1998 American TV series or program
Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
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![](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c6/280px-Nick-fury-agent-of-shield-movie-poster-486x700.jpg/220px-280px-Nick-fury-agent-of-shield-movie-poster-486x700.jpg) Release poster
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Based on
| Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
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Written by
| David Goyer
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Directed by
| Rod Hardy
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Starring
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Music by
| Kevin Kiner
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Country of origin
| United States
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Original language
| English
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Executive producers
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Producer
| David Roessell
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Cinematography
| James Bartle
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Editor
| Drake Silliman
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Running time
| 90 minutes
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Production companies
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Budget
| $6 million
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Network
| Fox
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Release
| May 26, 1998
(
1998-05-26
)
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Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
(stylized as
Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD
and
Nick Fury: Agent of Shield
) is a 1998 American
television
superhero film
based on the
Marvel Comics
character
Nick Fury
.
[1]
It was first broadcast on May 26, 1998 on
Fox
, intended to be a
backdoor pilot
for a possible new TV series.
[2]
[3]
Written by
David Goyer
,
[4]
and directed by
Rod Hardy
, the film had a $6 million production budget. It stars
David Hasselhoff
as Fury, a retired super spy who is approached to return to duty to take down the terrorist organization
HYDRA
, who threaten to attack
Manhattan
with a
pathogen
they have reconstituted known as the Death's Head virus.
Lisa Rinna
plays
Contessa Valentina "Val" Allegra de Fontaine
, and
Sandra Hess
plays
Andrea von Strucker
/
Viper
. It was released on DVD on September 30, 2008. The film was met with a largely negative reception.
Plot
[
edit
]
Agents of the terrorist organization
HYDRA
invade a
S.H.I.E.L.D.
facility, killing
Clay Quartermain
and reviving a cryogenically preserved
Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker
. Nick Fury, retired, and living in an abandoned mine shaft in the Yukon, is approached by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents
Alexander Goodwin Pierce
and
Contessa Valentina Allegra De Fontaine
to return to duty to take down Hydra, now led by the children of Von Strucker, an old enemy of his. Fury refuses to return until he learns of Quartermain's death. He then accompanies Pierce and De Fontaine to a S.H.I.E.L.D.
Helicarrier
, where he reunites with old friends
Dum Dum Dugan
and
Gabriel Jones
, is introduced to
telepath
Kate Neville
, clashes with new S.H.I.E.L.D. Director General Jack Pincer, and is shown advanced technologies that S.H.I.E.L.D. is developing, including a
Life Model Decoy
of Fury.
Shown a recording of Quartermain's death, with the killer taunting Fury by name, and informed that the killer was Von Strucker's daughter, codenamed Viper, Fury deduces that Von Strucker's body was taken to harvest a
pathogen
known as the Death's Head Virus, developed by
Arnim Zola
to be Hitler's doomsday weapon. Viper calls a meeting of the remaining four Hydra lieutenants from Cairo, Osaka, Prague and London. She executes the London lieutenant for questioning her authority. Fury learns that Zola is still alive and being kept in a S.H.I.E.L.D.
safehouse
in Berlin, Fury and De Fontaine travel there. They rendezvous with local Interpol agent Gail Runciter, and proceed to the safehouse, where an elderly Zola, in a wheelchair and requiring an oxygen mask, seemingly overpowers Kate Neville's telepathy with his evil visions of destruction. Runciter lures Fury away from the group and shocks him with a device before revealing herself to be Viper in disguise. She then kisses Fury with poisoned lipstick, leaving him unconscious, enabling Hydra to retake Zola. Fury learns he has 48 hours to live unless he can recover a sample of Viper's DNA from which to develop an antidote.
Hydra threatens to attack
Manhattan
with the virus, barring payment of US $1 billion, and as proof of their threat, the real Gail Runciter is found, dying from the virus. After Fury and his team brief the President of the United States, Pierce determines from a chip from a laptop sold in the
Aleutian Islands
that the Hydra base might be there. Fury has his people split into two teams, one led by de Fontaine heading to Manhattan to find the refrigerated truck they believe will be needed to deploy the virus, and the other with Fury leading Pierce and Neville to the Aleutian Islands. Upon arriving in the Aleutian Islands, and confirming that a Hydra transmission has come from there, Fury's plane is shot down by heat-seeking missiles. In Manhattan, de Fontaine's team figures out that the refrigerator truck is disguised as a garbage truck, while Fury and his team, having bailed out of the airplane in time, infiltrate the Hydra base.
Fury realizes that it was too easy to get in, just before his team is captured and stripped of their weapons. Viper reveals to him that she will release the virus even if they are paid, and locks Fury and his team in a freezer. Fury reveals that in place of his missing left eye, he keeps an explosive with which they are able to escape. Reaching Viper's control room, Fury and Viper fight until she gets hold of a gun and shoots him. However, it turns out to be Fury's Life Model Decoy. Fury incapacitates Zola and captures Viper, and Neville uses her telepathy to draw the code to abort the detonation from Viper's mind. The Helicarrier arrives, and captures the rest of Hydra's forces, but Viper escapes with the body of her father. Fury decides to return to S.H.I.E.L.D. to counter the new threat of Hydra, while Viper is shown to have restored her father, Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker, to life.
Cast
[
edit
]
David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury
Production
[
edit
]
Plans to create a Nick Fury live action production were circulated as early as September 1986, but it was not until mid-May 1995 that Fox Broadcasting announced the acquisition from
New World Entertainment
of a Nick Fury series pilot, to be broadcast in 1996.
[6]
The teleplay was written by
David S. Goyer
several years before the film was made, and Goyer was not otherwise involved as he was working on the television series
Sleepwalkers
.
[7]
Despite some misgivings within the studio, the producers cast David Hasselhoff in the lead role "to give SHIELD some recognizable star power".
[6]
The production also markedly "respected and utilized the comic roots of the project", incorporating "a who's who of the Marvel spy scene" and retaining details such as Fury's eyepatch.
[6]
Goyer was not enthusiastic about the casting of David Hasselhoff, but in hindsight said "Hasselhoff turned out to be the best thing in it. He got the joke. The script was meant to be very tongue in cheek and Hasselhoff understood that". Goyer described the film overall as "pretty mediocre".
[7]
[6]
Hasselhoff was reportedly signed for five additional Nick Fury television films, which did not materialize.
[6]
Reception
[
edit
]
Reception to the film was largely negative, with praises for its performances such as that of David Hasselhoff, but criticism for lack of execution and dialogue.
[8]
[1]
[9]
[10]
In 2016 Neil Calloway called it a "schlocky throwaway TV movie" with "some fantastically tongue in cheek quoteable lines...but in all honesty the film has dated like only a bad TV movie shot in Vancouver in the late 1990s could".
[11]
ScreenRant
later described the film as having "mostly disappeared without a trace with mediocre reviews",
[12]
and
Looper
included it on its list of the ten worst Marvel movies.
[3]
The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film and Television
found that "the production was hampered by weak, two-dimensional performances that bordered on hysteria and camp", and that Hasselhoff "just did not have the gravitas to pull off the role".
[2]
Den of Geek
described it as "a time filler that doesn't stray too far from Marvel's established SHIELD characters but didn't do anything terribly compelling with them either", concluding that it was "a one night wonder that wasn't very wondrous".
[6]
The initial television broadcast of the film came in fourth in the
Nielsen ratings
for that time slot, behind reruns on various other networks.
[6]
Home media release
[
edit
]
Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
was released on DVD on September 30, 2008 exclusively at
Best Buy
stores.
[13]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Brown, Todd (December 5, 2011).
"Marvel In The 90's: NICK FURY AGENT OF SHIELD Review"
.
Twitch Film
. Archived from
the original
on December 8, 2011
. Retrieved
December 9,
2011
.
- ^
a
b
John Kenneth Muir,
The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film and Television, 2d ed.
(2008), p. 407.
- ^
a
b
Cipriani, Casey (April 19, 2019).
"The 10 worst Marvel movies ranked"
. Looper.
- ^
Michael Eury,
Captain Action: The Original Super-Hero Action Figure
(2002), p. 77.
- ^
As spelled officially by Marvel Comics on
its S.H.I.E.L.D. page
, although misspelled with a male name and spelled with different Italian article as "Valentina Allegro de Fontaine" in her name's first two mentions, in
Strange Tales
#159, "Spy School", 10, panel 6, and
Strange Tales
#162, "So Evil, the Night" p.3, panel 6.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
"The Original Agents of SHIELD: The Story Behind The Nick Fury TV Movie"
.
Den of Geek
. September 18, 2013.
- ^
a
b
Jason Myers.
"David Goyer: Stripped to the Bone : Interview"
.
RevolutionSF
. Archived from
the original
on 2010-02-22.
- ^
Yamato, Jen (May 25, 2012).
"David Hasselhoff: I Was 'The Ultimate Nick Fury'
"
.
Movieline
. Retrieved
May 26,
2012
.
- ^
White, Cindy (September 30, 2008).
"Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. DVD Review"
.
IGN
.
News Corporation
. Retrieved
May 26,
2012
.
- ^
Leston, Ryan (September 4, 2013).
"David Hasselhoff wants another shot at Nick Fury"
.
Yahoo! Movies
.
Yahoo!
. Archived from
the original
on September 11, 2013
. Retrieved
September 16,
2013
.
- ^
Calloway, Neil (May 1, 2016).
"The First Nick Fury Film"
.
Flickering Myth
. Retrieved
March 10,
2018
.
- ^
McAdams, Eric (July 31, 2018).
"20 Things That Make No Sense About Nick Fury"
. ScreenRant.
- ^
Monfette, Christopher (September 22, 2008).
"Best Buy Employs Nick Fury"
.
IGN
.
News Corporation
. Retrieved
September 23,
2008
.
External links
[
edit
]
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