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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
I suddenly really want a Metal Gear-esque prequel starring Hawkeye and Black Widow.
Jeff Goldblum's Grandmaster is getting his own short
. And yes, Darryl will be in it.
edited 25th Oct '17 10:47:51 AM by comicwriter
The Defenders, Episode Two
So we open on the aftermath of the moderate earthquake and subsequent power outage that The Hand caused and I still have no idea what such a thing could possibly contribute to their nebulous goals.
I mean, it's really bad for a lot of people and countless innocent civilians are liable to be harmed, especially if - as is often the case in Movie Land - half the city sees the power outage and goes, "Wait, a minor disaster has caused a temporary but ultimately fleeting lapse in the social structure? Sweet! Let me get my hockey mask on and grab my AK-47 'cause IT'S PURGE TIME, BABY!!! WHOOO!!! EVIL IS THE TRUE HEART OF MAN!!!"
Man, I love Murdock flying over rooftops in his business attire. Full disclosure, I hate costumes and think secret identities are stupid, so scenes like this where an ordinarily costumed superhero gets to leap into action in his civvies always thrill me.
It's part of the reason why DC and I don't get along. Every superhero has a costume and secret identity. Every single one. It's completely f*cking mandatory, even if it makes no goddamn sense at all within the context of the character. "Hal Jordan is a space cop and must wear a mask so that the Kleptonians from Planet XR 58873 don't recognize him as that pilot from Whatever The F*ck City."
I like my superheroes to be less KGB-esque Secret Police and more…uh…I guess actual police would be the comparison there. But not being able to put your superheroics back in the box when you're done with them goes against the Escapist Fantasy of the genre, I guess. Point is, Marvel has a lot of characters that are more to my taste than DC does. Pretty much anyone who becomes an Avenger stops giving a f*ck about secret identities, and half of them never did in the first place. It's not a hobby, it's a day job.
I mean, shit, of the Defenders, only one of these assholes even has a secret identity. And he's here right now having a kickass fight scene in his business suit, because a real hero doesn't take time out of an emergency to run downstairs and put his mask on before leaping into action. That's what I like to see.
Spider-Man, you're awesome, but I am so sick of writers creating scenarios where Peter has to be like, "Oh no, there are violent criminals attacking this event that I’m at. If I do anything, it will expose my secret identity. I must allow these people's lives to continue to be in danger until I can find a convenient opportunity to suit up! Hope they don't kill anyone!"
"Who are you?" And he freaks out and stoically walks away. It's understandable, though. Gwen Stacy just died so he's going through his Spider-Man No More phase.
I really don't like the opening credits to Defenders. All the openings are stylish in their own way but this one's just bland. It's different colored pictures of the four stars that it just sort of cycles through over and over while the music rises. The music is cool, but the imagery is incredibly boring, especially compared to the blood-stained reality of DareDevil or the flashy imagery or Luke Cage. Even Danny trying to kung fu the Venom symbiote off of him in Iron Fist is a better opening than this, because it's active.
I don't remember Jessica's opening. <.< I think I liked it.
But the point is, the other openings at least have something to say about their characters. This one's message is, "Holy shit, I can't believe we actually made it to this show either."
"[The earthquake is] centered in Hell's Kitchen." Ooo, I bet this does have something to do with that huge unexplained hole that The Hand was digging.
"What happened last night was only 300 feet deep." So, not an earthquake, the Hulk just had Taco Bell for lunch. Gotcha.
"They said we had to cut out the earthquake stuff. I don't know why, but from the tone they used, it was not a conversation." This is one thing I really do like about the presentation of The Hand. There are magic ninjas everywhere. There's a bit of a Fight Club Project Mayhem dynamic that I wish would be played up more; a Paranoia Fuel element where anybody could be a magic ninja. They've thoroughly infiltrated every walk of the city. Assassins, thieves, and manipulators are secretly integrated into every function of New York.
That is the art of ninjutsu. They hide in plain sight. Their mask is not a black shroud over their eyes but a business suit and a pleasant smile.
"If I ever come across that warrior again, I'll be ready." Elektra is very good at leaving an impression on people. That's two Defenders now who've abruptly stopped what they were doing to obsess over her. Of course, getting Danny to abandon his responsibilities and neglect Colleen isn't hard, mind you, but the sentiment is there.
"I mean, he died fighting The Hand. That must be a sign, right?" Seriously? This is being presented like a shocking revelation? Some dude died in a sword-fight with The Hand and it took them the entire plane ride back to New York to realize, 'Hey, maybe that guy didn't like The Hand'?
"Of what?" Oh. My bad. It took Colleen until New York to make that connection. Danny's head is so far up his own asshole that literally seeing someone fight The Hand doesn't strike him as conclusive evidence that there are people fighting The Hand.
"He might not have died if I hadn't left my post in K'un Lun." …okay, not to interrupt you hating yourself for very good reasons that you should hate yourself for, but how would still being in K'un Lun have prevented some asshole in Cambodia from fighting The Hand? Danny's narcissistic self-absorption is actively impeding his cognitive functions.
And that's precisely what this is: yet another extension of Danny's narcissism. Narcissists can fall into self-hatred over things they regret, but you can always tell a narcissist's regrets from other people's. When a narcissist regrets something, the entire universe has suffered for their failure, because they are so important in their own eyes that the very idea that someone exists who didn't suffer at their hands is inconceivable. Whether you love or hate yourself, to a narcissist, everything that has ever happened or ever will happen does so because of you.
Danny cannot conceive that some guy in Cambodia's death is not related to his failure in K'un Lun, because that failure has to be responsible for all suffering in the universe. The alternative is that Danny is just one of many people of equal importance, and that is an unacceptable scenario to him.
"This isn't about anger. It's about fault." You're both wrong. It's about sadness, a feeling that men historically struggle with being emotionally honest about. Danny is taking a page straight out of the Toxic Masculinity handbook and using anger and violence to mask the fact that he feels sad over his responsibility in K'un Lun's fate, because he basically lives by that book.
"What if it's a trap?" Seriously, Danny?
He's just bitter because her idea is better than his. That's not how this relationship's supposed to work. She's his girlfriend, so he's supposed to be awesome and successful at stuff while she sits on the sideline and tells him how cool his choices are. That's what Danny wanted out of all this, goddammit!
"You and I, we haven't had the greatest luck trusting other people." "Yeah, but do you trust me?" To be fair, he hasn't had great luck with that either.
One thing I really want to give Charlie Cox props for is his facial acting. Specifically, his eyes. He does an amazing job of simulating blindness by not actually looking at anything. Keeping that dead-eyed straight-ahead stare on his face whenever the camera's on him can't be easy.
"Is the NYPD going to pay you for doing their job?" And just like that, Claire Temple became Best Pony.
"A rat hole called Trouble in Paradise." Jesus, what is it with Luke and crooked Paradises?
Meanwhile, Sigourney Weaver - who, as far as I can tell, still doesn't have a name so I'm just going to call her the Grim Weaver - is listening to musicians play cellos and violins in a large building full of glass windows that are mysteriously undamaged by the huge earthquake. Not even a crack. The hell?
"All Brahms wanted was to prove that he could do it too. He was petty like that." "Your insight in music history, it never ceases to amaze me." Well, she's with The Hand, so I’m going to guess she probably knew him personally.
"We've never encountered a wall before." Well, if it has anything to do with K'un Lun, then they usually had an Iron Fist to defend them. After Danny stole their superpowers and f*cked off to New York leaving them ripe for massacre, they had to do something.
"That's always been the difference between us. You are quick to rethink. I'm a bit more stubborn." You say that like it's a good thing. Speed Chessers are notoriously more difficult to handle than Chessmasters, because the ability to adapt to changing circumstances is a huge advantage. Why do I get the feeling that the Weaver's insistence on clinging to one idea is going to lead to her downfall?
"And from the beginning, they have valued one thing above all else." It's Danny, isn't it? The Iron Fist is the key. And fortunately for The Hand, they conveniently happen to have found this at a time when the Iron Fist is unusually douchey and terrible at his job.
And here's Jessica following the money and becoming increasingly confused as the conspiracy begins to present itself more and more. ^.^ Jessica is awesome.
"The oldest record goes back to 1820 but as crazy as it sounds, I think I need to go back further than that." Seriously, I love it when Jess gets to be a P.I.
"Jessica, we need to talk." Yes! You do! But probably not about what I think you need to talk about, which is that you, Hogarth, already know about The Hand and their infiltration of major corporations such as Rand Industries. That would be useful information to pass onto Jessica.
"Eleven million. You sure you want to stay pro-bono?" Murdock's not taking money for his cases? The f*ck is he affording rent, then?
That's something I hate about action dramas. They like to have their hero demonstrate his selflessness by refusing payment for his work, while never answering the logistical question of how he keeps the lights on and food on the table when he has no source of income.
Angel had a great bit about this in its first season, where the show's grounded character Cordelia spend an episode bickering with Angel about how he needs to start charging money for his cases if they're going to actually keep their business's doors open. It was made clear in the episode that Angel's vanity-fueled insistence on maintaining his Dark Hero of the Night angle was actively hurting his mission, and he ultimately compromised and allowed Cordy to start typing invoices when they got clients who could afford to pay, while still offering free services to the poor and underprivileged.
"You're lucky she didn't freak out and have us both disbarred." "We can trust her." It's funny because she's a reporter sitting on the scoop of the century.
"If you take these, you'll be up to your eyeballs busy, and the next time you think about stepping out at night, you'll be too busy being another kind of hero. It's not a solution. Not long-term." It's a step, and a really good one that Matt should seriously take. The reality of addiction is that there are no long-term solutions. Addiction never goes away, not entirely. It's just the short-term solutions that defeat it. One short-term solution and then, when that runs out, you find another one.
This is a great olive branch, and I really admire Foggy for offering it.
"Save yourself some time, Hogarth; stop worrying about me." Hogarth, you know better than this. Jessica has a contrarian streak and a bit of a death wish. Playing up how dangerous it's going to be only makes her want to do it more.
"Mariah and Shades. I need to know what they're up to." I like that Luke immediately assumes they're responsible for the trafficking. In crossover events like these, it's these kinds of limited scope moments that really help sell the reality of the larger universe. Luke is kinda being Wrong Show Savvy here. He thinks he's in Luke Cage, Season Two, but this is actually The Defenders, Season One.
"Okay! I heard about it!" …Luke, man, who's going to pay for that keg of alcohol? You just vandalized some poor guy's livelihood to intimidate Turk rather than, like, hitting him or something. Some poor service industry employee is going to be fired by a pissed off manager demanding to know, "The f*ck happened to this keg?! Which one of you did this?"
"If this isn't the truth, I'll be back. You won't like me then." "I don't like you now!"
I love it when characters get to respond to stock badass quotes.
"I think I found something. You should get a warrant and get down here." What, that's it? Yeah, that'll go over real well with the judge she appeals to. "Your honor, I need a warrant. No, I don't know where. No, I have no idea who it's for or what I'm hoping to find. A vigilante called and told me to grab a warrant."
"Luke, where are you? I need an address." You need a lot f*cking more than that if you're going to come with a warrant!
"Jess, where the hell have you been?!" Being Jessica. Going off-grid for a while just 'cause is not atypical behavior for her.
"This tremor stuff. I think they want me to sweep it under the rug." They're dumb. Nothing draws more suspicion to a thing than trying to keep suspicion from being drawn to it. An earthquake is innocent enough; trying to cover up the earthquake says there's something worth hiding in the earthquake. The Hand is overcomplicating their defense and incriminating themselves in the process.
Nothing ruins a crime quite like overcomplicating it. The best crimes are quick, efficient, often painfully stupid, and then dumped in the past and moved on from as soon as possible to allow people to stop caring that it happened.
The greatest advantage criminals have is humanity's short attention span. If we don't get an immediate answer, we get bored and move on unless some dipshit keeps bringing it up, and more often than not, that dipshit is the perpetrator desperately trying to prove his innocence.
"Someone's coming." I want so badly for it to be Stick, and he just walks into the massacre and is like, "Hey guys, I've got takeout, who ordered the wasabi—oh, goddammit. I was gone for ten minutes! You idiots couldn't stay alive for ten minutes?!"
…are they melting the bodies with spray acid? That can't be a cost-effective way of disposing of the evidence. You couldn't get a vat or something?
"Oh my god, it's too late." You know, I was honestly expecting him to shoot himself and then that turned out to be Trish or something at the door. But nope. Elektra really did show up to kill him.
I love Elektra's new look. It's stylish and sinister all at once.
I do not give Jessica good odds against Elektra. She's formidable, don't get me wrong. Super strength is a hell of a thing. But that's all she's got going for her, and Elektra is a magic ninja. If they were arm-wrestling, sure, Jessica would take this easily, but she's a brute force slugger. She's a pirate trying to figure out where the f*ck the ninja went.
Wow, these cleaning squad guys are terrible magic ninjas. The three who are shitty fighters were funny enough but my favorite was the one asshole who didn't even notice a fight was happening for several seconds, and then bolted for the door immediately. Danny and Colleen got The Hand's bargain bin today.
"Who are you?" "Who are you?" At last, two of the Defenders finally meet. And Luke promptly shoves Danny's face into a wall. That made me so happy.
Danny's repeated attempts to harm Luke and the increasingly futile nature of them is quite possibly one of my favorite scenes in the Netflix canon. Oh man, is this cathartic.
Luke rolled his eyes when Danny boxed him in the ear.
Danny gets in one good punch with the Iron Fist that knocks Luke back a few feet, but then Luke gets right back up. And that was his best trick. And it's notoriously short-lived; he can never sustain it longer than, like, one punch. So, yeah, if the cops hadn't conveniently showed up just now, Luke woud have thrashed Danny. This was amazing. I might need to watch this scene a few times, because Danny getting his shit stomped is just so, so good.
"You know who I am, I know who you are, so let's skip the wartime banter." Could we maybe have the wartime banter? Because I, for one, have no f*cking idea who you are. I mean, that's probably Stick under the hood, but who the f*ck are you, Grim Weaver?
"Not for your benefit but for mine I'm taking the blinds off." No, you're doing that for ours. There is no reason for you to do it for either of your benefits.
"Alexandra." Hey, a name!
Also, I hope we get an explanation as to how Stick wound up in this predicament. Last we saw him, he decapitated Nobu. He was doing pretty well for himself.
"He shot himself." "Then who were you chasing?" Why is Jessica lying about Elektra? There is zero reason for her not to tell Misty that a woman showed up and attacked the guy. There is physical evidence to corroborate the only unbelievable part of the story: Elektra slicing through the door lock. Look at the door lock! It's pretty f*cking sliced!
There is no reason to conceal the existence of the mystery assailant and incriminate herself in the process.
"My name is Matthew Murdock. I'm your attorney." She's going to punch him. She is so going to punch him. Because she's belligerent and contrarian for no reason. That's just how she rolls, and also probably the answer to the question I just asked about why she's keeping Elektra to herself.
She's probably three sheets to the wind right now.
Oh. Oh! That was the end of the episode. Huh. Good place to end; I really wanted it to keep going.
This was a really good episode. The mystery thickens, the characters move closer and closer to discovering the conspiracy of The Hand, we finally got a name for Alexandra, and Luke beat the shit out of Danny. Like, five stars for that scene alone. I could watch that happen for hours.
edited 25th Oct '17 6:15:13 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
I look forward to that. He deserves it.
edited 25th Oct '17 6:25:09 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.The title sequence isn't just color silhouettes of the four, it's color silhouettes overlaying a map of New York. In fact I think the glowing lines leading to Danny's fist are subway lines if I'm not mistaken.
edited 25th Oct '17 6:25:55 PM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!There's a reason why the Hand are operating stupidly— because Alexandra moved up their operations. They probably wouldn't have needed such a noticeable tremor if they'd had more time. Gao might have gotten away with it, too, if not for— not the Defenders, but rather that meddling Sigourney Weaver. I love that.
We talked about this on the Defenders thread, but Matt probably has some savings from before Nelson & Murdock went tits up, since this has only been a few months in-universe. The firm might have been bankrupt, but Foggy and Matt weren't necessarily flat broke. Plus pro bono means you don't get paid by your client beforehand, but there are other people, foundations and the like, who are willing to pay, if not a salary and not what you're worth as a lawyer, at least cost of living.
Luke doesn't care about the keg because it's a Bad Guy Bar. They all saw him come in. If anyone asks Turk and he says Luke punched their keg, they'll probably believe it. And make Turk pay for it.
And yeah, I could've watched that Luke vs Danny fight go on a lot longer. It didn't really make sense for it to keep going the way it was written, but if it had been written such that the stakes were higher? That could've been one for the ages.
I kinda wish the title sequence had been more like the teasers. It's a little generic by comparison, and doesn't feel quite as effortful or specific to the show as the others. Of which Daredevil's opening has my favourite visuals,
and Jessica Jones has the best theme music.
edited 26th Oct '17 4:48:01 AM by Unsung
Yeah, in the comics, Danny can actually sustain the Iron Fist for a period of time and do stuff with it. He's also a likable character with a personality that doesn't make you want to strangle him any time he does anything.
Here, it's a flash in the pan. He gets to throw one punch with it and then his chi is drained and he can't use it again. Sometimes for days. Also that punch is sometimes pretty underwhelming.
Basically, MCU Danny's superpower is that on very rare occasions he can perform one feat of super-strength before resuming being a Badass Normal.
edited 25th Oct '17 7:03:43 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Oh, you know, dropped into a seemingly simple but dangerous operation with some suspicious politics around it, a running battle with a band of Quirky Miniboss Squad super villains who all have oddball powers and backstories (like, pick a team of Marvel bad guys. Any one: Serpent Society, U-Foes, Femizons, whatever) - the leader of whom will be an Enigmatic Minion and/or Worthy Opponent who survives - a complicated relationship with an enemy agent who may or may not want to switch sides (since it’s a prequel, this is where Widow comes in), a Big Bad with a super weapon (again, it’s Marvel: pick any one - I dunno, Count Nefaria. The Maggia could use some love. Or since it’s Hawkeye, it could be the Secret Empire and the Worthy Opponent minion could be Trickshot. The super weapon could be Ultimo or something), and right at the end some Dramatic Irony hinting that an Illuminati organization that was playing the Big Bad as a patsy (it’s a prequel, so probably HYDRA unless you want to hint at, like, the “real” Mandarin or something).
edited 25th Oct '17 8:42:35 PM by KnownUnknown

Could do it, though that might run the risk of turning him into Jor-El, and what with the rest of Carol's powers, they might want to avoid that.
Or they could lean into it. That could work, too.