REGISTRADUS

Anonymous asked: "Would Phil Coulson as played by Clark Gregg be a better character if his name happened to be Jasper Sitwell?" - would Nick Fury played by Sam Jackson be a better character if his name happened to be Barry Smithers?

brevoortformspring:
Well no, he wouldn’t. But that’s not a parallel example. If anything, it’s the opposite. Sam Jackson is playing Nick Fury—that’s the character he’s inhabiting, that’s the portrayal he’s crafting. The character that Clark Gregg is inhabiting, however, is not Jasper Sitwell. He’s a different guy. There are some points of similarity, sure, but Clark didn’t start out with Jasper and then the name got changed—he started out really as a nameless, faceless SHIELD Agent whom he imbued with enough of his own personality and likeability for him to become a legitimate character that people wanted to see again. That’s all regardless of the name. And none of that came from Jasper Sitwell, it all came from Clark Gregg.
I disagree with Tom on this. From the moment Sitwell first appeared on screen, I thought, “Hey, he’s playing Jasper Sitwell.”
By coincidence or intent (and given that he debuted in the first Iron Man movie, done by writers and directors who built Tony’s life around Pepper and Happy, I don’t find it at all hard to imagine they knew who Jasper was), we had a SHIELD liaison to Stark who was reserved, polite and unbendingly confident and patriotic — it felt as much like a modern spin on Jasper as any of the other characters did on their four-color forebears. And when we found out later that he was also a fan, well, it just felt even more Jasper-like to me.
Clark Gregg’s done a wonderful job with the role. But I think he’s done a wonderful job on a character who fills the role Jasper filled — the buttoned-down super-capable professional amid the chaos, the guy who always holds it together no matter what’s exploding around him. He’s nerdy in a different way than Sitwell, but hey, Tony’s different, Pepper’s different, Whiplash was different…the heart of it feels the same to me.
And hey, who wouldn’t want to see Phil Coulson fall for Madame Masque like a ton of bricks…?

I can’t agree with this. how does Coulson = “super-capable professional”? all he does is bumble. and die.