TV watching
Jul. 2nd, 2023 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivendellroseTried watching the first episode of Marvel's Secret Invasion last night, and... umm... it did not go well.
The first thing that set off warning bells in my head within the first few minutes was that the plot had a very, how shall I say, "refugees are dangerous" kind of thing going. Which... sigh. Do we have to do this? Really? Like, is there not enough of that sentiment in real life? Should, perhaps, this not be something we do not reflect back in the worst possible way in our stories?
It also felt very much like the plot of Falcon and the Winter Soldier... without the fun bits with Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Just the dull grim everything-is-awful bits. So... that wasn't great.
It was nice for me to finally see Emilia Clarke in something, since I've always heard good things about her but could not (and would not) watch Game of Thrones. And it was nice to see Olivia Coleman, who is always wonderful. And of course I love Sam Jackson, although having most recently seen him in both The Hitman's Bodyguard and the sequel, I kept half expecting Ryan Reynolds and Salma Hayek to show up. Particularly since this did not in basically any way except the repeated mentions of the Thanos Blip feel like it was happening in the MCU. But I digress. And of course I was terribly happy to see Cobie Smulders as Agent Hill again. I've always felt the MCU criminally under-utilizes her and should give her more screen time.
Those of you who have seen the full first episode will now be shaking your head, understanding why I was supremely unhappy with the end of the episode.
And I'll say right now, I have always assumed this show might end with Maria Hill dead on the pile of under-utilized female characters that Marvel has sacrificed on the altar of plot development and emotional growth for other characters. I've seen the movies. I know how this shit keeps going lately. But, somehow, I had been under the mistaken impression they would wait until at least late in the second episode to kill her for emotional impact, for goodness' sake! But no! We cannot even wait until the beginning of the second episode! Let's get this out of the way as fast as humanly possible, because god for-fucking-bid we let this character I have loved (despite her complete lack of actual screen time or development) actually have some lines and some time to grow before she gets killed off to give someone manpain and prove that the stakes are high.
"Boy," I said about five minutes before the end of the episode, "it's so nice that they're finally giving Cobie Smulders some decent screen time and lines!" "Yeah," said Husband, "she's really getting some stuff to do!"
Me three and a half minutes later: "Are you fucking kidding me?!"
It reminds me a little bit of how I felt after, having disliked Wanda for the entire time she'd been present in the movies, I started to sort of warm to her ever so slightly in Endgame, then fell ridiculously in love with her in WandaVision... and then made the mistake of watching Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. "Oh. Oh, I see, all that character development and growth that she just went through... you're going to undo it. Because plot. And Sam Raimi. And character development for Strange. Oh. I fucking see."
Except in this case I'm honestly even more insulted because I have always liked Hill. Yes, I like her in part because I fully believe she is in fact Robin Sherbatsky (or rather I believe Robin Sherbatsky is her Clark Kent style alter ego) — why the fuck shouldn't I? It's not like the movies have ever given me anything else to believe about her. But she's cool and smart and competent and, yes, gorgeous, and, unlike just about any other woman in the MCU, she's someone I can stretch to believing I could be in an imaginary universe. Not a killer super-spy, not an over-powered maybe-evil chaos-incarnate witch, just a woman whose main power is being calm and competent and being a great shot. I'm none of those, but I like to pretend I'm the first two sometimes, and the woman working at a computer in the background is an easy mental jump for me, unlike the woman killing people with her thighs.
But a dude needed to realize that the situation with these ungrateful terrorist refugees was serious, so I guess she had to die.
Husband wants to keep watching to see if it gets better, even though he agrees that it was a disjointed mess in terms of editing, had seriously problematic messages about refugees and, um, killed my favorite Marvel character. I... have managed to agree to this on the principal that maybe, just maybe, the first five minutes of the next episode will include a Russell T. Davies-style "haha, faked you out!" de-cliffhanger where the Hill on the ground spluts into a Skrull. Of course I know this is unlikely, but for crying out loud there has to be some reason they zipped through all the introduction so damned fast in this episode, and maybe Husband is right that the whole thing is a fake out and the Skrull aren't actually the bad guys (I find this unlikely, but, hey, I'm willing to try one more).
Not two more, though. If the next one doesn't get better, I'm out. And possibly out of the MCU until... okay, realistically probably until the Loki series starts up again, because we already pay for Disney+ and there is a serious dearth of television on a streaming service we have that I actually want to watch. But... sigh.
The first thing that set off warning bells in my head within the first few minutes was that the plot had a very, how shall I say, "refugees are dangerous" kind of thing going. Which... sigh. Do we have to do this? Really? Like, is there not enough of that sentiment in real life? Should, perhaps, this not be something we do not reflect back in the worst possible way in our stories?
It also felt very much like the plot of Falcon and the Winter Soldier... without the fun bits with Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Just the dull grim everything-is-awful bits. So... that wasn't great.
It was nice for me to finally see Emilia Clarke in something, since I've always heard good things about her but could not (and would not) watch Game of Thrones. And it was nice to see Olivia Coleman, who is always wonderful. And of course I love Sam Jackson, although having most recently seen him in both The Hitman's Bodyguard and the sequel, I kept half expecting Ryan Reynolds and Salma Hayek to show up. Particularly since this did not in basically any way except the repeated mentions of the Thanos Blip feel like it was happening in the MCU. But I digress. And of course I was terribly happy to see Cobie Smulders as Agent Hill again. I've always felt the MCU criminally under-utilizes her and should give her more screen time.
Those of you who have seen the full first episode will now be shaking your head, understanding why I was supremely unhappy with the end of the episode.
And I'll say right now, I have always assumed this show might end with Maria Hill dead on the pile of under-utilized female characters that Marvel has sacrificed on the altar of plot development and emotional growth for other characters. I've seen the movies. I know how this shit keeps going lately. But, somehow, I had been under the mistaken impression they would wait until at least late in the second episode to kill her for emotional impact, for goodness' sake! But no! We cannot even wait until the beginning of the second episode! Let's get this out of the way as fast as humanly possible, because god for-fucking-bid we let this character I have loved (despite her complete lack of actual screen time or development) actually have some lines and some time to grow before she gets killed off to give someone manpain and prove that the stakes are high.
"Boy," I said about five minutes before the end of the episode, "it's so nice that they're finally giving Cobie Smulders some decent screen time and lines!" "Yeah," said Husband, "she's really getting some stuff to do!"
Me three and a half minutes later: "Are you fucking kidding me?!"
It reminds me a little bit of how I felt after, having disliked Wanda for the entire time she'd been present in the movies, I started to sort of warm to her ever so slightly in Endgame, then fell ridiculously in love with her in WandaVision... and then made the mistake of watching Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. "Oh. Oh, I see, all that character development and growth that she just went through... you're going to undo it. Because plot. And Sam Raimi. And character development for Strange. Oh. I fucking see."
Except in this case I'm honestly even more insulted because I have always liked Hill. Yes, I like her in part because I fully believe she is in fact Robin Sherbatsky (or rather I believe Robin Sherbatsky is her Clark Kent style alter ego) — why the fuck shouldn't I? It's not like the movies have ever given me anything else to believe about her. But she's cool and smart and competent and, yes, gorgeous, and, unlike just about any other woman in the MCU, she's someone I can stretch to believing I could be in an imaginary universe. Not a killer super-spy, not an over-powered maybe-evil chaos-incarnate witch, just a woman whose main power is being calm and competent and being a great shot. I'm none of those, but I like to pretend I'm the first two sometimes, and the woman working at a computer in the background is an easy mental jump for me, unlike the woman killing people with her thighs.
But a dude needed to realize that the situation with these ungrateful terrorist refugees was serious, so I guess she had to die.
Husband wants to keep watching to see if it gets better, even though he agrees that it was a disjointed mess in terms of editing, had seriously problematic messages about refugees and, um, killed my favorite Marvel character. I... have managed to agree to this on the principal that maybe, just maybe, the first five minutes of the next episode will include a Russell T. Davies-style "haha, faked you out!" de-cliffhanger where the Hill on the ground spluts into a Skrull. Of course I know this is unlikely, but for crying out loud there has to be some reason they zipped through all the introduction so damned fast in this episode, and maybe Husband is right that the whole thing is a fake out and the Skrull aren't actually the bad guys (I find this unlikely, but, hey, I'm willing to try one more).
Not two more, though. If the next one doesn't get better, I'm out. And possibly out of the MCU until... okay, realistically probably until the Loki series starts up again, because we already pay for Disney+ and there is a serious dearth of television on a streaming service we have that I actually want to watch. But... sigh.
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Date: 2023-07-03 12:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-31 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-10 12:22 am (UTC)(And I'm only a month late in posting a comment to this convo... /o\)
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Date: 2023-08-10 12:20 am (UTC)Oh my +1000 as the kids say. I did not make it past the second episode earlier. What really stung, as the fandom kept pointing out, was that Cobie Smulders got a "special guest star" type credit for all six episodes -- and except for the first one it was all shots of her dying or as a corpse.
At this point I'm waiting for Loki S2 and the Marvels and Echo in November, and after that anything in the MCU will be a really hard sell. I'm already unthrilled about how they're apparently just fine with Jonathan Majors being a major character in the next big Avengers storyline.