Marvel's Iron Fist

He wasn't even an ass about it. He really was the least abrasive member of the team in every issue except "we'll do the monumentally stupid idea of hiding you from this vast conspiracy of supernatural rich ninjas in this fucking abandoned warehouse and pray no one finds you".

And technically both parties were in the wrong in that interaction: the other plan of hiding Danny was shortsighted, but they wouldn't have had to tie up Danny if he hadn't lost his temper. Matt only stepped in front of Danny because Danny was going to storm off, something that, at least as far as they knew, would leave him vulnerable to capture by the Hand. Even then, Matt wasn't trying to engage Danny beyond that. He admitted that he didn't want a physical fight and asked Danny to calm down. Then Danny escalated the confrontation and punched Matt in the face. He got aggressive at the thought of having to lay low. The others got ready for a fight. That made Danny angrier, which turned it into a real fight, which led to them tying him up. If Danny had taken a deep breath, and agreed to hide, he would have not been restrained. The alternative was either The Hand using him or Stick cutting his head off.

(And Danny does have a right to be angry, but that doesn't justify punching a blind man in the face unprovoked, which doesn't look good no matter how you try to interpret it considering that in the fight, Danny was the aggressor. I can tell you that Karen and Foggy would probably side with Matt / be mad at Danny if they were there)

A man who tried to hinder him to leave.

Plus, Matt was the most stupid in the situation by a mile. He knows Stick. He should have known that Sticks default solution would be "kill the guy". And yet he left Danny with him alone, tied up, and didn't even warn Luke to be careful around Stick.

Matt really doesn't know Stick that well, certainly not as well as he thinks he does. Matt only really knew Stick for, what, probably a few months as a kid? Stick specifically left after having taught Matt how to function, before really beginning to indoctrinate him or explain anything much at all about the Chaste or the Hand, and Matt specifically doesn't believe him. Stick being willing to kill the members of a zombie ninja death cult and being willing to kill a kid who Matt just found out was basically the messiah of kicking said ninja cult's asses? Two different things.

We as the audience know the Hand need Danny's magic hand to open the wall, and that stopping the Hand actually really is exactly that simple. Matt, meanwhile, is still assuming that this is all still a lot more complicated than Stick's making it out to be, that Stick's got his own cult to run and that this is just the shit they hand out with the pamphlets on visitors' day.

edited 20th Dec '17 11:32:49 AM by Unsung

If Stick wanted to kill Elektra for an advantage over the Hand, someone he practically raised, why should Matt think that he wouldn't do the same to Danny? Again, at least warn Luke.

Elektra had seemingly gone crazy and *joined* the Hand. Luke's already guarding Danny, Stick's already said he wants to kill the Hand and Elektra, and Luke has no idea who any of these people are— Matt barely does himself, *Danny* technically knows more than Matt — so there's not really much for Matt to say. He certainly wasn't expecting Stick to pull out a poison potion and knock Luke out, and if Stick didn't know Elektra was going to show up at precisely that moment, I don't think anyone else could've.

edited 20th Dec '17 11:28:45 AM by Unsung

That Matt knows Stick really well doesn't mean he should have predicted that Stick would do something as out-of-character as attempting to murder a man who is basically his entire order's Jesus Christ. Stick's behavior in that episode makes it clear that trying to kill Danny is a huge violation of everything he believes in. He spends a lot of time working himself up to it.

Trying to kill Danny isn't business as usual for Stick, and so it's not something Matt should have foreseen. Of course it's shocking to Matt that Stick would do it; it was shocking to Stick too.

Netflix!Matt is an impulsive moron. So is Iron Fist.

Ironically, the most successful Netflix Marvel hero is The Punisher. He was the only one allowed to succeed in everything he attempted.

He fits in better with the dark and gritty tone of the Netflix shows than the other characters do.

The others are held back by the fact that they're characters designed for idealistic stories about hope conquering adversity, but the Netflix setting is a cold and dark place where everything sucks, where all the bad guys are reprehensible monsters spawned from Satan's malevolent asshole, and where being a decent human being is instantly punished with murder.

It's a setting where the only solution that actually works to any given problem is to start cutting a bloody path through the instigators of that problem until the city is drowning in the blood of evildoers. The Punisher meshes perfectly with that while others, such as Matt or Luke, are just left looking naive every time they try to appeal to a better way that the writers will never allow to exist.

They allow it to exist. Luke Cage is probably the most hopeful of the series overall, Luke gradually becoming an Ideal Hero and all, but it's a dark-before-the-dawn, light at the tunnel situation. With Matt and Jessica (and even Danny), they carry a lot of their darkness with them. Not that Fisk, Kilgrave, and the Hand aren't monsters, but defeating them was never going to be the beginning or end of their issues.

As pointed out by a few others, giving Frank a specific set of villains responsible for his family's deaths changes the character considerably from if if it had been truly random. Not irreparably, but it gives Frank a degree of closure and a (temporarily) happy ending that he couldn't really have in his traditional backstory.

Of Luke's four villians, only one isn't indicated to still be around to cause problems next season and that's because he was conveniently killed off by another villain, getting the job done while sparing Luke from having to do the deed himself.

It's the same thing DareDevil does: having Matt deliver lectures about the importance of never taking a life, then bumbling about ineffectually while the murderers in the cast proceed to resolve all the conflicts.

The Netflix shows have a major problem with their heroes largely being useless lunks around whom the plot occurs rather than being the driving force in philosophically overcoming the villain's agenda. Even when they do go head-to-head with the bad guys, it tends to be a purely physical endeavor while the overbearing darkness of the setting continues on unhindered.

This happens because Netflix MCU Heroes are extremely reluctant to kill people and Netflix MCU Writers cannot imagine any other way of defeating their villains.

edited 20th Dec '17 11:47:51 AM by TobiasDrake

I think Defenders has just in general a problem with the writing. It is lazy, they push the characters in specific situations instead of allowing them to develop naturally.

Separate argument— I'm just talking about tone, here. These shows would proceed largely the same way with the same overall beats even if Matt and Luke *did* kill the villains in question. Matt would still wring his hands and fuck up his life; Luke would still be a decent man trying to do the right thing the right way.

edited 20th Dec '17 11:50:42 AM by Unsung

Danny's aggro behavior in the warehouse is that of someone who believes wholeheartedly that he's the chosen one and basically protagonist of a cool action film being told "actually you're the macguffin, damsel at best and we need you to sit here quietly"

Precisely. If only he had listened.

>It's the same thing Dare Devil does: having Matt deliver lectures about the importance of never taking a life, then bumbling about ineffectually while the murderers in the cast proceed to resolve all the conflicts.

Y'know, there's a reason Fisk is untouchable in the comics. It's because killing him would leave a destructive power vacuum. Stands to reason the same is true for the show.

There's plenty of '90s Anti-Hero types in the Marvel verse to take his place if that artificial need is sustained.

Here's an idea: give Frank Castle a symbiote suit.

He'd fit nicely into the Lethal Protector role

It's been done. I shouldn't be surprised.

I didn't realize you could blackmail a symbiote like that.

And it seems like the least interesting way you could handle that pairing anyway

The symbiote is an impressionable infant. It totally could have been brought around to Castle's POV

Why hasn't anyone ever proposed a team full of all the best worst Frank Castles? Angel gun and Frankencastle and such

It was, it's just that the symbiote was dead-set on killing Spide-rman, which Frank Castle was absolutely against.

edited 25th Dec '17 4:35:31 PM by TheHandle

Fair enough

Maybe they could have compromised and just broken Peter's leg or given him a purple nurple

"We can work together, but once a week, we hunt down Spider-Man and give him a wedgie." "Agreed. Kid's a pain in the ass anyway."

Jessica Jones doesn't fit that description. Hell, the only reason she didn't kill Kilgrave immediately was because she needed him alive to prove Hope's innocence and give closure to his other victims not out of some stupid philosophy of wanting to be "better" that the villain. Although you're right for Danny, Luke and Matt.

Changing subjects: what was that stuff Bakuto administered to Ward at the start of 1x12? Was that a bit of substance he managed to secure from the bath that was used to revive Elektra?

My theory is that it's an impure version, or byproduct of the stuff that keeps the Hand Leaders going.