Low Budget Marvel

I've impressed myself with the recent run of pop-culture related posts I've managed here of late.  It helps, of course, that I've been clearing a backlog of stuff I've recorded from terrestrial TV, giving me plenty of subject matter.  On top of that, I've also found a new source of schlocky movies in an obscure Roku channel that I'd somehow missed before.  The quality of their recordings is frequently extremely poor, looking like they've been taken from fifth generation duplicates of dodgy pirate VHS recordings.  Which, as everyone knows, is the best way to view such films.  Rather than watching more of this stuff, I've spent most of today on the beach and in the New Forest, which, along with a session in the pub, has left me feeling exhausted.  Consequently, I've currently only mustered the energy to start watching Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D (1998).  Yeah, that Nick Fury film, made back in the days before Marvel became a multi-billion dollar movie franchise and its characters tended to be confined to cheapjack TV movies like this one.  The best thing about it is David Hasselhoff in the title role, as writer David Goyer noted at the time, the Hoff at least seemed to understand that it was meant to be a campy, tongue-in-cheek adaptation, sporting the trademark eyepatch, constantly chomping on a cigar and hamming it up like mad.  Intended as a pilot, it never led to a series.  

The film was made around the time that Baywatch was running out of steam and Hasselhoff clearly saw it as a potential new long-term gig.  (In the event, Baywatch transmogrified into Baywatch Hawaii, running for a couple more seasons, with Hasselhoff as a much reduced presence).  As Nick Fury, Hasselhoff seems to be going out of the way with his performance to prove that he isn't Mitch Buchanan with an eyepatch.  Which he pretty much succeeds in doing, growling his way through the role with none of Buchanan's good natured geniality, instead coming on as a total bad ass.  (The closest equivalence to his Nick Fury characterisation in his previous work is probably his turn as Garthe Knight, Michael Knight's evil doppelganger in Knight Rider, which involved him growling his lines and sporting a goatee rather than an eyepatch).  The film is basically good cheesy fun and has been unfairly maligned over the years, particularly in comparison to the more recent big-budget big screen Marvel adaptations.  The fact is, though, that I find myself preferring these low-budget, smaller scale Marvel adaptations that were once the norm.  They aren't as overblown and full of distracting CGI effects, relying instead on things like plot and characterisation.  Or, in the case of the Nick Fury TV movie, a sense of its own absurdity and refusal to take itself too seriously.  Basically, they hadn't lost sight of the fact that comic book characters are meant to be fun.