The Defenders--Marvel/Netflix
- Thread starter Turtletrekker
- Start date
They all take place in New York.
Well, the opposite side of that coin is, what of the people who are in it for the whole inter-connected experience? As I said up-thread, one of the things that impressed me about The Avengers was how it effortlessly worked as a sequel to four different movies. It picked up all of the characters (and some plot points) from their solo movies, advanced their stories, and set them loose again. None of the characters' stories could move forward without acknowledging the events of The Avengers. The Defenders should be similarly big for these characters. Moving forward, it has to matter.
I actually do agree on this point.
I don't mind the interconnected experience because I watch everything and know what fits where but that's not the case for everyone. A show needs to stand on its own and tell a story in its own right without having to rely on outside material. Someone watching Jessica Jones shouldn't have to watch the full run of the series and feel that they missed something between seasons 1 and 2. The Defenders should be its own thing as opposed to season 2 of Jessica Jones or season 3 of Daredevil. Character advancement would still be there but it could take the form of what happens when different leads team up as opposed to advancing the stories from each respective show.
Right, but the goal is to keep both approaches in mind. Different viewers will make different choices about how to experience the work, so you want to make it work both as a self-contained piece and as part of a larger whole. It's not about choosing one over the other, it's about trying to find the best balance of the two. (Or three, in this case -- as a standalone, as a continuation of each single character's series, and as a culmination of the whole multi-series progression.) Lots of things in writing are about trying to appeal to more than one audience, and not err so far in one audience's direction that you alienate the other one.
^ I didn't make that clear in my post but I agree.
Don't know if it's what they have in mind, but one format that might work for a series like this would be to do it like the Golden Age JSA stories...have the characters tackling a case from different angles solo, then joining forces...such that some individual episodes might feel like episodes of a particular character's series.
Eh, if they only have 8 hours I'd want to see as much of the team together as they can show (and I'm not just saying that because I would loathe seeing Jessica Jones or Daredevil solo in this show). They've gotten enough solo time in their series, Defenders exists for them to crossover and interact. Maybe spend the first hour establishing the threat and having them meet, but besides that no one should be getting much time to themselves.
I'm thinking 4 episodes of one character each...2 or 3 episodes of the characters starting to cross paths a couple at a time...remaining episode or two assembled as a team.
Still, you get plenty of their solo adventures in their own series. The fun of a team-up is getting to see them interact. So I want The Defenders to have as much interaction among the four leads as possible, to give us the same kind of bonding and tension and interplay we get in the Avengers movies. That's a natural for Luke Cage and Iron Fist (and hopefully for Misty Knight and Colleen Wing as well), though it's a bit harder to see how Daredevil and Jessica would interact with them or with each other. (I think the characters Daredevil is best-known for teaming with are movie characters like Spider-Man and Black Widow.)
When Brian Bendis was writing both Alias and Daredevil at the same time, he had Matt hire Luke and Jessica as bodyguards after he was outed as Daredevil and still denying it.
That could be an interesting source for the plot of The Defenders. Maybe combine that with the earlier storyline where Fisk outed Daredevil's identity and ruined his life. (He's had it outed and covered up again on several different occasions.) Although that would make it a heavily DD-centric crossover, even more than we already expect it to be.
I would expect them to save a storyline about the outing of DD's identity for DD Season 3.
Or not giving DD his billy club until the last episode... or not giving the Punisher and Elektra their costumes until the last episode... Uh-oh.
Yeah, see where I'm coming from?