So for over 2 years now, Marvel’s been building up their darker Netflix universe with 5 seasons
of TV, and it’s all been more or less building to a Netflix Marvel Avengers style team up
with The Defenders.
And I have been insanely excited to see this play out since day 1.
So, now that it’s finally here, let’s talk about it.
*clip* So now, after years and years of waiting,
is the Defenders a return to form for Marvel Netflix, or is it more akin to their latest
stuff.
I’m happy to say that the Defenders was pretty awesome.
I don’t think it’s the best Marvel Netflix show, but it’s probably the one I’ve enjoyed
the most since Daredevil season 2.
Firstly, as if it needs to be said, pretty much everyone in this cast is great.
Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock I think is one of the best performances and characters in
the MCU period, I love that character and I love the performance, and he’s just as
great as he always has been here.
When Daredevil shows up in the costume for the first time in the show, it’s such a
cool moment.
Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones, who we actually haven’t
seen for a while, is also fantastic.
Mike Colter as Luke Cage is also close to a Charlie Cox level for me, love that guy
whenever I see him as Cage.
And you know what, Finn Jones as Danny Rand, actually pretty good here i thought.
In Iron Fist I thought he ranged from bad to pretty ok, here, sure I think he’s definitely
the weakest of the 3, but I quite enjoyed him for most of it.
Also, the show on the whole does a brilliant job of taking everything everyone hated about
Iron Fist and making it better.
They make fun of him and all his mystical stuff all the time, which is great.
They also team him up with Luke Cage for a lot of this, and whenever they’re together
I was loving it.
Also they kind of address how whiny and irrational Danny can be sometimes and it made him overall
much more human and likable.
Everyone else you’ve seen in other series, Colleen, Foggy, Claire, they all are good
as well, especially Stick, loved him in this.
The two main villains, I suppose, kind of, of this show are Sigourney Weaver as Alexandra
and Elodie Yung as Elektra.
Sigourney Weaver was great, which you would expect from an actress of her caliber, although
the actual character didn’t stand out much to me.
LIke they tried to make her interesting with a certain angle, and she was pretty intimidating,
but she was nowhere near the level of Kingpin, the Purple Man, or even Cottonmouth.
And Elodie Yung is once again really good, although the whole Elektra storyline, it wasn’t
bad at all, but it reminded me so incredibly much of Bucky in the Winter Soldier, right
down to like tiny details and lines of dialogue.
I don’t know, I just find it strange since these are technically from the same franchise
that they would have storylines so similar.
Now really, what the whole big point of this kind of show is that these heroes are teaming
up.
And firstly, i just wanna say, there’s just something inherently cool about seeing heroes
you’ve grown to love for so long finally come together.
It was super cool in the Avengers, it’ll be super cool when the Avengers meet the Guardians,
and it was super cool here.
The thing that makes this team up work so well also is that these characters are all
very different and have very different ideologies, but the characters aren’t written differently
to compromise for that.
All these characters act exactly as you would expect them to, it feels totally natural.
Seeing them interact, both in combat and just talking is the best part of the show, easily.
Each character also gets a good amount of stuff to do, no one is really sidelined here.
Speaking of which, the action here is a little bit of a mixed bag.
Sometimes this is phenomenal stuff, and sometimes it’s kind of Iron Fist-ish meh action.
Some choreography and the way it’s shot and all that is great, especially most Daredevil
stuff, and then some seems a little bit off and not that convincing.
Really I can say when it’s good it’s great, and when it’s bad it’s just ok.
Nothing atrocious, but also nothing as good as the hallway fight from the first season
of Daredevil.
Now, this Netflix Marvel show kind of stands out from the rest, because it’s the first
to be 8 episodes and not 13.
And can I just say, I so hope this is the trend that these shows will follow now.
Even with the good shows, I always feel like they could be a little tighter, and this feels
a lot more well paced than some of the other shows.
There doesn’t feel like there’s really any filler, although it’s not always perfect,
we’ll get to that later.
Also, for people who kind of wanna binge it and or have to to get a YouTube video out
in time, god, it is so refreshing and so much more manageable.
Loved that aspect of this.
The tone is pretty dark although this does have some great humor throughout, there weren’t
really any jokes that didn’t land for me.
Though again, like with most of these shows, I do have to say, this is certainly not for
children.
There’s some pretty brutal violence and a little bit of sex and all sorts of stuff,
just saying, I hope parents whose kids love the MCU movies don’t say, oh this is in
the same world as Captain America, go watch this, Timmy!
Cuz Timmy will probably not enjoy it.
Also, like all the other Netflix shows, it’s also really well shot, like the cinematography
here is pretty beautiful sometimes.
Now as far as what didn’t work for me here, there isn’t much, but there are a few things.
I didn’t think the editing was great here, one, there were these kind of jarring transitions
which I wasn’t a huge fan of, and two, sometimes the show knows when to slow down for certain
things, but sometimes it felt kind of rushed.
Like maybe this was intentional, but there a few times where there was like a major character
reveal or something and it really felt like there could’ve been an extra few seconds,
maybe an extra shot and a little musical sting to make it more dramatic, instead of just,
oh hey, here’s this person.
The show is also a little slow at the start, like it takes a little while for everything
to kind of get going, but I didn’t really have a problem with that.
I mean, maybe you could’ve shaved about 10 minutes off before two of these characters
meet each other, but 1, when they actually did come together it was so satisfying to
see, and 2, by the time it got to it, it actually felt earned and natural.
Like it wasn’t just these characters are forced together because hey we need a crossover.
It all happens so they’re all going after different things that fit their characters
that just happen to come back to this overarching threat.
It would be weird and out of character if Luke Cage and Jessica jones just suddenly
said, oh there’s an ancient magical death cult in New York that we have to fight?
Sign me up!
No, it takes time and good reasons to get them all together, so I did like that aspect.
There were also a few cliches here of the superhero genre that at this point, it was
just a little frustrating to see.
Especially at the very end, if you’ve seen it you know what I’m talking about, but
I was just like, why?
I know exactly where this is going.
Maybe it’ll surprise me with a different spin in future seasons though.
Also, just a little nitpick here, not a big thing at all, this might just be me, but these
shows also kind of expect you to remember what’s happened in the previous seasons
of shows.
Like not to an extent where I can’t follow what’s happening, but seasons of Daredevil
and Jessica Jones I watched once, a long time ago, so I’m like, oh right, that radio girl
is her friend, right?
Oh, Matt stopped being friends with Foggy?
That happened.
Again, not a lot of that, but towards the start especially I found myself having to
really try and remember how certain characters knew each other.
So overall, Defenders was great.
But it didn’t really surprise me.
Besides one or two plot points, it was pretty much exactly what I thought it was gonna be.
That was a ton of fun, but don’t go into this hoping for something revolutionary or
mind blowing.
It’s very well made and very enjoyable, it just probably isn’t gonna blow you away.
I’ll give it a 9/10.
Also, before I sign off here, I just wanna say, most of you probably already know about
this, but if you don't, I have a new channel called The Poorly Planned Podcast where I
do an hour and a half long-ish show with a friend of mine where we talk movies and TV
and what not, so I’d really appreciate it if you go subscribed to that.
Link down below or in the card.
So those were my thoughts on The Defenders.
What did you think of this?
Let me know all of your thoughts down below in the comments.
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Thanks for watching and I’ll see ya next time.