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Luke Cage: Tired of Buying New Clothes (Spoiler Thread)


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I was pretty excited for this show, as I really liked him in JJ. That first weekend, I got the Spotify playlist, which is absolutely terrific. Didn't really get into the first couple episodes other than the terrific vibe. Was hoping the plot and characters would get rolling and catch up to that, but they never did. By the last few episodes, I was skipping entire scenes.

Colter's acting was weird. In one scene, I'd get this great 70s vibe, and was reminded of my favorite comedy of all time, Black Dynamite. His corny braggadocio worked well. Then a few minutes later, he'd give a more heartfelt line or two, and be very convincing. More often than not, though, I thought he fell into the middle ground, and lost me. 

I thought it was a pretty bold idea to kill off the big bad 2/3s through, after the show regularly hinted at this big scary Diamondback. Then he shows up and is just absurdly bad. Oh, man was that jarring. His character's logic made zero sense, he went from some mysterious total bad-ass who sounded like a big deal, to just a loony who hated his brother? Ugh.

Oh well, I won't re-watch it. I am happy I have that playlist, which will continue to get regular play on my commutes.

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On 16/10/2016 at 9:38 PM, Werthead said:

I think the best structure is that used by J. Michael Straczynski (in Babylon 5 and to a lesser extent Sense8) where you have continuing storylines as subplots in every episode, but the A-story of each episode might be a self-contained story or a serialised one. Or it might be what appears to be a self-contained story but then later on is revealed to be important to the overall arc. They weren't as accomplished at it, but Lost, BSG and Fringe did similar things (the article argues that Breaking Bad used the same structure, which is kind of true). That's much harder and tougher to write, but more satisfying overall and gives you the best of both worlds.

Farscape was a variant on it as well, more so in the later seasons than the first which was almost purely episodic until the end.  There is a show that absolutely needed the space to have certain ideas utterly flop without dragging the whole season down, since its lows were almost as bad as its highs were good.  I think the biggest thing is that regardless of how you're telling the story, each episode still needs to have a self contained narrative arc. I realise its less of a focus for Netflix shows where they all drop in one hit, but its superior story telling when its done this way.  The other thing that works better *for me* with this is when the serialisation is primarily focused on character development which drives the plot instead of the other way around (which loops back around to Farscape, which I think did this marvellously well).

And I'm a fan of serialised TV, I think it allows for a much richer story to be told than can be done through the constraint of purely episodic, but there is definitely some middle ground even if it skewed towards the serialised end for me. I'd add that I think the pacing for both JJ and LC could have been resolved by a 10ep season - those couple of episodes can just make or break the pacing (in either direction, I think GoT suffered greatly in early seasons from being 2-3 episodes too short - no idea now, since I stopped watching).

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There's a fairly common belief on this board that these Marvel/Netflix shows should be ten episodes, and that they'd benefit if some of the plot fat was trimmed... I can't say that I disagree.... merely that when I finish episode ten, I'm glad that I have three more to go. . But I think that's just me being a fanboy.

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Finally finished, those last few episodes were such hard work.  How on earth could they cast the actors who played mariah and diamondback? Some of the worst performances I've ever seen.

Also, because the second half was so bad i wasn't paying attention to all of it but i never really saw why diamondback hated Luke so much, the last i saw they were friends in the gym, what happened to sour the relationship?

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17 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Finally finished, those last few episodes were such hard work.  How on earth could they cast the actors who played mariah and diamondback? Some of the worst performances I've ever seen.

Also, because the second half was so bad i wasn't paying attention to all of it but i never really saw why diamondback hated Luke so much, the last i saw they were friends in the gym, what happened to sour the relationship?

Something to do with Diamondback and his mother being shunned by Luke's father and Luke getting off with some crime (joyriding I think?) while Diamondback was sent to a juvenile detention centre or something. 

(It was certainly one of my least favourite parts of the show, the relationship between Luke and Diamondback and the latter's motivations. Didn't make a lot of sense

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23 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Finally finished, those last few episodes were such hard work.  How on earth could they cast the actors who played mariah and diamondback? Some of the worst performances I've ever seen.

The actor playing Mariah would be Alfre Woodard, who in a four decade career in TV and film has won four Emmy awards, a Golden Globe and three Screen Actors' Guild awards (and been an Academy Award nominee). I think that's a pretty good CV.

I think Woodard's performance was great, and so do almost all of the critics I've read. I also thought Erik LaRay Harvey did pretty well with weaker material. If you didn't like the performances, well, everyone's entitled to their opinion, even if their opinion is wrong. ;)

23 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Also, because the second half was so bad i wasn't paying attention to all of it but i never really saw why diamondback hated Luke so much, the last i saw they were friends in the gym, what happened to sour the relationship?

The suggestion is that there was always resentment from Stryker, Luke just didn't perceive it. Luke was the golden boy, the 'real' son who got everything while Willis got nothing. Over time Luke's father pushed Stryker's mother away, Luke became more successful, and Stryker's resentment grew. The inciting event is a car theft in which both boys are involved but Willis goes to jail while Luke's father persuades the judge to allow Luke to join the Marines instead. When Stryker gets out, he frames Luke to punish him. But even then, Luke comes up smelling of roses, in Stryker's eyes: I mean, he does get superpowers and escape with a beautiful woman, so I can see that.

It's not as strong as the comics version where Diamondback and Cage are both in love with Reva, but the show merged two characters to get Diamondback. In the comics, Luke's (legitimate) brother is a different character and the show-Diamondback gets some of his motivations.

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did not see the cottonmouth death coming! Still finding the show super stylish but not that engaged with the plot. I feel his struggle with Cottonmouth is almost too low-key. Maybe things will kick up a gear now Cottonmouth appears to be out the picture.

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4 hours ago, red snow said:

did not see the cottonmouth death coming! Still finding the show super stylish but not that engaged with the plot. I feel his struggle with Cottonmouth is almost too low-key. Maybe things will kick up a gear now Cottonmouth appears to be out the picture.

Definitely.

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I think that they'd do a better job having mini-narrative arcs that go over one episode but aren't the whole season. Daredevil S2 did this well a number of times (notably with two separate Punisher arcs), as did DD S1, and it can work well with the Netflix system. Allow more development than a single ep can muster, have overarcing tie-ins, but still have resolutions. 

But Luke Cage didn't have much of arcs at all, as far as I can tell. Cage gets involved accidentally, causes some problems but doesn't end up fixing anything, then Cottonmouth just kind of randomly dies and then the show goes to complete shit. It'd be one thing if the show was meandering but eventually arriving at a plot end (like JJ and DD S2 did) but it doesn't really even do that all that much. 

I love the style of LC. Love it. Fix the story though.

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On 10/18/2016 at 8:37 PM, karaddin said:

Also just want to say I've still got 'Long Life the Chief' in my head, that ep5 opening sequence was phenomenal.

I know.  I have 4 episodes left, I'll finish tonight.  Jidenna's cameo in 5 was spectacular.  

I'm dying to know what Shades' deal is, but don't want to spoil anything for myself.  My boss is a huge Marvel fan and he recommended that I stay off Google if I wanted to avoid possible future show spoilers.  With all the biblical themes running through the series, Shades appears to be part Screwtape and part Randall Flagg.  Scary.

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  • 5 weeks later...

I agree with everyone in the thread (except Mormont I guess), that the actor that played Diamondback was unreal bad, and the writing for the character was even worse.  The show was great while Cottonmouth was the villain, and went to shit after that.

I just started JJ, but would agree that these thirteen episode seasons are too long. I think 10 is the sweet spot.

 

I also agree with whoever said that the comic book hero aspect of it is frustrating as well, as the shows get exponentially worse when it just devolves into punching. Luke Cage was great when he was up against a criminal enterprise headed by two people with somewhat realistic plans. It turned into shit when it was just Cage against some idiot who gave up his drug running empire to focus solely on killing Luke Cage.

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4 hours ago, sperry said:

I also agree with whoever said that the comic book hero aspect of it is frustrating as well

I see this complaint a lot about the Marvel Netflix series and even the movies, and it makes no sense to me. These are comic book properties. The lead characters are comic book heroes. It's like saying 'I'm enjoying this Western, but why does Clint Eastwood's character have to be a gunslinger? There's too many shootouts!'

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26 minutes ago, mormont said:

It's like saying 'I'm enjoying this Western, but why does Clint Eastwood's character have to be a gunslinger? There's too many shootouts!'

Well, not quite. Westerns are films, and you know what you're in for. Comic book movies/shows aren't comic books, they're a different medium. And they quite often improve on their source material for my money. I don't really read comics myself, and I see this excuse often that 'yea, but that's how it is in the comics', and I just don't really care. JJ stayed true to its themes of control and dominance through to the end and was much the better for it, the weakest part was the most comic book-ee part when blondie's boyfriend took whatever it was and became a comic book villain. Luke Cage got drastically worse the more it tried to emulate a comic book. I think the casual Netflix viewer is a large enough part of their viewership that they can treat these shows as serious takes on other issues, and not get scared that the comic book fans will complain.

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13 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Comic book movies/shows aren't comic books, they're a different medium

What are you talking about?

Westerns are films, yes, and books and comics and TV series and so on. They're a genre, not a medium. The same applies here.

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I've complained about this myself in places, and I do think there are moments when some of the properties would be better if they didn't go in quite so hard on the cliches of the genre (the end of Winter Soldier is the biggest one for me, they really didn't need to go so all-out at the end to make it work as a spectacle), but really, the problem isn't that they're trying to integrate the other genres with the superhero stuff, it's that they're not integrating them especially well. As many actual comic-books, and some films (The Dark Knight being the obvious), show, this isn't an inherent flaw. It's a question of creative skill.

To respond to the specific accusation, Luke Cage didn't get drastically worse when they tried to emulate a comic book, they got drastically worse when they killed a good villain and replaced him with a bad one. None of the problems with the second half of the season are anything to do with super-hero stuff.

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4 hours ago, mormont said:

I see this complaint a lot about the Marvel Netflix series and even the movies, and it makes no sense to me. These are comic book properties. The lead characters are comic book heroes. It's like saying 'I'm enjoying this Western, but why does Clint Eastwood's character have to be a gunslinger? There's too many shootouts!'

 

How much their superpowers dominate the plotline and action doesn't have to be the same. The 50th time that Daredevil or Luke cage beats up 25 armed men it starts to lose it's luster significantly. All of these shows have gone lighter on the superhero fighting in their first few episodes, and I think most people on this board are arguing that the first episodes of all these series are the best.

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6 minutes ago, sperry said:

 All of these shows have gone lighter on the superhero fighting in their first few episodes, and I think most people on this board are arguing that the first episodes of all these series are the best.



For real? Daredevil had the hallway scene in episode 2 of season 1 and the stairway fight in episode 3 of season 2. And the action in that series is pretty widely considered one of the key attraction points of it.

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10 minutes ago, polishgenius said:



For real? Daredevil had the hallway scene in episode 2 of season 1 and the stairway fight in episode 3 of season 2. And the action in that series is pretty widely considered one of the key attraction points of it.

 

For real. You need some action scenes, but they seriously lose their luster when it's the same thing over, and over, and over, with maybe another random superhero showing up to bail him out in a couple of them. The character driven stuff is significantly better.

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2 minutes ago, sperry said:

 

For real. You need some action scenes, but they seriously lose their luster when it's the same thing over, and over, and over, with maybe another random superhero showing up to bail him out in a couple of them. The character driven stuff is significantly better.


The 'for real' was referring to your claim that either season of DD had less action in the second half than the first.

Action scenes totally need support, or to be support, for the character work, especially in a series, true. But the second halves of DDS2 and of Luke Cage were steps down because the character work (particularly on the villains) was a step down on the first, not because there were more action scenes (which I don't think was at all the case in either). It's probably also the case that the action simply wasn't as good, too, though.

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