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cool kids inc. posted:He absolutely has been. Angel is presented as this sweet, dark, hosed up but hearts in the right place kind of guy. Angelus is lighthearted, leather pants wearing, and completely evil. It's not until it gets Angel starts to go dark in season 2 of Angel that we really see that Angel/us could be more similar than initially thought. I think in early season 2, they actually give Boreanaz the ability to bring out Angelus a little even before "the change" happens. Initially, it seems like he's putting on a show when Spike and Dru are around, but as the show gives us glimpses of him away from the high school gang more and more, it becomes clear that the Angel that all of them see is the real show, and that Angelus with a soul is always lurking beneath the surface. You can see it in the scenes where he fucks with Spike's mind, or the one when he gets pretty brutal with the rear end in a top hat barkeep trying to extract information (which I liked, because it also sort of sets the hardboiled tone for his spin-off). He's still Angelus when he's Angel, he's just careful to keep it in check when he's around the Slayer and her pals. I haven't seen Angel in long enough to remember if they keep that going.
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May 4, 2015 17:23
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Bicyclops posted:I think in early season 2, they actually give Boreanaz the ability to bring out Angelus a little even before "the change" happens. Initially, it seems like he's putting on a show when Spike and Dru are around, but as the show gives us glimpses of him away from the high school gang more and more, it becomes clear that the Angel that all of them see is the real show, and that Angelus with a soul is always lurking beneath the surface. You can see it in the scenes where he fucks with Spike's mind, or the one when he gets pretty brutal with the rear end in a top hat barkeep trying to extract information (which I liked, because it also sort of sets the hardboiled tone for his spin-off). He's still Angelus when he's Angel, he's just careful to keep it in check when he's around the Slayer and her pals. I just re-watched the show, and as mentioned above, Angel in Season 2 of his show gets really dark with a soul, and it's exactly as you describe - this is still Angelus the Vampire. He just has a soul now that can moderate his evil, when he chooses to do so. When he doesn't, he can be just as evil - maybe even more so. Season 4 of Angel, on the other hand, gives the impression that the vampire is totally a different being. It didn't work IMO.
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May 4, 2015 17:26
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redshirt posted:I just re-watched the show, and as mentioned above, Angel in Season 2 of his show gets really dark with a soul, and it's exactly as you describe - this is still Angelus the Vampire. He just has a soul now that can moderate his evil, when he chooses to do so. When he doesn't, he can be just as evil - maybe even more so. They did but they didn't. There was that scene where the dude in the store died, and Angel with a soul still ate.
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May 4, 2015 17:31
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One of the show's biggest mistakes is flat-out saying, repeatedly, "The vampire is not actually you anymore. A demon comes up and walks around in your body, and you're gone," because it's very obvious that isn't true from every instance they show of a person converting, and even more obvious with Angel. I always just write it off as Watcher propoganda. Vampire is the demon version of you. It strips away your conscience. It makes Angel's "curse" actually make sense, because he gets his conscience back but still has the demon version of him, which he's lived with for a lot longer, tempting him at every corner. Season 2 is much better than I remember it being on a second watch, so far, even if it does have Inca Mummy Girl in it. e: I'm sure this has been debated in this thread and everywhere else on the internet ad nauseum, but I haven't engaged with it for awhile, so, you know, it just comes up.
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May 4, 2015 17:32
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Bicyclops posted:One of the show's biggest mistakes is flat-out saying, repeatedly, "The vampire is not actually you anymore. A demon comes up and walks around in your body, and you're gone," because it's very obvious that isn't true from every instance they show of a person converting, and even more obvious with Angel. I always just write it off as Watcher propoganda. Vampire is the demon version of you. It strips away your conscience. It makes Angel's "curse" actually make sense, because he gets his conscience back but still has the demon version of him, which he's lived with for a lot longer, tempting him at every corner. It probably is Watcher propaganda, or them being flat out wrong - and we are shown they are wrong on many subjects. Or, it could be accurate for vampires, but Angel (and Spike) is the obvious exception. That said, is Angelus really Liam? Liam seemed like a loser, with nothing special about him except he was good with the ladies. Angelus is smart and cruel and Liam seemed like none of those things.
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May 4, 2015 17:44
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For some vampires its true and some its not. With Angelus he is complete demon. Its proved when the Judge touched him and nothing happened. In the case of Spike and Dru he claimed they had the stink of humanity on them.
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May 4, 2015 17:55
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redshirt posted:
Well, the cruelty comes from being a vampire. I haven't gotten to the Liam flashbacks yet, but Angel seems more like Liam, from what I can remember. His conscience is bound up in a strange guilt complex and he is obsessive about what other people think of him. The scene in which Angel just kind of sits there and lets Buffy burn him with the cross he gave her strikes me as a very Liam thing to do.
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May 4, 2015 17:56
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bobkatt013 posted:For some vampires its true and some its not. With Angelus he is complete demon. Its proved when the Judge touched him and nothing happened. In the case of Spike and Dru he claimed they had the stink of humanity on them. True too. I wonder if Season 4 of Angel Angelus would have survived the Judge's touch. He seemed far too human like even as a pure vampire. Maybe that's the point of the character change - the preceding years had so impacted Angel that Angelus was changed as well.
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May 4, 2015 18:05
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redshirt posted:True too. He was also in the hell dimension as Angel with a soul.
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May 4, 2015 18:08
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Bicyclops posted:Well, the cruelty comes from being a vampire. I haven't gotten to the Liam flashbacks yet, but Angel seems more like Liam, from what I can remember. His conscience is bound up in a strange guilt complex and he is obsessive about what other people think of him. The scene in which Angel just kind of sits there and lets Buffy burn him with the cross he gave her strikes me as a very Liam thing to do. Cruel is the wrong word, but that said most vamps aren't cruel, they're just monsters who kill and eat. Angelus is supposedly legendary among vampires for his cruelty, which comes from...? Liam? I don't see how the human Liam could begat the cruelest vampire in history. Or, should we conclude that is the work of Darla? And distantly, the Master?
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May 4, 2015 18:08
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bobkatt013 posted:He was also in the hell dimension as Angel with a soul. Indeed. This is a plot point that is so easy to forget yet is incredibly relevant to the character we see from Buffy Season 3 onward. 100 years in hell will do things to a person, right? The Angel from Season 3 BTVS is far more evolved as a person then the Angel of Season 2 BTVS.
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May 4, 2015 18:10
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I think the major difference is Liam was a self-loathing loser with daddy issues. He totally rejected the person he was before and gave into the demon that possessed him because it gave him a purpose (evil). That's the whole drat point of his character. The flashbacks to his old family show he was what a 90's slacker kid would have been 250 years ago in a noble family- just drunk and living it up with no clue as to his purpose in life or what he should be, while his father constantly expects more of him. It's telling that his first action as a vampire is to murder his family. Then he's cursed with a human conscience and realises what he's done. What's the main motivation behind his quest for redemption? He spends a hundred odd years battling with his own personality, but the instant he's given a new, noble purpose ("I want to help her. I want to be somebody"), he takes it. Because without the evil he had before, he was just existing- again, without purpose. (This also shows why, in the episode "Are You Now, or have you Ever Been", why he gives up so quickly; although he has a conscious, he realised saving these people won't affect his standing in society.) That's why in season 2 of Angel he has so much trouble adapting to the fact that seeking redemption is more than about defeating bad guys and his own demonic nature, and that maybe the struggle is unobtainable. The episode "Epiphany" is maybe his only major character growth, if you include flashbacks in the timeline, in over a hundred years. "If nothing we do matters, than all that matters is what we do." Compare him with Spike, who becomes a vampire and then tries to take his only family (his mother) on the journey with him. All of Spike's crimes are because he was always trying to impress people and the with the vampire demon he switched from poetry to cruelty. Angel was so bizarre and cruel because it became his only reason for existence. e: Angel is also aware of what Angelus does, although it's something that each personality takes time to figure out. It's clear that it's the same person but with extreme, self-imposed repression. That whole fight between Angel and Angelus in Angel's memory summarizes this better than I could. Animal Friend fucked around with this message at 18:52 on May 7, 2015 |
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May 7, 2015 18:48
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That's a good summary of it, actually. It explains why he's sort of locked in an eternal adolescence too, which works well for the metaphor involved (that he is a dangerous, comparatively older man whose mannerisms make him vaguely fit in at times with the Scooby high-schoolers), and also for how we are meant to see him in the show (as a sort of college age teen in Buffy and a young adult trying to find his place in the world in his own spin-off). He's been alive for hundreds of years, but all of it was spent in some kind of sex-and-murder cult that he discovered after he enjoyed killing his family, so his adaptive, normal development is arrested enough that he's developing inappropriate feelings for a well-meaning teenager with purpose. That gels well with the "magic making all the stuff that feels life and death when you're young into literal life and death situations" general format of the early show.
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May 7, 2015 19:30
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Carnaticum posted:I think the major difference is Liam was a self-loathing loser with daddy issues. He totally rejected the person he was before and gave into the demon that possessed him because it gave him a purpose (evil). That's the whole drat point of his character. The flashbacks to his old family show he was what a 90's slacker kid would have been 250 years ago I agree with this reading. I'd add that Liam wasn't just self-loathing, but also self-destructive. He took absurd risks because he literally didn't care what happened to him. When Darla found him, he'd pretty much just descended into hedonism: not only for lack of any other purpose, but for a total lack of any sense of self-preservation. As you said, it makes sense that a person like that, stripped of whatever conscience he had left, would devote his life to sadism as an art form...it's an actual purpose, which in a life that previously had none probably seems appealing. But also, since Liam-as-human was already trying to destroy himself, symbolically destroying himself by becoming a monster wasn't even a difficult decision.
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May 7, 2015 20:01
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Carnaticum posted:I think the major difference is Liam was a self-loathing loser with daddy issues. He totally rejected the person he was before and gave into the demon that possessed him because it gave him a purpose (evil). That's the whole drat point of his character. The flashbacks to his old family show he was what a 90's slacker kid would have been 250 years ago in a noble family- just drunk and living it up with no clue as to his purpose in life or what he should be, while his father constantly expects more of him. It's telling that his first action as a vampire is to murder his family. Then he's cursed with a human conscience and realises what he's done. Fantastic. Agree with it all. Also, your post makes me consider that Angel with a soul spent a 100 years in a hell dimension (and what stories that must hold - you'd think he'd talk about it) and Connor spent 18. Like Father like Son. And, since we saw what the effects of 3 months of not-feeding do to Angel (when Connor drops him into the ocean), I wonder what he did in that hell dimension? Surely, there were no butchers selling pig's blood there.
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May 8, 2015 01:21
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It always bugged me that they still said Angel was 250 years old even after spending 100 years in a hell dimension.
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May 8, 2015 05:32
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redshirt posted:And, since we saw what the effects of 3 months of not-feeding do to Angel (when Connor drops him into the ocean), I wonder what he did in that hell dimension? Surely, there were no butchers selling pig's blood there. Yeah, but when they went to Lorne's dimension, the vampire rules were all different. Who knows what Hell dimension was like. Also, he was probably in a different Hell dimension than the one Connor was in. Maybe it wasn't so bad. Like, a dimension where it's kind of cold all the time, but not so that bad outside that. Or he was tortured in a Hell dimension where the only television show was reruns of Step by Step. But, you know, Suzanne Somers was kind of hot in that.
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May 8, 2015 05:51
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redshirt posted:a soul spent a 100 years in a hell dimension (and what stories that must hold - you'd think he'd talk about it) Supernatural had the exact same problem, but handled it better. Hard fact is they didn't have a budget to show what he went through and listening to Angel tell a whole bunch about what he went through was going to get boring really quickly.
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May 8, 2015 06:30
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Xealot posted:Yeah, but when they went to Lorne's dimension, the vampire rules were all different. Who knows what Hell dimension was like. True about Lorne's dimension, but they were only there a few days, AND Angel fed during those few days. Quartoth was worse though. Sahjahn knows dimensions.
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May 8, 2015 08:08
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Just in case anyone was wondering, "Bound", Charisma Carpenter's Asylum Films knockoff of 50 Shades of Grey but with an older woman/younger man plot, well, it was not very good. Not even the acting chops of former NFL star Terrell Owens, playing himself, could save it.
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May 16, 2015 19:33
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shadow puppet of a posted:Just in case anyone was wondering, "Bound", Charisma Carpenter's Asylum Films knockoff of 50 Shades of Grey but with an older woman/younger man plot, well, it was not very good. So she finally gave up and did porn?
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May 16, 2015 19:52
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Rhyno posted:So she finally gave up and did porn? Gave up and finally did basic cable after 10 pm is more accurate. Still felt less creepy and porny than The Expendables though. Its just not a good career arc. She was co-starring with that Baldwin that hasn't been in a theatrically released movie since 'Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man'. Its a shame that Joss is a lunatic faux feminist that can hate a woman for getting pregnant in the middle of filming his brand of schlock. A year ago would have been the perfect time to hire her on with a lucrative bit part same as Alexis Denisof got with an Avengers speaking role. She could have been Bruce Banner's Pepper Potts that always has a tracksuit for him to throw on post going green or Hawkeye's bowstring consultant who helps him cope and make the most of a ridiculous weapon choice in the year 2015..
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May 16, 2015 21:51
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shadow puppet of a posted:Its a shame that Joss is a lunatic faux feminist that can hate a woman for getting pregnant in the middle of filming his brand of schlock. A year ago would have been the perfect time to hire her on with a lucrative bit part same as Alexis Denisof got with an Avengers speaking role. She could have been Bruce Banner's Pepper Potts that always has a tracksuit for him to throw on post going green or Hawkeye's bowstring consultant who helps him cope and make the most of a ridiculous weapon choice in the year 2015.. He just seems really weird and petty with the actors he chooses to ignore. Its like if you slight him once hes done with you. Charisma Carpenter gets pregnant. never work with her again. Nicholas Brendan gets buff during s6, never work with him again. Emma Caulfield cuts her hair, never work with her again.
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May 16, 2015 22:28
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So three people were a little unhappy with their roles, Caulfield has recently only said good things about working on Buffy, and I think everyone knows about Nicholas Brendon's problems. So removing those two, we have a single person left who feels slighted that she wasn't a part of the last season of Angel? Sounds more like it was due to plans changing, and plans changed in large part due to her. It doesn't sound likely that anyone was holding a grudge against her, things simply changed.
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May 16, 2015 23:04
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People's attitudes change over the years. Time was there was plenty of negative poo poo said about working on those shows. But now Joss is the director of one of the highest grossing films in history and it's sequel. Maybe on the off chance that you might like to work on one of his future projects or be snubbed by other directors it's a good idea to not cling to a decade old grudge.
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May 17, 2015 05:28
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It's a miracle to me that anyone would work with Nicholas Brendon for a week, frankly, let alone for seven years.
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May 17, 2015 05:44
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Bicyclops posted:It's a miracle to me that anyone would work with Nicholas Brendon for a week, frankly, let alone for seven years. I thought they guy was just an alcoholic, what's so bad about him?
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May 17, 2015 05:47
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Production wise? The stuttering. I'd happily give a kid a break but after two episodes worth of blown cues and thousands of feet of useless footage, Xander would have been killed and replaced with his cool cousin Mander.
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May 17, 2015 05:49
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e X posted:I thought they guy was just an alcoholic, what's so bad about him? He continues to get into legal problems due to his alcoholism. He needs to get serious help. I've lost track of the times I see an article about him loving up again. I don't know if anyone bothers to record him when he's at autograph booths but he's been pretty open in the past about how much of a "fucker Joss is." You can usually tell when he's still drunk. I've been up to get an autograph from him with three different people and he may as well have been a different person each time. Always nice but his levels of coherence and squinty eyes vary quite a bit.
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May 17, 2015 05:50
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It admittedly probably isn't fair for me to hold his current alcoholism against him, but if I were a director I would be tearing my hair out trying to get the guy to emote. I'm two seasons into this rewatch and he's still made of cardboard. Here are some Xander gifs, though.  
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May 17, 2015 06:34
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For all his problems, he really did blissful glee and hysterical fear better than anyone else on the shows. Everyone with even a passing interest in Buffy/Angel loves the Zeppo, right? "I had sex."
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May 17, 2015 06:39
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I guess I'm the staunch main cast defender, but Nicholas Brendon's job wasn't to be much more than cardboard. He was a spring-loaded comic foil If he was too good of an actor, he'd come across as pathetic-maudlin and the show would be trending towards My So Called Life with rubber masks and spirit gum. If he shone too bright comedically he'd slip into being Screech Powers.
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May 17, 2015 06:53
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Rhyno posted:For all his problems, he really did blissful glee and hysterical fear better than anyone else on the shows. Everyone with even a passing interest in Buffy/Angel loves the Zeppo, right? Xander is my favourite character on the show, but i was never really crazy about The Zeppo. It is good, but there are much better Xander episodes.
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May 17, 2015 08:45
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The Zeppo is definitely in my top 10. I don't think it was his job to be cardboard, though. Sometimes I picture Matthew Perry in the part and think about how much better it would have been (Perry probably would have been just a little too old, but there are things about Xander that are so similar to Chandler).
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May 17, 2015 14:51
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The Zeppo is a pretty great episode. I just finished Angel, and... Cool, a cliffhanger, awesome. I know that Angel and Buffy continue in the comics, but generally EU stuff tends to be... Dumb. Are the Angel/Buffy comics dumb? Does either bring closure to the Wolfram & Hart arc?
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May 22, 2015 21:46
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Angel ends exactly the way that it should have. Like, it is technically a cliffhanger, but it's very definitely an ending, which implies that it isn't ever over; they're fighting against hell/corporate greed/whatever you like, and it's always going to be a losing battle in which they're the underdog, and that isn't ever going to stop. That's the ending. If you're left wanting more for some reason, the comics may actually be your thing.
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May 22, 2015 21:51
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Yep, Angel pretty much ended perfectly thematically. Angel ripping up the Shanshu prophecy and putting himself in play as the underdog for as long as he has fight left in him, because the fight is never done. The comics are... interesting, and they're not bad if you go into them as a what-if scenario, though the art is pretty dismal. They use an outline of season 6 as a basis but takes some liberties with it. I certainly enjoyed them more than the Buffy continuation, but that's a pretty low bar. Actually I'm kind of curious, since Angel is now on Dark Horse, do the current Buffy comics acknowledge any of After the Fall as happening? hope and vaseline fucked around with this message at 23:34 on May 22, 2015 |
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May 22, 2015 23:29
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The Fall only affected LA and they eventually reversed it any way I think.
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May 22, 2015 23:39
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Yeah, over the course of the day I've come to accept the ending as it is. I think I just really enjoyed that universe? Especially after season 5, that almost made up for season 4's... Season 4ness. But you're saying the comics are bad then? Fair enough.
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May 23, 2015 02:58
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I wouldn't say they're bad. Angel: After the Fall in particular I really enjoyed. Buffy seasons 8-10 are more of a mixed bag, but overall I enjoy them.
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May 23, 2015 02:59
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