Marvel's The Defenders

Here it is, the show Marvel has been building toward for years with their four Netflix series.

Given that those four shows range from amazing to almost-fell-asleep, how did this one fair?

Beware spoilers.




Opening Sequence:

As I noted in my Luke Cage and Iron Fist reviews, the opening sequences have been pretty cool overall for Marvel's streaming television projects. While I felt that the Iron Fist opening suffered a bit, The Defenders marks a return to form.

First the visuals. We have a street map of New York building the outlines of the four heroes, color coded to identify them. The patterns are overlaid onto one another, distinct but fitting together as parts of a whole. This was very reminiscent to me of the Daredevil opening. It was visually striking and hewed very close to the theme for the show.

Second is the music. I double checked and sure enough the music was written by John Paesano, who did the score for Daredevil. Subtle work and a wonderful fit with the visuals.

Themes:
As hinted at by the opening, there's a strong theme of solitude versus family or community in this show.

Matt is isolated from his friends by his decision to return to being the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. Luke is isolated by his status as both a folk hero and an ex-con. Jessica is isolated by her own choice and abrasive nature, a defense mechanism against the pain of her brokeness. Danny is isolated by the loss of his family, by his responsibility to take down the Hand, and by his failure to protect K'un Lun.

Even the villain Alexandra confesses that after a lifetime of being isolated by her longevity and the mutual distrust she has of the other Hand members, she longs to stop being alone. Other Hand members express a desire to simply go home again.

Contrast that with events later in the series. Colleen shares that Danny is, at heart, still an orphaned kid just looking for a family and that he finally found it with the her and the other superheroes. Luke and Danny come to some mutual respect. Luke reminds Jessica that she has friends and one of them is in Harlem. And Matt's friends, especially Foggy, are there to support him in a clutch moment.

All of the supporting characters intermingle and share their frustration with being on the sidelines, dealing with the fear of not knowing what's happened. A few share in mourning.

If I can condense it down, the theme is this: No one has to be alone. And no one truly wants to be.

Acting:
The acting in this show is solid all the way through. The four leads all found their voice in the prior seasons of their own shows and we get pretty much the same level of performance from them all.

I think Sigourney Weaver deserves particular mention as Alexandra. She layers her character with joy, loss, resolve, pain, and quiet desperation. She pushes every actor on screen with her to be better.

Writing:
Definite improvement here from Iron Fist.

The writers manage to bring together the disparate heroes pretty well. The transitions between the various POV characters worked well, though I still can't decide if the color coded filtering (red for Daredevil, yellow for Luke Cage, blue for Jessica, and green for Iron Fist) is brilliant or too jarring.

The pacing is much better, though it does fall off a bit in the last couple of episodes with a lot of introspection and banter in the hallways of Midland Circle just as the climax is ramping up. It was a bit jarring in that instance and would have benefited from continuing the momentum more.

As I mentioned in the Acting section, the characters have distinct and consistent voices in this show. Of particular note is Danny Rand. Rather than ignore what went before, the writers make Danny's lack of competence and inability to think his actions through well a plot point. He's more easily captured by the Hand agents because of his lack of foresight and relative lack of skill compared with others. He's manipulated by Elektra with a ploy a blind middle schooler could see coming.

My one complaint with this is the writers allow Danny to maintain his confidence, completely unaffected by the fact that he falls on his face every single time he tries something on his own. There was a lot of wasted character growth opportunity there, though they may have been constrained by the eight episode season length.

The dialogue is believable and sometimes witty. The writers toned down the profanity, especially compared to Jessica Jones.

Nearly all our questions about the Hand and their goals are answered. And we get enjoyable and sometimes tense or tender moments threaded throughout. The quality we see in evidence restores some of my faith in the Netfilx/Marvel project as a whole.

Action:
There are three specific aspects I want to touch on here.

First, Finn Jones improves noticeably in the area of fight choreography. He's still the weak link, but with the writing choices I discussed above and in light of the fiasco that was his Iron Fist performance, Jones fits his role much more effectively.

Second, some of the directorial decisions that went into propping up weaknesses in the fight scenes result in dark, choppily cut sequences that make it nearly impossible to follow what's happening. There's a reason you saw the fight in the Midland Circle offices in the trailer. So many others happen in the dark. That's not to say that all the fights are bad, but shaky cam is still as annoying as ever.

Third, and most important, everyone got to be cool at various points. The fighting styles are distinct, playing to each character's strengths, whether Matt's acrobatics, Jessica's raw power, or Stick's near super-human will to survive.

More generally, the fact that the action isn't limited to the superheroes but falls back to the supporting characters and police a bit helps hit that community vs solitude note and fills the world out better.

Not all action is violence, and the tense conversations between the Hand leaders, so laden with potential violence, were equally enjoyable.

One small complaint: the stakes are high in the narrative, but the stakes when the violence does get going never seems to reach that level. You know how the fights will all play out and I was missing that Daredevil vs Nobu or Jessica vs Purple Man level of tension.

Summary:
This is a very good entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe that understands its characters and their world well. While not filled with earth shattering implications, it's an enjoyable ride that is well worth the eight-hour entry fee.