Thanks Mack. Well, there goes that show. Cloak and Dagger dealt with drug addicts, child abusers, rapists, murders, and super villains.
How the fuck you gonna tell an accurate story on ABC Family?
S o me one dropped the ball on that one...
Marvel Netflix Discussion: The Defenders (New Trailer!) fonzerrillii approved
- Thread starter playahaitian
- Start date
Thanks Mack. Well, there goes that show. Cloak and Dagger dealt with drug addicts, child abusers, rapists, murders, and super villains.
How the fuck you gonna tell an accurate story on ABC Family?
S o me one dropped the ball on that one...
Hmmm
Iron fist improved and Jessica Jones had funny moments.
My only problem was that Misty Knight didn't get enough character development. I'm happy about what they did with her at the end but she wasn't a big enough part of the plot. They could have given Colleen Wings screen time to Misty since Colleens arch was redundant.
My only problem was that Misty Knight didn't get enough character development. I'm happy about what they did with her at the end but she wasn't a big enough part of the plot. They could have given Colleen Wings screen time to Misty since Colleens arch was redundant.
u can tell they listened to the critics cuz iron fist fighting vastly improved ...lol
the team up took away from the rest ...luke & daredevil...
it was just kool...had it`s moments...i give it a 7 ...
nice touch with the trademark headband...
dont think they had her wearing her hair like that in Cage....
misty changed her hair at the end of luke cage.u can tell they listened to the critics cuz iron fist fighting vastly improved ...lol
the team up took away from the rest ...luke & daredevil...
it was just kool...had it`s moments...i give it a 7 ...
nice touch with the trademark headband...
dont think they had her wearing her hair like that in Cage....
she got super strength and can jump pretty high. they tone down her ability to fly in the show. the main thing of jj was about how much of a down and out person she was. a super hero white trash.
jj joked tat she had same clothes on all week. she just wanted to end the shit so she can go home and get a drink.
But like I said, even though it was a step down from those two it was not in the same vein as Fist. Not even close.
Also I think people were expecting a super hero show full of fighting and powers and she's a gumshoe so it threw them off. She's completely reluctant to use her powers and that turned people off compared to how Daredevil NEEDS to get out there and fight feeling compelled
also Cage's ecosystem was WAY better than anyone's ecosystem because harlem and black people in general are just more interesting that's just what it is.
Jessica's circle is SMALL and she has no ties to the community like Cage and Devil so it's a completely different world she's in her own lane fighting her own demons it's not grand but it is dope.
the concept is dope but not the execution
they rushed it almost as much as Defenders
I posted this earlier in a reply to Fonzi - but imagine instead the writers allowed you to get to know her for a season and the audience accepts her as a mysterious dysfunctional PI -reluctant hero -really step more into noir and establish her allies and rivals, world build... Then do purple man in 2 or s3-
I can agree with that but also I can understand why they wouldn't do that because they really only had 1 chance women don't get them chances to fail like men do. So if they had did a slow burn chances are she wouldn't have a season 2.
I just don't understand how that's entertaining. I genuinely like Kristen Ritter as a actress and I think she an okay looking white girl. But I don't find any enjoyment in watch a superhero show about a washed up, white trash, alcoholic, P.I., who doesn't even want to use her powers. I don't want to watch a show about that character. I want to help her get an AA sponsor, a change of clothes, and a bar of soap.
damn lol
it wouldn't be a slow burn - start in the middle of an intense case going left
focus on the developments and issues of that case... over the course of 13 eps her character and the world their in comes more and more into the light let the character unfold while fighting through an upheaval or challenge...
biggest crutch for these super hero shows and movies is the idea there needs to be an origin story up front -
IRL you meet people in the middle or sometimes at the end of their lives, very rarely do you get to see the beginning
I think its only an easter egg...DD Season is about to get crazy if they follow this storyline...
I don't think they have the balls to really do this story or any of DD's darker tales... there has been no setup for Karen to follow the path of her comic character
Right but hers wasn't an origin story either though. We joined her in the middle of her life it was a case it brought up the past but it def wasn't an origin story
the entire season was an origin story -
so far every character's series has followed the same basic recipe with a few different spices and very different cooks
Of course, I think they are going to "MCU" it.
I don't think they will go the whole Karen in the gutter route but the seeds are already planted with her hating what he does. Maybe as a reporter she slips up and uses the newspaper but the results will be the same.
I hoping Kingpin is the Defenders, Thanos.
They used Defenders season one to establish Elektra in control of the Hand.
Everyone died but Madame Gao so the Kingpin joins when he returns home.
Then add Bullseye and Elekrta for Defenders Season 2.
they not letting karen page get whored out , doing porn flicks for h.they'll change that part probably.DD Season is about to get crazy if they follow this storyline...
}}; bpppppp
Yeah, I really don't care about the porn stuff or Karen much at all.
I just want to see the full Kingpin not Wilson Fisk
I want to see the Kingpin destroy Matt Murdock's life.
Yeah, I really don't care about the porn stuff or Karen much at all.
I just want to see the full Kingpin not Wilson Fisk
I want to see the Kingpin destroy Matt Murdock's life.
What We Mostly Didn't Like About The Defenders
The Defenders mini-series made its Netflix debut Friday, bringing together Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Daredevil and Iron Fist as Marvel’s street-level super team. We assembled Gita Jackson and Mike Fahey to discuss what worked, what didn’t, and how horrible Danny Rand is. So horrible.
The Defenders Spoilers Follow
Fahey: So, Gita. I was following your tweets this weekend, and I am under the impression that you weren’t 100 percent satisfied with The Defenders. Is that correct, or was I reading the really mean things you were saying wrong?
Gita: Mike, I was not overall thrilled by The Defenders. I was expecting a lot of campy fan service, and I got that, but I also just got a whole lot of bad show.
Setup Timeout Error: Setup took longer than 30 seconds to complete.
Fahey: That is impossible, Gita. This is a Netflix Marvel show. They can do no wrong. Except Iron Fist. And large chunks of the second season of Daredevil. But other than that, the track record is perfect. How could it be bad?
Gita: I actually really thought about this while I was watching the show because, you know, despite some weird missteps, I like three out of the four characters on screen. And we know that some of them have great chemistry and banter already. But it felt like I was getting a diluted version of four different shows, each with wildly different aesthetics, and it was like eating under-seasoned mashed potatoes. Like, it’s in my mouth, it’s a food I enjoy, but I cannot describe it to you if asked.
Fahey: I see where you’re coming from. I certainly got that vibe during the first of the eight episodes, which felt like four distinct shows with distinct voices, soundtracks and shooting styles getting mashed together.
My dissatisfaction mainly stems from the fact that the entire event is the culmination of my two least favorite story lines from the Netflix shows. Daredevil’s battle against the Hand, and Iron Fist’s battles against the Hand. I guess what I am saying is the Hand is not a good enemy.
He hates the hand so much.
Gita: For the life of me, I could not care about the Hand. I just really do not give a shit about the Hand at all. The show seemed to assume I’d care from the jump—any time Jessica or Luke asked what the Hand does that’s bad, Matt and Danny would both say, “Everything.” Sure, they do everything bad. That’s bad. But like, give me some specifics?
Fahey: I can’t, Gita. They’re too bad, the things the Hand does. So bad.
Gita: If the Hand were an organization that personally stole one of my socks so I never had matching pairs, I would care.
But apparently they just have a hand (ugh) in every pot of evilness to the point where I’m like, you must be joking, right?
Fahey: The plot is basically that the Hand is going to destroy New York City in order to get a mysterious substance that keeps the five core members immortal. To do this, they use up the last of the substance to bring Elektra, the Black Sky, back to life.
Why? Because they need her. For reasons.
Gita: I felt really bad for the actress playing Elektra. As you mentioned, the back half of Daredevil season two has issues, but Elektra was this weird, electric ball of energy and joy in a plot that suddenly made no sense. I didn’t know why she did the things she did, but by golly, I had fun watching her. Here, she’s mute, lifeless, boring, glum.
Fahey: She gets a bit better towards the back end, and that electricity is still there, but there never is a real explanation of what role she is supposed to play in the Hand’s plans. She is a weapon, but she doesn’t seem to have any supernatural abilities. All five fingers of the Hand are highly-skilled martial artists, so it doesn’t make sense they’d squander their life-juice to make a sixth. How far did you get in the series?
Gita: I just checked Netflix—I think I tuckered out around the middle of episode six. After realizing that the show didn’t really get going for me until episode four I gave it another two episodes and I was like…. how much do I care about this, actually?
I love dumb fan service. I live for that. But I was just… bored. I was so bored.
Fahey: I understand stopping. I watched the series between naps. Then you didn’t see the fate of Alexandra (Sigourney Weaver)?
Gita: I didn’t! I did like Sigourney—she always does so much with so little. And she was having a lot of fun being evil. Please, spoil me.
Fahey: Elektra murders her with sais.
Gita: You were typing for so long…… I really thought it was, like, a little more than sword murder.
I am laughing so hard in the office.
Fahey: Yeah, I did that for effect.
Gita: Thank you, Fahey. Thank you.
Fahey: I mean, she had to see it coming, acting like a mother figure to a deadly assassin named after a character from Greek mythology famous for PLOTTING THE MURDER OF HER MOTHER.
Gita: But yeah, there is a real pay off problem in The Defenders. We see Luke in the first episode, and he’s just like, not in jail anymore. It’s a thing they built up and the payoff is “oh he’s fine.” Colleen gets stabbed by her suddenly-not-dead-anymore mentor, and he just leaves, and she’s also fine. Sigourney gets sword murdered.
Fahey: But yes, Elektra kills Alexandra and assumes leadership of the Hand. This changes absolutely nothing concerning the Hand’s plans to destroy New York. It doesn’t mean Elektra is suddenly having second thoughts about being evil.
Let’s talk hero motivation.
Gita: Yeah that’s a pretty good summation. Every time Danny meets someone new, he has to explain K’un L’un again… and at least later they start getting some good jokes out of it but, holy shit. Still don’t care about K’un L’un, my dude!
I think I could have tolerated Defenders if Finn Jones wasn’t a complete charisma void. He just has no screen presence, he’s bad at fight scenes, I don’t believe the conviction of his actions, and his character is just so stupid.
Fahey: He’s so grim about everything. And I get it—his imaginary home in the sky is destroyed. But also he has cool martial arts powers and a bajillion dollars. I cannot feel sympathy for a guy who goes from shoeless to billionaire and still whines. “It’s my sacred duty!” Oh shut up. You have a cool new friend. Just enjoy your new friend. He makes your fist glow.
My wife and I decided the fist is his “Better Superhero Detector.”
Gita: Hahahaha, that’s pretty great. Props to your wife.
Fahey: Like in the office scene—one of the two best in the mini-series. He just can’t get it up, then Luke Cage arrives.
Gita: That office scene was pretty great. I think they finally figured out how to shoot Finn Jones’s fight scenes (though he is quickly outclassed by everyone else). The key was not quick cuts, but good angles and having the stunt people really over-act taking the punch.
Fahey: There’s a bit in the final act, where the group is surrounded. Luke says to Danny, “Light it up,” and Danny punches the air and everyone goes flying. This was episode eight. Danny finally gets good in the final episode, after being completely insufferable the rest of the time.
Gita: I’m trying, desperately, to come up with a response to this. But I’m just floored.
Fahey: Did you catch the fight in episode six?
Gita: I think I was asleep by that point, to be honest. Unless you’re talking warehouse redux.
Fahey: The fight between Danny and everybody else?
Gita: Okay yeah, sorry, the other problem I have with this show is that it’s visually indistinct and horribly shot, so everything blends together and I can’t remember what happened when.
Fahey: You have a point. I kept re-watching bits I’d already seen, unsure if I’d already seen them.
Gita: Like, they spend so long in this warehouse that I mentally place it as “the boring shit from episode five,” but they STAY there for a while, and have another fight in six, and I forgot about it. If this second fight had even happened in the parking lot, it would have created a sense that time was passing.
Fahey: They find out that the Hand wants Danny because he’s the only one who can open the portal beneath New York, giving them access to the “substance.” Everyone decides the best course of action is to keep Danny away from them. Except Danny. No, he wants to go fight them, because he is an ASSHOLE.
So everyone kicks his ass.
Gita: The one thing I feel like is really deliberate about Danny Rand’s character and that I think Finn Jones is on purpose playing up is that Danny thinks his problems are the only problems in the world.
Fahey: That is exactly the case.
Gita: I have enjoyed stories about characters who get their shit together—I like Scott Pilgrim!—but man. Fuck Danny Rand.
Scott Pilgrim is just a shitty guy in a band. Danny is a billionaire with a glowing fist trying to tell a black dude from Harlem who just got out of lockup that his pain is the worst pain.
Fahey: They tie him to a chair but he ends up getting captured by Elektra, who takes him under the Hand’s office building to open the ancient portal.
Meanwhile, the most interesting non-superhero characters in the various series are locked in a police station for most of the series.
Gita: Did Defenders feel more like an Iron Fist season two to you, or was that just me? It felt like, in terms of character growth and plot importance, Danny was at the center.
Fahey: Luke were just there, doing their Jessica and Luke thing. Daredevil got to pine over Elektra some more, while his two best friends spent the mini-series trying to keep him from being Daredevil.
But yeah, it was all Danny and Colleen Wing. I like Colleen. And I really like Misty Knight. OH! You missed it.
Gita: Did Misty and Colleen finally get to be Misty and Colleen? Dammit!
You’re tempting me to watch the final two and a half episodes. I mean, the bodega down the street has beer and I am sure there’s vacuuming to do or something.
Fahey: They wind up in the office building while The Defenders are in the basement, facing off against Colleen’s former mentor, Naruto. He has a sword. You know what swords do?
Gita: Was there more sword murder, Fahey?
Fahey: How familiar are you with Misty Knight’s comic book incarnation?
Gita: Here’s an admission: I was a DC person.
Then DC started to become what it now is.
And now, I am lost.
Fahey:
Fahey: Note the right arm.
Gita: OH, she got armed.
Fahey: I have never cheered so loudly at a limb being amputated. They tricked us with that shit in Luke Cage.
Gita: We take our joy where we can get it.
The longer I get into this connected universe without having read, or really been familiar with, certain lore aspects of certain characters, the more I begin to feel like this is a failed experiment, you know?
Fahey: I feel like they are getting to a happier place. The friendship blossoming between Danny and Luke shows hints of the one they shared in the comics. Luke makes Danny a better person, and you can catch glimpses of it in The Defenders.
But there’s just so much heavy shit standing in the way. Danny’s whole K’un L’un thing. Luke being with Night Nurse instead of his comic book wife, Jessica. The epilogue hints that there’s something there, but it seems like the path to getting there is going to suck. And then we’ve got Daredevil dying at the end.
By the way, Daredevil “dies” at the end.
Gita: Ok, I take back my earlier curiosity about the final two episodes. At that point… who cares?
Fahey: Let me set this up for you:
So the gang defeats the Hand, knocks out Elektra and has minutes left to escape to the surface before the explosives Colleen stole from police lockup, as you do, go off and bring down the entire office building.
All they have to do is get on the elevator. But Matt’s all, “You guys go, I have to try to get through to her.”
There’s a nice fight between them with lots of violent cuddling. Then the whole thing explodes.
Cut to some time later and everything is fine. No one is in jail for terrorist acts. Luke and Jessica share a drink at a bar. Colleen and Danny talk about how Daredevil gave his life to save the city he loved.
Bullshit. Daredevil gave his life to try to save his girlfriend, for one. And then he wakes up in a convent hospital bed.
Gita: This is, like, a summary of all the comics tropes I hate. What I liked so much about Daredevil and Jessica Jones was that when people died, they DIED. There was no cheap, obvious resurrection or “they just got hurt in that explosion but they’re fine.” If I was going to live with these plot points I’d just read the comics.
Please do not tell me he has amnesia. I swear to god.
Fahey: We’ll find out in Daredevil season three! Though I am pretty sure it’s the convent or whatever where his mom supposedly went to, as hinted in a better season of television.
What I liked about Daredevil season one, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage were the villains. Such amazing fucking villains.
Gita: Yes! I was thinking of that too. Jessica Jones, especially, has a really strong antagonist in Kilgore, and it allows Jessica to have a strong story arc in the show.
Fahey: Tennant was absolutely terrifying.
Gita: That one is my favorite of the three series you mentioned, because it has a very defined beginning, middle and end, and Jessica has a very clear Problem that Kilgore embodies.
And yeah, Tennant knocks it out of the park.
In Daredevil and Luke Cage, too, the villains are strong because they are the societal problems that the characters are also fighting. Kingpin is corpratism that kills New York, and the two villains that Cage fights are manifestations of oppressive systems that destroy places like Harlem.
Fahey: D’onofrio was an amazing Kingpin. Mahershala Ali’s Cottonmouth was powerful and nigh unstoppable despite being just a guy.
Gita: What is the Hand?
Fahey: Just a buncha ninjas.
One of the biggest conflicts in those series was each villain was a human, and each hero had the power to just snuff them out if they wanted to. Creating characters that wouldn’t do that—unless pushed to the very brink—that’s what made those series.
In The Defenders we have villains that everyone seems fine with killing, but there’s a whole bunch of them. Instead of interesting internal struggles, we get eight long, drawn-out episodes leading to a foregone conclusion.
Gita: We should take maybe four or five seconds to mention Naruto (actually Bakugo, Colleen’s evil mentor), who seems to be an attempt to give Colleen, at least, more personal stakes in what’s going on with the Hand. The problem here is 1) Bakugo is boring and 2) He shows up in episode five.
Fundamentally, on top of everything else, the show has a pacing problem.
The show only really seems to gel by episode four, and at that point it’s halfway done. And then, from there, you gotta build all the stakes and drive the plot forward.
Not pictured: Misty Knight. Yeah, that’s about it.
Fahey: Netflix probably could have gotten away with making this an original movie rather than a mini-series. Come together, find out what the Hand is up to, stop them. Roll credits.
Instead we get shots of Alexandra’s whirlwind seated tour of NYC, Danny being Danny, Jessica rifling through records, side characters wandering around a police station, fights where everyone escapes to make it to the next fight, Daredevil fretting over being Daredevil and Luke being so sexy all the time.
Gita: This is an accurate summary of a disappointing Netflix show. Though if I’m being honest about Daredevil—he can still get it.
He technically died from horny, so, I feel like I relate.
Fahey: Wait, are you saying Matt Murdock over Luke Cage here?
Gita: Oh, absolutely not.
Just, like, if Luke was busy breaking furniture with someone else I wouldn’t mind Murdock as a second choice.
Fahey: Oh god, I just had a horrible idea about how they’re going to write out Claire. We need to stop.
Gita: Don’t speculate. You’ll be disappointed in due time.
The Defenders mini-series made its Netflix debut Friday, bringing together Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Daredevil and Iron Fist as Marvel’s street-level super team. We assembled Gita Jackson and Mike Fahey to discuss what worked, what didn’t, and how horrible Danny Rand is. So horrible.
The Defenders Spoilers Follow
Fahey: So, Gita. I was following your tweets this weekend, and I am under the impression that you weren’t 100 percent satisfied with The Defenders. Is that correct, or was I reading the really mean things you were saying wrong?
Gita: Mike, I was not overall thrilled by The Defenders. I was expecting a lot of campy fan service, and I got that, but I also just got a whole lot of bad show.
Setup Timeout Error: Setup took longer than 30 seconds to complete.
Fahey: That is impossible, Gita. This is a Netflix Marvel show. They can do no wrong. Except Iron Fist. And large chunks of the second season of Daredevil. But other than that, the track record is perfect. How could it be bad?
Gita: I actually really thought about this while I was watching the show because, you know, despite some weird missteps, I like three out of the four characters on screen. And we know that some of them have great chemistry and banter already. But it felt like I was getting a diluted version of four different shows, each with wildly different aesthetics, and it was like eating under-seasoned mashed potatoes. Like, it’s in my mouth, it’s a food I enjoy, but I cannot describe it to you if asked.
Fahey: I see where you’re coming from. I certainly got that vibe during the first of the eight episodes, which felt like four distinct shows with distinct voices, soundtracks and shooting styles getting mashed together.
My dissatisfaction mainly stems from the fact that the entire event is the culmination of my two least favorite story lines from the Netflix shows. Daredevil’s battle against the Hand, and Iron Fist’s battles against the Hand. I guess what I am saying is the Hand is not a good enemy.
He hates the hand so much.
Gita: For the life of me, I could not care about the Hand. I just really do not give a shit about the Hand at all. The show seemed to assume I’d care from the jump—any time Jessica or Luke asked what the Hand does that’s bad, Matt and Danny would both say, “Everything.” Sure, they do everything bad. That’s bad. But like, give me some specifics?
Fahey: I can’t, Gita. They’re too bad, the things the Hand does. So bad.
Gita: If the Hand were an organization that personally stole one of my socks so I never had matching pairs, I would care.
But apparently they just have a hand (ugh) in every pot of evilness to the point where I’m like, you must be joking, right?
Fahey: The plot is basically that the Hand is going to destroy New York City in order to get a mysterious substance that keeps the five core members immortal. To do this, they use up the last of the substance to bring Elektra, the Black Sky, back to life.
Why? Because they need her. For reasons.
Gita: I felt really bad for the actress playing Elektra. As you mentioned, the back half of Daredevil season two has issues, but Elektra was this weird, electric ball of energy and joy in a plot that suddenly made no sense. I didn’t know why she did the things she did, but by golly, I had fun watching her. Here, she’s mute, lifeless, boring, glum.
Fahey: She gets a bit better towards the back end, and that electricity is still there, but there never is a real explanation of what role she is supposed to play in the Hand’s plans. She is a weapon, but she doesn’t seem to have any supernatural abilities. All five fingers of the Hand are highly-skilled martial artists, so it doesn’t make sense they’d squander their life-juice to make a sixth. How far did you get in the series?
Gita: I just checked Netflix—I think I tuckered out around the middle of episode six. After realizing that the show didn’t really get going for me until episode four I gave it another two episodes and I was like…. how much do I care about this, actually?
I love dumb fan service. I live for that. But I was just… bored. I was so bored.
Fahey: I understand stopping. I watched the series between naps. Then you didn’t see the fate of Alexandra (Sigourney Weaver)?
Gita: I didn’t! I did like Sigourney—she always does so much with so little. And she was having a lot of fun being evil. Please, spoil me.
Fahey: Elektra murders her with sais.
Gita: You were typing for so long…… I really thought it was, like, a little more than sword murder.
I am laughing so hard in the office.
Fahey: Yeah, I did that for effect.
Gita: Thank you, Fahey. Thank you.
Fahey: I mean, she had to see it coming, acting like a mother figure to a deadly assassin named after a character from Greek mythology famous for PLOTTING THE MURDER OF HER MOTHER.
Gita: But yeah, there is a real pay off problem in The Defenders. We see Luke in the first episode, and he’s just like, not in jail anymore. It’s a thing they built up and the payoff is “oh he’s fine.” Colleen gets stabbed by her suddenly-not-dead-anymore mentor, and he just leaves, and she’s also fine. Sigourney gets sword murdered.
Fahey: But yes, Elektra kills Alexandra and assumes leadership of the Hand. This changes absolutely nothing concerning the Hand’s plans to destroy New York. It doesn’t mean Elektra is suddenly having second thoughts about being evil.
Let’s talk hero motivation.
- Luke wants to keep the kids of Harlem from being used and discarded by the Hand. Noble as fuck.
- Jessica takes a case from a woman whose husband, the architect of the Hand’s office building, has gone missing. The guy gets murdered in her office. She wants to make sure the family is safe and get answers. Detective as fuck.
- Daredevil wants his girlfriend back. He’s just horny.
- And Iron Fist wants revenge for the destruction of a city no one cares about at all.
Gita: Yeah that’s a pretty good summation. Every time Danny meets someone new, he has to explain K’un L’un again… and at least later they start getting some good jokes out of it but, holy shit. Still don’t care about K’un L’un, my dude!
I think I could have tolerated Defenders if Finn Jones wasn’t a complete charisma void. He just has no screen presence, he’s bad at fight scenes, I don’t believe the conviction of his actions, and his character is just so stupid.
Fahey: He’s so grim about everything. And I get it—his imaginary home in the sky is destroyed. But also he has cool martial arts powers and a bajillion dollars. I cannot feel sympathy for a guy who goes from shoeless to billionaire and still whines. “It’s my sacred duty!” Oh shut up. You have a cool new friend. Just enjoy your new friend. He makes your fist glow.
My wife and I decided the fist is his “Better Superhero Detector.”
Gita: Hahahaha, that’s pretty great. Props to your wife.
Fahey: Like in the office scene—one of the two best in the mini-series. He just can’t get it up, then Luke Cage arrives.
Gita: That office scene was pretty great. I think they finally figured out how to shoot Finn Jones’s fight scenes (though he is quickly outclassed by everyone else). The key was not quick cuts, but good angles and having the stunt people really over-act taking the punch.
Fahey: There’s a bit in the final act, where the group is surrounded. Luke says to Danny, “Light it up,” and Danny punches the air and everyone goes flying. This was episode eight. Danny finally gets good in the final episode, after being completely insufferable the rest of the time.
Gita: I’m trying, desperately, to come up with a response to this. But I’m just floored.
Fahey: Did you catch the fight in episode six?
Gita: I think I was asleep by that point, to be honest. Unless you’re talking warehouse redux.
Fahey: The fight between Danny and everybody else?
Gita: Okay yeah, sorry, the other problem I have with this show is that it’s visually indistinct and horribly shot, so everything blends together and I can’t remember what happened when.
Fahey: You have a point. I kept re-watching bits I’d already seen, unsure if I’d already seen them.
Gita: Like, they spend so long in this warehouse that I mentally place it as “the boring shit from episode five,” but they STAY there for a while, and have another fight in six, and I forgot about it. If this second fight had even happened in the parking lot, it would have created a sense that time was passing.
Fahey: They find out that the Hand wants Danny because he’s the only one who can open the portal beneath New York, giving them access to the “substance.” Everyone decides the best course of action is to keep Danny away from them. Except Danny. No, he wants to go fight them, because he is an ASSHOLE.
So everyone kicks his ass.
Gita: The one thing I feel like is really deliberate about Danny Rand’s character and that I think Finn Jones is on purpose playing up is that Danny thinks his problems are the only problems in the world.
Fahey: That is exactly the case.
Gita: I have enjoyed stories about characters who get their shit together—I like Scott Pilgrim!—but man. Fuck Danny Rand.
Scott Pilgrim is just a shitty guy in a band. Danny is a billionaire with a glowing fist trying to tell a black dude from Harlem who just got out of lockup that his pain is the worst pain.
Fahey: They tie him to a chair but he ends up getting captured by Elektra, who takes him under the Hand’s office building to open the ancient portal.
Meanwhile, the most interesting non-superhero characters in the various series are locked in a police station for most of the series.
Gita: Did Defenders feel more like an Iron Fist season two to you, or was that just me? It felt like, in terms of character growth and plot importance, Danny was at the center.
Fahey: Luke were just there, doing their Jessica and Luke thing. Daredevil got to pine over Elektra some more, while his two best friends spent the mini-series trying to keep him from being Daredevil.
But yeah, it was all Danny and Colleen Wing. I like Colleen. And I really like Misty Knight. OH! You missed it.
Gita: Did Misty and Colleen finally get to be Misty and Colleen? Dammit!
You’re tempting me to watch the final two and a half episodes. I mean, the bodega down the street has beer and I am sure there’s vacuuming to do or something.
Fahey: They wind up in the office building while The Defenders are in the basement, facing off against Colleen’s former mentor, Naruto. He has a sword. You know what swords do?
Gita: Was there more sword murder, Fahey?
Fahey: How familiar are you with Misty Knight’s comic book incarnation?
Gita: Here’s an admission: I was a DC person.
Then DC started to become what it now is.
And now, I am lost.
Fahey:
Fahey: Note the right arm.
Gita: OH, she got armed.
Fahey: I have never cheered so loudly at a limb being amputated. They tricked us with that shit in Luke Cage.
Gita: We take our joy where we can get it.
The longer I get into this connected universe without having read, or really been familiar with, certain lore aspects of certain characters, the more I begin to feel like this is a failed experiment, you know?
Fahey: I feel like they are getting to a happier place. The friendship blossoming between Danny and Luke shows hints of the one they shared in the comics. Luke makes Danny a better person, and you can catch glimpses of it in The Defenders.
But there’s just so much heavy shit standing in the way. Danny’s whole K’un L’un thing. Luke being with Night Nurse instead of his comic book wife, Jessica. The epilogue hints that there’s something there, but it seems like the path to getting there is going to suck. And then we’ve got Daredevil dying at the end.
By the way, Daredevil “dies” at the end.
Gita: Ok, I take back my earlier curiosity about the final two episodes. At that point… who cares?
Fahey: Let me set this up for you:
So the gang defeats the Hand, knocks out Elektra and has minutes left to escape to the surface before the explosives Colleen stole from police lockup, as you do, go off and bring down the entire office building.
All they have to do is get on the elevator. But Matt’s all, “You guys go, I have to try to get through to her.”
There’s a nice fight between them with lots of violent cuddling. Then the whole thing explodes.
Cut to some time later and everything is fine. No one is in jail for terrorist acts. Luke and Jessica share a drink at a bar. Colleen and Danny talk about how Daredevil gave his life to save the city he loved.
Bullshit. Daredevil gave his life to try to save his girlfriend, for one. And then he wakes up in a convent hospital bed.
Gita: This is, like, a summary of all the comics tropes I hate. What I liked so much about Daredevil and Jessica Jones was that when people died, they DIED. There was no cheap, obvious resurrection or “they just got hurt in that explosion but they’re fine.” If I was going to live with these plot points I’d just read the comics.
Please do not tell me he has amnesia. I swear to god.
Fahey: We’ll find out in Daredevil season three! Though I am pretty sure it’s the convent or whatever where his mom supposedly went to, as hinted in a better season of television.
What I liked about Daredevil season one, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage were the villains. Such amazing fucking villains.
Gita: Yes! I was thinking of that too. Jessica Jones, especially, has a really strong antagonist in Kilgore, and it allows Jessica to have a strong story arc in the show.
Fahey: Tennant was absolutely terrifying.
Gita: That one is my favorite of the three series you mentioned, because it has a very defined beginning, middle and end, and Jessica has a very clear Problem that Kilgore embodies.
And yeah, Tennant knocks it out of the park.
In Daredevil and Luke Cage, too, the villains are strong because they are the societal problems that the characters are also fighting. Kingpin is corpratism that kills New York, and the two villains that Cage fights are manifestations of oppressive systems that destroy places like Harlem.
Fahey: D’onofrio was an amazing Kingpin. Mahershala Ali’s Cottonmouth was powerful and nigh unstoppable despite being just a guy.
Gita: What is the Hand?
Fahey: Just a buncha ninjas.
One of the biggest conflicts in those series was each villain was a human, and each hero had the power to just snuff them out if they wanted to. Creating characters that wouldn’t do that—unless pushed to the very brink—that’s what made those series.
In The Defenders we have villains that everyone seems fine with killing, but there’s a whole bunch of them. Instead of interesting internal struggles, we get eight long, drawn-out episodes leading to a foregone conclusion.
Gita: We should take maybe four or five seconds to mention Naruto (actually Bakugo, Colleen’s evil mentor), who seems to be an attempt to give Colleen, at least, more personal stakes in what’s going on with the Hand. The problem here is 1) Bakugo is boring and 2) He shows up in episode five.
Fundamentally, on top of everything else, the show has a pacing problem.
The show only really seems to gel by episode four, and at that point it’s halfway done. And then, from there, you gotta build all the stakes and drive the plot forward.
Not pictured: Misty Knight. Yeah, that’s about it.
Fahey: Netflix probably could have gotten away with making this an original movie rather than a mini-series. Come together, find out what the Hand is up to, stop them. Roll credits.
Instead we get shots of Alexandra’s whirlwind seated tour of NYC, Danny being Danny, Jessica rifling through records, side characters wandering around a police station, fights where everyone escapes to make it to the next fight, Daredevil fretting over being Daredevil and Luke being so sexy all the time.
Gita: This is an accurate summary of a disappointing Netflix show. Though if I’m being honest about Daredevil—he can still get it.
He technically died from horny, so, I feel like I relate.
Fahey: Wait, are you saying Matt Murdock over Luke Cage here?
Gita: Oh, absolutely not.
Just, like, if Luke was busy breaking furniture with someone else I wouldn’t mind Murdock as a second choice.
Fahey: Oh god, I just had a horrible idea about how they’re going to write out Claire. We need to stop.
Gita: Don’t speculate. You’ll be disappointed in due time.
6 Things We Liked About The Defenders (and 4 We Didn't)
All images: Netflix
Netflix’s long-awaited Defenders finally came together on Friday and we largely enjoyed it. There was plenty to love, mostly in how the four main characters worked together and the banter between them. Technically the show was also firing on all cylinders. And yet, there were some things—things Marvel’s messed up before—that didn’t work. Here are the six things we loved most and four things we loved least about The Defenders.
We Loved...
...That Each Character Felt Impacted by the Events of the Show
So many big crossover events can feel isolated from what’s going on in each individual character’s lives in their own series—unimportant enough that everyone can come together, quip, and punch bad guys for a bit, and then be on their merry ways for the real character development to happen in their own series. But The Defenders feels huge not just for the culmination of years of build up, but for how vitally important it is for the main characters and supporting characters involved beyond introducing them to a wider world... or a wider New York, in this case.
With the death of Stick, Daredevil re-confronting a resurrected Elektra, and then, you know, the whole “had an entire building and ancient dragon skeleton collapse on him only to survive somehow” thing, it’s arguable Matt Murdock came out of Defenders as the most impacted, but vital beats happen for every character. Jessica Jones is re-aligned as someone willing to be a hero to other people in her investigative work, as does Luke Cage in reconciling how he wants to be the Hero of Harlem. Arguably, from an audience perspective, Danny Rand is the one most importantly built on here, given a new purpose, inspired by Daredevil’s seeming sacrifice, to protect New York, and having had some of the pompous naïveté that made him so unlikable in Iron Fist checked by his time with his more jaded counterparts. Even major side characters—especially Colleen Wing and Misty Knight—get their dues here, with Colleen bookending the journey she took in Iron Fist by closing the book on Bakuto for good, and Misty taking one step closer to superheroics by... getting her arm sliced off so hopefully we can see her with a robot one by the time she appears in Iron Fist’s second season.
You could’ve skipped some of the series before Defenders and been fine to jump in here (with a little research)—but honestly, at the moment, this crossover feels crucial to the future stories and character arcs to be told across the four other shows.
...Sigourney Weaver as Alexandra
There are many things to love about Sigourney Weaver’s performance as Alexandra, leader and one of the original members of the Hand. She’s stately, intimidating, and calculating, and sincerely believes that she’s in this fight for all of the right reasons, which is what makes her the ideal villain for the Defenders to take on. As electric as all of the scenes involving Alexandra are, though, after watching about two or three of them, you begin to realize that the presence you’re responding to on screen is Sigourney Weaver’s and doesn’t exactly have all that much to do with Alexandra.
The mark of a fantastic actor is their ability to so wholly inhabit a character that you lose sight of the actor themselves and only perceive the character. Oddly, the opposite is what happens with Alexandra. Alexandra’s a captivating adversary because of what Sigourney Weaver is doing with the part and not so much how the character was written. All of Alexandra’s goals and desires are objectively understandable, but there isn’t a single moment where you forget that you’re watching Sigourney act her ass off as she glides across the screen swathed in varying styles of gold lamé, reminding everyone just how many lifetimes she’s lived.
...That the Show Anticipated Some Fan Grumbling
There were a lot of moments that felt like the writers of this show knew things that fans were thinking and sought to at least hang a lampshade on as a result. Things like Colleen saying that Danny will tell anyone who will listen that he’s the Iron Fist, or Luke lecturing Danny on his privilege all seemed designed (even if the showunner says they weren’t) to mitigate some of the problems people had with that character and Finn Jones’ portrayal of him. It also helped that Danny got walloped a lot.
Another bit that stands out is when Matt has Jessica’s scarf tied around his face while the rest of the Defenders are out there with nothing but regular day clothes. Everyone pointing out that it’s weird and ridiculous that he’s the only one that does that—and Matt’s valid retort that people knowing who you are puts them in danger—nicely dealt with the fact that he’s the only one who wears his comic book costume. Jessica also made fun of his outfit every time he showed up, putting a nice button on that.
Everything about the heroes that a normal person would react to with incredulity was met that way in-universe, which made watching the show way more fun than if it had all been played straight.
...The Lighting
One of the larger critiques of Netflix’s individual shows has been that, at times, they feel as if they’re all set in wildly different versions of New York City. Defenders cleverly addresses this point in its opening credits by showing us each of our main heroes, color-coded and projected onto various New York neighborhoods.
Those colors reappear later in the series as a series of general lighting choices, and color cues were used to reflect when a scene was oriented toward a particular character. Luke’s early scenes in Harlem, for example, are drenched in yellow tones while Jessica’s life in Midtown is largely purple and blue. Though the color palette gimmick can at times be a little heavy-handed, it feels like a natural and smart choice if you think of the show as trying to skew more toward its origins as a comic book and less as a prestige action show.
...The Meeting in the Royal Dragon Restaurant
The much-anticipated hallway fight might have preceded it, but the climax of episode four, “Royal Dragon,” is one of the most satisfying moments of all of The Defenders. With the team already fractured—thanks to Jessica’s abandonment of the whole venture and the three guys hesitant to trust each other—and the returned Elektra ready to strike, it feels like shit is about to go down in a major way. But then Jessica, having realized she actually wants in on this whole mystical Hand mystery too, makes a grand return by smashing a carthrough the restaurant’s storefront and right into Elektra, making her way to stand side-by-side with the group once and for all, as the show’s theme tune blares in triumph. It’s the most brazenly comic-book-y moment of heroics in the whole Marvel/Netflix-verse.
The Defenders had been together before this in the series, but this is the moment they were truly united and committed as a team for the first time. Plus, there are few things as hilarious as Jessica Jones nonchalantly ambling through the mess she made, knowing full well how goddamn cool she looks.
...Jessica Jones and Matt Murdock Becoming Bros
This was the big surprise of the show. Colleen and Misty meeting up and Luke and Danny spending time together were pre-ordained by the comic book gods. Jessica and Matt were paired basically because they had to be, and they ended up being great together. Matt’s drama with Elektra, Stick, and the Hand were made much more palatable by Jessica taking the piss all the time. Jessica and Matt’s mutual stalking of each other was a stand-out scene in a pile of them.
It’s obvious that Krysten Ritter and Charlie Cox are the best actors out of the four main Defenders and that, even if their characters were being serious, they were having a ball playing their parts. Even though the team as a whole had good chemistry, this was the pairing we wanted more of.
We Didn’t Love...
...How the Hand and Elektra Were Handled
The second season of Daredevil spent an awfully long time trying to impress upon us just how dangerous the Black Sky would become were it ever to be secured by the Hand. When we all watched Elektra die and then end up in that terra cotta pot, we knew that when Elektra made her inevitable return from the dead, she was going to be a much more significant threat than any of Marvel’s NY-based heroes had faced before.
But then, when Elektra’s resurrected in Defenders, we see that the Black Sky gave Elektra a few lifetime’s worth of knowledge about fighting and weaponry. And that’s it. It certainly made her more dangerous than she’d been, but she also just became kind of a knock-off living weapon to face off against the Iron Fist. Considering how the Handof Marvel’s comics is often seen trying to summon a literal demon from another dimension to achieve its evil plans, the idea that the MCU’s Hand just wanted to teach a fighter how to... fight better(?) was a bit of a letdown.
This was actually how we felt about the Hand as an organization now that we’ve met the Hand as people. Part of the allure of an international, shadowy organization is that no matter how high you go up, you never quite learn all of the reasons why they do what they do. Now that we know that the Hand’s entire reason for existing is to ultimately find more dragon parts to make the substance, the Hand feels kind of petty and dumb. Like, yeah, a bunch of rich old people wanna live forever. What else is new?
...That the Hand’s Plot Was Way Too Nebulous
So we know the fingers of the Hand, having used mysterious dragon goo—frustratingly referred to in the style of “the Incident” as “the substance”—to keep themselves alive for centuries, wanted to go back to K’un-Lun after being exiled for years and years. But... what did that have to do with whatever the hell they were trying to accomplish in New York?
We have so many questions about what the Hand was actually trying to accomplish, and even how they were doing it. What was responsible for the tremor that rocks Hell’s Kitchen at the end of the first episode? What was the point of having Elektra, resurrected as the Black Sky, on hand? Why did they need to dig down to the big ol’ hole from Daredevil season two—god bless that confounding thing—and get at the dragon bones hidden there if they just wanted to get back to K’un Lun? And how on Earth would getting access to them somehow level the entirety of New York?
The Hand’s plot was so obscure and mostly unanswered that the fact they represented a huge threat—one that Daredevil and Iron Fist had spent the last few years building up to—never really felt apparent in The Defenders. Hell, outside of the bickering among themselves until Alexandra is deposed by Elektra, the fingers of the Hand didn’t really do much at all. They came, they blabbed on about the substance a lot, and then most of them got their heads lopped off. And we’re still really none the wiser as to what they wanted other than to go home, a goal seemingly far separated from their obscure plans for New York.
...The Pacing in the Back Half
It’s shocking that even with four leads and a truncated episode order The Defenders still managed to have the same problems with pacing that have plagued almost every Netflix show. Once the team actually got together and Jessica drove a car into the restaurant, everything should have taken off.
It didn’t. Instead, everyone split up again. And while that was a boon to seeing more of Matt and Jessica together (Daredevil found a vital clue by playing his own theme song), it meant that we had taken a giant step back. We also kept going back to the police precinct where, realistically, only a few supporting characters actually made an impact on the plot. Foggy, Misty, Colleen, and Claire all had things to contribute, but the rest of the characters gummed up the works. Malcolm especially seemed to be there just cause he was. The show could have used more development time that was wasted in other areas.
...The Forced Comic Book Connections
Part of the joy in comic book crossovers like this is getting to see the first meeting between heroes who, thanks to the comics, we know will go on to form incredible bonds with each other. But in some instances, The Defendersleaned a little too hard on its audience already being aware of those partnerships to sell us on team-ups that haven’t quiet yet earned it yet.
This most notably can be felt in the connection between Luke and Danny in the series. In the comics, they’re life-long friends known as the Heroes for Hire; here, they feel far too different from each other to gel quite so much. Their first meeting best reflects that divided relationship as Luke angrily checks Danny on his privilege and naïveté. But by the time they’re slowly starting to buddy up—while the former keeps the latter tied up to stop the Hand from capturing him in episode six—the banter doesn’t hit right. It’s as if the fact we already know Luke Cage and Danny Rand are destined to be best friends is being used to try and jump to that point quicker, even if character-wise the two aren’t there yet.
A similar thing happens among the supporting cast too, with Misty Knight and Colleen Wing being thrust together at any available opportunity, no matter how awkward it is, to get them in each other’s circle of awareness so the show can nod at their future partnership as the Daughters of the Dragon. But given that Defenders is already trying to do so much in a reduced number of episodes, any attempt to fast track these duos feels rushed, and done for the sake of checking off a long list of comic book references rather than a move that really makes sense for the characters.
Where The Defenders’ team chemistry really worked was ultimately in the unexpected partnerships it created. Where it did not: trying to force together characters who we know have close ties—thanks to years of comics history that let those ties develop naturally—in such a limited period of time.
All images: Netflix
Netflix’s long-awaited Defenders finally came together on Friday and we largely enjoyed it. There was plenty to love, mostly in how the four main characters worked together and the banter between them. Technically the show was also firing on all cylinders. And yet, there were some things—things Marvel’s messed up before—that didn’t work. Here are the six things we loved most and four things we loved least about The Defenders.
We Loved...
...That Each Character Felt Impacted by the Events of the Show
So many big crossover events can feel isolated from what’s going on in each individual character’s lives in their own series—unimportant enough that everyone can come together, quip, and punch bad guys for a bit, and then be on their merry ways for the real character development to happen in their own series. But The Defenders feels huge not just for the culmination of years of build up, but for how vitally important it is for the main characters and supporting characters involved beyond introducing them to a wider world... or a wider New York, in this case.
With the death of Stick, Daredevil re-confronting a resurrected Elektra, and then, you know, the whole “had an entire building and ancient dragon skeleton collapse on him only to survive somehow” thing, it’s arguable Matt Murdock came out of Defenders as the most impacted, but vital beats happen for every character. Jessica Jones is re-aligned as someone willing to be a hero to other people in her investigative work, as does Luke Cage in reconciling how he wants to be the Hero of Harlem. Arguably, from an audience perspective, Danny Rand is the one most importantly built on here, given a new purpose, inspired by Daredevil’s seeming sacrifice, to protect New York, and having had some of the pompous naïveté that made him so unlikable in Iron Fist checked by his time with his more jaded counterparts. Even major side characters—especially Colleen Wing and Misty Knight—get their dues here, with Colleen bookending the journey she took in Iron Fist by closing the book on Bakuto for good, and Misty taking one step closer to superheroics by... getting her arm sliced off so hopefully we can see her with a robot one by the time she appears in Iron Fist’s second season.
You could’ve skipped some of the series before Defenders and been fine to jump in here (with a little research)—but honestly, at the moment, this crossover feels crucial to the future stories and character arcs to be told across the four other shows.
...Sigourney Weaver as Alexandra
There are many things to love about Sigourney Weaver’s performance as Alexandra, leader and one of the original members of the Hand. She’s stately, intimidating, and calculating, and sincerely believes that she’s in this fight for all of the right reasons, which is what makes her the ideal villain for the Defenders to take on. As electric as all of the scenes involving Alexandra are, though, after watching about two or three of them, you begin to realize that the presence you’re responding to on screen is Sigourney Weaver’s and doesn’t exactly have all that much to do with Alexandra.
The mark of a fantastic actor is their ability to so wholly inhabit a character that you lose sight of the actor themselves and only perceive the character. Oddly, the opposite is what happens with Alexandra. Alexandra’s a captivating adversary because of what Sigourney Weaver is doing with the part and not so much how the character was written. All of Alexandra’s goals and desires are objectively understandable, but there isn’t a single moment where you forget that you’re watching Sigourney act her ass off as she glides across the screen swathed in varying styles of gold lamé, reminding everyone just how many lifetimes she’s lived.
...That the Show Anticipated Some Fan Grumbling
There were a lot of moments that felt like the writers of this show knew things that fans were thinking and sought to at least hang a lampshade on as a result. Things like Colleen saying that Danny will tell anyone who will listen that he’s the Iron Fist, or Luke lecturing Danny on his privilege all seemed designed (even if the showunner says they weren’t) to mitigate some of the problems people had with that character and Finn Jones’ portrayal of him. It also helped that Danny got walloped a lot.
Another bit that stands out is when Matt has Jessica’s scarf tied around his face while the rest of the Defenders are out there with nothing but regular day clothes. Everyone pointing out that it’s weird and ridiculous that he’s the only one that does that—and Matt’s valid retort that people knowing who you are puts them in danger—nicely dealt with the fact that he’s the only one who wears his comic book costume. Jessica also made fun of his outfit every time he showed up, putting a nice button on that.
Everything about the heroes that a normal person would react to with incredulity was met that way in-universe, which made watching the show way more fun than if it had all been played straight.
...The Lighting
One of the larger critiques of Netflix’s individual shows has been that, at times, they feel as if they’re all set in wildly different versions of New York City. Defenders cleverly addresses this point in its opening credits by showing us each of our main heroes, color-coded and projected onto various New York neighborhoods.
Those colors reappear later in the series as a series of general lighting choices, and color cues were used to reflect when a scene was oriented toward a particular character. Luke’s early scenes in Harlem, for example, are drenched in yellow tones while Jessica’s life in Midtown is largely purple and blue. Though the color palette gimmick can at times be a little heavy-handed, it feels like a natural and smart choice if you think of the show as trying to skew more toward its origins as a comic book and less as a prestige action show.
...The Meeting in the Royal Dragon Restaurant
The much-anticipated hallway fight might have preceded it, but the climax of episode four, “Royal Dragon,” is one of the most satisfying moments of all of The Defenders. With the team already fractured—thanks to Jessica’s abandonment of the whole venture and the three guys hesitant to trust each other—and the returned Elektra ready to strike, it feels like shit is about to go down in a major way. But then Jessica, having realized she actually wants in on this whole mystical Hand mystery too, makes a grand return by smashing a carthrough the restaurant’s storefront and right into Elektra, making her way to stand side-by-side with the group once and for all, as the show’s theme tune blares in triumph. It’s the most brazenly comic-book-y moment of heroics in the whole Marvel/Netflix-verse.
The Defenders had been together before this in the series, but this is the moment they were truly united and committed as a team for the first time. Plus, there are few things as hilarious as Jessica Jones nonchalantly ambling through the mess she made, knowing full well how goddamn cool she looks.
...Jessica Jones and Matt Murdock Becoming Bros
This was the big surprise of the show. Colleen and Misty meeting up and Luke and Danny spending time together were pre-ordained by the comic book gods. Jessica and Matt were paired basically because they had to be, and they ended up being great together. Matt’s drama with Elektra, Stick, and the Hand were made much more palatable by Jessica taking the piss all the time. Jessica and Matt’s mutual stalking of each other was a stand-out scene in a pile of them.
It’s obvious that Krysten Ritter and Charlie Cox are the best actors out of the four main Defenders and that, even if their characters were being serious, they were having a ball playing their parts. Even though the team as a whole had good chemistry, this was the pairing we wanted more of.
We Didn’t Love...
...How the Hand and Elektra Were Handled
The second season of Daredevil spent an awfully long time trying to impress upon us just how dangerous the Black Sky would become were it ever to be secured by the Hand. When we all watched Elektra die and then end up in that terra cotta pot, we knew that when Elektra made her inevitable return from the dead, she was going to be a much more significant threat than any of Marvel’s NY-based heroes had faced before.
But then, when Elektra’s resurrected in Defenders, we see that the Black Sky gave Elektra a few lifetime’s worth of knowledge about fighting and weaponry. And that’s it. It certainly made her more dangerous than she’d been, but she also just became kind of a knock-off living weapon to face off against the Iron Fist. Considering how the Handof Marvel’s comics is often seen trying to summon a literal demon from another dimension to achieve its evil plans, the idea that the MCU’s Hand just wanted to teach a fighter how to... fight better(?) was a bit of a letdown.
This was actually how we felt about the Hand as an organization now that we’ve met the Hand as people. Part of the allure of an international, shadowy organization is that no matter how high you go up, you never quite learn all of the reasons why they do what they do. Now that we know that the Hand’s entire reason for existing is to ultimately find more dragon parts to make the substance, the Hand feels kind of petty and dumb. Like, yeah, a bunch of rich old people wanna live forever. What else is new?
...That the Hand’s Plot Was Way Too Nebulous
So we know the fingers of the Hand, having used mysterious dragon goo—frustratingly referred to in the style of “the Incident” as “the substance”—to keep themselves alive for centuries, wanted to go back to K’un-Lun after being exiled for years and years. But... what did that have to do with whatever the hell they were trying to accomplish in New York?
We have so many questions about what the Hand was actually trying to accomplish, and even how they were doing it. What was responsible for the tremor that rocks Hell’s Kitchen at the end of the first episode? What was the point of having Elektra, resurrected as the Black Sky, on hand? Why did they need to dig down to the big ol’ hole from Daredevil season two—god bless that confounding thing—and get at the dragon bones hidden there if they just wanted to get back to K’un Lun? And how on Earth would getting access to them somehow level the entirety of New York?
The Hand’s plot was so obscure and mostly unanswered that the fact they represented a huge threat—one that Daredevil and Iron Fist had spent the last few years building up to—never really felt apparent in The Defenders. Hell, outside of the bickering among themselves until Alexandra is deposed by Elektra, the fingers of the Hand didn’t really do much at all. They came, they blabbed on about the substance a lot, and then most of them got their heads lopped off. And we’re still really none the wiser as to what they wanted other than to go home, a goal seemingly far separated from their obscure plans for New York.
...The Pacing in the Back Half
It’s shocking that even with four leads and a truncated episode order The Defenders still managed to have the same problems with pacing that have plagued almost every Netflix show. Once the team actually got together and Jessica drove a car into the restaurant, everything should have taken off.
It didn’t. Instead, everyone split up again. And while that was a boon to seeing more of Matt and Jessica together (Daredevil found a vital clue by playing his own theme song), it meant that we had taken a giant step back. We also kept going back to the police precinct where, realistically, only a few supporting characters actually made an impact on the plot. Foggy, Misty, Colleen, and Claire all had things to contribute, but the rest of the characters gummed up the works. Malcolm especially seemed to be there just cause he was. The show could have used more development time that was wasted in other areas.
...The Forced Comic Book Connections
Part of the joy in comic book crossovers like this is getting to see the first meeting between heroes who, thanks to the comics, we know will go on to form incredible bonds with each other. But in some instances, The Defendersleaned a little too hard on its audience already being aware of those partnerships to sell us on team-ups that haven’t quiet yet earned it yet.
This most notably can be felt in the connection between Luke and Danny in the series. In the comics, they’re life-long friends known as the Heroes for Hire; here, they feel far too different from each other to gel quite so much. Their first meeting best reflects that divided relationship as Luke angrily checks Danny on his privilege and naïveté. But by the time they’re slowly starting to buddy up—while the former keeps the latter tied up to stop the Hand from capturing him in episode six—the banter doesn’t hit right. It’s as if the fact we already know Luke Cage and Danny Rand are destined to be best friends is being used to try and jump to that point quicker, even if character-wise the two aren’t there yet.
A similar thing happens among the supporting cast too, with Misty Knight and Colleen Wing being thrust together at any available opportunity, no matter how awkward it is, to get them in each other’s circle of awareness so the show can nod at their future partnership as the Daughters of the Dragon. But given that Defenders is already trying to do so much in a reduced number of episodes, any attempt to fast track these duos feels rushed, and done for the sake of checking off a long list of comic book references rather than a move that really makes sense for the characters.
Where The Defenders’ team chemistry really worked was ultimately in the unexpected partnerships it created. Where it did not: trying to force together characters who we know have close ties—thanks to years of comics history that let those ties develop naturally—in such a limited period of time.
Hey can anyone point me in the direction of a tpb or graphic novel of the complete frank Miller daredevil run..elektra included
start with this series - 3 separate vols or buy the whole thing in omnibus
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=DAREDEVIL+BY+MILLER+AND+JANSON
DAREDEVIL BY MILLER AND JANSON
Vol.1 (Nov 2008) reprints Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #27-28, Daredevil V1 #158-161, 163-172
Vol.2 (Dec 2008) reprints Daredevil V1 #173-184
Vol.3 (Jan 2009) reprints Daredevil V1 #185-191, 219, Daredevil: Love and War & What If? #28
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Question, are all those members of the hand from the comics? And who will replace them?
Yes. There were a bunch of members. Not sure exactly who will replace them.
no the closest to being a real character from the comics is Nobu
there were a bunch of recruited members over time in the books- if they they keep using the Hand on TV maybe the same will continue
except for Nobu - none of those characters are from the books
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hand_(comics)
I've read many good points about the series good and bad points that I agree with. My own initial reaction was 2 words: DANNY RAND. Or should I say Finn Jones? He dragged the whole series down he's such a whiny, mealy-mouthed asshole.
Here's about the best quote I've read:
Every time Danny meets someone new, he has to explain K’un L’un again… and at least later they start getting some good jokes out of it but, holy shit. Still don’t care about K’un L’un, my dude!
I think I could have tolerated Defenders if Finn Jones wasn’t a complete charisma void. He just has no screen presence, he’s bad at fight scenes, I don’t believe the conviction of his actions, and his character is just so stupid.
It's very difficult to make room for all those heroes, their friends, plus the villains in a piece. They all need lines, fights, etc. Plus there has to be at least some type of story arc for each, sometimes more than one arc, plus the overarching arc of the story (pretty weak in this case, I'll admit). Not an easy job at all. I also agree that the fight scenes were too similar. But at the end of the day what brought The Defenders down was the Danny Rand story arc. Make the Kun Lun/Ironfist shit a secondary or parallel arc and expand to 13 episodes and I think it would have been much, much better. It would have opened the door for a super-villain who could be much more scary than The Hand.
13 episodes would have allowed for better continuity also. An unsecured police evidence room? Please. The three Hand leaders and Elektra's fighting skills vary widely from fight to fight and that's because continuity was sacrificed for plot advancement. And if you gotta make so many concessions, it means the plot ain't that great to start with.
Here's about the best quote I've read:
Every time Danny meets someone new, he has to explain K’un L’un again… and at least later they start getting some good jokes out of it but, holy shit. Still don’t care about K’un L’un, my dude!
I think I could have tolerated Defenders if Finn Jones wasn’t a complete charisma void. He just has no screen presence, he’s bad at fight scenes, I don’t believe the conviction of his actions, and his character is just so stupid.
It's very difficult to make room for all those heroes, their friends, plus the villains in a piece. They all need lines, fights, etc. Plus there has to be at least some type of story arc for each, sometimes more than one arc, plus the overarching arc of the story (pretty weak in this case, I'll admit). Not an easy job at all. I also agree that the fight scenes were too similar. But at the end of the day what brought The Defenders down was the Danny Rand story arc. Make the Kun Lun/Ironfist shit a secondary or parallel arc and expand to 13 episodes and I think it would have been much, much better. It would have opened the door for a super-villain who could be much more scary than The Hand.
13 episodes would have allowed for better continuity also. An unsecured police evidence room? Please. The three Hand leaders and Elektra's fighting skills vary widely from fight to fight and that's because continuity was sacrificed for plot advancement. And if you gotta make so many concessions, it means the plot ain't that great to start with.
yeah I missed Bakuto and Yutaka
ok so Alex and Gao were made for TV
Thanks on the insight