Friday 29 May 2020

Marvel One-Shot: Item 47

The title refers to all the retrieved weapons belonging to the Chitauri Aliens after the battle of New York.  The short film begins five days after the Avengers defeated the Chitauri.  Damage Control a government clean up division/agency as shown in the opening sequence of Spiderman's Homecoming collected the wreckages of the invasion. While according to S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Felix Blake (Titus Welliver) who worked frequently as a missions briefer had acquired & logged all alien technological weaponry. S.H.E.I.L.D. had located only 46 inert weapons.
That was until a down on his luck Benjamin (Bennie) Pollack (played by Jesse Bradford) and his girlfriend Claire Wise (played by Lizzy Caplan) come across the 47th Chitauri weapon, reversed engineered it, and got it to operate without the alien hive to interface which triggered its power. Bennie and Claire devise a string of bank robbery heist.
With a guitar and synthetic musical score  courtesy of Christopher Lennertz, the duo rob their first bank, a Farmers & Merchant branch in Allenstown, Pennsylvania. The  film was beautifully shot and well lit thanks to its director of photography Gabriel Beristain, whose camera work will be seen again in the upcoming Black Widow movie. The combination of score, editing, camera composition under the direction of Louis D'Esposito (Marvel Studio's Co-CEO) the opening robbery and montage of robberies play like an elaborate 90's rock video, with the kinetic flare of an Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers movie.
Farmers & Merchant bank - Los Angeles
There are a couple of things wrong in the set up, beginning with where the first robbery takes place. If using real world geography, the slightly blurred  street signs of 4th street and Main street are visible and the arching marquee at the bank entrance gives the street number of 401.  Proving the existence of an actual Farmers and Merchant bank located at 401 Main Street South in downtown Los Angeles.  Compounded by the fact that there is no Farmers & Merchant bank in Allenstown PA. The nearest bank is either Northampton PA (7.9 Miles apart) or Bethlehem PA (6.2 Miles apart).
The geographical route taken by Bennie and Claire does however make sense, as they are moving quickly between banks and heading in a zig-zag formation south towards Key West, Florida in which they plan to sail away to a South American off shore hideaway. The one-shot spans a full seven-days and concludes 2 weeks after the battle of New York. This information is provided in a narration by Agent Felix Blake to Agent Jasper Sitwell, as the crime spree begins.

Allentown, PA on May 9th  (4.5hr trip of 297 Miles to Richmond)

Richmond, VA on May 11th (3hr trip of 202 Miles to Greensboro)

Greensboro, NC May 13th (4.25hr trip of 274 Miles to Charleston)

Charleston, SC May 14th (2hr trip of 107 Miles to Savannah)

Savannah GA May 15th (10hr trip of 643 Miles to Key West)

with a 10hr drive to Key West
and 24 hr wait to come out of dry dock
Estimate May 16th or 17th as day of arrest.

Driving between cities range from 2 - 4.5 hours
including gas refilling, eating, and overnight in car or motel to stake out banks.

The next robbery to transpire after duo's arrest
was on July 2012 in  San Jose, CA
At Vistacorp HQ, by Scott Lang

December of 2012 saw the Destruction of
the Chinese theatre (Iron Man 3)

The characters of Bennie and Claire was loosely based on Bonnie & Clyde, though the opening conversational sequence is reminiscent to Tarentino's Honey Bunny & Pumpkin's conversation before robbing the diner in Pulp Fiction  On the strength and prospects upon viewing item 47 was what convinced Disney CEO Bob Iger to green-lit Agents of Shield into a television series.

Item 47 was written by Eric Pearson who was from the first graduating class of Marvel's in-house screenwriting workshop. His screenplay was picked by Louis D'Esposito for him to direct Agent Carter and Item 47 One-Shots, followed by being a contributing writer for the remaining one shots all except,  Hail to the King. Pearson quickly became a script doctor, helping to re-course trouble scripts that finally made it to the big screen with Ant-man and Thor Ragnorok. His next two big Screenplays are Black Widow, and Godzilla vs King Kong.




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