The Defenders--Marvel/Netflix

[Christopher]

I'd argue most of those things are driven by mortality. They only ever seemed to exercise their power to further their own plots. There was no grand scheme. They were stagnant and spinning their wheels for centuries apparently.

Yes, that's my point. The grand scheme is "stay alive and stay rich." They don't see any higher calling than their own survival and prosperity. They were only out for their own self-interest and didn't care how many people they had to hurt. How is that unbelievable or unusual?

Sure they could, but considering the actor's ethnicity and any lack of effort to suggest otherwise, the clear implication is that he is Latino.

That's my point. Latinos are largely descendants of people who immigrated from Spain and Portugal starting in the 16th century. So Bakuto could've been Spanish to start with and immigrated to South America in the 16th or 17th century, say. (In which case it's odd that he has a Japanese name, though they mangle its pronunciation so badly that it's hard to tell.)

Bakuto seems the odd man out in a lot of ways, I don't believe for a moment that he is centuries old, much less millennia. I'd be very surprised if his character was created with this role in mind.

They've been planning out this whole crossover since the start, and Iron Fist and The Defenders were shot back-to-back. Wikipedia says the story outline for The Defenders was complete by May 2016, while Iron Fist season 1 was filmed from April-October 2016. So, yeah, when they cast Bakuto, they should've already known what his role would be in both shows.

Because notNobu was laying on the ground at the end with no crashed elevator to be seen.

Murakami? He fell well before the elevator did, and it's probable that the air currents in the shaft would've blown him off a perfectly vertical course, whereas the elevator was constrained to slide down its rails. So it makes sense that he would've been some distance from where the crashed elevator landed.

Bakuto's was presumably millennia ago, same as the others.

Did they say they were millennia old? I'm not sure the historical references they dropped stretch that far back. Alexandra mentioned Constantinople, but that was the name of the city until 1453, more or less.

The lack of clear rules in general is part of the problem. You know that. It sets the stakes. They've brought back armies of expendable ninjas, spent their final doses on Nobu and Harold, etc. but never thought to set aside a backup supply?

It is just messy storytelling.

Maybe creating the Black Sky -- who was apparently somehow different from an ordinary resurrectee -- took a greater than usual amount of the Substance, and Alexandra recklessly squandered all they had left on that special resurrection, instead of saving it for multiple ones.

 

[Nerys Myk]

So Bakuto could've been Spanish to start with and immigrated to South America in the 16th or 17th century, say. (In which case it's odd that he has a Japanese name, though they mangle its pronunciation so badly that it's hard to tell.)

Might not be his actual name. Alexandra was shown to have several names over the Centuries. She does have an affinity for the letter "A" though.

 

[bbjeg]

I'm off tomorrow and binge watching the series. It's happening.

 

[Tallguy]

We just watched the first episode (which is why I'm not reading any other posts). It seems... Indulgent? Imagine the first ten minutes of The Avengers stretched to 54. With no action.

I like talky. But this has not grabbed me yet,

I guess it's a whole new world. (And when the hell did tube TV's start looking ANCIENT?!?)

 

[Christopher]

It seems... Indulgent? Imagine the first ten minutes of The Avengers stretched to 54. With no action.

I've never liked the idea that action should be some absolute requirement to be forced into a story whether it's needed or not. I consider that indulgent. There's plenty of action later on, when it serves a purpose. In an 8-hour miniseries unifying 4 series, it makes sense to take the necessary time to establish the characters and relationships, which are ultimately far more important than a bunch of punching and kicking.

 

[Reverend]

Did they say they were millennia old? I'm not sure the historical references they dropped stretch that far back. Alexandra mentioned Constantinople, but that was the name of the city until 1453, more or less.

Stick credited them with the destruction of Pompeii, which if accurate places them in at least the first century AD. Also, I may be misremembering, but I think in his explanation of how The Hand and/or the Chaste formed in one of the 'Daredevil' seasons, he mentioned it was "before China was China". Which would place it two or three centuries earlier at the very least.

For all we know they've been around since the Neolithic. No reason to assume K'un-Lun was founded by humans after all. I'd be willing to bet Shou-Lao himself established it way before the dawn of human civilisation.

 

[Tallguy]

I've never liked the idea that action should be some absolute requirement to be forced into a story whether it's needed or not. I consider that indulgent. There's plenty of action later on, when it serves a purpose. In an 8-hour miniseries unifying 4 series, it makes sense to take the necessary time to establish the characters and relationships, which are ultimately far more important than a bunch of punching and kicking.

I'm usually a fan of "slow". I'll see how the rest of it goes.

I watched it with my wife who hasn't seen any of the other shows. She didn't think it laid much groundwork (she didn't know much more about these people than she did when it started).

OTOH, I love Foggy's haircut.

 

[Christopher]

Stick credited them with the destruction of Pompeii, which if accurate places them in at least the first century AD.

Oh, yes.

Although that raises another question. Both Alexandra and Stick talked about destroying great cities as something the Hand had done numerous times in the past and would continue to do in the future (reminding me of the League of Assassins in the Nolan Bat-films). But it turned out they weren't planning to destroy NYC for the sake of destruction, but because they needed to extract the dragonbone under the city and that would somehow cause the city to collapse into the Earth. So the destruction of the city was just a side effect of their real goal. So does that mean that all the cities they destroyed in the past happened to have dragon skeletons buried under them? How the heck does that work out? Some sort of ley line convergence that draws both dragons and city founders to the same areas? There's a ton that doesn't make sense or wasn't adequately explained.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

On the other hand, just because Stick says it doesn't mean it has to be 100% true. He could be Nick Furying it in trying to accomplish his goals.

I really enjoyed the show. Comparisons to Avengers is strange to me, because it felt nothing alike (I don't recall, do people compare the crossovers of the DC shows to Avengers as well?), but I definitely enjoyed the pacing and the ride.

I also appreciate that it felt the gore and violence felt more more toned down that that of especially Daredevil. It was still there, but didn't feel as gratuitous.

 

[kirk55555]

I'm on episode 4, I just wish they'd let Jessica go. She's a whiny asshole and mostly useless. They have a much stronger person, and any "detective" work can easily be done by allies who aren't constantly being an asshole. Really, there is no justification for her to be there except that she got a Netflix show so she has to be on the team up show. But, once again, Stick saves the scene. He calls Danny an idiot, then tells Jones to sit down and shut up. She's such a selfish prick that honestly she's less sympathetic then Punisher. Danny may be an idiot, and annoying, but Jessica is unpleasant and useless. I wish she'd just not come back after that scene

Anyway, still enjoying the show fairly well, mostly for Matt and Luke obviously. Weavers character is one of the worst MCU villains, though. She's boring, and I wish I' known ahead of time that every scene she's had with Elektra so far has predictable and pointless, I could have skipped them and lost nothing. I might have to consider that in the future. But, at least all the characters know/know about each other so things should get moving.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I don't always agree with kirk55555's takes but I do enjoy reading them.

 

[JD]

Finished up the series this morning and I really enjoyed it.

Spoiler: Episodes 5 - 8

Elektra killing Alexandra and taking over The Hand for herself was a surprise, I had expected Matt to finally turn her against them and that she's end up being the thing they needed to beat them.
I was not surprised by Stick's death, I pretty much assumed he'd die as soon as it was announced he'd be on the show.
I was pleasantly surprised how straight forward The Fingers' end goal was. So many of these kinds of stories go for some overly complex non-sense plot, but all they wanted was dragon bones to make more of The Substance. Pretty much everything they did tied back to that end in a pretty clear manner. Weren't they also trying to find a way back to Kun L'un? They kept talking about wanting to go back.
I did find it a bit funny that I asked about the hole after episode four, and then from five on it was pretty much the whole focus of the series. I loved the others calling out Matt on not mentioning it earlier, when I had the exact same thought.
I liked that Misty, Colleen, and Claire actually played a pretty significant part in the defeat of The Hand. I'd say they were practially members of the Defenders themselves, Colleen and Claire especially.
The end was a nice set up for the next seasons of Daredevil and Iron Fist, and Jessica Jones, although we didn't get quite as clear a set up for Luke Cage.
I was surprised we didn't get at least some kind of reference to the main characters being The Defenders. I understand that they weren't really an official team the way the Avengers or the Justice League are, but I was still expecting at least a reference to them being the only ones who could defend the city, or that they were the defenders of New York or something like that.

 

[Turtletrekker]

^Even if we didn't get it right at the end, Luke's stated desire to take down Mariah and Shades was enough season 2 set-up for me.

 

[Reverend]

Oh, yes.

Although that raises another question. Both Alexandra and Stick talked about destroying great cities as something the Hand had done numerous times in the past and would continue to do in the future (reminding me of the League of Assassins in the Nolan Bat-films). But it turned out they weren't planning to destroy NYC for the sake of destruction, but because they needed to extract the dragonbone under the city and that would somehow cause the city to collapse into the Earth. So the destruction of the city was just a side effect of their real goal. So does that mean that all the cities they destroyed in the past happened to have dragon skeletons buried under them? How the heck does that work out? Some sort of ley line convergence that draws both dragons and city founders to the same areas? There's a ton that doesn't make sense or wasn't adequately explained.

Well it's not like Stick was a first hand witness to these things, all he knows is what The Chaste taught him. They may even believe what they teach and their records may even be historically accurate, but they can never be *exactly* sure what The Hand's motivations were in what they did. From the outside, all they saw was murder, manipulation and occasionally some mass destruction. Since they presumably never found anything in the ruins to indicate what they were really up to, they may have assumed that the destruction was intended to destroy all evidence of whatever it was, not realising it was just a side effect.

If the Pompei thing was really them, then perhaps that was the site of another dragon skeleton under Vesuvius and removing it caused a collapse like the one promised in New York, eventually setting off the eruption?
Not sure what Chernobyl may have been used to cover up. Possibly another dig site, or maybe The Hand had gotten itself into a scrap with Leviathan and/or Hydra/SHIELD. Who knows? I think it'd be weird if some of these ancient shadowy cabals didn't at least cross paths on occasions.

 

[Christopher]

Comparisons to Avengers is strange to me, because it felt nothing alike (I don't recall, do people compare the crossovers of the DC shows to Avengers as well?)

But it was deliberately conceived by Marvel as being a structural equivalent to the way the MCU films led up to The Avengers -- first set up four solo series (Iron Man 1&2, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America vs. Daredevil seasons 1&2, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist), then do a crossover uniting all four into a team, along with various other supporting characters introduced in the earlier works. There's even a gruff, manipulative mentor figure who was introduced in the first installment (Fury, Stick) and who plays a key role in convincing the individual heroes to unite. The parallels have been intentional all along. The whole reason they used the Defenders title (despite none of these characters having been among the primary members of the comics' Defenders) was because it sounded like Avengers. And there was a recent interview where someone involved with the production talked about it setting up a second "phase" of the Netflix shows, like how The Avengers culminated "Phase One" of the MCU films. So the stories are quite different, yes, but the overall strategy is parallel.

 

[Ethros]

Just finished it. They could have really worked a bit harder on that opening titles theme tune IMO; incredibly forgettable.

 

[Seven of Five]

I agree with the theme song, and would go as far to say that all the Marvel shows seem to have forgettable theme music.

Everything else about the show was really good though. Actually managed to watch this in two sittings (would have been one if not for work), and me and the hubby loved it. Much more accessible than Iron Fist, thankfully, though whilst Rand still wasn't the best character here, he was a bit more interesting than in his own show.

It was a joy to watch the slow build where we basically caught up with each character, almost like each a new season of each series. The colours and the music were a true representation of the corresponding show, at least until they started bumping into each other. The interweaving of four distinctive shows into a cohesive whole was really well done - some supporting characters had more to do than others, but it was good stuff.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I agree with the theme song, and would go as far to say that all the Marvel shows seem to have forgettable theme music .

Speaking for myself, I like these...

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

 

[Xerxes82]

I agree with the theme song, and would go as far to say that all the Marvel shows seem to have forgettable theme music.

I can't agree here. I find the Daredevil theme to be haunting. It really sets the mood for that show.

 

[Christopher]

The Jessica Jones theme and the Luke Cage theme are both extremely memorable and striking. They're the only two of the Netflix Marvel themes I can call up from memory.