swanpride

No surprise there….NEVER underestimate the popularity of AoS. Who knows, if the streaming numbers pan out, maybe Feige will consider a follow up show...I really would love to see Agents of Sword....

Don't get me started on NOT having one system for all.

I mentioned above that I am from Germany.

Voting is anonymous over here, too. You only know WHO has voted, not what said person has voted for. This way you can make sure that the number of votes match up with the number of voters. And yeah, I am aware of the voter ID discussion, but all the other precautions I listed could be implemented. They could do a count at the polling station how many people were coming in to vote, they could do the "five random assigned people pro ballot" thing, all of this would be possible to safeguard the election.

Honestly, our pen and paper system is so well organised, I really don't see how anyone could manipulate it. You can't hack it because it is done on pen and paper. You can't cheat counting because every count is done by five people who are randomly assigned (so they don't know each other and don't all support the same party) AND every citizen has the right to come and witness the voting. You can't do ballot stuffing, partly because nobody is ever alone with the ballots, but also, because there are lists who voted where and the results are published online sorted by the districts, it would be immediately obvious if there are suddenly more votes than voters. And naturally we all have ID, so you can't vote for someone else. I guess it is possible that someone who lives in you home is casting a letter vote for you, but wide-spread manipulation, I really don't see how this would be possible. Those voting machines seem to be not only ineffective, but also more expensive than our system in the long run.

You know what would be even better than "securing" the election with a paper trail? Doing the voting on paper from the get go. If organised right, it's more or less fool proof….. Side-note, the German government considered voting machines a few years back. Then the Bush re-election happened. After that nobody was talking about the notion again. So...I guess thank you for taking the bullet for us?

I want Captain Marvel 2.

At this point it is kind of disappointing whenever they go with the obvious choice. I honestly really look forward to the Eternals, just because I am curious what they have come up with THIS time around.

I know. But Brexit seems to be a never-ending story.

To make my point...here is everything they planted regarding Ward (Spoiler tags just because I am overly careful): Naturally by now they have to work even HARDER to trick the audience, but they still manage to do it on a regular basis. It's frankly amazing. The idea that they aren't good writers is really silly. I frankly don't know ANY writing team which is that careful in keeping canon straight. I mean, in this show event can become relevant again 5 seasons later.

Well, in hindsight it is good that it didn't, because that makes it easier to divorce Inhumans from canon.

Yeah, me too. I hope we get some sort of wrap up now in Agents of Shield, even though it feels odd to have them clean up after another show. I think AoS does a really good job regarding fitting into the larger universe, or at least they did until Infinity War required absolut secrecy. But all the comments I just heard about AoS just solidifies to me, what I always noticed: Those who don't like it tend to do so, because they wanted AoS to be something else. Which is fine, but one can't judge a show on what it isn't, only on what it actually tries to be. And what AoS tries to be is an enjoyable romp through different genres, where Characters are thrown into situations which get crazier and crazier and the audience is unable to predict what will happen next. But, to the credit of AoS, they NEVER cheat the audience. With all the twists they did, not one single time did they do something which wasn't carefully set up beforehand. At the same time, they are really good in implementing the hints in a way, that they are right there but usually you won't notice them. It's brilliantly made. I mean, even with Ward...we should have known. The hints were all there.

There were two issues with Agent Carter season 2: For one, they spend more time setting up some future plot (which we never got) instead of telling one self-contained story. And two, while the first season was all about Peggy dealing with her grief over Steve and finding her place in the world, including learning to trust her own abilities while also learning to accept help of others, the second season was basically about which gut she should kiss. It was and incredible reductive take on her. Also, one shouldn't judge Agents of shield based on the first half of season 1. That's like judging Daredevil based on the second half of season 2 only. It is easily the worst part of the whole show (not bad though if you don't go into it with unrealistic expectations, it's mostly just the typical world building jitters a lot of shows have in the beginning). Also, the show is made for one specific audience, for people who enjoy the work of writers who don't forgot what they did in the past and who trust the audience that it will remember, too, and who enjoy watching something which required to pay close attention to the plot whole also ending up constantly surprised because the show is utterly unpredictable.

Fun fact: Agents of Shield is overall actually better reviewed than Daredevil. Not that RT TV shows scores mean much, but past the first season, AoS has constantly scored in the high 90%. In any case, the one true failure which came out of Marvel Live Action TV under Loeb was Inhumans, and I think we can blame THAT one firmly on Perlmutter. Even Iron Fist has its fans and there is a general agreement that the second season was a huge improvement. I'm honest, the thing I currently want the most as follow-up from the Defenders Verse is the story of Danny and Ward travelling through Asia (yeah, I know, will most likely never happen). I think the one thing one can really blame on Loeb was how botched Defenders ended up being. But that is an essay in itself….

In my eyes Agents of Shield isn't just the best Marvel show (yes, better than Daredevil), it is one of the best shows I have ever seen. And I am not alone with that opinion. Nobody would have ever said that about Baywatch.

Oh, it does if you follow the Brexit news closely.

It's too bad, I really liked this show. One of Marvel's best. But I guess it never got the traction it deserved in the first place, and at least the show ended at a logical place. Too bad that the chance of them turning up in the MCU again is pretty low, even though it would be all kind of awesome….

I don't count Inhumans as a Loeb Project, since Perlmutter has its fingerprints all over it. That leaves the Defenders Verse, which suffered in quality later on, but was still extremely successful, with Jessica Jones even winning a Peabody award. Agents of Shield is all kind of awesome und one of the most watched TV shows in the world - also Marvel's longest running TV show by a long shot. Agent Carter was great, especially the first season. And if you haven't watched Cloak and Dagger, you are missing out. I admit, that Runways wasn't what I expected and I didn't manage to really get into that show, but it seems like the audience likes it well enough. So overall a pretty good track record, especially in a landscape in which shows barely make it past its first season anymore.

??? Which crappy TV shows are you talking about exactly? Marvel TV has a pretty good track record overall.

If I get the story right, Perlmutter really wanted to push the Inhumans, Feige really wanted to make Black Panther (and Captain Marvel). So they had an agreement that they would do both. But then Feige was removed by Disney from Perlmutter's control during the whole Civil War fight, giving him full say over the future slate, which lead to Inhumans being quietly dropped from the slate. So Perlmutter went to where he still had power and wanted a TV show. I guess Loeb basically left the project to him instead of fighting over it, since it would explain pretty much every sh.. decision made regarding Inhumans.

I also got the impression that Disney quietly fixed some of the underlying problems with Marvel, basically by ensuring that the strongest talents they have are in charge of the creative process while keeping the money cruncher out of the way as much as possible. I mean, it's VERY noticeable in the movies. Ironman 3 was fraught with problems because of Perlmutter's influence and Thor The Dark World was a production mess. But after that there was less and less reported regarding Studio interference (Ultron being the notable exception) and more and more regarding people being able to realize their vision. In the case of Civil war, because Disney interfered and got Perlmutter out of the way so that Civil war could be the movie the Russos had in mind.

Yeah, but the background between that was supposedly a spat Perlmutter had with Fox. Back in the day, Fox sued Marvel because they thought that they had not just bought the movie rights, but also the TV show rights for the X-men. Long story short since that was before Marvel had the Disney Lawyers backing them out and still busy struggling out of bankruptcy, the case ended with an agreement, which basically lead to Fox only being able to make TV shows with the permission of Marvel and Marvel only being able to do animated shows...or something like that. The whole matter was really messy and allegedly Perlmutter took it personally. Hence him pushing Inhumans so much.

Oh, he totally is...he is also a racist (he infamously thought that nobody would notice if they re-casted War Machine) and incredible cheap (hence he wanted to do Civil War without Ironman). I suspect that the Inhumans show was pretty Perlmutter's "thing".

Who knows...without Perlmutter both might do better...

Well, they basically pluck the best elements of the franchises in question and mix in some fresh ideas, so yeah, I think they can make everything work. That they are not too married to the comics and not afraid to throw annoying ideas - like the secret identity - over board is their biggest strength. I wonder how long it will take until we have caught up with the timeline though...I mean, currently we are at least four years in the future, if not five.