Marvel have released a shocking amount of live action TV shows that are set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and while I have taken a look at a few of the latter shows I thought that it would be a good idea to take a look at the show that started this trend of. Oddly enough while alot of shows set in Marvel Cinematic Universe got series renewals straight away this one struggled every year and yet it's become the longest running Marvel Cinematic Universe TV show and so here is my review of the debut episode of Agents Of Shield with the episode simply being called "Pilot" enjoy.
The plot of the episode is a new team is being assembled one that will take on the missions that Shield either won't or can't and there first mission is to find a guy who has been given super powers by someone before he blows up killing countless people. I honestly thought that the episode had a much stronger story but when I was re-watching the episode for this review I was honestly shocked at how thin the story actually was if anything this is the kind of story you'd expect to find in one of the many Marvel One Shot short films and not the debut episode for a TV show set in what is the most popular cinematic universe of modern times the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Starring in the episode is Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson , Ming-Na Wen as Melinda May and Brett Dalton as Grant Ward. Also starring in the episode is Chloe Bennet as Skye , Iain De Caestecker as Leo Fitz , Elizabeth Henstridge as Jemma Simmons , J. August Richards as Michael Peterson , Ajani Wrighster as Ace Peterson , Arlene Santana as Hunter Harris , Shannon Lucio as Doctor Debbie , Ron Glass as Doctor Streiten and Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill.
Before you all say anything yes I know that both Clark Gregg and Cobie Smulders are reprising their roles from the Marvel Cinematic Universe films whoever as this was fairly common knowledge I chose to to mention it when crediting the cast for this episode. As for what I thought about the acting in this episode it was alot better then what I remember it being I watched this episode when it was first broadcast and I remember the acting not being that good but to my surprise the acting is actually alot better then what I remember it being.
Doing the CGI for this episode is Furious FX and try as I might i cannot find what else they've worked on. Which is most likely a good thing since the CGI in this film is at best OK and bad at it's worst perhaps the worst offender for me is the drones that they use because all of those when flying are CGI and they look fake as all hell I get that not every effect is going to look great but I do expect them to look at least passable even more so when you have freaking Disney and Marvel putting up the budget for this show and thus this episode.
Like I said at the start of the review even tho alot of the live action shows that are set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe got renewals almost right away. This show show didn't infact it honestly felt like that the people in charge of choosing which shows get more seasons where waiting until the last possible minuet to decide on if this one was going to get a new season which I can't imagine made things easy for the cast and crew not knowing if there going to get to make more episodes until the eleventh hour.
As to be expected in the pilot episode there are plenty of references to The Avengers film which i'm not going to lie I honestly liked. To me the references that they made didn't get in the way of the actual story or n building up these new characters instead the references served to remind us that this is set in the same world as all those other films which for a show that is meant to bet set int he same world as those films is honestly a good thing since it gives people who perhaps weren't sure if this was set in the same world as the films the reassurance that they perhaps wanted.
However those references can also be seen as a bad thing because they firstly remind people that they could be watching a better product. Secondly because of the fact that they make alot of references to The Avengers 2012 film it also doesn't give this show a chance to stand on it's own since your being bombarded with references to the films which really isn't fair on this show since any show should be given a chance to stand on it's own and it feels like that the makers of this weren't giving it the chance to do so in my opinion.
As listed in this review this episode does introduce alot of new characters to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and not all of these characters are memorable. This sadly the case for nay show that has a large ensemble and chooses to introduce them all in the first or second episode because you now have to dedicate at least half of your running time to setting up these characters while characters like May or Skye (yes i'm refusing to call her Daisy deal with it) are the more memorable characters there are also character like Grant Ward , Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons who just aren't that memorable which is why I feel that this premier story should have been a two parter just so you can give all of the characters a much more fair chance of being more memorable in my opinion.
This premier story was only one episode and that episode was only forty four minuets long which for this kind of story with this many new characters simply isn't long enough. Like I just said I honestly feel that this is a story that should have been stretched out two episodes just because there are so many main characters to introduce and there's no way in hell you could introduce all of these characters and still tell or a good story.
Now then since this is an action show that does mean that I have to talk about the action that's in this episode. Which even tho there isn't that many action scenes in this episode what little action we do get is honestly really freaking awesome at least for a TV show it is anyways but with that being said I would have liked it if there was a bit more action just due to the world that this show is a part of but yeah the action that we got was really good plus any action scene where Ming-Na Wen gets to look even more awesome is a winner in my book.
Overall this episode while not as good as remember it being I remember being really blown away by how good it was was still really enjoyable. I'm not going to lie and say this episode was perfect because it honesty wasn't but given that this show is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and has the director of the 2012 Avengers film on board as a writer and director for this episode what we got for something that while bad in a lot places still fun to watch as such this episode gets a 7 out of 10 from me.
All of the images that I used in this review were gathered from the official Marvel Cinematic Universe fandom wiki page or the official The Gifted fandom wiki page. Since I got pretty much all of the images from this episode from the official Marvel Cinematic Universe fandom wiki page I have no choice but to recommend that you use them for either images from any of the MCU films , shows or this episode since they honestly are really , really , really high quality and very freaking high definition images,