Marvels The Defenders

I know a lot has happened in the last week or so, and I do wanna talk about it eventually, but right now I feel like talking about a bit of pop culture I have been looking forward to.

The Defenders released two weeks ago and I binged it all over a couple of days, then spent some time thinking about it, in general I guess it turned out alright, but I feel like it has flaws that are actually pretty significant.

Now I wanna say right up front, I don't give a crap about keeping the characters true to their comic book versions, so no criticisms of that nature will be happening.

In general we had a pretty good introduction, with the slow reveal of the plans of our villains, and the team being drawn together despite their own flaws and mistrust of one another. That was done competently and even believably. The middle of the series, as the characters learn about one another and more about their opponents, and vice versa, is also well done, with the actors all handling the surprises that their counterparts throw at them in engaging and amusing fashions, and of course there are pretty decent fight scenes scattered around. The first 6 episodes or so kind of function as a mystery with punching, and it is only when we get to the end, the mysteries being revealed, and the villains unmasked, that I felt the story was weak.

It just... didn't feel very big, when it comes down to it The Hand just became kind of, I dunno, feeble seeming, their ultimate goals were basically personal for the leaders only and despite the fact that the consequence of pursuing those goals would have been dangerous to the city, for reasons that are not explained, it just reduced them to criminals in a heist movie almost. The ending fights were uninspired, little more than standing around in a cave, I never felt that our heroes were at risk, or that they were fighting someone who actually deserved their talents. At several points secondary characters tell them that they should take their evidence to the police, and you know? They maybe should have! The proper authorities in the Marvel Cinematic Universe would probably have been at least as able to deal with it as The Defenders were.

The point is there didn't seem to be a challenge, Sigourney Weaver did a great job in what I thought was the lead villain role, intimidating and mysterious, but, spoiler alert, it turns out that the writers didn't care for her character actually doing thing and kill her off to replace her with Electra as the big bad.

Here's the thing about Electra: She is terrible, she sucked when Frank Miller created her in the 90s or whatever, she sucked in the movie of the same name, she has sucked in all her comic book incarnations and she sucks here, as a love interest for Daredevil she is annoying, like a main character from Final Fantasy who only speaks in ellipses. As a villain she doesn't work, we have already seen the character beaten by Daredevil in his own series, and when she is a love interest we all know she will betray him or be murdered or something, in Defenders she is resurrected as The Black Sky, the ultimate weapon of The Hand, but the ultimateness is somewhat in question as Danny Rand punches her through a wall like three times, Danny fucking Rand, and it is proven that neither she nor any of the other villains can even inconvenience Luke Cage in a fight.

Let's talk about Danny Rand for a minute, The Defenders in a lot of ways is Iron Fist 2, expanding a bit on his character and actually giving him an arc and some growth. Iron Fist gets criticism, which might be a little unfair, as being appropriation, however I am an apologist for this interpretation as I think that was supposed to be the theme of the show, Jessica Jones had sexual assault, Luke Cage dealt with racism and black culture, Daredevil was economic inequality themed, I think Iron Fist was supposed to be about cultural appropriation, but they just didn't do it very well, consider.

During his show, Danny Rand is repeatedly told by characters who are in a position to know, that he kind of sucks and is the worst Iron Fist, and it's true! He gets his ass kicked on the regular, doesn't know hardly anything about his powers, and once attaining the title of Iron Fist, along with the responsibilities therein, immediately fucks off and leaves the culture that gave everything to him to rot in favor of regaining control of his multi-billion dollar corporation. This is a pretty good basis to start a character arc, realizing that what he did was wrong and why, but they failed in Iron Fist, he ended up with the powers, the girl, and the money. The thins is that he shows no awareness of the privilege he has, he regrets that his choices lead to the destruction of Kun'Lun, but at no point does he show that he would take those choices back if he could, and his only idea to start making it up is to track down The Hand, which he does by traveling all over the world in his private jet with his girlfriend and having kung-fu battles in foreign sewers.

That is the Danny Rand that we get at the beginning of The Defenders, and when he returns to New York he still has no ideas other than find street level hoods and punch them in hopes that they can tell him something, it takes Luke Cage giving him a lecture about privilege and reminding him that he has a literal billion dollar corporation with ties to The Hand before he realizes that maybe there could be another way. In the context of the show it is a small moment, but it shows more actual growth as a character than he had in his entire solo series. Again, during The Defenders various people with the knowledge to comment call him kind of an idiot and a terrible Iron Fist, but it actually seems that it might be sinking in during the course of the series. Danny Rand's character arc isn't over and was handled pretty terribly in his solo series, but he actually had some growth here and when his second season happens, as I assume it will, I hope they continue exploring those themes.

So yeah, good start, strong middle, weak ending, villains not so inspiring, decent level of growth for the weakest character. I don't feel like I wasted my time but this won't be going down as the best the MCU has to offer.