Tuesday, October 28, 2014

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ohgodbenny earthsmightiestassholes

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petermaximoff:

Avengers: Age of Ultron sneak peek on ABC

#woahhhh

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samiholloway ohgodbenny

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starlord-man:

INFINITY WAR TRAILER!

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Sunday, October 26, 2014

On shared network worlds

According to the commercials, tomorrow night, Hetty from NCIS:LA is going to help out tr new kids on the block from Scorpion. That is amazing, and lemme tell you why...


See, last week, Scorpion was a fun show that had a few episodes under its belt and, like, nothing else. I really like it, and I'm really enjoying the mix of car chases and smart people, but it only had the world it had built so far.

Now, if the commercials aren't lying--like, if she's guest starring, but not being Hetty, say--now it has this whole bigger world to share. If Hetty can guest, then so can anyone on her team, which would be particularly good for Eric or Nell, who are the resident squints, and anyone off of NCIS or Hawaii Five-0 could come through, and, conceivably, they could bring back someone from all the way back in JAG, if they really wanted to.

Plus, folding Scorpion into the mix adds some other layers:

  • Scorpion is a crime-fighty sort of show like the others, but it's the first one where the people involved are not military--in fact, last week, they all failed miserably at being military-types, and that's why they work the way they work on the cases they have. Them being part of the same world brings in the civilian angle that all these military shows sometimes miss, and shows that civvis aren't just victims of the crimes they solve. 
  • Also, since they're not military, they can be messier--messier lives, messier personalities, messier stories that aren't constrained by protocol, or rank concerns, or training expectations--they're freer, in a way. And maybe that freeness can inform the other shows at some point.
  • AND, even if Scorpion somehow doesn't get picked up (which would make me sad, because I like it), these characters don't have to disappear and never be seen again. They can cross over and guest star on the remaining shows for ages after their own show is gone. They could even, conceivably, join those shows permanently, if the other shows can integrate them smoothly.
And because Scorpion is based (loosely) on the life of a real person, it means that there's this further layer of actual realness on the other shows now. If Walter is real, any of them could be real!

All of this is to say: Yes. This is a good move.

See, when I was growing up, there were all these similarly-constructed crime-fighting shows all over the TV, mostly on the same networks. And the fact that Magnum PI, Simon & Simon, and Murder She Wrote all crossed over at various points added this whole new dimension to television that I had never before thought of--all these shows were in the same world. People in them knew each other

It was mindboggling.

Of course, now TV is much more sophisticated (or at least more continuous and more complicated), but I've always had this fondness for shared worlds, and I just really wanted all of them to know each other. 

The JAG > NCIS lineage (or the millions of CSIs or Law&Orders) are a good way to do that, but they're shared by default. They're spun off of each other. Now that Hawaii Five-0 isn't a fluke, and Scorpion is part of it, it feels like a return to that comradery of shows on the same channel being aware of each other, sharing stories and characters, and, behind the scenes, being supportive of each other rather than existing in their own vacuums.

And since we've got Arrow and Flash now, and, potentially, a million other spinoffs they're setting up the world to offer if anyone has them, as well as SHIELD and Agent Carter on ABC, it seems like the thing right now for channels to have their own shared worlds. 

And if CBS would just admit that ALL their procedurals that happen in New York-- Elementary, Person of Interest, etc-- were one world, too, I'd be happy as a clam. It'd be easy. Just have John and Finch wander through the background and Sherlock not notice them because they don't matter to his case. It wouldn't even have to be a whole, formal crossover event.

Also, there's this potential for trans-channel shared worlds. Arrow and Co on CW are, technically, in the same universe as Constantine and Gotham and the proposed Teen Titans and Young Justice shows that haven't happened yet. How cool would it be if they formed the bridge between the networks and the cable channels and proved that they don't have to be in competition? That they can work together? Marvel already has linked movies, TV and Netflix; DC could be the one that links the channels between each other. 

Maybe I'm getting carried away (I probably am), but this feels like a brewing shift in how TV works that makes everything cooler instead of more fractured and annoying!

What do you think?

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

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sbstudios22:

THE AVENGERS AGE OF ULTRON HOLY CRAP ITS GLORIOUS

#avengers: age of ultron #The Avengers: Age of Ultron #marvel

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Thursday, October 9, 2014

Shows I want to spawn off of the Arrow-Flash-verse


This is a picture of my tv right now. This has been my TV for fourteen days.

In the last two weeks, I watched every episode of Arrow Season One AND Two to prep for the new season and the premier of Flash. And they did such a good job of spinning off Flash with deep roots in the father show rather than just the usual one-show-there-you-go sort of spinoff, that now I want these two shows to spin off ALL THE SHOWS. But especially the following:

Blue Beetle - They've already introduced Kord as a lab, so why not dudeface himself as an awesome inventor / crime fighter? And for bonus points, give me Booster Gold and make it a buddy-vigilante show.

Nightwing / Batgirl / etc - We have had enough Batman, we all know him. But think how cool it would be, in-world, if te next generation had their own show and it wasn't stupid? What if Barman never shows, is just something people talk about--if he was actually the legend he should be? Bonus points: if he does show, he's Aflek totally being movie-Bats, cleanly uniting the verse in one stroke.

Zatanna - Magical AND stage-magic AND fishnets! What more do you need?

Martian Manhunter - Black cop by day, green alien by night! Shape shifting super-power procedural! How cool would that be?

Power Girl - A girl Kryptonian? Sign me up!

Wonder Woman - This one is probably too much to ask since she's one of the JLA Big Three, and if she's on TV and isn't Gal Gadot, it basically makes uniting the TV-verse and DCCU impossible but... But Wonder Woman. Srsly. 

Shazam - If they can make a kid who is given god-powers and transforms into a super hero cool, which I think these people could, just think how much fun it'd be!

I don't know a whole lot about non-JLA DC, but I'm sure there are plenty more awesome dudes and dudettes (even though I call everyone a dude regardless of gender) that I would love to see have their own show. 

Who would you like to see? Which DC spinoff would make you so happy you'd just keel right over?

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

An open letter to Sony and Marvel

Dear Sony and Marvel,

I hear that you're in talks to bring Spider-Man into the MCU! This is such exciting news that I just want to encourage you to keep on this path and iron out all the difficulties--and I know there will be a lot of them. Marvel comics are based on a huge interconnected world, where team rosters overlap and heroes from one team know others, and it would be amazing if all the Big Names could even just cameo in each other's films.

But then I also hear that your plan to bring them together would involve recasting and rebooting again--when te current reboot isn't even done. This seems...wasteful. I'm the first to admit that I don't know how these things happen behind closed doors, but since the legalities will undoubtedly be super complicate to work out, wouldn't it make more sense to keep the story simple?

Here's how I see it: Spider-Man has just gotten established as a crime fighter. Okay; just say that all this happened before Avengers--even right before. So then, as a New York hero, he knows exactly what happened, he participated in it without hooking up with the Avengers, and he's been continuing to freelance while all that shit with Shield went down. Now, he's aware of all that stuff, he's living in a post-invasion world, and his villains are also aware of it. Bam! No need to reboot AGAIN, and only (I would assume), modifications to the already long-term contracts of the people already in the movies doing a really good job of it. Work it out in plot, not in reboot. 

That being said, I know I'm not one of your writers (though if you need one, I'm willing). I know that Marvel has a good track record with the balance of their movies. I know that this current version of Spider-Man was the best yet. I have faith that this will turn out well.

I'm just unclear on why it has to be done the hard way.

Your fan,
Sami




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