TV Talk - Marvel's Defenders

Before I get to some good ‘ole Bruceploitation, I thought I’d share my thoughts on something major from Marvel. I was thinking on what I haven’t covered on here involving the martial arts side of Marvel, and then the Defenders popped into my head. It has the Hand, Marvel’s own group of evil ninjas, after all. Yeah, I forgot about the big crossover between the 4 Marvel Netflix shows. There may be a few reasons why, but I’ll get to them later. Also, I may be talking about a Marvel event that uses those characters in a similar fashion called Shadowland on my other blog. That’ll come… eventually.

Anyway, Defenders was the big crossover event that was supposed to bring in characters from Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist. Heck, it mostly came from bits that tied into Daredevil’s and Iron Fist’s stories. They were building toward their eventual meeting in the same way everything led to the Avengers. We had characters like Jessica Jones and Luke Cage meet each other. We even had Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) be kinda of a link between most of the series. I was sort of psyched for it even though the previous series (Iron Fist Season 1) wasn’t that good. So, what did happen in this 8-episode mini that debuted on August 18^th, 2017?

Defenders takes place a few months after the end of Daredevil’s second season and a month after the end of Iron Fist’s first season. All of the heroes are dealing with their own personal trials. They all end up on a path that brings them together and that path is the Hand. It looks like they’re up to their old tricks again and it looks like the majors heads, led by Alexandria (Sigourney Weaver), are going to do some bad stuff to New York. It’s also revealed that they have a secret weapon: Elektra, Matt’s supposedly dead girlfriend. Will these Defenders be able to stop the nefarious goals of the Hand?

PROS

While this wasn’t the greatest thing since Chocolate Pound Cake, it was a nice crossover. It was something that had been coming ever since the first season of Daredevil. Seeing everyone (main leads and supporting characters) come together for the crossover was pretty good. I also liked how this wasn’t just a story where nothing happened to our leads. Things that happened in their previous series (Luke being locked up, Matt reeling from Elektra’s loss, Jessica being… Jessica,  and Danny being an idiot) get brought up here and dealt with a bit.  Also, Some major things happen here with our main characters and side characters. Thankfully, the later (and unfortunately last) seasons of their shows don’t ignore those things.

Of course, seeing all four come together and bounce off one another was a treat. I think the ones who really worked well together were Charlie Cox and Krysten Ritter. While the Power Man/Iron Fist side of the quartet didn’t get as much time to gel together, it was cool to see Mike Colter and Finn Jones finally do their thing. I also liked how Danny was pretty much the butt end of this group. If you didn’t like Iron Fist’s first season, you’ll love seeing everyone give Danny crap. Heck, they even get to knock Danny around a bit when things start getting weird. We also got Misty Knight and Collen Wing together and they made for a nice combo.

While the villains were… what they were, I thought Sigourney Weaver wasn’t too bad as the leader of the Hand. Seeing others like Madam Gao and Elektra come back was nice. Too bad… well, that would be spoiling.  The fight scenes here were pretty nice for the most part. I think the best one is where the Defenders first team up in the Hand’s headquarters. You see everyone do their signature stuff. Another fight that was pretty nice was when Danny basically took on all of the Defenders. Overall, this crossover had more good than bad.

CONS

As for the bad, I can look at our evil ninjas for that. The Hand was a pretty subpar group of villains. We started to see how subpar they were in the other series. It seemed like they got worse with each series that featured them. Their goals were pretty weird here. We also end up getting some new major Hand members (the Five Fingers), but they were just bland cannon fodder. I know that one dude who threw hands against Luke Cage (Off-Screen) is one big example. Outside of Alexrandra and Gao, I can’t even remember the rest… oh yeah, there was Botaku or whatever that dude name was.

Another problem is Elektra, and that also ties into the Hand issue. The way they set her up was kind of interesting, but things went off the rails in the back half of the crossover. I won’t spoil anything (I know it’s been two years), but let’s just say that the amnesiac ninja ends up doing something pretty out of place (for this version of the character anyway). After that, it just made the Hand scenes come off as just “meh.” As for our Defenders, the only one that annoyed me was Danny. Luckily, he annoyed the other Defenders, so that kind of balanced that out.

Can someone turn on a light???

Another thing that was weak was the pacing. This something that all the Netflix shows struggled with. Even the good ones had issues with pacing and this series is no different. It felt like the show either needed one less episode or one more episode to make it all work. I don’t know. While I did like the action here, the final fight with all the Defenders together was kind of subpar. It definitely wasn’t lit well since took place underground. Other than those things and maybe some small nitpicks, this was still a nice show.

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In the end, Defenders was good for the most part. Yeah, it had problems, but there was more good than bad. Now that Netflix Marvel is unfortunately done, we may never see this version of the group together again, and that’s sad. It sucks that this version of Marvel is essentially done since it gave fans darker, grittier versions of these characters. I don’t know how they’ll fare in the MCU proper, but I hope some of what was done on Netflix sticks around. Other than Iron Fist, I don’t think the rest need a hard reset/reboot especially Daredevil. Well, that’s all for now. For now, Peace, God Bless, and keep giving the Danny Rands of life crap.