The Defenders (Marvel)

[Bazooka]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h3m7B4v6Zc

The fit bird from Iron Fist is in it and the best of the four Daredevil is in it, sealed it for me.

8 Episodes this August.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I'd be more excited for this if Luke Cage and Iron Fist hadn't been varying degrees of ploppy. Hopefully the shorter length means it'll be free of the padding that marred all the individual characters' series.

[BritishHobo]

Yeah. I really liked the idea of this back at the start. I enjoyed Daredevil 1 and Jessica Jones, and I was looking forward to ateamup. But Daredevil 2 completely fucked its own beautiful momentum with the TEDIOUS ninja shit, and the idea of ten episodes of that, and Stick and Elektra, the two most boring fucking characters in the franchise, makes me want to cry. FUCK OFF STICK AND ELEKTRA YOU ARE SHIT.

Also it's insane how boring they made Luke Cage. It's just SHIT.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Well at least the showrunner isn't Scott Buck, the idiot behind Iron Fist and Dexter's final season. It's some guy called Marco Ramirez, who's written for Daredevil, Sons of Anarchy and Orange Is The New Black, along with Fear The Walking Dead and Da Vinci's Demons, but hey, maybe he was forced to do the last two at gunpoint.

[Old Gold Tooth]

Ah fuck, Elden Henson is in this. Normally Marvel's casting is on the money but this didn't work for me at all.

In the comics, Foggy is a stalwart foil to Matt Murdock who kept him grounded, while being a cracking lawyer and thoroughly decent chap, if a little bumbling. Sadly in the series he comes across as an oily and arrogant dickhead.

[Mister Six]

Yeah. I really liked the idea of this back at the start. I enjoyed Daredevil 1 and Jessica Jones, and I was looking forward to ateamup. But Daredevil 2 completely fucked its own beautiful momentum with the TEDIOUS ninja shit, and the idea of ten episodes of that, and Stick and Elektra, the two most boring fucking characters in the franchise, makes me want to cry. FUCK OFF STICK AND ELEKTRA YOU ARE SHIT.

Also it's insane how boring they made Luke Cage. It's just SHIT.

I'm with most of that, although I love Stick tons.

Honestly just with Defenders for JJ to be honest. Great character, Ritter is fun to watch, and she's the only one of the four who has the common sense to just kill baddies before they hurt anyone else (unlike, for some reason, The Immortal Weapon Iron Fist).

[wooders1978]

Why have we got this, which looks shit, ironfist and Luke cage, which are shit and not the promised punisher series?

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Because of contracts and stuff.

[Mister Six]

Punisher series is in the can and is coming late this year. Bit perturbed that Microchip is in it, because I was hoping for a pretty much straight adaptation of Ennis's grim-grim-grim-oh MAX series.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Why have we got this, which looks shit, ironfist and Luke cage, which are shit and not the promised punisher series?

Their plan was to release one season for each of the four original shows, DD, JJ, IF, and LC, then to conclude that "phase one" with The Defenders.

However, Iron Fist took ages to reach production. First, they looked desperately for a showrunner, then they settled on Scott Buck, who, reportedly, had cracked the character and proposed an exciting direction which wouldn't be cheesy. And then, the casting started.

So, they tried desperately to stick with the original plan while acknowledging that IF would be late. Instead of IF, we got DD season 2, then LC was released around the time it was supposed to be released, and finally, IF took the spot originally attributed to The Defenders.

DD season 2 wasn't supposed to move forward with the overall story too much, so it wouldn't interfere with The Defenders. They introduced Elektra and The Punisher, and The Punisher got his own separate show, which is now intended for their "phase 2". That's why Frank Castle is not in The Defenders. He wasn't supposed to appear when the whole concept was mapped out.

[olliebean]

So, anyone watching this then?

Found episode 1 a bit of a slog. Someone needs to do a fan edit taking out all the bits that are just Cage or Fist. Annoying that they seem to be moving towards the "You've got to watch all these series, including the boring ones, for any of them to make sense" model.

[brat-sampson]

So, anyone watching this then?

Found episode 1 a bit of a slog. Someone needs to do a fan edit taking out all the bits that are just Cage or Fist. Annoying that they seem to be moving towards the "You've got to watch all these series, including the boring ones, for any of them to make sense" model.

Yup.

;)

[Bazooka]

Two episodes in, and it's dull as dishwater, will slog through it though.

[olliebean]

Someone on another forum said episode 3 was " 'kin awesome", so I guess I'll give it at least until then. If it doesn't improve I might just skip through to the Jessica Jones bits, just so I'm not in the dark at the start of JJ season 2.

[Bazooka]

Ugh dear, just binge drinked it all/fast forward through half the dialogue scenes which is 90% of it all. Not very good at all.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I'm finding it watchable enough. I didn't much care for Luke and Danny in their respective solo shows, but their little double act seems to have improved both of them.

The inherent problem with the action scenes is that the characters powers all just boil down to punching. Nice cheap punching. Even with that limitation, though, they could still be more creative. Jessica has super strength and Daredevil has his grappling hook/nunchuk thing but they don't seem to factor into any of the fights so far.

[Bazooka]

I agree, for starters there are not enough fight scenes and when there are they are lackluster especially after watching Daredevil and even Iron fist. Too many scenes with the hot dojo bird and Claire sitting around talking and don't get me started on the police women, she is pure sandwich filling.

Maybe I was a little harsh, but after watching the other individual series this is just boring, yes even compared to Iron Fist, at least the side characters were quite interesting like Ward.

[Custard]

I've only watched both DD series, and lasted 1 and a half episodes of Jessica Jones, but I've been looking forward to this. Sigourney Weavers being the villain being another pull

Though episode one is very slow. It's a show about 4 superheroes coming together to beat people up. How on earth have they made it dull?

Though seeing Rosario Dawson get boffed on a table nearly saved the whole episode

Hope it gets better. But yeah, let's be hurrying up with that Punisher series

[BlodwynPig]

So what you are all saying is take the Marvel out of Marvel and you have The Father Dowling Mysteries

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

don't get me started on the police women, she is pure sandwich filling.

Isn't the filling usually the interesting part of a sandwich?

[Custard]

Well after a rather dull first two episodes, I've got to say the third one is much better. Finally some funny lines and proper punch-ups

In fact, I'd recommend the wary start with 3, as you won't be missing much at all by doing so

[olliebean]

The inherent problem with the action scenes is that the characters powers all just boil down to punching. Nice cheap punching.

Yeah, that was bothering me even before starting to watch it. In fact as far back as Jessica Jones it bothered me that Luke Cage had the exact same powers as her. Made me wonder what the point of him was. This could do with someone with a non-violent power (or at least one that is only incidentally violent), for variety.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Not the worst way to wile away a lazy Saturday, but it fell far short of it's potential. Even with more characters, fewer episodes and no filler B-plot (although I could have done without cutting back to the supporting characters) it still managed to seem slow. Less like an epic culmination of the whole Hand storyline and more like a long-winded tying up of that particular loose end.

The action remained the biggest disappointment. The big fight in episode 3 was the highlight, when it should have just been a promise of greater this to come. To be fair, it was a genuinely good scene: thrilling, decently choreographed and edited and, perhaps most importantly WELL LIT. I realise how geeky it is, but I was bothered by how all over the place they are in terms of power. Having Jessica be strong but otherwise vulnerable in a fight is a neat subversion of the usual superhero thing, but then she just becomes redundant next to Luke (which I don't remember happening in her show). Similarly, Iron Fist is meant to be some legendary fighter, but he's clearly outclassed by Daredevil. It would have made more sense for daredevil to hang back a bit and use his super senses to help coordinate his stronger teammates.

Although they didn't get to kick much arse, the leads did at least play well off each other. The scenes in which they suddenly crossed paths were probably the best bits of the whole series. As I mentioned above, Luke and Danny made a decent buddy duo and I'd be interested to see them get a spin off show, rather than more lacklustre solo outings. It saddens me to say, but I kind of thought Sigourney Weaver was phoning it in. Madame Gao was a far more effective villain.

[up_the_hampipe]

Do I need to see all the other series to watch this? I watched Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and some of Daredevil. Iron Fist looked bollocks and I didn't really get much out of Daredevil. I only really want to see Jones and Cage teaming up again, maybe some more of that crazy supersex.

[olliebean]

I haven't been arsed to watch ep.2 yet, but ep.1 seemed to have a fair amount in it that assumed knowledge of events I hadn't seen. (I previously only watched Jessica Jones, about half a series of Daredevil, about half an episode of Luke Cage and none of Iron Fist.) My worry now is that if I don't slog through this it'll mess up JJ season 2 for me.

[colacentral]

Ain't seen this; only just finished Daredevil season 2. They need to sack the showrunners though, who made a dog's dinner of both seasons of Daredevil and are running The Defenders, which I assume is just as shite based on the reactions on here.

The handling of The Hand storyline and Karen Page's inexplicable foray into journalism should have been grounds for instant removal. Marvel have the money to get any TV writers they want, so why these fools?

[up_the_hampipe]

Do I need to see all the other series to watch this?

Guess I did. The Daredevil and Iron Fist scenes in episode 1 are boring the arse off me. No idea what they're on about.

[BritishHobo]

They just have shite-all idea how to pace a TV show. None of them have needed thirteen episodes (and it says a lot that the team-up season is by far the shortest). It's like Marvel saw that that's what all the most critically acclaimed shows have, ten to thirteen episodes, and figured that the complexity and depth of those shows would simply follow suit. But they all end up filling and padding before a rushed showdown at the end. They're all essentially single superhero movies stretched to absurd length, adding NOTHING new or interesting to make use of the format. They only got buzz at the start because they ape the gloomy style of The Dark Knight, which automatically makes people think a superhero project is deep and well-written.

[colacentral]

That's true, but they could do a good series at 13 episodes. Take DD season 2 as an example cos it's fresh in my mind: the general character who turned out to be The Blacksmith appeared in literally one previous scene before his reveal as the bad guy. You're meant to care that he betrayed Frank, but you barely know who he is. He could have had a few scenes talking to Frank in place of one of the hundreds of boring ninja fights to give his reveal as the bad guy a bit of weight. They seem afraid to go a single episode without constant action when spending the time to do a few character driven episodes and letting the plot unfold organically from there would give those big action moments more power.

The other thing that annoys me is that the Daredevil showrunners seem to think the main ingredient to making a HBO style gritty crime drama is killing alot of characters, whether necessary to the story or not.

It's going to be a while before I get to The Defenders as I'll try and give Jessica Jones a go first, since that seems to be thought of as the best of the other three.

[mjwilson]

Do I need to see all the other series to watch this? I watched Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and some of Daredevil. Iron Fist looked bollocks and I didn't really get much out of Daredevil. I only really want to see Jones and Cage teaming up again, maybe some more of that crazy supersex.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/03/iron-fist-recap-season-easter-eggs-defenders-continuity-hints