Let's talk about the bad before we get to the good, and there is good but I feel like the bad needs to be discussed at the fore front. Let's start with the main character (at least the center of this whole thing) Danny Rand a.k.a Iron Fist. As I've stated before "Iron Fist" was obviously a set up to "The Defenders" so naturally he'd be taking center stage. So if possible, think of "The Defenders" as "Iron Fist" Season 2. The problem with "Iron Fist" (to me at least) was it got trapped in not knowing where to place it's focus. The 1st half was Danny trying to prove his identity, the 2nd half was Danny realizing The Hand is in Rand Enterprises and the 3rd was Danny fighting against Harold Mechum, all well and good however, the pacing of these events were disjointed. The season would have been much better had Danny been sent back to New York to destroy The Hand, that would have given Danny a much stronger purpose than not knowing why he left K'un L'un.
And that's the problem, despite having an actual threat Danny really had no reason to be in New York and was clueless himself as to why he left, it was just PAINFULLY convenient for him that The Hand was in New York, he didn't know that going in. Had he known that going in, that would've changed so much of the series and for the better. That being said, where we are at the start of the series ("The Defenders" that is) is that Danny Rand is basically traveling the world hunting The Hand, that's the beginning, what follows however is a far reaching conspiracy that leads all the characters to the same location. Here's the bad, for starters let's talk about the initial misunderstanding fights and THANK GOD there was only one between Luke Cage & Iron Fist however that devolved into an (incredibly lame) argument about "White privilege".
Can I just say that I hate it when superheroes fight, especially if the reason they're fighting is a complete and total misunderstanding (case in point "Batman v. Superman") that can be cleared up with a little context. Thankfully, the fight between Luke Cage & Iron Fist was brief, but nonetheless caused me to roll my eyes. Aside from the fight my second biggest issue was everyone's open unwillingness to work together. I understand there's a lot of strong personalities in the room but having someone who has special abilities working with than against you is advantageous, especially in a situation where you're going up against an entire world wide organization of essentially non humans. Personally, I felt like The Defenders took too long to click and too long to get on the same page and even then they really didn't.
I wasn't expecting The Avengers where immediately they become friends, but I was expecting an acknowledgment of each other's usefulness and seeing how they could help each other, but Jessica Jones is an alcoholic with issues, Matt Murdock has issues, Luke Cage...no clue why he didn't wanna help, he's an extremely personable guy and at least he stuck around to hear what Stick had to say, and Danny was the only one who wanted to work together. Which brings me back to Danny and dear Lord did this series make him look like a dumbass. This is issue number 3, the selective disbelief of the characters. This pissed me off to no end, every time Danny opened his mouth about The Hand, his origins and who he was nearly every character (with the exception of Daredevil) completely dismissed EVERYTHING he said.
Jessica Jones was held captive by a man who merely had to speak to gain control over people, she herself gone from being a completely average girl to suddenly having super strength, Luke Cage went from being nearly dead to being completely bulletproof and apparently being able to survive underwater (as his swim from Seagate would have killed even the best Olympic swimmer alive), add to that they live in a city that was nearly torn apart by f*ckin' aliens, they watched the news as a Robot nearly dropped a small country on Earth that would've killed everyone, they're aware of a scientist that was hit with gamma radiation and morphs into a green rage monster, they're aware of Thor, they're aware of a 50 year old frozen American Icon who's walking around today (and don't tell me they're not, Captain America's face is in museums). So when Danny Rand talks about their being Dragons and they see his fist literally glowing and he's been the ONLY thing capable of hurting Luke Cage without any added apparatus and they dismiss EVERYTHING he's saying as bullshit, it makes him look like a moron and makes them look like bigger morons.
I get all of that being hard to take in, but all the characters have to do is look at their own circumstances and realize that maybe the world is freakier than they realize, but instead they play the complete bullshit route and even at the end Danny was never vindicated, so to them he's still spouting a bunch of mystical bullshit. The worst moment of this is when Danny Rand is tied up and Luke Cage sarcastically comments that Danny should tell him more about punching a dragon to which Danny starts to narrate his takedown of Shou Lao in dramatic fashion only for Luke to dismiss him again by stating he was being sarcastic. Yes, he did eventually recant and reconcile with Danny over his dismissal but the damage was already done and Danny looked like an idiot.
 |
| Hey, Luke, why don't you tell me about how you were beat half to death put in a tank and then become bulletproof because that's way more believable. |
Disbelief aside, Danny continued to look like an idiot and was never shown to be the competent specially trained badass he was meant to be. The caliber of villains must match the caliber of hero or to put it in words better understood, the villain must be equally as strong as the hero if not the same way then in another. Case in point, Daredevil was a solid ass-kicker but nearly everyone's ass he kicked was human or human-ish (ie, Nobu) and Daredevil got his ass literally kicked by Nobu and only managed to survive by some quick thinking on his part. Fisk only managed to kick Daredevil while he was down and in a fair fight Fisk got his ass handed to him quite decisively. Jessica Jones was super strong but her strength couldn't save her from Kilgrave's abilities, on and on. Ultimately, Danny Rand never came off as anything entirely special since he was only a skilled martial artist with a glowing fist, his enemies have been pretty much humans as we've never seen him take the Iron Fist to anyone who was exceptional trained, aside from Davos.
Ultimately, Danny Rand beating up a roomful of guys isn't as impressive as Daredevil because Daredevil is just a human and we've seen it before, Danny Rand is human-ish and therefore needs to fight someone on his level and I'm hoping Davos comes back for a legit showdown. The Iron Fist in the old footage Bakuto had (the one with both fists glowing) that's the Danny Rand we need to see. However, I do appreciate the youth of his character and the naivety of his character, but with battle hardened veterans like Luke, Matt & Jessica he comes off as "some kid" and both Stick & Matt make that assessment pretty accurately.
Last bad thing, Misty Knight...HOLY F*CK is this character a drain on both her home series ("Luke Cage") and "The Defenders". Why? Because she spent a good portion of "Luke Cage" investigating and following Luke solely because A: he took someone's shift who was involved in a robbery & B: she slept with him, those are the only two reasons. Here the situation is even worse; now that she knows Luke Cage is completely on the level she still inserts herself into the situation ensuring that the police can handle it ignoring the fact that a literal bulletproof man is telling you to stay out of it. I understand as a police officer she can't entirely stay out of it but if she's put on the city wide task force she can at least accommodate Luke by moving his friends and everyone else to a safe house and use her resources to cover for them. This isn't to say that the defenders couldn't have given Misty small stuff like the heroin ring Madame Goa was running and ties to numerous shell companies (a.k.a tax fraud). But Misty runs off half-cocked thinking she's billy badasses and loses an arm because of it...that made me happy. Her appearance on screen is the harbinger of something stupid shortly to follow and she never disappoints. My hope is she quits the force and becomes a P.I..
 |
| ...or she could just die...that'd be great. |
Moving right along, let's dive into the good. Right outta the gate, I want to say that The Hand are easily my favorite TV Marvel villains. The perfect thing about The Hand is that their motivations are clear and understandable, they're motivated by fear, more specifically fear of death and as I've said many times over "fear is the greatest motivator.". On paper The Hand looks pretty noble, they want to stop people from dying, they view death as an aberration to nature and therefore want to defeat it. The unfortunate reality is in trying to defeat death one has to do some pretty awful things. As I've stated one action has to be justified by the next and before you know it, you're running a criminal organization and training assassins to protect your goals.
It's true Sigourney Weaver was largely wasted as Alexandra but her character did bring The Hand's reason for existing into light with her character actually dying, from what is unspecified but we know The Hand's resurrection ability is limited greatly. Murakami is easily my favorite member of The Hand aside from Madame Gao, and it was good to see all 5 fingers of The Hand together. The question of whether or not they're truly done for is another question altogether be considering Stick and the entire Chaste is gone I'd have to say yeah, The Hand is donezo. What that means for Danny remains to be seen.
As for Mr. Murdock, Season 3 is going to be interesting to say the least with people (Karen & Foggy) under the assumption that Matt's dead, one can't just pop up randomly and say "Oh hi, I'm not dead.". This leads me to wondering if Matt somehow became exposed to whatever The Hand used to heal themselves and that's how he survived, which means will Matt come back wrong? What will Season 3 look like? Will Fisk be there? Will Danny or Luke stop by? All remains to be seen. All in all "The Defenders" was a decent enough start to getting these characters together. Now that we're passed the "Getting to Know you Stage" next Season can hopefully focus on them kicking some legit ass. What I don't want to see is The Punisher joining them, NO! Frank Castle needs to stay as far away from them as possible and show up when the chips are down. Those are my thoughts and I'll catch you guys later!
No comments:
Post a Comment