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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
I'd like to chime in on the 'White Billionaire' just to say that there might be other reasons for someone not liking them. I myself make no bones about the fact that I utterly despise Tony Stark (though I try not to bring that up too often; it gets old real fast). For several reasons, but none of them have to do with his money.
Probably because as messed up as the Mandarin could be in the past he still has way less baggage than Fu Manchu who is basically known as the walking embodiment of the trope even to the average Joe. Whereas there's been times when they tried to reinvent the Mandarin into something more topical and less overtly racist. Also the presence of Shang-Chi as the lead hero would definitely mitigate that by a big amount, especially if he's surrounded by other Asian characters who are not stereotypes.
Mmm, I tend to agree. Jessica Jones had Killgrave escaping once too often, but other than that, the show had a fairly steady pace. Daredevil Season 1 had more of a narrative problem, with spending a lot of time to set up the big fight at the end which was then dealt with in one episode. Luke Cage's biggest problem was Diamondback. He didn't really fit into the story and was really badly set up. He only seemed to be around so that Luke could have the big fist fight, but I actually found Mariah's suggestions to deal with him - drown him, poison him - way more interesting than the notion of a Judas bullet. And Daredevil Season 2 never really recovered from the Hand. The Hand was always the biggest problem in the Netflix shows and I hope that Iron Fist can fix some aspects there before the Defenders.
I'll confess that I was somewhat miffed that Mariah's suggestions were pretty much brushed off - in fact, I don't think Stokes even had a proper response. I mean, what reason do we have to believe that they wouldn't work - no one ever tried.
Oh God! Natural light!Precisely. Smart villains know how to work around a hero's strengths and exploit their weaknesses. For some reason, however, the show doesn't seem to want to explore these obvious holes in his defenses, and never explains why. Granted, actually pulling some of these off would be difficult, but I still think it could be done.
Still, I think this sort of thing could be made to work if it was established that Stokes, say, wanted to make a big show of taking out Luke, which he can't really do with more underhanded methods - something like that would work for Stokes, as he never really wanted to be a crime boss in the first place, and is arguably not cut out for it the way Mariah is. Likewise, by the time Mariah takes over, it might be in her interest to keep Luke alive, so that she can use him to gain power.
Diamondback, again, could work in a similar way to Stokes, but I don't know if I get the impression that he's the same type of guy as Stokes - I'm not sure he has any compunctions with exactly how he'll take revenge.
Now, someone might say that some special bullet is more exciting - and it is a vivid image - but I think that a talented director could make a more mundane method equally suspenseful and engaging.
edited 14th Mar '17 3:26:37 PM by KarkatTheDalek
Oh God! Natural light!Looks like Sam Jackson may have let slip an interesting return
. Grain of salt and all that.
I mostly agree with Karkat about Diamondback. On paper his backstory with Luke and the whole biblical cain and abel thing they had going on was a good concept, but Diamondback as a character was super silly and hard to take seriously and was not anywhere near as compelling as Cottonmouth or Mariah were. When he burst out with the campy powersuit my brother and I burst out laughing for a good minute or so because we couldn't believe that was actually what they went with.
JJ had another problem where I don't think either half of the show was particularly worse than the other, but the cat and mouse game with Kilgrave just got to be frustrating.
.....I actually really like Diamondback. A lot.
He's a Large Ham, but he hates Luke and that level of vitriol is just really entertaining to see.
He has a similar issue as The Hand with Daredevil in that they are a strange breed of campy absurd villain for the gritty realism of the series they're in.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Yeah, they were going for something considerably more grounded here, so he ends up just feeling...at odds with the whole thing, really.
Plus, at times, he honestly comes off as a bit of a Villain Sue, killing people I'm not entirely convinced he should be able to kill, escaping when the odds are a little too against him, and apparently inspiring loyalty even when we don't really see him doing anything that might do that (granted, he's definitely letting his hatred of Luke get to him, but it might have been better to see what he's like without that influencing him). Plus, his motives come across as...really petty, frankly, and compared to Cottonmouth, not explored nearly enough.
I think he might have worked just a bit better if he had somehow been built up a little more - maybe showing a few flashbacks of him earlier, or at least a few hints towards his existence? I'll be honest, when he emerged from out of the shadows after he shot Luke, the way it was framed made it look like it was this huge reveal...but we've never actually seen him before, so it feels a tad unnecessary. Like, I was actually confused, thinking that he was someone we'd met before, but he wasn't, so that moment ended up feeling rather weird.
Oh God! Natural light!That's exactly how I felt too. The dialogue certainly made it seem that way as well, so I was a bit confused.
And honestly I feel like it would have been fairly easy to foreshadow him, a few lines lines of a dialogue or maybe even a few flashbacks would have gone a long way.
Well, they did mention him before he showed up, the reveal just fell flat because we hadn't seen him and we didn't recognize him as Luke's childhood friend. Maybe it would have worked better to have him as a visible presence throughout the season without any direct references to his past with Luke, and then when he shoots Luke, Luke recognizes him and says his real name for the first time in the show.
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.I like Diamondback too, but I don't think he should've been Big Bad, let alone the character in the Bigger Bad position as well.
It's like, if you ever made a Batman tv series with a serious arc, making the Joker a highly visible and consistent Big Bad is a bad idea, because he works far better as a loose cannon who usurps the plot towards the end (much as people malign him for it these days).
Gina Rodriguez is interested in playing Miss America Chavez. [1]
. If MAC ever shows up in the MCU I think her origins might change a lot due to how complicated it all sounds.
Damn, aside from being slightly older than the character (America is in early 20s), I think Gina Rodriguez would probably make an awesome Ms America Chavez. Heck, I could even see Genesis Rodriguez
as America, too.
edited 14th Mar '17 10:27:43 PM by alliterator
I could accept the coincidence of both Willis and Luke ending up in New York a little more easily if Diamondback's hatred of Luke weren't so all-consuming— if he hated Luke and maybe even let his own empire suffer in the course of exacting his revenge, but if we still saw something of the crime lord and arms dealer who Cottonmouth was so intimidated by and to whom Shades had such a deep respect. We never really see that Diamondback, and the one we get seems too volatile and reckless to be the guy who called Stokes out on letting his business suffer over personal matters. It just feels like we're missing something.

When it comes to pacing problems (which I don't think think DD Season 1 really had), I think Jessica Jones had the least problems. Plenty of stuff was engaging, even in the latter half - it's just they did stuff like letting Kilgrave escape one too many times, and the stuff with Simpson felt kind of disconnected from the rest of the story. The actual conclusion, I think, was a fairly satisfying one.
Luke Cage had a great first half, but the problems began to surface once Stokes bit the dust - he's a great villain, but while Mariah definitely had the potential to take his place (and her offing Stokes was definitely the right way for his character to go out), they ended up giving the Big Bad spot to Diamonback instead, and he's just too...silly, I guess? Just some Bible-quoting asshole that I have a hard time believing is scary/charismatic enough to inspire any real sort of loyalty. Honestly, him putting on the campy powersuit was actually a blessing, as it seemed to fit his character more than being a crime boss did.
I think Daredevil Season 2, however, had the biggest problems. Now, I've seen some people who legitimately dislike the Punisher, but I think they did a good job with him, at least at first - same with Elektra, actually. The problems start to arise when Matt starts getting involved the Hand business, while in the process beginning to completely ignore the Punisher case - likewise, Foggy and Karen stay entirely focused on the Punisher, to the extent that they don't really seem all that curious about what Matt's doing. Hell, Karen walks in on Matt with Stick and Elektra, and if I recall correctly, doesn't really seem to care just who these people are and what Matt's doing with them. That, in my opinion, is one of the biggest problems I have with this season, and plots like it - there's an A-Plot and a B-Plot, characters are mostly divided between the two, and no-one seems to acknowledge or even care what's going on in the other. It just seems like they lack awareness about what's going on outside of their storylines, and I dislike when that sort of thing happens. Matt gets involved with both, true, but I get the impression that the Elektra plot is what he's truly focused on, and the two plots never really intersect in any meaningful way.
Hell, the Punisher basically only shows up at the Hand confrontation just to remind the audience that he's the thing - and in the process, somewhat vindicating him. Are we supposed to agree with Matt that the Punisher killing people is wrong? Or maybe we're supposed to draw our own conclusions? Because if either of those are the case, we could use some more reasons to take his side over Frank's.
Honestly, the lack of support for Matt's own positions, coupled with how poorly thought and frankly selfish his actions seem to be, makes him rather unlikable. I'm not saying that he can't make mistakes, but sometimes it feels like that's all he does, to the point where when he tells Karen he's Daredevil, it elicits less of a "What an interesting development!" and more of a "Fucking finally!"
And that's not even getting into how Elektra seems to have very little agency in her own plotline, extreme vagueness about what the hell a "Black Sky" is (even when I can't think of any reasons why Stick or Nobu couldn't elaborate a bit), Elektra's extremely telegraphed death that mostly just seems to exist to give Matt man-pain (I'd be more excited about her impending resurrection if I knew more about just what they hell she's supposed to do) and the uncomfortable racial elements of the Hand mixing with frankly astonishing lack of depth when compared to other Netflix villains (even Diamondback got something) creating characters who are basically just bland Yellow Peril stereotypes. And while Punisher's storyline is better (Hi Fisk!), it still has its weaknesses, like the rather weak and tacked-on nature of the Blacksmith reveal.
So yeah, I don't like Season 2 of Daredevil.
edited 14th Mar '17 1:57:27 PM by KarkatTheDalek
Oh God! Natural light!