NICK FURY, AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D.: I’m Just Blowing Smoke Up Your Hoo-Ha

NICK FURY, AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D. (1998) – Directed by Rod Hardy – Starring David Hasselhoff, Lisa Rinna, Sandra Von Hess, Garry Chalk, and Ron Canada.

Special to Atomic Anxiety by Joe Crowe.

Today, May 16th is Atomic Anxiety’s Birthday #2. As a special treat to those of you who’ve been around for any of our 650 posts or 105,000+ hits or have been a part of making the last eight days the eight busiest days in the site’s history (thanks, AVENGERS!), I’m sitting back and letting someone else do the work! Wait, I suppose that’s really a special treat to me …

Check out Joe’s super-awesome sci-fi site, REVOLUTIONSF, where you get news, reviews, fiction, message boards, and trailer probes! Erm, that last one sounds dirtier than it is. Maybe you should just follow along with them on Twitter.

“That’s the problem with the Third Reich. No sense of humor.” — Nick Fury

Samuel L. Jackson is Nick Fury now. But in 1998, David Hasselhoff did it first.

I taped it when it aired in 1998 on Fox, because back then, there were no superhero live-action movies every other week. It was a TV movie and it only aired once, so Fox didn’t have to cancel it. I neither confirm or deny that I also bought a bootleg copy at a sci-fi convention.

Here’s some perspective. In 1998, David Hasselhoff was the biggest star ever to appear in any Marvel movie or show.

That’s right. This is the Hoff singing “Rhinestone Cowboy.”

The movie’s writer is now a big shot. David Goyer wrote Batman Begins and Dark Knight. He also wrote Blade, which also came out in 1998. But this movie was first. Goyer put in more comic-book references than any previous Marvel movie or show — by a factor of a zillion.

Every single character is from a Marvel comic, from Jack Kirby and Jim Steranko era SHIELD mainstays Dum Dum Dugan and Gabe Jones to agents from the 1980s and 1990s comics, Daniel Pierce and Kate Neville. The villains are Hydra, Baron Strucker and his children.

The Hydra goons don’t wear green costumes, but the movie shows the comic book Hydra logo, a skull surrounded by a circle of tentacles. My nerd receptors were in the red zone.

Dum Dum Dugan doesn’t have the handlebar mustache or a tiny little hat. Everyone calls him “Tim,” his real name in the comics. Arnim Zola is here, but he’s a greasy old man, not a robot with his head in his chest.

Hasselhoff acts with a cigar in his mouth for most of the movie. He’s gross, unshaven and sweaty in a really tight leather suit for most of it. This may be Hasselhoff’s finest hour.

I guess in 1998, the Fox network could not get the word “ass” past the censors.

I say that because there are several lines such as “Let’s go kick Hydra butt!” Then Fury tells a naive rookie, “Relax, kid. I’m just blowing smoke up your hoo-ha.”

Strucker’s daughter is hilarious. (The actress even has an appropriate name: Sandra Von Hess.) She doesn’t steal scenes. She DESTROYS THEM. She even tries to out-smash mighty Hasselhoff.

She yells “Silence!” while rocking spiked platinum hair. She’s German like all Germans are in Marvel comics. She calls her father “fazer.” Ultimate victory is “wizin our grasp.” When she thinks so, she says, “I zink zo.”

Goyer’s dialogue is so great. The actors issue lines that everyone in Marvel Comics said in the 1960s. Val (Lisa Rinna) calls a thug, “laughing boy.” Fury says, “Hydra’s been jerkin’ our chain six ways to Sunday!”

When Iron Man 2 came out, real copies of this appeared at Best Buy. Of course I bought one. But now it’s 82 bucks! You should have bought one already. You owe it to Nick Fury. There should be a line of “Sci-Fi Convention Bootleg Table Presents.” I would have to take out a second mortgage.

This movie is not hard to watch. Goyer’s script helps. It’s a standard super-spy action flick and it doesn’t look dinky or cheap.

NICK FURY, AGENT OF SHIELD has dorky charm out the wazoo. That’s what they would have said in 1960s Marvel Comics.

In the new Marvel movies, Samuel L. Jackson delivers, ten times out of ten. But Hasselhoff set the bar.

Review Copyright Joe Crowe, 2012.

ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING: You Kids Must Be From the Suburbs

Adventures in Babysitting (1987) – Directed by Chris Columbus – Starring Elisabeth Shue, Maia Brewton, Keith Coogan, Anthony Rapp, Calvin Levels, Penelope Ann Miller, Bradley Whitford, John Ford Noonan, Vincent D’Onofrio, Lolita Davidovitch, George Newbern, Clark Johnson, and Albert Collins.

I had forgotten that Bradley Whitford played the jerk boyfriend.

I had forgotten that Vincent D’Onofrio played “Thor.”

I had forgotten that Penelope Ann Miller played the nervous friend.

I had forgotten that Lolita Davidovitch played the skanky college girl.

But I hadn’t forgotten how totally gorgeous Elisabeth Shue was in ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING, which I believe was the first movie I ever got my parents to take me and my mates to when I was a kid without accompanying us inside, and it was just because I had such a crush on Elisabeth Shue. It makes me feel a bit old that BABYSITTING came out 25 years ago, but re-watching it last night for the first time in probably 20 years, I was really surprised at how well the movie holds up. ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING isn’t any kind of cinematic classic, but it is a pretty good Chris Columbus version of a John Hughes film.

Chris Parker (Shue) is super excited about a night out in the city with her boyfriend Mike Todwell (Bradley Whitford), but he stands her up because his sister is sick. Chris ends up getting a late call to babysit for the Andersons: Sara (Mara Brewton) and Brad (Keith Coogan), with the bonus inclusion of Brad’s friend Daryl (Anthony Rapp). Chris’ friend Brenda (Penelope Ann Miller) runs away from home but gets stuck in a bus station in Chicago, so she begs Chris to come get her. Against her better judgment, Chris piles the kids into her mom’s car to head to the big, scary city. They get a flat, wacky adventures happen, and they make it home precious minutes before Mr. and Mrs. Anderson.

I’m not going to rehash the plot, except to say that Columbus’ pacing is spot-on. One adventure follows quickly on the previous escapade, making BABYSITTING a fun, fast-paced ride. Everything that happens to the kids – a flat tire, a tow-truck driver with a hook for a hand, getting trapped in a stolen car, escaping some thugs, singing with Albert Collins, climbing down the outside of a high-rise office building – is just realistic enough, and just a bit more unrealistic that the escapades that precede it, that the film stays grounded enough for me to go along for the increasingly silly ride.

What I really want to get into is the film’s underlying principle: White people are afraid of black people.

Let me specify that statement a bit. By “white people” I mean “people who live in the suburbs” and by “black people” I mean “people who live in the city.” Like the typical Hughes film, BABYSITTING focuses on protected, upper class white kids from the suburbs who are confronted by scary black people. There’s a whole strain of white kid movies that touch on this fear of black people in often subtle, but still disturbing ways: Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Animal House, Road Trip, etc. But even when the Hughes/Columbus/Reitman/Ramis films don’t explicitly touch on race, they are prime examples of Toni Morrison’s concept of the “Africanist presence,” which argues that even when black people aren’t physically present in an American narrative, their presence is still felt.

In BABYSITTING we see both the explicit and implied fear of black people in the fear the kids show in going into Chicago.

It’s really a pretty segmented world the kids live in out in the well-to-do suburbs as the very thought of taking the kids into the city causes Chris all sorts of anxiety. The very idea that she would take these kids INTO THE CITY plays like she’s taking them to the Titty Twister for a night of drugs, strippers, and getting eaten by vampires.

Into the city they go where they meet a scary white tow truck driver who turns out to be a nice guy (before he decides to go kill his wife’s lover) and then a scary black car thief who turns out to be a nice guy (before he chases them down for his crime boss). Both the trucker and car thief end up eschewing their bad behavior to help the kids out, so BABYSITTING is, in large part, about taking people for who they are, not who they appear to be.

Critically, however, the trucker is designed to look crazy with his hook hand, his scraggly beard, and wild eyes, while the car thief just looks like a normal guy. The idea that the crazy trucker can be a good guy willing to help them is based on his zany appearance – if he was a normal white truck driver, the kids wouldn’t have freaked out – while the idea that the car thief can be a good guy is based far more on him being a black guy than him being a car thief.

Just look at how the characters are rendered: the trucker is presented as atypical while the car thief is presented as typical.

It gets worse when Chris and the kids end up on stage at a blues club. The kids are fleeing the crime boss, run through a back door, and stumble on stage during an Albert Collins set.

Once everyone notices them, the club stops dead and the kids are nearly frozen in fear. Everyone in the club is black. All of the kids are white. Obviously, then, the black people are stunned silent by the idea of white people in their midst while obviously the kids have to be as scared by a roomful of black people listening to music as they were of the crime bosses chasing them. Chris nervously says they just want to leave but Collins insists no one can leave until they sing the blues. So Chris and the kids make up a song on the spot with help from Collins and his backing band and the crowd goes wild because, oh-my-god, white kids from the burbs sing a song about how tough it is to be a babysitter.

Now, as a kid growing up in a 99% white town in central Massachusetts, all of this made perfect sense because our conception of non-Christians was largely created by the media, so we were used to black people being portrayed as scary. My parents and most of my friends’ parents HATED going in to Boston, even though we could get to Fenway Park in 90 minutes tops, so the fear of a city made some sense, too.

And look at what happens here. Sara – 8-year old Sara – is terribly afraid to be confronted by a room full of black people at the blues club but she has no fear in climbing out a window at the top of a freaking skyscraper in downtown Chicago to escape another scary black guy.

Now, as an older guy, all of this seems a bit … disturbing, but then, that’s what Columbus was creating here, a white kid, suburban nightmare fantasy that ultimately reveals city people of all colors are good and bad, and that you have to take people for who they are, not what they are.

Enough of that. You might be asking why I’m reviewing this movie in the middle of all this AVENGERS talk. Well, whether you were wondering that or not, I’m going to tell you. When I decided that May was going to be Avengers Month, I worried a bit about finding enough Avengers-specific material to fill the month, so I decided to include movies that featured actors from AVENGERS, and then I decided to branch out to include BABYSITTING because Sara is such a huge fan of Thor (she spends the movie walking around wearing Thor’s helmet and wearing his hammer). It’s her love of Thor that ends up winning over Vincent D’Onofrio’s mechanic (whom she mistakes as being Thor), which allows them to leave with Chris’ car.

Good for you, Thor.

THE AVENGERS: The HULK Reaction

The Avengers (2012) – The 6th Marvel Cinematic Universe Film – Directed by Joss Whedon – Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Clark Gregg, Cobie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgård, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Bettany, Alexis Denisof, Stan Lee, Powers Boothe, Lou Ferrigno, and Harry Dean Stanton.

Welcome to the eighth character-specific reaction to Joss Whedon’s THE AVENGERS. I’ve already written a 4,200+ word review of the film, but that wasn’t nearly enough to cover everything I wanted to talk about, so I’m going to write character-specific reactions to delve a bit deeper into the film. You can find all of the relevant AVENGERS links at the bottom of this post.

Let me be clear about what’s coming: SPOILERS. Lots and lots of SPOILERS. Read ahead only if you’re cool with that. If you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want things ruined, come on back when you do.

Also, please note that these reactions are evolving as we go. If you see some line I got wrong or a detail I overlooked, by all means let me know. I’ve seen the movie twice, but it’s a long movie and the audience reacts wildly in parts, so some things get lost or forgotten or misinterpreted. And I’m sure some of the quotes are wrong, but I will correct the mistakes as I become aware of them. Don’t be surprised if these reactions grow a bit in the coming days.

Join the conversation on Twitter.

“Puny God.”

The Hulk stole the show.

Built off a foundation of strong work by Mark Ruffalo as a less-victimized Bruce Banner, the Hulk is no longer a simplistic embodiment of rage, but rather a more complicated explosion of Banner’s Id in which the “Other Guy,” as Banner calls the Hulk, is far more than the “enormous green rage monster” of previous films.

A quick recap of where the Hulk has come from: Ang Lee’s underrated HULK isn’t part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe while Louis Letterier’s INCREDIBLE HULK is, but none of the three cinematic interpretations significantly contradict one another, and they actually work together rather well to build a strong, multi-film narrative arc for Banner and the Hulk.

In AVENGERS, Bruce Banner is living in India, helping out the sick, when the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) tricks him to the outskirts of town to recruit him in to a SHIELD operation to track the stolen Tesseract. They do the back and forth about Banner coming in, and what’s of primary concern to Bruce is whether Tasha and SHIELD want him or “the Other Guy.” While not referencing previous events directly, Banner is clearly concerned that SHIELD wants the Hulk. Tasha assures him this isn’t the case, that SHIELD only wants Banner’s expertise to track gamma radiation to bring the Tesseract back, and that if there was a bigger brained gamma radiation expert somewhere in the world, she’d be there instead of with him.

Banner is doubtful, of course, and he lashes out at Tasha as she sits at a table. He screams at her, slamming his fists into the table in an enraged state, and she quickly draws a gun on him. There’s clear fear in her eyes, and Banner, instead of going green as one would expect from his outburst, raises his hands in surrender. It’s Banner who tries to calm things down, and we’ve all seen this scene before …

Except we haven’t.

We immediately get our first taste of how Joss Whedon and Company’s conception of Bruce Banner and the Hulk has evolved from earlier incarnations. Banner talks Widow down because it’s Widow who’s on the verge of losing control of her emotions, not him.

Whedon does a masterful job at building the Banner/Hulk arc, teasing Banner’s “secret” through the film. It’s been a while since the Hulk got out of Banner and as the film progresses, different characters try to get Banner’s secret out of him. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) wonders if it’s mediation or “a big bag of weed,” but Banner never lets his secret out until the big final battle at the end of the film against the Chitauri. “That’s my secret, Cap,” Banner says as he walks towards the battle, “I’m always angry.”

This one line, this one simple, beautifully written and delivered line that comes right before we finally see Banner self-trigger his transformation into the Hulk. It’s the kind of line that, once delivered, completely recontextualizes everything you’ve seen prior to this moment in terms of the Hulk.

That said, what can we do with it?

There’s two transformations in the movie and the first appearance of the Hulk is a bit of the old fashioned, to borrow a line from Agent Coulson’s (Clark Gregg) conversation with Captain America (Chris Evans), as Banner can’t stop the Hulk from appearing, while the second transformation is self-triggered. What’s fascinating about these differing trigger mechanisms is that they effect the Hulk’s personality; when the Hulk is birthed out of anger, we get a classically-conceived, vicious, violent, out of control Hulk, but when Banner self-triggers the Other Guy, we get a Hulk that’s much more in control of himself and the result is two of the funniest bits in the entire movie.

Let’s take the transformations chronologically, starting with Banner on the Helicarrier.

The Bruce Banner that Steve Rogers meets on the deck of the Helicarrier (it’s in battleship mode at this point) displays a willingness to be sympathetic as well as a dry sense of black humor. Bruce is sympathetic to Steve being the man out of time, and this empathy for another is completely fitting with previous conceptions of Banner. The Eric Bana and Ed Norton Bruce Banners also tried to find a purpose in their lives by helping others, and Ruffalo on the deck of the Helicarrier is building on not only what he was doing in India, but those earlier Banners. When Tasha suggests that Banner and Rogers ought to get inside because it’s going to get hard to breathe, the two future Avengers mistakenly believe the ship is going to turn into a submarine. “Great idea,” Banner remarks dryly, and when they realized the Helicarrier is going up instead of down, Banner thinks it’s an even worse place to bottle up the Hulk.

(Which seems kinda silly, eh? It’s better to be trapped with the Hulk in the sky than the middle of the ocean, I would think.)

Ruffalo delivers these lines with a knowing sense of his condition. There’s a sadness to the humor, but there isn’t defeat in his voice. Where Ruffalo’s Banner differs greatly from previous incarnations is that he’s made his peace with the Hulk. “I got low,” he says to the assembled team. “I put a bullet in my mouth and the Other Guy spit it out.”

It’s a powerful admission in the middle of the film, and when someone gets on your case about this being a silly little action film, remind them that one of the characters at the center of this popcorn flick admits that he’s only able to be here because tried to kill himself and failed. This idea that the “Other Guy” won’t allow Banner to be killed suggests what Banner ultimately admits – that rage isn’t the key to the transformation, and the Hulk is less the bottled up rage monster and more the lurking subconscious lingering just beneath the surface.

Which isn’t to say you’ll suddenly like Banner when he gets angry. Loki (Tom Hiddleston) allows himself to be captured and ends up manipulating the team to exacerbate their personality conflicts. His ultimate goal is to let the Hulk out to cause havoc during Hawkeye’s assault on the Helicarrier. When Hawkeye’s arrow explodes, Banner and Widow get knocked down a floor. She’s trapped, and he’s on the verge of losing it. Now it’s Tasha’s turn to try and calm Banner down but she’s not successful and we get the arrival of a very angry Hulk into our midst.

Tasha is visibly frightened the Hulk is visibly agitated. They “fight,” which is to say Tasha becomes very, very afraid and tries to escape and the Hulk tries to prevent this. Tasha is saved by Thor (Chris Hemsworth), which leads to a Thor vs. Hulk battle in the middle of the Helicarrier.

Yup. That’s as awesome as it sounds. The Thor v. Hulk battle is incredibly violent, and again I have to point out that the personal combat scenes in AVENGERS are pretty darn great because we can really feel the power. There’s a truly fantastic moment when Thor calls Mjolnir to him and delivers a jaw-crunching uppercut to the Hulk that sends the big man flying. It’s a huge thrill to see these two beat the crap out of each other, and the CGI guys deserve major kudos for how good the Hulk looks and how good he moves.

The Hulk ends up jumping off the Helicarrier when a fighter jet attacks him, and there’s a King Kong sense to the Hulk bashing and tearing apart the jet from its back. I love the moment when the pilot ejects and the Hulk catches him, only to toss him aside.

Critically, in this battle the Hulk is dangerously out of control because that’s the state he was in when he transformed.

This isn’t the case for the final battle. After crashing in an abandoned factory and having a chat with Harry Dean Stanton about his fall, Banner gets on a bike and drives into the city, surprising most of the Avengers with his reappearance. This time around, Banner self-triggers into the Hulk and we get a Hulk that takes commands from Captain America and goes out and smashes the heck out of the Chitauri. It’s simply fantastic to watch a Hulk be able to operate without any concern for anything. Whedon (externally) and Captain America (internally) have found a way to let the Hulk out to play without restraint. Seeing him try to rip the jaw off a Chitauri leviathan and just generally smash the hell out of anything and everything he wants, and for this to be a GOOD THING is a clever way for all of us to simply enjoy the Hulk and remove the burden of Banner’s guilt.

Our enjoyment of the Hulk is raised even more by Whedon’s secret weapon – the Hulk is hilarious.

No, the Hulk doesn’t start telling jokes or indulging in some Whedon certified one-liners. Instead, Hulk gets us to laugh by his actions and it was pretty clear that both times I watched the film in the theater, the Hulk’s actions during the Chitauri battle got the most applause. The Hulk and Thor team up to take down a Leviathan and as they’re standing there side-by-side with the fight over, there’s a single quiet moment, and then the Hulk shoots out his left hand and pounds Thor off the screen. It’s the kind of moment that is so unexpected that the laughter it creates in the audience is not just one of thinking the scene funny but of the disbelief in the audience’s mind. It’s such an unexpected move – to see one hero sucker punching another in the middle of an epic battle against an enemy – and such a hilarious move that it’s easily one of the most joyous feelings I’ve ever experienced in a movie theater.

And then AVENGERS tops it.

Up in Stark Tower, the Hulk and Loki face off and Loki dresses down the Hulk with a vicious, elitist verbal assault. “Enough!” the Asgardian commands the Hulk. “All of you are beneath me. I am a god, you dull creature and I shall not be bullied-!”

Loki’s rant is cut off right then and there by the Hulk grabbing the God of Lies and slamming him around like a ragdoll. It is brutal and ridiculous and hilarious and one of the most awesome scenes I’ve ever witnessed. The Hulk leaves a wheezing broken shell of a god lying on the cracked floor and walks away in disgust.

“Puny god,” he grumbles.

Derrick Ferguson and others have pointed out that they missed this line the first time they saw the film because the audience was roaring so wildly and loudly.

“Puny god.”

This isn’t the Intelligent Hulk or Fix-It Hulk, but it’s not the mindless brute, either. This is a Hulk who understands what’s going on around him and can act with some agency instead of simply being the enormous green rage monster. It’s a really smart decision to push the character in this direction. At the end of the movie, when Iron Man is falling down through the sky after delivering the nuke that blows up the Chitauri ship, it’s the Hulk who jumps up to save him from crashing to earth. One of the best parts of the individual character arcs is how Tony Stark and Bruce Banner developed a real relationship with one another, and I believe it’s this friendship that causes the Hulk to be the one that jumps into the sky to catch a falling Stark.

Mark Ruffalo is fantastic as Bruce Banner and Joss Whedon’s conception of the Hulk as a creature who’s personality is partly determined by the trigger mechanism combine to have a Hulk that steals the show.

____________

THE AVENGERS REVIEW INDEX

THE AVENGERS: THE MOVIE REVIEW
THE AVENGERS: THE HAWKEYE REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE AGENT COULSON REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE BLACK WIDOW REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE NICK FURY REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE MARIA HILL REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE CAPTAIN AMERICA REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE CHITAURI/THANOS REACTION
THE AVENGERS: THE HULK REACTION

THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE REVIEW INDEX

1. IRON MAN
2. THE INCREDIBLE HULK
3. IRON MAN 2
4. THOR
5. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER