I’m also going to review this miniseries, as there’s a gap in the Daredevil seasons without it. The Defenders superhero group includes Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist. This MCU show premiered on Netflix in July 2017, produced by Marvel Television in association with ABC Studios, with Doug Petrie and Marco Ramirez acting as showrunners. It stars Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock/Daredevil, Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones, Mike Colter as Luke Cage and Finn Jones as Danny Rand/Iron Fist, all reprising their roles from their individual series, plus Sigourney Weaver as the Hand’s Alexandra Reid. This review includes spoilers.
Luke Cage has been released from prison, and during an investigation encounters Iron Fist Danny Rand and his friend Coleen Wing, who have arrived in NYC from Cambodia. PI Jessica Jones takes a case where an architect has gone missing, finds his apartment filled with explosives, and is present when he commits suicide in his office. Jones is taken in by the police and Foggy Nelson sends Matt Murdock to get her out of trouble. Meanwhile, the Hand’s excavations at Midland Circle are causing earth tremors. Cage, Jones and Murdock continue investigating, and Rand tries using his corporate ties to find out what’s going on at Midland Circle. His meeting with the board goes poorly, and the Defenders end up together fighting their way out. They hold a meeting at a Chinese restaurant where Matt’s old martial arts instructor Stick arrives, and Matt and Jones refuse to get involved. The Hand is onto them now, though, and arrive at the restaurant. Cage captures Sowande, one of the Hand’s fingers, and they find that the Hand wants Danny/Iron Fist to open a portal for them at the bottom of their excavation. The Defenders gather their friends and send them to the police precinct station for protection. Stick kills Sowande and means to kill Danny, but Elektra arrives, kills Stick and steals Danny away. The Defenders wake from unconsciousness at the police station, but break out and head uptown to rescue Danny. Meanwhile Cage’s friend Claire Temple and Colleen Wing have stolen the explosives and the architect’s plans out of the police evidence room and set the explosives at Midland Circle to bring down the building. Elektra kills Alexandra Reid and takes over the Hand’s organization. Madam Gao takes control of the reanimation substance the Hand is mining. The Defenders rescue Danny and head out, but Matt goes back for Elektra. The explosive goes off. Is there any way Matt and Elektra can survive?
This story continues the second season of Daredevil. It’s something of a mash-up of stories, but it also includes bits of ironic humor and generally moves along pretty well. There are a couple of big plot holes. For example, if the police find unconscious people at a crime scene, they’ll take them to the hospital, not to the police station, even if they’re identifiable as superheroes. The resulting scenario is fun, but not real likely. Also, even female superheroes have to deal with physics. Even if Jessica Jones is super-strong, she will still need to deal with mass, and even if Alexandra Reid has mystical powers, she will still need correct body mechanics to throw her opponents. This is an obvious problem given the gifts of Élodie Yung as Elektra and the 75-year-old Wai Ching Ho as Madame Gao, who does an awesome job of channeling her mystical powers.
Very entertaining and watchable. Four stars.
thephantom182
Dec 17, 2018 @ 09:34:54
This was my favorite out of all of them to date. It was the most faithful (meaning barely) to the original comics.
It always puzzles (and annoys) me when TV and movie people chop-and-channel comic book properties as they did with Iron Fist. The original worked. It sold. Iron Fist was a very successful character for a long time.
The TV people threw out 90% of what made the comic fun, shoved in a bunch of pointless angst and left the “hero” as a morally compromised shell of a man. Daredevil did it too, particularly in the third season.
The Defenders was good because it abandoned all of that crap and went with the comic book plot. These guys have these powers, they use them to defeat the bad guys, that’s sufficient motivation to drive the scenario.
Its a -comic book-. It is supposed to be bright colours and simple plots. Bad guy does bad things, good guy stops him. Kapow.
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Lela E. Buis
Dec 17, 2018 @ 16:08:36
Changing mediums means there has to be some kind of translation, so the results are always something new and different. I was really pleased with the Daredevil translation here, though I didn’t much like the film a few years back. The story is actually very complex for a comic and so hard to carry off on film. This show was entertaining even with the plot holes, but I’m one of the people who really liked season 3 of Daredevil because of how it investigated the human condition. “Born Again” is one of the better known story arcs from the comic.
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thephantom182
Dec 17, 2018 @ 17:57:07
“I’m one of the people who really liked season 3 of Daredevil because of how it investigated the human condition.”
Personally I’m not a fan of the human condition. ~:D I don’t go to comic books looking for that, I go looking for the Iron Fist using his powers on the Hand’s supernatural fighters, and Daredevil fighting ninja swordsmen. I’m very much in the “POW! BAM!” school of comic reading.
We get older, but not necessarily more mature.
It was interesting though how little use Daredevil was fighting Wilson Fisk in Season 3. I find this in my own writing, with characters who are ridiculously over-powered for their environment. Hitting is not much use in a civilized environment like ours. Everything is done legalistically, with under-the-table arrangements.
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Lela E. Buis
Dec 17, 2018 @ 18:59:01
Right. I liked the move to strategy against Kingpin, too. I want my comic characters to be smarter than the bad guys. There was actually a good discussion in the final episodes about whether some people are too wealthy and powerful for the law to take down–above the law, in other words. Nelson, Murdock and Page eventually came down on the side of using the law. I’ve got more to say about this in the next couple of blogs.
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