The Defenders (Potential Spoilers)

[Crazedwraith]

Netflix/Marvel's team up series has arrived.

Personally I still need to finish off Iron Fist before I can start it but I figure some of us might be mainlining it.

[Vendetta]

Already did.

It's OK. Not as good as Jessica Jones or the first season of Daredevil, but way better than Iron Fist, the second half of Luke Cage or the non-Punisher bits of Daredevil S2.
Spoiler

The big weakness, like it was in Daredevil season 2, is the Hand as villains. They're just not interesting, they're vaguely evil, they live forever, and they're after more live-forever dust. Apparently if they get it New York will fall into a hole in the ground?

Then Alexandra gets shanked by Elektra and she has even less sensible motivations as a big bad. Also she has vaguely defined superpowers and is strong enough to hurt Luke and Jessica but Matt can still fight her.

Hopefully the Hand can fuck off now and we can get back to good villains.


Fortunately Danny Rand is less of a tit in this one, he's basically what the show thought he was in Iron Fist, a naive idealist rather than an entitled little shit.

[Gandalf]

Well that was a fucking waste of time.

The heroes together sort of worked, but the villains fucking sucked. The Hand suck. Elektra sucks. The Hand wanted some sort of immortality, and Elektra wanted... something.

The best part of the whole thing was watching Cage give Rand shit about how he fights crime.

[Vendetta]

I agree about the Hand being rubbish.

I think part of the problem is that the Hand in the comics are sort of vague because they've been used as villains for quite disparate heroes. What works for Daredevil is different from what works for Wolverine, but the Hand has been up them both.

So in the TV shows they're vague badmans with lots of influence but few to no specific goals, and the bad consequences of them getting what they're after in Defenders are orthogonal to their actual desires so the stakes don't feel personal to the heroes, the villains or the audience.

[FireNexus]

Well that was a fucking waste of time.

The heroes together sort of worked, but the villains fucking sucked. The Hand suck. Elektra sucks. The Hand wanted some sort of immortality, and Elektra wanted... something.

The best part of the whole thing was watching Cage give Rand shit about how he fights crime.

Just the general shitting on Iron Fish was super entertaining for me.

[Crazedwraith]

Watched Episode 1. Nothing wrong with it beyond it feels like the first fifth of each of their next series. With nothing much linking them yet. And nothing outstandingly amazing. I like Jessica's scene with Malcolm.

Weaver's villain is surprisingly above Gao. Not sure how that gels with her apparently position in Iron Fist. But it was a nice twist. Given Weaver's first scene in hospital I assumed at first Gao was there to offer her a Meachum like deal.

Nice to see Foggy meet up with Cage but also annoying all that legal kerfuffle was sorted out off screen and not by Matt, which seemed to obvious way of getting them to meet up of the bat.

[PREDATOR490]

Binge watched it.

Jessica Jones still sits as being the best out of all these series.
Dare Devil comes Second
Defenders is a solid Third
Luke Cage comes Fourth
I refuse to watch Iron Fist

The Defenders did kinda annoy me with the fluctuating power levels being displayed from Jessica Jones and Electra.

Jessica Jones is supposed to be pretty damn strong but it is beyond rare in this series to see her doing anything that demonstrates that. The Hand mooks are running around doing Kung-Fu which would make for a solid case for how they can run rings around Luke Cage and Jessica Jones.
When either of these two actually get a shot in, Jessica ends up doing very little compared to Luke Cage flooring people.

This is nothing compared to Electra though, that quickly became exceptionally tedious.

Somehow she can withstand getting punched by the same Glowy Fist that literally floors Luke Cage. In addition she is able to hit Luke Cage hard enough to knock him out and somehow out strength Jessica Jones AND Luke Cage. Meanwhile, the non-superhuman Dare Devil is handily going hand to hand with Electra. I can see the defence being Electra holding back because of the emotional drama however it still comes across as some iffy plot mechanics.

The Hand: Very uninspired and their entire operation seemed really small. For an organisation that supposedly had world wide influence it did not convey that much at all. Since I refuse to watch Iron Fist I kinda accept that a good portion of the BS that revolves around the plot and what the Hand are after is being missed.
Spoiler

Annoying Details:

They only had one elevator in the bottomless pit.
That elevator was somehow sitting waiting for the Defenders at the top to go down when logically it should have been at the bottom after ALL the villains were at the bottom.

The Elevator cord snaps, Jessica Jones finally demonstrates some super Strength by holding the entire thing with one arm then dropping it.
Meanwhile on the bottom, no scene or indication of that Elevator crashing to the deck. Apparently, it got lost on the way down ?

Overall,

Fairly good series and it mostly works due to it being a fairly low key sort of premise.

[Broomstick]

Pluses: I like that they opted for just 8 episodes rather than trying to draw it out into more. The length was plenty for the story told.

Please tell me we are done with the Hand? I am sooooo tired of the Hand.

I thought the ensemble case was handled pretty well.

There were many little touches I liked. ("Who can hear neon?", Murdock actually being a lawyer, all sorts of stuff).

Negatives: I am soooooo tired of the Hand.

Some of the power-level inconsistencies.

Elektra being evil without really have a reason to be.... except that in Ironfist we saw that people resurrected by the Hand tend to come back a little more wrong each time. But if you didn't see Ironfist you wouldn't know that.

If every time someone is resurrected by the Hand they come back a little more wrong that has disturbing implications for the "fingers" of the Hand which aren't really explored. I mean, sure, they're all amoral psychopaths but after presumably dozens, if not hundreds, of resurrections you'd expect them all to be a lot more fucked up.

Just one elevator for the Pit of the Substance.... except Spoiler

... Matt and presumably Elektra as well did get out, so maybe there was another exit

[LadyTevar]

To me, the ending looks like a setup for Spoiler

Daredevil Born Again, which personally I thought was just an excuse to make Daredevil 'edgy' again.
Hopefully they're not going to follow Miller's story but take it in a different direction.

[LadyTevar]

Elektra being evil without really have a reason to be.... except that in Ironfist we saw that people resurrected by the Hand tend to come back a little more wrong each time. But if you didn't see Ironfist you wouldn't know that.

If every time someone is resurrected by the Hand they come back a little more wrong that has disturbing implications for the "fingers" of the Hand which aren't really explored. I mean, sure, they're all amoral psychopaths but after presumably dozens, if not hundreds, of resurrections you'd expect them all to be a lot more fucked up.

After all those centuries and resurrections, perhaps they have learned to control themselves, to mask their psychosis. Then again, we do see the one that went off on bear hunts by himself, while Colleen's master seemed fixated on her. Alexandria had created/fixated on the Black Sky, and seemed to have begun seeing her like a daughter to replace the one she lost. Gao played at the Wise Ancient, but she was a player of all the sides. And the African General believed he could get inside people's heads to the point they would bow to him of their own will.
All of those sound like symptoms of various psychosis to me.

[Lost Soal]

If I read the ending and earlier statements correctly. Spoiler

Kun Lun wasn't destroyed, they just hid themselves/moved their entrance so Danny doesn't see it when he goes through the pass.
The cavern however was another entrance into Kun Lun, which is where the Fingers kept saying they needed to go. The not dead monks find Matt and either give him to someone in the city or kick him back into our world to be healed

[Gaidin]

Elektra being evil without really have a reason to be.... except that in Ironfist we saw that people resurrected by the Hand tend to come back a little more wrong each time. But if you didn't see Ironfist you wouldn't know that.

Maybe I'm missing something but as someone who's not read those older comics there's only one common theme I can find. She dies and comes back. Miller never really goes into how or why. That lets the old movies, these shows, anything that uses Elektra really, sit there and play with the mythos. The mythos of how the Hand's resurrection works. If and when she'd get memories back. How long that'd take. If they can control it. How 'wrong' you are each time you come back, and if that's controllable. Those dragon bones seemed to be a thing, for what THAT is worth. But a common problem with Elektra is there's no root to hail back to of why it happens and why she comes back, forget how.

[streetad]

It's weird. Matt Murdock being a lawyer, Wilson Fisk, Killgrave, the Punisher, most of Luke Cage; all the best parts of these shows have one thing in common - no involvement with the ongoing Hand plot.

I'm not sure how they managed to make a secret globe-spanning mystical ninja conspiracy such a boring slog to get through, but it was boring when it first came up in Daredevil and it's still boring now.

[ray245]

Because they are limited by the show's MCU setting. They can't be too destructive of a scale because the Avengers will show up.

[Gandalf]

Because they are limited by the show's MCU setting. They can't be too destructive of a scale because the Avengers will show up.

Then don't make the villainy destructive in a way that the Avengers will notice. Luke Cage worked because the villains largely weren't blowing things up, but acted more subtly.

[PREDATOR490]

These series only do lip service to trying to appear like they are in the MCU and the only thing they really seem to mention at ALL is "the incident"

This is the same issue with AoS feebly trying to maintain a relevance to the movies except these series have it significantly worse. AoS can reliably stay under the radar with the handwave of being super secret spies that operate over the world.

It is kinda ludicrous for someone like Luke Cage to openly fighting people in the street or taking rocket launcher hits without an Avenger, SHIELD or someone taking notice. Levelling an entire tower building in New York should have gigantic amounts of attention being drawn to the Defenders.

The realistic explanation is the series cannot afford to bring on the movie cast and the movies cannot be bothered maintaining continuity with even more stuff to keep track of. Unfortunately, this attempt to appear still in the larger MCU hurts the series because as long as they keep trying to pretend the more these stories have to avoid anything that would reasonably affect it. This series cannot even be bothered to recognise Stark's tower should be viably in some of their scenes.

I am a bit confused by the time period of the Defenders. They only mention the Battle of New York and the strong impression I got is these series are taking months at most to occur.
I think Luke Cage mentioned the Accords which brings a whole different point of why The Defenders should be attracting attention for using super powers unregistered.

[Vendetta]

These series only do lip service to trying to appear like they are in the MCU and the only thing they really seem to mention at ALL is "the incident"

The series are being run by Marvel and Ike Perlmutter, the movies are Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige reporting direct to Disney. There's some bad blood between Feige and Perlmutter, so they're basically being run separately on purpose.

(All the petty bullshit Marvel do regarding stuff licensed to Fox like cancelling the Fantastic Four comics because they don't control the characters for movies is Perlmutter).

[Elheru Aran]

Because they are limited by the show's MCU setting. They can't be too destructive of a scale because the Avengers will show up.

Then don't make the villainy destructive in a way that the Avengers will notice. Luke Cage worked because the villains largely weren't blowing things up, but acted more subtly.

Yes, a rocket launcher to the face is subtle.

[Gaidin]

Yes, a rocket launcher to the face is subtle.

Yes, let's work on a definition of subtle.

Avengers.

Alien wormhole with invading force:

Floating city island that will destroy earth:


Defenders.

JUST A DRAGON BONE CAVE.


Yes. Subtle. Work on your definition on subtle. Or. Better yet. Work on your definition of blunt force trauma.

[Elheru Aran]

Irony-meter broken much?

I'll post a longer review later. Gotta get ready for work now.

[Gaidin]

Irony-meter broken much?

No. Bitching about a conflict being too big not to attract the Avengers is actually fairly common, whether it's this one or season of Agents or another thing. I feel absolutely no irony in addressing you over someone else.

[Gandalf]

Yes, a rocket launcher to the face is subtle.

Hence my qualifier "largely."

[Elheru Aran]

Gaidin, sweetie... my point is that when one decides to bung a RPG warhead through your front door, generally it's considered a bit rude. One would think the traditional note on a brick through the window would do. If one wanted to be firm, two bricks.

Sarcasm aside, it's not about 'Avengers level' or whatever, it's that Cottonmouth firing a rocket at Luke Cage is a bit overkill (or would be if Luke Cage wasn't practically invulnerable) and that it was out of character for the show in general, which specialized in gun battles for the most part, superhuman punching matches aside. Gandalf got it. Go eat a Twix or something and come back when you're yourself.

Anyway. Review.

Daredevil S1 and the good parts of S2 are still probably the best, as are the good parts of Luke Cage. I'm on the fence with Jessica Jones, technically it was a pretty decent show but the whole Kilgrave, mind-control part is just incredibly skeezy and I'm uncomfortable with that. I mean, that's probably the whole point, I just can't bring myself to rate it well though. Iron Fist was a big flop, what plot they had could've been stuck in three or four episodes. It didn't need to be strung out over twelve. Never mind that Danny Rand and the various villains of the piece were pretty lousy.

So, compared to the above? It rates better than Iron Fist, for sure. A big part of this is they manage to redeem Danny Rand's character by ignoring almost completely the whole 'long-lost billionaire heir' angle, jet-setting across Asia to the US aside. The chemistry between the Defenders is decent. They manage to turn Daredevil around a bit (but not much) from the dark corner he found himself in at the end of DD S2. Alexandra, by herself, was an OK villain, the hints at her long life were fairly well done like finding physical clues in her handwriting on the deeds and all that.

Where it falls down mostly is that the Hand was a big fat nothingburger of a villain. I think this is pretty much what everybody agrees on. I'd have far rather the villain be someone new. I remember seeing a kinda out-there theory a while ago that Alexandra was actually Mephisto in disguise. I actually rather liked that.

It's frustrating, honestly. Kingpin was a good bad guy. Cottonmouth was pretty decent. Kilgrave... well. But the Hand (both in Iron Fist and Defenders) and the Meachums? Weak.

I gotta go see to the kid. More later if I'm able.

[Broomstick]

Kingpin was a good villain because he was complicated, he had good intentions but evil execution, was well written, and Vincent D'Onofrio is a supremely good actor capable of nuance. Kingpin was a great villain because he cared so damn much, he was the opposite of a sociopath.

Sigourney Weaver is a also a good actor and I think she did a lot with what she was given - but the quality of the writing for her character wasn't as good as Kingpin's. In less skilled hands it would have sucked but her acting chops saved Alexandra from the hopeless heap. Alexandra is sort of portrayed as greedy and evil for evil's sake, and frankly psycopaths aren't that interesting as characters.

[Elheru Aran]

Essentially, yeah.

If they had stuck with the 'army of ninjas' version of the Hand from Daredevil S2, it *might* have worked. Nobu was an OK villain and the whole coming back from the dead thing was new then, and that's pretty much what the Hand is in the comics-- a massive army of ninjas. But they devolved from that through Iron Fist with the whole 'training kids off the streets' (which okay you have to get ninjas from -somewhere- so I can sorta live with that), to just basically a bunch of random thugs in Defenders and not even that many of them at that. Seriously, all 'five fingers of the Hand' get together and that's the best they can do? At the very least throw in some offhand lines from Bakuto and Madame Gao along the lines of 'all our soldiers are still back home, we didn't think we needed them if all we're doing is meeting up' or something.

Gao is a problem as well. She was fine in Daredevil S1/S2, but they worked her too hard in Iron Fist to the point where I got tired of seeing her. And Bakuto was completely unlikable. He was a smug douche in Iron Fist, he wasn't any better here. The only thing he was good for was cutting off Misty Knight's arm, I expect they'll have a throwaway comment at some point about how her metal arm later on is Stark-tech or something like that which Danny paid for.

Also, the Japanese guy... I can never remember his name, but they didn't particularly set him up well. He's a badass martial artist? That's cute, turns out there's a lot of those though?

Never mind that we had no real idea about the 'Five Fingers of the Hand' thing until this show. I could buy Bakuto being Hand middle-management, but the heads of the Hand should be virtually untouchable and keeping their hands spotlessly clean. I'm talking like... Bill Gates or something. So rarefied that a few vigilantes from New York shouldn't even really register on their radar other than being annoyances.

Frankly, the Hand was a mistake for this, after they handled it so badly in Iron Fist. I'd have far rather seen either Kingpin returning from prison, or someone trying to muscle in on Kingpin's old criminal empire.

One last thing: Jessica Jones. She was severely underused in this show. Basically she was there to drink, deliver snarky comments, throw a few punches, and ratchet up a bit of ex-relationship tension with Luke. The architect plotline was OK and did contribute to the plot, but otherwise I felt that Luke and Matt got the most development throughout the show, as Jessica barely grows, and about all that happens with Danny is he gets his head screwed on a bit straighter.