Action Choreography in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Since Daredevil dropped on Netflix, there's been a lot of back-and-forthing about the relative quality of the Marvel universe TV offerings, on a lot of different fronts, with a lot of compelling logic. My take on things, if you're interested:

1. Agents of SHIELD has tons of interesting and diverse women. Agent Carter has ONE fully fleshed-out woman, and a couple of secondary ones, in service of a specific feminist-ish theme. Daredevil never passed the Bechdel test, which isn't a sole indicator of quality, but one that I take super-seriously.
   
   
2. Agents of SHIELD doesn't have a very coherent visual aesthetic. Agent Carter is gorgeously styled. Daredevil is not very comfortable with light in any of its forms.
   
   
3. Agents of SHIELD is corporatized and bland a lot of the time, with a full 20+ episode season. Agent Carter is well-driven in a very specific way, for a 10+ episode season. Daredevil is well-driven in a very specific way most of the time, for a 10+ episode season.

Fair? I feel like that's fair. I enjoy watching Agents of SHIELD most of the time, I enjoy watching Agent Carter most of the time, and I enjoyed Daredevil while I binge-watched it, and then got quickly weary of it after I recovered. In any case, however, both Agents of SHIELD and Daredevil have each done fairly remarkable single-take fight scenes, and I think they're fairly good at demonstrating the ethos of each of the two shows. (Sorry, Agent Carter.)

First, let's look at Daredevil, since that came out first. This is the end of the second episode, IIRC. Also, the green lighting was so Matrix-like that I couldn't get past it at first. I expected Agent Smith to emerge at any moment.


Vulture has a good breakdown of the scene. I, personally, was impressed by how well the fighters conveyed weariness as the fight dragged on and on (in an awesome way). If you've ever watched a decent boxing match, you'll know the signals: the staggering, the long pauses, the moments when it kind of seems like the combatants want to just hug and lean into each other instead of throw another punch. It's a great callback to Murdock's boxer father, and also a fair analogy for Daredevil's first character arc. Murdock runs into the fight all gung-ho, but gets slowly worn down, still focused on his objective, but feeling the pain and weight of it accumulate.

Now, let's take a look at this scene from Agents of SHIELD 2.19, in which Skye is a TOTAL BADASS.


Hitfix has the breakdown on the scene, but besides being a remarkable feat of choreography and camerawork, it also illuminates Skye's rapid acclimation to being an actual SHIELD agent better than a season-and-a-half's worth of sturm und drang. And it's not just a fancy martial arts fight, which the show often gives to May or Bobbi. Instead, we see Skye assess the scene, the environment, the hazards, and the opportunities in micro-seconds. We see her run out of ammo, reload, run out of ammo AGAIN, and dive for another weapon. We see her run around a table and how that effectively buys her a few seconds against one of her opponents. There's no hesitation in what she does, and it's amazing. AMAZING.

Anyway. Those are my thoughts for the day. If you need me, I'll be rewatching these two clips over and over again for the next few hours.