I love superheroes.
Ask anyone that knows me, they’ll tell you I’m obsessed. I’ve seen every Marvel movie in theatres, and most DC movies as well. I follow Arrow, Gotham and The Flash on tv and binge watch them again once they come out on Netflix. So it made sense to watch the Marvel shows; Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist, all Netflix original shows. I’ll admit I was a little hesitant to start the shows because I watched a bit of Marvel’s Agents of Shield and absolutely hated it, so I was worried that Marvel had mastered the art of the superhero movie but still had ways to go with the television side. But as we all know, Netflix shows are different. Their format is different, they don’t need to take into account any commercial breaks and they can run as long or as short as they want (they still stick to a 27 minute or 55 minute show but nevertheless it’s flexible).
Most recently Marvel and Netflix released The Defenders, a show that brings the characters together to be a small screen version of The Avengers and save the city of New York as opposed to saving the whole world. So because the whole world is obsessed with superheroes, and it seems to be the only type of content that is making any money now I thought it would be a cool idea to tell you all what my opinions are of The Defenders and how it is in relation to the big screen heroes.
Daredevil: 7/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 86% IMDb: 8.7/10
I would honestly give Daredevil a higher rating if we could just pretend the first half of season 1 didn’t exist. I won’t get into the whole storyline because that’s some spoilers but the general idea is this; Daredevil is Matt Murdoch a blind lawyer who has trained to heighten his other senses to become a badass fighting machine. The first season focuses less on the overall plot of “The Hand” and a little more on an evil character named Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin. This season reminded me a lot more of DC’s “Gotham” with minor villains who fight the city hero. They kept Daredevil to what it was, one guy fighting in one section of New York. That’s right, this show isn’t based on all of New York, he only fights for the people of Hell’s Kitchen. That’s the scale of which this show is on in the first season, it starts small and will get a little bigger by the time we get to The Defenders. The second season (this is the only one of The Defenders that has two seasons) focuses more on Daredevils connection to The Hand as well as introducing The Punisher (!!!) played by Jon Bernthal. In my honest opinion, the best part of the Daredevil series is The Punisher. His character kicks some major ass and is going to be getting his own spinoff, coming some time in 2017.
Matt Murdoch is a great character, but the other aspects of the show feel a little slow for me. He struggles a lot with his Catholic faith and how he basically beats up people as a hobby. Karen and Foggy are okay characters but they don’t really stand out. Fisk is a good character, he’s a pretty creepy dude and they do a good job of showing how he came to be so darn evil. The only problem for me with the whole show is that it’s not incredibly memorable (but again, it is on a pretty small-scale).
Jessica Jones: 6/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 92% IMDb: 8.6/10
Alright, here comes a rant. I wanted so badly to love Jessica Jones (series not the character), I wanted to finally see a female character kick ass on her own in her own show. Jessica Jones is the first one of this set of shows that has a person with “abilities” as they call them. She’s got super strength, she can jump really high and pick up cars and punch boys in the face. I wanted it to be so awesome and see some really awesome female power. And you do, she’s got this great no-nonsense attitude and stands her ground on everything.
Now here’s where it gets a little tricky, there’s a ton of female power, but it’s focused more on a social message rather than one that focuses on the storyline. Now, as a feminist it was great to see Jessica Jones fight against her abusive ex and overcome those kind of issues. Abusive exes, either physical or emotional are the worst and is a huge problem for a lot of women. As a stand alone show it was wonderful for this to be an issue that they wanted to address. However, I was disappointed that this was the first introduction to the character. As a female superhero fan I have waited to see a woman be portrayed as a cool, hardcore fighter like their counterparts whose problems don’t only revolve around the men in their lives. I wanted to see Jessica Jones come in and fight The Hand, like Daredevil did and like Iron Fist did. I wanted to see a girl who had other issues than her ex. Male superheroes can have seasons that focus purely on fighting and then the next will be a social issue and then the next could be a romantic plotline, they get to do this because they have the monopoly on superhero tv time. With Jessica Jones they had to throw it to a social issue right away because that’s the first season focused on a woman and they’ve got to be socially conscious right away. As a woman, I loved it, as a superhero fan that just wanted to see a strong girl punch through some walls, I was disappointed. Again, I thought it was a good idea, I just wish it hadn’t been the first one.
Fun fact: Jessica Jones is the most popular Marvel show on Netflix, just proving that women hero’s are appreciated and wanted as much as the men.
Luke Cage: 9/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 96% IMDb: 7.6/10
Let me tell you, this series is the bomb. It is thebomb.com. It is the so awesome. I think I liked it so much cause unlike Daredevil and Jessica Jones, Luke wasn’t brooding and all negative on himself. All these heroes are selfless, but Luke Cage embodied that to a different level. Daredevil loves his city but from in the shadows (very batman of him) and Luke Cage is apart of the community, he knows who he is fighting for. He’s smart, he’s funny, he’s strong and he’s bullet proof. He knows the barber and works for him on the side. He wants the kids in his neighbourhood to stay out of gangs and to go get an education instead. He knows his neighbours and they know him, it’s more of a friendly attitude throughout the whole show in relation to DD and JJ. My media and communications mind watched this series and made a correlation between a bulletproof black man and the current injustices going on around that. I liked this because he’s one of three men in the Marvel series and so having a social issue around his storyline was fine. They’ve already got two other men focused on the plot line so the third male character having a social issue is a good idea. His series takes place in Harlem where he deals with an issue within the community as well as with the police. We also meet Misty Knight, and for fellow superhero fans we know what’s to become of her (but I won’t spoil it). It was really well put together and I felt that it was easier to watch.
Iron Fist 5/10. Rotten Tomatoes: 17% IMDb: 7/10
One word: boring. There’s nothing wrong with Danny Rand (the Iron Fist) and this is the storyline that sets everything up for The Defenders, it’s just kinda boring. We’re used to watching Iron Man and Captain America and now we’re getting a guy whose super power is a strong fist. We already have Jessica Jones and her super strength as well as Luke Cage with his super strength plus being bulletproof we also have Daredevil who has the same fighting abilities as Iron Fist but he’s doing it blindly. Now we’ve got the Iron Fist who can punch stuff when he channels his chi. It’s a little lacklustre and at times really predictable. However, it’s important to watch this series if you want to watch The Defenders because you get a lot more information on what The Hand is and who they are.
The Defenders: 8/10 Rotten Tomatoes: 75% IMDb: 8/10
The Defenders redeemed the bad vibes I got from the rest of the series’. It brought everything together to make some sense. So to back up a bit, in each series the characters had a different colour schemes. Daredevil was red, Jessica Jones purple, Luke Cage orange and Iron Fist yellow. In the first two episodes of The Defenders, before they all linked up together, they were showing each hero in their own story and sticking to said colour schemes. Honestly it was a great cinematic moment for nerd me. It was so cool to see Jessica Jones’ story line in purple and then it would switch to orange and you would know that it was now Luke Cage’s story. Honestly that was one of the best parts of the show aside from the story line. Daredevil was basically “the leader” which was good because Danny Rand Sucked (yes that capital S is on purpose). Seeing as these are the two characters that know who The Hand is, it made sense that one of the two would be the leader of the gang. Matt Murdoch was a calm, cool and collected blind lawyer ninja and Danny Rand was a baby that thought he could do everything on his own. Luke Cage and Jessica Jones are introduced to The Hand in this series and they do a good job of making them seem weirded out by people who basically don’t die, even though these are people with actual super powers. Sigourney Weaver played Alexandra, the leader of The Hand and one badass woman. The rest of The Hand is made up of Madame Gao who is in Daredevil and Iron Fist, Bakuto who is in Iron Fist and then two new characters that haven’t been in previous seasons; Murakami and Sowande. Together they make the five fingers of The Hand, and honestly, when it’s put like that it makes that evil organization seem a lot tamer.
All in all, I liked The Defenders, I thought all the characters brought something to the table that made them into a cool group. They’ll go back to their own shows for now, Daredevil season 3 has already started filming and Jessica Jones season 2 will be beginning shortly, we’ll have to wait a while for Luke Cage and Iron Fist though, but hopefully they’ll be worth the wait. 
But there you have it, my no spoilers review and breakdown of the show. Overall I was a little underwhelmed with the whole show and experience. After being bombarded with characters like Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Hulk it’s hard to watch a show like The Defenders and say that it’s going to live up to the expectations we have for our superheroes. And that’s how we classify them; superheroes. In reality two of them just know how to fight really well and the other two have a superhuman strength that gives them some ability to kick ass. There’s not much else that these four have going on. My question to myself is “Do superheroes need the big screen to be captivating?” In 2017 we’re seeing the best movie making in history, we get to see AntMan shrink and grow to incredible sizes, we see gods fighting against aliens in the sky. We’re not seeing that kind of magic and wonder on the small screen. We can all remember the first set of Spiderman films with Toby McGuire, bless him and his efforts but those superhero movies were again, lacklustre. They didn’t have the ability to make the movies as awesome as the new ones and because of that they had to redo them*. My point is, it’s unrealistic to think that the show was going to be as good as the films, they budget isn’t there, and the magnitude of the heroes aren’t there either. But after all of the movies that have been going on for over 10 years it’s hard to watch something small like this and love it just as much. As storylines progress and new villains come into play I might feel more hope for them but for now I’m going to be tentatively waiting.
*so whoever doesn’t know, Spiderman was remade once while with Sony and that’s why Andrew Garfield was Spiderman for two films. Once the rights to Spiderman weren’t with Sony anymore Marvel had free rein to put Spiderman into the mega universe that they have going on and thus having to recast Spiderman once again. Many people speculated that they recast cause Andrew Garfield is old (33) and Tom Holland is young (20), but actually it all had to do with movie rights. But it doesn’t hurt that they cast someone closer to the age of 16.
salt & vinegar 