Defenders on Netflix (full spoilers)

[briantw]

1 hour ago, lmanion said:

yeah the claire thing was a bit weird i would have thought she would at least contact matt when she brings if and lc together.

Hadn't Matt stopped being Daredevil to that point?  She probably didn't want to involve him because he'd presumably moved on with his life.

[karaddin]

I hadn't watched either season of DD or IF and I still enjoyed it fine. The shitting all over IF was definitely one of the highlights, particularly Luke calling him out on his privilege. Particularly that his response to that was all "I know, I'll use my wealth to tell the hand off directly! ....And almost get captured and only get out because the rest coincidentally saved my ass". I was in the camp that thought the Hand didn't particularly want to destroy NY, they just didn't particularly care that it would happen - the dragon bones were the literal foundation of the city, you take away the foundation and the city crumbles basically.

[The Meereense Knot]

I didn't really see much discussion about this, but does the whole blowing up of the building actually make sense to anyone? As far as the characters besides IF know, the Hand kidnapped IF and mind-controlled Electra, dug a big hole and were planning something...but had no idea what it was. I can maybe see IF go for it, but he wasn't there. Matt spent 2 seasons being not ok with directly planning on killing people and wanted nothing to do with this, other than saving Electra. They actually kicked the Hand's ass before even getting to blowing things up. At what point does blowing up the building you are also going to be in make any kind of sense? Also, yay! you blew up the building. Now no one can ever dig a hole there again? or will find anything once they start going through the rubble?

[mormont]

What the characters knew at the time was that far below the building was a 'domed structure' that seemed to be important to the Hand. They wanted to blow the building up to destroy that structure.

Now, we later find out that domed structure housed the dragon skeleton, so it wasn't the structure per se that mattered. But the characters didn't know that at the time they came up with the plan.

Also, by the time they kick the Hand's ass, Bakuto has already started the timer on the explosives.

[RumHam]

It's pretty funny that all Iron Fist had to do to foil the Hand was not punch a wall and he couldn't do it. 

[Maithanet]

On 8/26/2017 at 6:38 PM, RumHam said:

It's pretty funny that all Iron Fist had to do to foil the Hand was not punch a wall and he couldn't do it. 

I knew from a plotting perspective that it was definitely going to happen, and it still pissed me off to no end.  Iron Fist is terrible.

I think I liked this series more than a lot of people, but it wasn't a home run.  I liked the shorter length (Jessica Jones could have been a great 10 episode series, instead of the very good 13 episodes we actually got).  I liked JJ and DD and Luke playing off one another, and the secondary characters were surprisingly involved and interesting.  It was very watchable, and mostly fun. 

Iron Fist was a small problem and The Hand was a big one.  The Defenders were obviously more powerful than the Hand.  After the big fight in episode 3, I was like "why are they running away?  They won the fight and Alexandra is right there!  Just capture her instead of trotting off to get chinese food."  They never seemed able to really account for the fact that Luke Cage is just ridiculously overpowered compared to anyone in The Hand.

This is basic writing, IMO.   If they have Sowande defeat Luke Cage with his pressure point mysticism, then you start to have doubts.  Then make the JJ vs Nobu2 fight be a little longer and more one sided in Nobu2's favor.  It isn't hard to imagine that JJ would really struggle fighting a true martial arts expert who could adjust for her extraordinary strength.  Then with both of the true Supers having been humbled, it would feel like the Hand can actually pull this off.  Instead, it was obvious all along that If the Defenders stop pulling their punches, the Hand is screwed. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

2 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

They never seemed able to really account for the fact that Luke Cage is just ridiculously overpowered compared to anyone in The Hand.

This is basic writing, IMO.   If they have Sowande defeat Luke Cage with his pressure point mysticism, then you start to have doubts.  Then make the JJ vs Nobu2 fight be a little longer and more one sided in Nobu2's favor.  It isn't hard to imagine that JJ would really struggle fighting a true martial arts expert who could adjust for her extraordinary strength.  Then with both of the true Supers having been humbled, it would feel like the Hand can actually pull this off.  Instead, it was obvious all along that If the Defenders stop pulling their punches, the Hand is screwed. 

I haven't seen this so I should probably just keep my mouth shut, but this is a problem that I think many writers seem to have a problem with figuring out. The badguys are fucking ninjas! They don't face shit head on or toe to toe, that's not what they do. They should have multiple counters to someone like Cage that don't involve a direct physical altercation. Traps, poisons, gas, some sort of blinding agent, etc, etc.

[Maithanet]

Just now, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

I haven't seen this so I should probably just keep my mouth shut, but this is a problem that I think many writers seem to have a problem with figuring out. The badguys are fucking ninjas! They don't face shit head on or toe to toe, that's not what they do. They should have multiple counters to someone like Cage that don't involve a direct physical altercation. Traps, poisons, gas, some sort of blinding agent, etc, etc.

Yeah, well they didn't act like ninjas, they acted like blindly loyal mooks with modest martial arts training.  I agree if they were doing all they could to AVOID a straight up fight with Luke Cage, they would be a lot more effective.  I mean, how stupid are these guys?  "I just saw someone unload an automatic weapon into Luke Cage, I bet if I punch him, that will do the trick!" 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

3 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Yeah, well they didn't act like ninjas, they acted like blindly loyal mooks with modest martial arts training.  I agree if they were doing all they could to AVOID a straight up fight with Luke Cage, they would be a lot more effective.  I mean, how stupid are these guys?  "I just saw someone unload an automatic weapon into Luke Cage, I bet if I punch him, that will do the trick!" 

That's what I'm saying. Write your villains appropriately. 

[Maithanet]

2 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

That's what I'm saying. Write your villains appropriately. 

Exactly.  I mean, here's a quick rundown of the battles I remember.

Episode 3 battle at Hand HQ.  Defenders win.

Ep 4 Battle at Chinese Restaurant.  Defenders flee, but Sowande is captured and later killed.

Ep 5 Nobu2 vs JJ and Daredevil.  Defenders win.

Ep 6 Electra vs JJ, Daredevil and a drugged Luke.  Electra wins, although it seemed plot essential since Electra acquired superstrength all of a sudden.

Ep 7 IF vs Electra.  IF loses because he sucks.

Ep 8 Defenders vs Hand.  OF COURSE the Defenders win.

I mean, going into episode 8 the Defenders have an almost unbroken string of victories in actual fights, aside from that one weird battle where Luke was drugged, IF was tied up and DD was sucker punched trying to talk to Electra.  And even still this one only worked because Electra acquired super strength, which never showed up again.

[karaddin]

Having already conceded I haven't watched DD S1 or S2, or IF, so I didn't realise there had been previous Black Skies, the power up seemed like it was intentional and Electra as Black Sky was meant to be super powered as well. Having that actually be the case, and you know...having an actual reason for it and for Alexandra's faith in her, would also help with this problem since it explains why The Hand would put all their eggs in that basket and still think they could win a head on confrontation. Maybe rather than have Luke drugged in that scene, have Electra actually able to hurt him too. You don't even necessarily need to explain it at the time, you just need to make it clear that something is up with her specifically AND have an explanation for it at some point. But there wasn't and they didn't.

Despite having little interest in the DD plotline, I loved the interactions between DD and JJ along with the JJ and Luke stuff, the chemistry between the Defenders really worked. And Colleen has far better chemistry with Claire than she does with IF, but that's not saying much.

[Dolorous Gabe]

Well that was terrible. I found about 90% of the dialogue completely laughable.

[PetyrPunkinhead]

On 8/28/2017 at 11:07 PM, Let's Get Kraken said:

They had so many quick cuts during the fights I honestly couldn't tell who was winning or losing.

Yeah, that and the shitty, overly dark lighting. Tricks to hide mediocre fight choreography and minimal training/rehearsal time for the actors and stunt people. I felt there were enough decent fights thought o balance it out though--first meeting between Cage & Iron Fist, hallway team-up against the Hand HQ, restaurant ambush, and any scene with Stick all stand out in my memory as good fights.

[williamjm]

I finished watching it today. I thought it was entertaining without being particularly great, it's certainly far better than Iron Fist and more consistent than Luke Cage (although I think the best bits of LC are better than anything here) but nowhere near as good as Daredevil season 1 or Jessica Jones.

I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about The Hand as villains. They generally seem to be a bit rubbish at their job, very little they do actually turns out well. I like Madame Gao, but the others were underwhelming, particularly Murakami who gets a big introduction and then does nothing of interest for the rest of the series. The endless stream of redshirt ninjas who seem to have gone to the same training camp as the League of Assassins members from Arrow was also boring. Elektra also felt a bit redundant to the series despite how crucial we were told she was, although I did like the scene where she killed Alexandra.

The heroes and sidekicks are better, with the notable exception of Danny who continues to be an idiot, although I did enjoy the other characters pointing out what an idiot he is. The scenes with the characters squabbling and slowly realising they need to work together were also a bit dull, since we know they'll end up working together it does feel like manufactured conflict. Matt and Jessica probably stood out the most and had some decent character development, Luke was fine but it did feel like he had just wandered into someone else's plot. The he's-dead-but-not-really ending with Matt was a bit annoying.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Was excited to see the Easter Egg at the end of the last episode. I'm assuming that sets up Season 3 of Daredevil as the "Born Again" storyline. Perhaps the best Daredevil vs Kingpin story in the entire run.

[red snow]

On 26/08/2017 at 11:38 PM, RumHam said:

It's pretty funny that all Iron Fist had to do to foil the Hand was not punch a wall and he couldn't do it. 

Ha!

I just finished it, I thought it was fine as a TV-Avengers show. They did a good job of following through on plot points from all the shows but not in such a way that people would have been pissed off if they'd only watched one of the individual shows. I thought the "fingers" of the "hand" were a great idea but they didn't really use them to much affect. I thought Sigourney Weaver was great and her death was almost as big a mis-step as they made with Cottonmouth in "luke Cage". It's a bit tired at this point too as Cottonmouth, crazy Iron fist villain and Weaver all died in similar ways mid season (Iron Fist dude at least came back).

In a weird way the show did remind me of how good Jessica Jones and Daredevil were as characters and while this was a step down for them did make me eager to see their second seasons. I also really like Luke Cage although in his case I think he works better outside his own show but that's more because of the storytelling decisions made in his show.

And, yes, the Punisher teaser after the end credits seems very promising. But I do think Defenders sets all the other shows up well. Iron Fist with his helping of Misty will hopefully turn into a mini-team show with him, Colleen and Misty fighting for NYC. Maybe just have Danny see a therapist between seasons (he can afford a good one) and maybe make him become a fun, youthful crime-fighter rather than a childish, petulant one.

[Caligula_K3]

I'm five episodes in. It had a pretty rough start, but episodes four and five have been better, especially episode four, even if I have to fight sleep anytime The Hand is on screen or somebody mentions The Hand and their evil ninjas and evil ninja goals. Jessica Jones, Daredevil and their interactions are by far the best part of the show. Iron First works better as comic relief but is still too often a drag. Luke Cage can be an interesting character, but the actor doesn't really give him any charisma. I haven't seen his show (or Iron Fist), but it seemed like he was more interesting on Jessica Jones.

Even at its best, it just feels sloppily made, unfortunately. The end of episode four (the chinese restaurant one) is kind of a case in point. Alexandra shows up, alone and defenseless, and monologues at the heroes for a while. Nobody thinks to take her down while she monologues or hold her hostage when Elektra shows up. Then Jessica Jones runs over Elektra with a car, and rather than pouncing on the superhuman tough fighter, everyone stands together waiting for Jessica to join them so they can... wait for Elektra to get up?