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.
Fahey: So, Gita. I was following your tweets this weekend, and I am under the impression that you weren’t 100 per cent 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.
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 favourite 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 organisation 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 realising 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)?
The evil leader of the diabolical Hand.
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.
This is your Danny Rand cue.
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.
I think it might be the pants.
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: OK 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 ARSEHOLE.
So everyone kicks his arse.
This is how the rest of the heroes feel about Iron Fist.
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?
I want to cheer when arms get cut off, too
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 mum 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 favourite 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.
Comments
14 responses to “What We Mostly Didn’t Like About The Defenders”
another dire negative headline, why dont you choose a more neutral headline? All negative headlines like this do is help ‘shape’ peoples opinion of something. EG if all you see before you watch something is negative headlines, you are going watching with the frame of mind something is going to bad, so you are watching proof, not entertainment.
I thought it was just me. So many negative Nancy headlines lately.
You’re not the only one. I’m starting to think that Kotaku writers hate their jobs… or just what they are asked to cover.
watch out, youll get marked for moderation with talk like that.
meh, they are right. i didnt even see all the bad reviews before i wasted time watching the first few episodes and wondering if it gets any better because it sucks so far. Wish i had red the reviews first and saved myself some time.
Other than the duly noted “for reasons” moments, I found Defenders to be a lot of fun, really enjoyed it
I really liked Defenders. It was just so cool seeing the heroes come together and take on such classic Marvel bad guys as the Hand that I was able to overlook the show’s flaws.
Really looking forward to the seeing how the things set-up in Defenders play out in the respective other series’.
Also, it’s Kilgrave, not Kilgore. And it’s Bakuto, not Bakugo.
At least make an effort to get the names right.
I’m honestly done with Netflix’s Marvel stuff. It’s lost me. First there was the dire second half of the second season of Daredevil, but the rest of it was fine so thought maybe it was a one-off. Then Luke Cage, which was okay for the first half, then mid-season tonal shift into ludicrous with an utterly mediocre caricature of a villain. And they followed it up with Iron Fist, which had astonishingly bad action choreography, an incredibly bad casting choice, and an utterly terrible script combined with plodding, pedestrian directing. And no, it would not have been fixed with an Asian actor, that’s like saying that a different actor for Anakin would have rescued the Star Wars prequels.
And then this comes along. At least it’s blessedly short. But the plot is utter garbage with characters basically strung along constantly in service of a terrible plot. Random villains out of nowhere, all showing a few flashes of something interesting before being summarily dismissed. Danny Rand basically being an angry useless prick, Daredevil trying his best Emo Batman impression and Luke Cage spending his only major moment having a massive preaching session about the evils of White Privilege, because well his show did really well with African American viewers so let’s tack it in to be edgy and topical even when that actual sermon was utter nonsense in the context it appears in.
People pouring acid on dead bodies to clean the scene of a massacre probably don’t deserve to get away completely untouched just because they’re “just trying to make a living.”Add to that the fact that the action choreography was utterly terrible, incredibly hard to follow and full of jump-cuts and shaky cam, and after that I’m not sure I can even buy the whole “Iron Fist sucked because they picked an actor that couldn’t do martial arts” argument. Other actors in this demonstrably can fight, and yet they’ve got just as much shaky-cam jump-cut bullshit in this installment.
Overall incredibly disappointing. Should have been far better than it ended up. They’re going to have to really pull it together in a big way to get me interested in this overall franchise again.
Some people hate Cottonmouth and are thankful they brought in Diamondback. I can’t understand this opinion one bit. The whole point was that Cage was invincible and could disintegrate Cottonmouth with one hit, but he can’t actually just kill people and real world problems are more complex than just punching the shit out of people.
Ah well let’s bring in a guy with a space suit though.
I enjoyed the show, great fun! Don’t agree with their opinions at all. Danny Rand is not nearly as insufferable as Guitar would have you believe or is it Gita…..I get so confused, must have been under control of Kilgrave *cough* erhhhmm I mean Kilgore
I enjoyed the show, though I can agree that the Hand is too impersonal a villain. I’ve really enjoyed Madam Gao as a “hidden boss” in previous series and when in the first episode they showed Alexandra talking to her as though she was an incompetent servant, I thought that she was being set up as a truly frightening evil. It was disappointing that much of her scenes where spent either being doubted by the rest of the Hand or dotting over Elektra. And yeah, Danny was insufferable.
But besides those complaints, I got lots of satisfaction from the interactions of the characters and the action scenes.
How that dude got cast as Danny Rand will forever be a mystery of the universe.
Worst. Actor. Ever.
Overall I didn’t mind the Defenders, though it certainly has its problems.
I could go on a rant but basically The Hand has just been incredibly tedious rubbish in the previous series, and it was so obvious it was going to be the main big bad in The Defenders. I thought that the Defenders would also have tedious rubbish about the origin of Jessica’s powers, and more backstory on Luke getting framed. (Maybe that’s why the series was 8 episodes instead of 13?)
Oh, and the bit with Misty in Episode 8, when she burst in on the fight with the swords, I thought, finally, *it* is going to happen. Which when you think about it is a terrible reaction to someone getting ‘armed’. Sorry Misty!
I really don’t like that iron fist guy. He’s like that irritating hippy dude that you always seem to encounter. The one who thinks hacky sack is a great way to impress girls.
Iron Fist is the most useless character of them all. The guy whines and cries like a little baby all the time and his acting is extremely bad.
I would have rather have the Punisher show these Defenders how to really take care of business. The whole squad is weak!
I’m watching it again and I think Danny is unfairly maligned. He has total belief in being the living weapon to end this specific enemy, but he’s also a friendless kid that grew up being brainwashed. His excitement at having a friend in Luke and missing social cues constantly are actually pretty cute. He’s also a moron, but it seems like it’s always a result of being hammered with “there is only war with the hand, you are the weapon, blah blah” for his entire formative life. Like of course he summoned the iron fist to try and beat up Elektra. He thinks he is fated to win these battles, but he fucked his training up due to being torn between two worlds. He’s basically a homeschool kid that’s all messed up and can’t deal in the real world. The money makes that even more obvious.
It is pretty easy to understand how people are resistant to sympathy for the pretty naive white boy who shows up and gets to be a billionaire on top of being a mystical chosen one. It bums me out a bit because I think the Netflix take on Iron Fist is the best they could have done and Finn does what he can with the character, but people don’t have time for a rich, white kid.
I think the biggest mistake in his storytelling was not showing his difficult upbringing in kun’lun, instead just giving us one speech in IF where he talks about how hard it was for him the audience needed to see him suffering, plus it being the running joke for the other characters to do the same “he said whaaaaa” reaction over and over. Without that his childlike optimism seems like a grating flaw rather than a psychological defense mechanism for the traumatized boy who never grew up.
I also like his hippy bent and I want him to turn up in Harlem to see Luke and embarrass him in front of cool people by talking about this awesome chi balancing drink he saw advertised called Kombucha.
I kept myself from watching the Netflix Marvel shows because of all the negative reviews I heard. It wasn’t until I watched the Punisher that I decided to give the rest a try. There’s only one series I didn’t care for (I think anyone can guess it), but as for the rest I think Netflix did a good job. I do agree they should have chosen a different villain organization than The Hand, but the show is not nearly as bad as what people say. I’m looking forward to season 2.