Review: 10 Cloverfield Lane

This will be the first of two posts on 10 Cloverfield Lane, first is a review of the film itself and the second will be a genre study. This first part is spoiler free and the other will have marked spoilers.

How you respond to Bad Robot's new production 10 Cloverfield Lane will almost certainly depend on how much you were expecting a sequel to 2008's Cloverfield.

First-time director Dan Trachtenberg's movie has little-to-no connection to the first Cloverfield, but it's also destined to suffer disinterest or even rejection from two extremes: anybody who was hoping to see the original story continued; and also haters of the original who are turned off by the use of the title for this new movie.

For what it's worth, I found some enjoyment in the original film but hoped that whatever Matt Reeves directed next wasn't as aggressively average and doused in shaky-camera antics (I was rewarded in 2014 with his flawed but great Dawn of the Planet of the Apes). If you were in the same camp, you probably weren't clamouring for Cloverfield 2. However, you might be better positioned to enjoy 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is Michelle, who after an argument with her fiance leaves New Orleans and drives out to the country. She has an accident on the highway and blacks out, only to wake up inside an underground bunker owned by Howard (John Goodman). Howard is a conspiracy nut and disaster prepper who alleges that there's been "attack" above ground and, as far as he knows, Michelle, he and a third survivor, Emmett, are all that remain of the human race.

So begins a no-fat rollercoaster ride filled with mystery and tension, grounded in fantastic performances by the two leads. Goodman is intriguing (given the twisted story structure of reveal upon reveal) and is alternately welcoming and frightening. His potential untrustworthiness – whether intentional or simply by his being an "outsider" – is a good parallel to your reaction while watching the film. Has Howard rescued Michelle, or simply kidnapped her and invented a catastrophe? Is he the antagonist of the story? His he a "monster", much like the kaiju Clover? Is the movie even science-fiction? You won't get a peep from me.

Winstead, on the other hand, brings to life one of the best protagonists of the year so far. Her story-arc is core from minute 1 through minute 103 (the movie is 103 minutes long). It's uplifting to see a film whose production staff were dedicated to providing cathartic character growth and at the same time not shirking the horror of being trapped in a confined space with people you don't know.

The acting isn't the only thing that keeps you engaged. Battlestar's Bear McCreary provides a fitting original score, though you could say that it is closer to the Bad Robot "house style" than Bear's own. What his music truly succeeds at is blending into the sonic fabric of Howard's bunker. When Michelle is feeling emotional, that's the accompaniment. When she is surprised, the strings will sting.

Yes, there are jump scares in the movie. Yes, like many mysteries, once you know the outcome the tension will probably be deflated on future viewings. Despite this, I take issue at the idea that these will sour 10 Cloverfield Lane with time. Like Psycho (more on that in the next post) the world suggested within the story is layered and interesting enough that you will never be bored, even knowing exactly what happens next. In the end, the film is a high-quality experience either way, with great twists and believable characters.

But what about the Cloverfield connection? Do you need to have seen the first movie at all to get more out of 10 Cloverfield Lane? The answer is a resounding no. Abrams and company have made it clear with this sudden departure and subsequent interviews that the idea of a true sequel to Cloverfield is less interesting than using the strange, smaller-budget associations of that title to tell what amounts to a sci-fi anthology series, like a big-screen Twilight Zone. That might be the most thrilling part …

10 Cloverfield Lane earns 4.5 / 5 stars.

Stay tuned for another look at 10 Cloverfield Lane next, with a focus on how it fits into the cinematic canon of "high-quality B-movies".

Review: April and the Extraordinary World

If you grew up reading Asterix the Gaul or The Adventures of Tintin, you were probably intrigued by the trailers to Avril et le Monde truqué, or April and the Extraordinary World. The film, which uses a combination of computer-assisted hand drawn animation and CGI, is an original story based in a world created by bandes dessinées artist Jacques Tardi.

If you want the pure experience, go now, watch the movie and come back afterward. In a nutshell, if you enjoy Franco-Belgian comics, steampunk or Hayao Miyazaki's movies this will definitely be up your alley. I won't spoil anything major about the plot in the review below, but part of the fun in April is the thrill of discovery, much like the principles of science that motivate the characters therein.

There's a modern term that describes Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror (and Historical Fiction sometimes) collectively as Speculative Fiction. Stories about the "What If".

Existing in the space between futuristic, historical, magical and scientific, April is very much a speculative-fiction story. In this case: what if the Franco-Prussian War never happened? What if there was nothing more to stand in the way of the French Empire? Add to that: what if the world's scientists began to disappear?

Of these scientists, two happen to be the protagonist's parents. Left with a priceless snowglobe, a love for science and a cat who can talk as a result of a failed experiment, April spends ten years stealing, sneaking and generally waifing-it-up around Paris trying to recreate her family's secret serum (the relevance of which I will leave up to the movie to detail).

April is not a spunky, Barbie-doll teenager but a much more down-to-earth personality who bears the weight of an orphan but is also weighed down as a citizen of the disgusting capital that Paris has become. The might of the French Empire was so hungry for fuel to fight its wars that it deforested the entire continent, belching so much smoke into the atmosphere that most Europeans wear gas masks in 1941 and the countryside has been turned into a grey wasteland. 

For April, the loss of her family and the destruction of the natural world might as well be the same thing: her first hopeful encounter in years happens at a memorial to the last tree and the journey to find her parents takes her away from the smoggy horror she's known for years. Her talking cat, Darwin, is the closest thing she has to a family member, and the smoke in the air is likely to take him from her too.

April charts an alternate history that results in, thanks to the lack of scientists, a world where electricity was never discovered and the burning of coal and wood is the only source of energy. Combined with the oppressive French Imperial regime, you have a recipe for classic steampunk.

Much like The Matrix and the genre of cyberpunk back in 1999, readers already familiar with this kind of setting might find the opening narration somewhat over-explanatory as to why April's world is this way. Most movie-goers, however, are less likely to take the preponderance of airships and chunky wood-fired machines for granted -- in which case this is the best introduction that one could ask for. Instead of treating the aesthetic as a fashion statement, April does a remarkable job of exploring both parts of the term "steampunk": an empire that needs fuel for its machines of war (the steam) and a dismal world where the only heroes are the outcasts and abnormals (the punks).

While its exploration of steampunk politics is a rare occurrence on film, the actual plot of April is pure old-fashioned adventure-romance, meaning not the lovy-dovy kind of romance but the two-fisted, derring-do kind. Taking inspiration from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Howl's Moving Castle, Raiders of the Lost Ark and even James Bond and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at times, the film-makers clearly knew what they wanted to produce and who they were making it for. Often, thanks to the nearly perfect pacing, exciting action and silly slapstick, the movie seems to be blossoming out of pure love right before your eyes.

Is the plot predictable? Mostly, with a few minor exceptions. Do the villain/s plans seem far-fetched? Quite. Will the protagonists find themselves in a beautiful natural environment after spending the first half of the story in a smog-choked, overcrowded city? You bet! But accusing April of being unoriginal in these ways is as pointless as doing so to any of the aforementioned properties. Part of what makes something a "genre" in the first place is a set of guidelines and touchstones that are familiar to the audience, and April is no exception.

That said, if you happen to be sensitive to what Doug Walker (of the Nostalgia Critic) calls the "liar revealed" story¹, it rears its head in April, though it is downplayed to an extent: it's only so important to the characters until they next get into trouble (which as you might guess is quite often in a pulp adventure tale).

Strangely enough -- though I cannot be certain of how and when the production of April lines up -- there are multiple reflections, plot points and even visual motifs that seem to simultaneously evoke and rebuke last year's Tomorrowland. Perhaps it is from the overarching premise of disappearing scientists and the imminent death of the natural world. Even the villain/s motivations seem to expound upon and better rationalise the kind of character that the former film's Governor Nix became.

Regardless, while there are certain logistical questions left at the end of April that even the film admits may have gone a bit too far, it manages to tell a complete story in the way that Tomorrowland failed. Rather than a protracted first act and rushed conclusion, April goes to great lengths to provide a full beginning, middle and end. This is a movie that understands that an adventure (rather than say, a mystery story) needs the plot details to be doled out over the course of the story rather than dumped on the audience all at once in the climax.

Many of the fantastically staged action scenes wouldn't have had as much impact if the secrets had been withheld in this way -- and they really are fantastic. The aesthetic of the film is hands-down the best translation to animation of Tintin artist Hergé's pioneering "ligne claire" style (of which Jacques Tardi makes ample use in his work) that I have ever seen. I have not read many of Tardi's comics but I understand that his style also makes use of highly detailed backgrounds, another beautiful component of April's visual identity. The few conspicuous uses of 3D CGI are integrated as well as they can be and mostly just to maintain sensible proportions when depicting vehicles.

The biggest negative I have about April and the Extraordinary World is akin to one of the villain's core motivations: prejudice. That is, prejudice in the anglosphere against French films, and especially animated ones. When I showed the trailer to a friend earlier in the year, he remarked, "oh, an art film."

This is a movie that deserves to be as popular with kids and adults alike as any of the upcoming Dreamworks and Pixar projects, but like the stop motion extravaganzas of LAIKA is probably destined to be seen only as a cult classic. It has humour in abundance, wondrous sights, thrills and even manages to sneak in commentary on the importance of family.

April and the Extraordinary World is no Star Wars or How To Train Your Dragon -- the plot is maybe a tad too conventional -- but in a world with angry superheroes and lightspeed remakes or nostalgia grabs it allows the audience to have a different sort of adventure. It stands out from the norm, and that makes it extraordinary -- 4.0 / 5 Stars.

As they say in France, fin.

___________________________________________________________________

1 That is to say, the rather overused device where a hero is caught in a deceit, and subsequently ostracised -- causing emotional turmoil in one or more characters who thought they could trust them -- even though the audience is well aware that the heroes will kiss and make up before the finale.

The Great Cow Race Ch1: The Spring Fair

"The Spring Fair! Don't you just love it Fone Bone? The smells! The colors!"
"I have to admit -- this is a pretty good way to wind up our adventure!"

So what, Bone, in a few days you'll be headed back to Boneville?
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Pros
The opening page of this chapter has some beautiful art showing off the Spring Fair, and as usual the facial expressions of the main characters are very effective. I also liked the introduction of giant bees as another emblem of the Valley's magical weirdness.

Cons
Sheesh, Tom -- you didn't win the good looks lottery, did you? Perhaps it's because he's such a bit-part character, but the hunk with the honey's first of several appearances in The Great Cow Race has a whole lot of derp-face going on. Sure, it's just one panel, and he's considerably more normal through his other scenes but ... good grief, maybe Jeff Smith just wanted us to dislike him from the start and went waaay too far.

This chapter's lesson
At the start of The Great Cow Race, I was reminded that, unfortunately, this and the fifth volume Rock Jaw are the least impressive of the series. They aren't bad by any means, but especially contrasted with the high action and drama in the surrounding volumes, the talking-animal antics and less interesting plot threads (oh no, Thorn is smitten by a jerk guy ...) come off as affected and unnecessary.

However -- and this is the lesson for today! -- the sillier tone of The Great Cow Race and the lower-stakes action is not a weakness from the standpoint of Bone as a children's series. Yes, it has a broad audience and is not intended only for kids, but it is of the same genre as Asterix or The Hobbit. Both books also make use of sillier breaks in between the more serious plots to keep the story from becoming too grim.

Think back to the episode "The Tales of Ba Sing Se" in Avatar: TLA. Our heroes have just been told that the city they spent the whole season trying to reach is basically a more affluent Airstrip One from 1984. Followed up with a collection of light or touching short stories! Not exactly the most narratively satisfying continuation, but necessary to downplay just how scary the situation truly is.

To fall back on the ever-present Tolkien example, these early hi-jinxes are like the Shire. Darker times ahead will be more bearable to struggle through knowing what lies behind the main characters and what they want to protect. Here, the Spring Fair is an example of that fun and happiness.

Review: Amulet Book One: The Stonekeeper

On the back cover of Amulet Book One: The Stonekeeper, by Kazu Kibuishi, are these words:

"Five -- no, three pages into Amulet and you'll be hooked."

-- Jeff Smith, creator of BONE

I ask, dear reader: how could I resist?

Note: while I'll try not to spoil major plot reveals, I recommend if you want to go in fresh that you leave now and come back once you've read the book. If you've already read Amulet, you probably have a much better idea of what I'm talking about!

The Story

Let's see. First, it's your standard kids' portal fantasy: something terrible happens to one or more family members of the protagonist/s and they enter another world filled with magic and wonder but also dangers, a terrible villain and a whole lot of saving to do. So far, so Narnia, so Pan's Labyrinth or anything in between (incidentally, doesn't Jim Henson's Labyrinth qualify as halfway between?).
It doesn't sound like a story that has much new to offer, right?

Wrong.

The Art
Amulet first shows its true potential through use of an evocative, chiefly grey-blue colour palette, shot through with other tones, similarly subdued. This is reflective of the nature of magic in the setting, also quite subtle but beautiful in its own way. Among these styles are characters who, frankly, took a while to grow on me visually. It's hard, for instance, to take the kids' mother's incredibly long head seriously.

But that's all okay, because the design of Amulet's world is the real draw. Already I can't wait to read the next book, because a plethora of giant molluscs, alien elves and intelligent teddy-rabbits show that Kazu Kibuishi tried his darnedest to separate his story from the pack. Along with these Lovecraft-lite monsters and cute robots, the entrance to the magical parallel world of Alledia is a spooky and original opening to Navin and Emily's adventure.

Laid out like a Zelda dungeon with less puzzles, there are the aforementioned molluscs, treacherous cliffs and strange fungi galore to feast your eyes upon. Then, we reach Charnon House in the middle of an underground lake. I can just taste the promise: every new location suggesting mystery, then when explored, new horizons are revealed. Kibuishi must have been taking notes from Tolkien for that one.

And this is all without mentioning the magic and technology. There are the robots like Miskit, flying machines, the actual house -- whose true nature I will leave for you to discover -- mixed in with the mysterious sorceries of the elf prince and the titular Amulet.

The Setup
We have to face it. This book is an adventure, certainly, but like all first books its true purpose is to introduce the struggle and enchant the reader; make them want to read more. There are plenty of interesting threads premiered -- the biggest of course is that Navin and Emily need to save their mother -- but of them all I was struck the most by the nature of the Amulet.

It's the primary plot device: the source of magic for the protagonists and apparently the means of defeating the Big Bad Guy, the Elf King. But immediately, it is treated with as much ominousness as it is with promise.

This is not your typical plot pendant, it's actually more like the use of alchemy in Fullmetal Alchemist. That is, for a story ostensibly directed at children, the magic of the Amulet is more ambiguous than usual. We're telegraphed from the word go that things are going to go wrong. Will Emily suffer a terrible fate for having bound herself to the Amulet? Are the protagonists even the "good guys" that Silas makes them seem in the first place? Such ambiguity is tantalising and I look forward to where Navin and Emily's adventure takes them next.

The One Big Con
Alas, very few if any stories are perfect and the rule is upheld with Amulet. You might think I have nothing but praise because it pushes all the right buttons on my story brain, and to a certain extent I thought that too. Except that there's one aspect of Amulet: The Stonekeeper that I cannot stand, and it's the pacing.

Now I'll be the first to admit that I absorb comic books in a less-than-ideal manner. Despite my love of visual art, my more primal reading tendencies take over. My eyes snap from balloon to balloon to eat as much of the story as possible, regarding the rest only so much as I might notice the paragraph breaks in a novel. Paradoxically, this means I occasionally take longer to finish a comic book because I like to go back and actually take in the illustrations properly.

Yet, even I noticed that the panels, page after page, were dreadfully decompressed.

I have nothing against decompressed comics per se. I just believe that manipulating the passage of time is a technique to be used across all comics. I'd go so far as to say that deliberately slow comics are less accomplished narratively than those that use a diversity of panel numbers, sizes and representations of time.

Amulet: The Stonekeeper covers maybe one third of the ground that Out from Boneville does and it does it with fifty pages more. That's two whole issues of a regular magazine comic! This is like one of those two hour movies that you just wish could have been edited to ninety minutes. True, when the inevitable Amulet movie is developed they could probably use these decompressed panels as storyboards, but that doesn't help when there's really only enough story content to fill two episodes of a half-hour cartoon.

Okay, that last part used a lot of comparisons to other media. Let's stick with comics: Amulet: The Stonekeeper feels like the beginning of an arc, not an entire arc unto itself. It's a proof-of-concept, and a great one. But that doesn't excuse it for taking its sweet, sweet time getting the story to where it needs to be for Book Two.

The Verdict
Well, I should probably start coming up with a rating system if I'm going to actually review stuff. Amulet is off to an exciting start and if the pace improves, it could easily be one of my favourite fantasy comics (there don't seem to be that many around, do there?).

Amulet: The Stonekeeper 
3.5 / 5

What I Want From Movies -- Part 1

(picture from letterboxd, movie social media)

Princess Mononoke. Terminator 2. The Dark Crystal. Mad Max: Fury Road.

Why are the four movies on my profile my "favourites"? For starters, there are a few elements that I love in movies more than all the craft in the world (though 'course, it always helps that the craft is good too):

-- Grand stories with relatable themes
-- Larger-than-life characters and epic drama
-- Fascinating worlds and beautiful visual composition

Lucky for me, there are a lot of movies that can offer at least one of these. Occasionally, it is why I'd rather watch a gangster picture than an actual science-fiction or fantasy movie -- I'll nearly always choose epic scope and dramatic story over cheap thrills. 

Sometimes it's even why I'll admit that a movie isn't perfect and still enjoy the heck out of it: see 2012 or 9.

... okay, it's a little weird that both examples I picked weren't really titles so much as numbers.

Moving on.

The point is that the movies I've said are my "favourites" have all three bullet points and more. If I could choose the movies that I'd make, or pick the movies that other people make -- these four would be the gold standard. "Make more like this," I say.

Oh and, before I get stuck into each of these points for today's movie: let it not be forgotten that there's a fourth, subsidiary element that I love in movies and that's a good score. Princess Mononoke certainly has that one down. While I've liked movies with bad musical scores, they never reach the top of the heap¹.

Princess Mononoke is a classic little-w "western" in the sense that it has a drifter-type character coming to a new town/city/land and (intentionally or unintentionally) becoming wrapped up in the local conflict just as it builds to a head. This conflict is, in all-but-a-few examples, between an upstart group of greedy and/or technologically superior humans and the incumbent culture -- aliens, first peoples, elves, you name it. 

Over the course of the story, the wandering knight, or gunslinger, or samurai, or former Confederate captain, or martial arts master in question will pick a side, or none at all, and change the conflict for good (though not always for the side he joined in the first place). This also makes Princess Mononoke a spiritual predecessor to Avatar, but as we will see, I think it does a much better job of exploring the nature of conflict and human relationships.

Okay, so the movie probably already has your attention with its basic plot setup: after all, it's rare that one of these never builds to an epic showdown -- sometimes over land, sometimes over ideologies, often over both. This pretty much guarantees that the first two elements I mentioned at the top are covered. 

Our wandering hero this evening will be played by Ashitaka, the last prince of a persecuted Japanese people, the Emishi. He is cursed and must leave his home to find a cure before it kills him -- and just for fun, I'll point out that the soundtrack for the first leg of his journey is actually titled "The Journey to the West", in case you weren't already sure what genre this epic story was going to be. 

Other larger-than-life characters include the spirits of the forest (which, despite the English translation, you must understand are not "gods" as the anglosphere thinks of them); Jigo, a shrewd merchant with very few morals; and the leader of the local humans, Lady Eboshi, who is not the kind of antagonist you might think she would be in a western story (this time also meaning European stories as opposed to eastern ones). 

Above all, San, the titular "Princess Mononoke" (aka. Beast Princess) is the most important character in the story, having been raised among the wolves of the forest and practically forsaken humanity. Her relationship to Ashitaka is more tense and passionate than any Pocahontas wannabe and doesn't go the direction you're expecting, either.

Ashitaka is unusual in this mix as he does not automatically side with the humans of Irontown, who the spirits of the forest are so keen to get rid of. Rather, as he says, he wants to see "with eyes unclouded by hate", and come to a mutually beneficial cease of hostilities. 

As one might imagine, this is particularly difficult when (most) men and beasts have viewed each other as enemies since the beginning of time. The unfolding of this story I will leave unspoiled, but suffice it to say that Princess Mononoke treats all of these ideas with due gravitas and even manages to show the shades of grey that Avatar forgot about around the time that Stephen Lang was cast as the big bad military villain.

The last element I mentioned up top might be even more prominent than the first two in this movie: Princess Mononoke creates an absolutely gorgeous world through the use of traditional animation and computer-enhanced multiple planes. Even the touch of mid-90s CGI is used deftly, leaving no elements dated by today's standards. The forest is mysterious, full of power but also danger, and Irontown as a new settlement has the nostalgic feel from stories of settlers in far-flung reaches of the world. Both primary settings are treated with a combination of heightened reality and down-to-earth empathy, meaning as the audience we don't want to see either of them destroyed.

Again, this is in contrast to the modern, American western where the colonists are always automatically seen as an unsightly blot on the landscape and the forest is depicted as blameless and nice.

Princess Mononoke is, additionally, an example of Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki in their prime, and one of the few cinematic fantasy/western films that is spoken of in the same breath as Star Wars. Everything about it is absorbing and strange, combining wondrous movie magic with thoughtful commentary on humanity's relationship with the natural environment. The only possible complaint I might have is that, from a perspective as a Christian, there is little-to-no discussion of the creator of this natural environment.

Hopefully this has given some insight into why I want more movies to be like the four I have picked to be my "favourites". Next time, we'll discuss what I think might be the greatest action movie of all time, Terminator 2: Judgement Day. What's that? I think Die Hard is trying to bash down my door, better go sort this out ...

___________________________________________________________________

1 For instance, Once Upon a Time in China is an exciting and well-told movie from a certain point of view, but the music is far from the best that Chinese or Hong Kong films have offered.

Agents of SHIELD Season 1 -- By Memory

I wanted to catch a friend up on the events of "Agents of SHIELD", season 1, so I thought I'd make it available to all. Special thanks to Conor Bendle and Mik Bennett who checked that I provided appropriate information for season 2.

After the events of the third biggest movie ever made, Agents of Shield follows a not-very-crack team of not-very-superheroes. Almost every episode, the Agents have to investigate an object or villain, most so obscure that even comic fans have to look at Wikipedia to remember them.

Surprise! Agent Coulson is alive. Except not really. That is to say, he's not alive in the movies, but he's alive on TV. And from the word go, we're not sure if he's even that. How did he survive being stabbed in the heart? Is he a robot? A hologram? Some sort of clone duplicate? The answer won't be as exciting as you think.

So Agent Coulson isn't allowed to see his old friends the Avengers, because in the movies they all think he's dead and it would be too expensive to have them on the show. But he still wants to help defend the world from evil, so he builds a new team:

Melinda May – an emotionally closed martial arts master who definitely won't open up and become more friendly over the series. Fitz and Simmons – two young scientists who went through SHIELD's version of Hogwarts with top marks and are so close that most of the time people just refer to them as Fitzsimmons. Grant Ward – a super competent, decorated agent whose personality is even less interesting than his name. And as a late addition, the magical hacker who never knew her parents, Skye.

The first season has three major arcs: the first comprises mostly stand-alone episodes where the team meet a collection of colourful villains and encounter strange devices, all related in some way to the Avengers or other parts of the Marvel movie world. The second arc focuses on connecting the stand-alone events of the first few episodes together to reveal that a rogue group known as "Centipede" is trying to create their own brand of scary super-soldiers – the most prominent of these is Deathlok, who is doing what Centipede orders him to save his family. During this arc, Skye discovers that SHIELD potentially knows who her parents were and Coulson finds that he was resurrected through the use of big, bad, alien technology. When Skye pushes Coulson to help her find the classified documents about her family, Coulson – understandably, following his own revelations – tells her she might not want to know and refuses to help.

In the final arc, the Agents of Shield are caught off guard trying to return to the Hub (a major Shield base) by the reveal that the evil organisation Hydra has been within Shield all this time. The events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier occur at the same time. During the final arc, the agents ally themselves with the remaining loyal Shield agents only to see them killed off by Hydra and Centipede (who are also part of Hydra and led by Garrett, played by Lieutenant Hudson from Aliens). Ward himself turns against the team and joins Centipede, after having been a deep-cover villain all this time. This, incidentally, makes him a much more dynamic and layered character and is retroactively for the best.

Our agents make it "Game Over, Man!" for Garrett and Centipede, with a little help from Nick Fury, whose actor Samuel L. Jackson was a better sport than the other superhero movie leads and just wanted to be a part of the show. At the end, half of the original cast is in a bad place: Ward, with his mentor Barrett dead, is captured and will probably be both conflicted and crazy/evil next season. Fitz suffers a near-death experience and "might never be the same again", causing a lot of heart ache for Simmons. And finally, Coulson, though he has a revitalising new mission from Fury to basically restart SHIELD with nothing but his little team, is getting worse following the reveal of how he survived. The alien technology used to bring him back from the dead caused Coulson to start drawing strange patterns that look like circuit diagrams, maths equations, or some kind of map. To be continued!