The Defenders...
Aug. 19th, 2017 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatDecided to take a break from the world today and binge-watched The Defenders. It's only eight episodes, so not that long.
In a nutshell? Unfortunately, it's not very good. Quite disappointing in fact. I agree with the reviews I've seen to date. They made a huge mistake in regards to Iron Fist being the centering focus. He's the least interesting and charismatic of the team. Although, will state, that the last three-four episodes weren't bad, and I quite enjoyed the last two episodes.
I'm thinking the loss of Stephen DeNight and Drew Goddard as show-runners and writers hurt the series, who are both crack dialogue writers - they wrote Daredevil S1 and I think Alias, Jessica Jones, which were quite good and tightly written. This seems to be written by Doug Petrie and Marc Ramos, a few others...and it's deathly slow in places. The first four episodes have some serious pacing issues. The dialogue is downright clunky throughout, and the plot meanders, along with the action. I found the first four episodes rather slow, and we spent far too much time watching Sigourney Weaver stare morosely into space, most likely contemplating how her career got to this point and why she wasn't doing something more interesting like Game of Thrones.
It took far too long for the four heroes to meet up, they don't until the end of episode 4. Also far too long for the plot to get rolling, way too much meandering about watching the characters get coffee, and worry about mundane issues or superficial chatter. If I were writing this? I'd have gotten them together by episode two or written more episodes.
For the most part, the action and plot picked up whenever Daredevil or Jessica Jones were on screen, and slowed to a screeching halt when Luke Cage or Iron Fist popped up. Making it clear to me that either I'm not interested in either Iron Fist or Luke Cage or the writers haven't figured out how to make them interesting to me? The females trifecta in the sections featuring IF and LC, Misty Knight, Claire, and Colleen Wing, on the other hand were interesting. While the sections featuring Daredevil and Jessica had the opposite problem, they were interesting, but Foggy, Karen, Trish, and the other guy weren't. (If I had to see one more scene where one of the above characters chastises our heroes for either not trying to help people (Jessica Jones), playing a vigilante (Daredevil), and not being a superhero (Luke Cage), or for wanting to do it (Iron Fist), I was going to kick them. It was repetitive, and not required. I wanted to tell the writers, yes we know that they all think that, it does not need to be repeated and repeated and repeated. Focus on the non-obvious items, there are quite a few.)
It may just be me, but I really felt robbed of the Daredevil reveal to Karen. Instead I get them six months later, and awkward chatter over coffee. And more of the: "I can't be with you as long as you want to be the Daredevil." We should have gotten a flashback or something. Instead we get awkward.
The first four episodes jump between the leads lives, showing each of them struggling to move forward from the events at the end of their individual series. Some are doing better than others. Ironically, Luke Cage seems to be in the best shape, considering he'd ended up serving more time in prison, with Foggy getting him out at the beginning of episode 1. Iron Fist seems to be doing the worst, having horrific guilt ridden nightmares about what happened to the people in Kundulan at the end of his series. Jessica Jones and Matt are both attempting to put their lives back together, and leave the superhero business, with mixed results. With JJ, her friends want her to continue with it and take cases, when she just wants to jump back into a hole. While Matt wants to go back to being the vigilante, but his friends tell him to save people as an attorney instead and let the cops do their job, it's safer for all concerned. (I don't understand his friends, the man has super-powers, and was trained to be a ninja warrior, how in the hell is he going to be happy being a lawyer? Come on. Jessica's friends make more sense. Matt's, I'd like to shake and say, hello! Get with the program already. Your friend was raised to be a ninja, be happy he just wants to save people and isn't eager to follow Electra or Stick as a ninja assassin.).
Most of our time, for reasons that escape me, seems to be spent on Luke Cage and Iron Fist. Luke is coaxed by Misty Knight into helping another kid who lost a loved one in Harlem, an action that will come back to haunt her later, and of course the kid has resorted to crime to make ends meet. Luke follows the kid to a nasty dude with a white suit and panama hat...and runs smack into the Iron Fist.
Apparently Iron Fist is tracking the same person from another angle, and stumbles upon the kid cleaning up the bad dude's handiwork. Luke is trying to save the kid who has been hired by Panama Hat to clean up bodies, while the Fist is trying to capture the kid for questioning. And possibly kill him.
Jessica Jones, meanwhile, is coaxed into investigating an architect who disappeared. She only decides to take the case when said architect calls her with a voice scrambler to warn off of taking it.
She investigates, and discovers he has an apartment filled with explosives. Calls the cops, runs afoul of Misty Knight. Then takes off to hunt him down, manages to...and runs afoul of a resurrected Electra. Who ends up causing the architect's death. Leaving Jessica with the body. Foggy meanwhile has given Matt his case overload, and that includes Jessica Jones. Who Foggy coaxes into helping, because his boss, Jeri Hogwarts has asked him to keep close tabs on JJ and keep her away from their firm and tainting them in any way. Jeri is sort of Jessica's version of Stick. As a result, Matt turns up as her lawyer, and gets intrigued by whatever she's investigating.
I rather liked the Matt/Jessica pairing. They played off of each better than Danny/Luke did for some reason. I'm thinking the actors are just better or better written. OR, more likely, it's just me.
I wanted more of them. Their banter was funny in places.
The villains fiendish plot is really not as complicated as writers want us to think it is. Or the characters, who keep saying it is. Basically there are five people, warriors from the ancient land Kundluan, who had the gift of the Chi, and instead of using it to heal others, as Iron Fist can do, they decided they wanted to use it to keep themselves immortal or strive for immortality. And as a result were banished from their homeworld into this one. The Iron Fist is their way back to their homeland and to achieve immortality. He opens the gate to the substance that makes them immortal. This substance is dragon bone which is located under Manhattan. If they mine it as they desire, they will break down the foundation under the city and cause it to completely dissolve. It takes us forever to figure this out. We just go around it and around it. By the time it was revealed, I no longer cared.
The villains were lame. Alexandria didn't do anything except scold and threaten people. She seemed sort of futile. And watching her was boring. I didn't care about her. The best scene was Electra killing her, which I saw coming, Alexandria was annoying... Madame Gao continues to be the most interesting of the villains and the only one worth watching. The others...I was glad died. I think Madame Gao may have survived.
That's what I didn't like.
What I did like or what worked?
*Daredevil and Electra -- that I found interesting. Both are characters that others keep trying to define. Matt, his entire life has been told who he should be or become. The only one who isn't telling him what to be and suggests he just be free is Electra. Electra her whole life has been told she is a killer or a weapon nothing else, the only one who tells her she doesn't have to be a killer is Matt. She's tasked with persuading Matt to turn himself into a weapon for the Chaste to fight the Hand as well.
At the start, it feels like this is Iron Fist's story, but really it's Daredevil's as sort of a stepping off or motivating agent of Iron Fist, which I have mixed feelings about, because I like Daredevil, Iron Fist...eh, ambivalent.
*There's also a nice pararelle between Colleen Wing and Electra fighting their mentors. Both kill their mentors in the same fashion, except one from behind and as a surprise and one to the side.
Both are used by the Hand as weapons, and both love someone the Hand wants to kill or use. Both choose the person they love over the Hand, or sort of. Wing does, Electra chooses herself. Sort of shadows of each other.
* I loved Daredevil's sacrifice at the end. (But it would have had more value, if they'd spent more time building his relationship with the other four characters. Too much happens off screen. Instead of showing us how people find out information and their reactions to it, we're told, robbing the audience of key emotional resolution or catharsis, which in turn makes it hard to care. Instead we spend a lot of time watching Alexandria scold and threaten people, yet do nothing.) Still, the filming of Daredevil's scenes with Electra in the bottom of the building, as the building falls on top of them...their fight, and kissing ...depicting their mating dance...was quite beautiful and I watched it multiple times. Well worth the wait. Also the best sequence in the whole series.
I knew he survived, of course, since there's a Daredevil S3 arriving in early 2018.
* As previously stated, Jessica Jones and Matt Murdoch are an interesting purely platonic pairing. Possibly because they are clearly not each other's romantic type, totally underestimate each other's abilities, and simpatico in background. Both have guilt trips. And both have normal friends who can't fight or fend for themselves, and like to investigate things. They are also both investigators and detectives. And end up investigating each other. I'd love to see them work a case together.
The Danny/Luke pairing should have been more interesting, but alas it wasn't. Jessica/Luke was in her series, since both are reluctant heroes. I'd like to have seen more of Matt/Danny pairing...due to the contrasts and similarities there. And more of a Matt/Luke pairing. But alas the writers had other things to focus on, like watching Alexandria stare at her musicians or argue with Nobel as he cleans a bear.
* Claire/Misty/Colleen were interesting...and dynamic. I still think Rosaria Dawson's Claire was doing the heavy lifting there. And Misty's cop routine ..."Tell me what is happening, or I'll lock you up" was admittedly getting old. It's also repetitive. Yes, writers, we know why you can't have the characters go to the cops or use their help, but stop repeating it to us.
Shame we didn't get more of the others. Like I said above, far too much on Luke Cage and Iron Fist, who are the weak links in the series.
[ETA: Dang Series makes me want to see Daredevil S3 immediately. It's not popping up until 2018.]
In a nutshell? Unfortunately, it's not very good. Quite disappointing in fact. I agree with the reviews I've seen to date. They made a huge mistake in regards to Iron Fist being the centering focus. He's the least interesting and charismatic of the team. Although, will state, that the last three-four episodes weren't bad, and I quite enjoyed the last two episodes.
I'm thinking the loss of Stephen DeNight and Drew Goddard as show-runners and writers hurt the series, who are both crack dialogue writers - they wrote Daredevil S1 and I think Alias, Jessica Jones, which were quite good and tightly written. This seems to be written by Doug Petrie and Marc Ramos, a few others...and it's deathly slow in places. The first four episodes have some serious pacing issues. The dialogue is downright clunky throughout, and the plot meanders, along with the action. I found the first four episodes rather slow, and we spent far too much time watching Sigourney Weaver stare morosely into space, most likely contemplating how her career got to this point and why she wasn't doing something more interesting like Game of Thrones.
It took far too long for the four heroes to meet up, they don't until the end of episode 4. Also far too long for the plot to get rolling, way too much meandering about watching the characters get coffee, and worry about mundane issues or superficial chatter. If I were writing this? I'd have gotten them together by episode two or written more episodes.
For the most part, the action and plot picked up whenever Daredevil or Jessica Jones were on screen, and slowed to a screeching halt when Luke Cage or Iron Fist popped up. Making it clear to me that either I'm not interested in either Iron Fist or Luke Cage or the writers haven't figured out how to make them interesting to me? The females trifecta in the sections featuring IF and LC, Misty Knight, Claire, and Colleen Wing, on the other hand were interesting. While the sections featuring Daredevil and Jessica had the opposite problem, they were interesting, but Foggy, Karen, Trish, and the other guy weren't. (If I had to see one more scene where one of the above characters chastises our heroes for either not trying to help people (Jessica Jones), playing a vigilante (Daredevil), and not being a superhero (Luke Cage), or for wanting to do it (Iron Fist), I was going to kick them. It was repetitive, and not required. I wanted to tell the writers, yes we know that they all think that, it does not need to be repeated and repeated and repeated. Focus on the non-obvious items, there are quite a few.)
It may just be me, but I really felt robbed of the Daredevil reveal to Karen. Instead I get them six months later, and awkward chatter over coffee. And more of the: "I can't be with you as long as you want to be the Daredevil." We should have gotten a flashback or something. Instead we get awkward.
The first four episodes jump between the leads lives, showing each of them struggling to move forward from the events at the end of their individual series. Some are doing better than others. Ironically, Luke Cage seems to be in the best shape, considering he'd ended up serving more time in prison, with Foggy getting him out at the beginning of episode 1. Iron Fist seems to be doing the worst, having horrific guilt ridden nightmares about what happened to the people in Kundulan at the end of his series. Jessica Jones and Matt are both attempting to put their lives back together, and leave the superhero business, with mixed results. With JJ, her friends want her to continue with it and take cases, when she just wants to jump back into a hole. While Matt wants to go back to being the vigilante, but his friends tell him to save people as an attorney instead and let the cops do their job, it's safer for all concerned. (I don't understand his friends, the man has super-powers, and was trained to be a ninja warrior, how in the hell is he going to be happy being a lawyer? Come on. Jessica's friends make more sense. Matt's, I'd like to shake and say, hello! Get with the program already. Your friend was raised to be a ninja, be happy he just wants to save people and isn't eager to follow Electra or Stick as a ninja assassin.).
Most of our time, for reasons that escape me, seems to be spent on Luke Cage and Iron Fist. Luke is coaxed by Misty Knight into helping another kid who lost a loved one in Harlem, an action that will come back to haunt her later, and of course the kid has resorted to crime to make ends meet. Luke follows the kid to a nasty dude with a white suit and panama hat...and runs smack into the Iron Fist.
Apparently Iron Fist is tracking the same person from another angle, and stumbles upon the kid cleaning up the bad dude's handiwork. Luke is trying to save the kid who has been hired by Panama Hat to clean up bodies, while the Fist is trying to capture the kid for questioning. And possibly kill him.
Jessica Jones, meanwhile, is coaxed into investigating an architect who disappeared. She only decides to take the case when said architect calls her with a voice scrambler to warn off of taking it.
She investigates, and discovers he has an apartment filled with explosives. Calls the cops, runs afoul of Misty Knight. Then takes off to hunt him down, manages to...and runs afoul of a resurrected Electra. Who ends up causing the architect's death. Leaving Jessica with the body. Foggy meanwhile has given Matt his case overload, and that includes Jessica Jones. Who Foggy coaxes into helping, because his boss, Jeri Hogwarts has asked him to keep close tabs on JJ and keep her away from their firm and tainting them in any way. Jeri is sort of Jessica's version of Stick. As a result, Matt turns up as her lawyer, and gets intrigued by whatever she's investigating.
I rather liked the Matt/Jessica pairing. They played off of each better than Danny/Luke did for some reason. I'm thinking the actors are just better or better written. OR, more likely, it's just me.
I wanted more of them. Their banter was funny in places.
The villains fiendish plot is really not as complicated as writers want us to think it is. Or the characters, who keep saying it is. Basically there are five people, warriors from the ancient land Kundluan, who had the gift of the Chi, and instead of using it to heal others, as Iron Fist can do, they decided they wanted to use it to keep themselves immortal or strive for immortality. And as a result were banished from their homeworld into this one. The Iron Fist is their way back to their homeland and to achieve immortality. He opens the gate to the substance that makes them immortal. This substance is dragon bone which is located under Manhattan. If they mine it as they desire, they will break down the foundation under the city and cause it to completely dissolve. It takes us forever to figure this out. We just go around it and around it. By the time it was revealed, I no longer cared.
The villains were lame. Alexandria didn't do anything except scold and threaten people. She seemed sort of futile. And watching her was boring. I didn't care about her. The best scene was Electra killing her, which I saw coming, Alexandria was annoying... Madame Gao continues to be the most interesting of the villains and the only one worth watching. The others...I was glad died. I think Madame Gao may have survived.
That's what I didn't like.
What I did like or what worked?
*Daredevil and Electra -- that I found interesting. Both are characters that others keep trying to define. Matt, his entire life has been told who he should be or become. The only one who isn't telling him what to be and suggests he just be free is Electra. Electra her whole life has been told she is a killer or a weapon nothing else, the only one who tells her she doesn't have to be a killer is Matt. She's tasked with persuading Matt to turn himself into a weapon for the Chaste to fight the Hand as well.
At the start, it feels like this is Iron Fist's story, but really it's Daredevil's as sort of a stepping off or motivating agent of Iron Fist, which I have mixed feelings about, because I like Daredevil, Iron Fist...eh, ambivalent.
*There's also a nice pararelle between Colleen Wing and Electra fighting their mentors. Both kill their mentors in the same fashion, except one from behind and as a surprise and one to the side.
Both are used by the Hand as weapons, and both love someone the Hand wants to kill or use. Both choose the person they love over the Hand, or sort of. Wing does, Electra chooses herself. Sort of shadows of each other.
* I loved Daredevil's sacrifice at the end. (But it would have had more value, if they'd spent more time building his relationship with the other four characters. Too much happens off screen. Instead of showing us how people find out information and their reactions to it, we're told, robbing the audience of key emotional resolution or catharsis, which in turn makes it hard to care. Instead we spend a lot of time watching Alexandria scold and threaten people, yet do nothing.) Still, the filming of Daredevil's scenes with Electra in the bottom of the building, as the building falls on top of them...their fight, and kissing ...depicting their mating dance...was quite beautiful and I watched it multiple times. Well worth the wait. Also the best sequence in the whole series.
I knew he survived, of course, since there's a Daredevil S3 arriving in early 2018.
* As previously stated, Jessica Jones and Matt Murdoch are an interesting purely platonic pairing. Possibly because they are clearly not each other's romantic type, totally underestimate each other's abilities, and simpatico in background. Both have guilt trips. And both have normal friends who can't fight or fend for themselves, and like to investigate things. They are also both investigators and detectives. And end up investigating each other. I'd love to see them work a case together.
The Danny/Luke pairing should have been more interesting, but alas it wasn't. Jessica/Luke was in her series, since both are reluctant heroes. I'd like to have seen more of Matt/Danny pairing...due to the contrasts and similarities there. And more of a Matt/Luke pairing. But alas the writers had other things to focus on, like watching Alexandria stare at her musicians or argue with Nobel as he cleans a bear.
* Claire/Misty/Colleen were interesting...and dynamic. I still think Rosaria Dawson's Claire was doing the heavy lifting there. And Misty's cop routine ..."Tell me what is happening, or I'll lock you up" was admittedly getting old. It's also repetitive. Yes, writers, we know why you can't have the characters go to the cops or use their help, but stop repeating it to us.
Shame we didn't get more of the others. Like I said above, far too much on Luke Cage and Iron Fist, who are the weak links in the series.
[ETA: Dang Series makes me want to see Daredevil S3 immediately. It's not popping up until 2018.]
no subject
Date: 2017-08-20 01:49 pm (UTC)Gah. It's a pet peeve of mine: if you create a plot in which a character should die, have the guts to kill him/her.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-20 03:47 pm (UTC)It's sort of like Spike's death at the end of Chosen. You knew he wasn't dead, because the character was joining Angel, and they had to announce that to promote Angel, also the character was more popular with fans than any of the other characters on either series. Or Jon Snow's on Game of Thrones. Or Buffy's on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Or Angel's on Buffy. Sigh, the list is endless. ;-)
If The Defenders was a stand-a-lone series, and not a cross-over event, then sure it would work they way you said. and they shouldn't have shown him recuperating at the end. But it's not. I think the decision to have him sacrifice himself at the end made sense, and they did in a way set it up for them to survive...it's a tunnel network under there, and they are trapped with the substance that sustains life. I have a feeling Madam Chao survived as well. And Electra most likely pulled him out.
The problem with comic book and fantasy television serials, is characters don't tend to stay dead unless the writers get bored of them, are using them to prop other characters, or they don't have serious fan followings. (BTW, if Amber Benson had been cooperative, Whedon would have brought her back from the dead in S7, that was the original intent. They had to rewrite part of the plot when she became unavailable. I'm sort of glad she was unavailable, because I agree with you, characters should stay dead in some cases. If you keep killing off characters and resurrecting them...the audience stops caring after a while.) Farscape was notorious for it, they killed off all the leads and brought some of them back.
BSG also did it a lot. Vampire Diaries killed off all their main characters and brought all their main characters back to life at various points, LOL!
It got to the point in which, I'd think, oh don't worry, they'll be back...the writers like them too much. ;-)
Unfortunately serial television writers don't tend to be great with "death", they have a tendency to want to hit the reset button.
OTOH...the ending and set up of the series does explain why the writers felt the need to delay DDS3 and JJ2 until after The Defenders aired. And why they had to fit in IF and LC first, which...suffered from some of the same poor writing decisions as Defenders did.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-20 04:03 pm (UTC)I understand that they hate to kill off popular characters, and I do like DD. Maybe they could have killed off Danny, thereby relieving us of future episodes and giving him a good exit despite his whiny nature. :)
I will give them credit on one bit of writing: the architect made it easier to find the plans for the Death Star than Galen Urso did.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-20 10:22 pm (UTC)I knew both would get out okay, because both are contracted for S3 DD, and I'm pretty sure Electra is in Daughters of the Dragon, although could be wrong about that.
I understand that they hate to kill off popular characters, and I do like DD. Maybe they could have killed off Danny, thereby relieving us of future episodes and giving him a good exit despite his whiny nature. :)
If I were writing it, I'd have had Danny Rand die. It would have been a great motivator for all the characters. He was annoying, so there's that as well. Also Colleen Wing would have been more devastated and it would have been more of a major change. And it may have made it harder for Misty Knight to get healed fast.
will give them credit on one bit of writing: the architect made it easier to find the plans for the Death Star than Galen Urso did.
True. Except, having just finished watching Rogue One, Galen Urso didn't hide the plans. The Empire had them in their data banks on Scarid. It's not like he control over them, which actually makes more sense. An architects plans aren't his they are the company or organization he's working for, that organization would have possession of the plans. What the architect in the Defenders did was he stole the plans or made copies, and hid them in his piano. What Galen did was he put a fatal flaw in the design of the Death Star. He couldn't very well steal them and hide them. Best he could do was to tell his daughter about them and hope she could transmit them. Which she does, and Princess Leia gets them
no subject
Date: 2017-08-20 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-20 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-20 10:09 pm (UTC)I read about it when Iron Fist was on, but can't find the link. It got greenlight after Iron Fist. That's why there was so much focus on Misty Knight, Clair, Colleen and Electra doing the series. Actually, I'd be willing to watch that over the Luke Cage/Iron Fist spin off., mainly because I think the best things in Iron Fist and Luke Cage were Misty Knight, Claire and Colleen Wing. Luke and Danny Rand were boring.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-20 10:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-20 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-20 10:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-21 12:48 pm (UTC)There's another link that I had to find...where the Mary Sue says they are actually doing it. Apparently they announced it during the Defender's Panel at Comic Con.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-21 01:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-21 05:13 pm (UTC)Or not, apparently according to a recent post on TMZ, where Misty Knight is being added to the IF cast and it will be a subplot of that season. (Sigh). So clearly The Mary Sue got it wrong? (shrugs)
The Punisher will have Karen Page, and is airing this fall. They finished shooting JJS2 and are starting filming of DDS3 in October. JJS2 will most likely air after DDS3 later in 2018.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-21 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-21 05:47 pm (UTC)Yep. Agreed. I hope The Punisher gets horrid ratings. No interest in it at all. Despised the character, and it was the worst part of DD2 in my opinion.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-21 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-21 05:52 pm (UTC)Agreed. I thought he was interesting for that reason alone, as a foil. Showing DD the problems with going extreme vigilante. And it also motivated DD to give up the hero biz. And motivated Karen and Foggy to look at DD in a different light.
But other than that, he's very cliché and somewhat boring on his own.