The Defenders

The Defenders.

Built as it is to binge, I thought it as apt to do a single, whole-series review of The Defenders as to do a blow-by-blow, especially considering my current rate of writing.

The Defenders, for the sake of internet historians of the far future, was Netflix’s answer to the Avengers, bringing together their corner of the MCU and uniting the four superpowered Defenders of New York who aren’t Spider-Man(1). Mind you, it takes its sweet time doing it, being a couple of episodes in before anyone actually meets up.

Danny Rand and Coleen Wing are chasing the Hand around the world when they get a tip off from a dying man that the real fight is in New York. They track down a weapons shop in New York and find a whole mess of dead martial artists. They confront the team sent to clean the crime scene, but they turn out to be a group of black youths offered the work by a man in a white suit. One of them is the brother of Candace, the hostess who was murdered at the end of Luke Cage, leading to the much anticipated ‘Luke Cage vs. Iron Fist’ event, in which Danny Rand bloodies his knuckles on Luke’s indestructible skin, before finally knocking him down with the Iron Fist. Then they both run from the law.

Now I have a lawyer. Ho-ho-ho.

Elsewhere, Foggy gives Matt some overflow, pro bon cases to help him kick the Daredevil habit. One of these is the case of Jessica Jones, who sort-of takes the case of a missing architect because someone calls to tell her not to. This leads her to an apartment full of explosives, and later brings the architect himself to her office with a gun(2). This particular Mexican standoff is interrupted when Elektra shows up, all Black Sky, to knock Jessica about and kill the architect. Matt shows up as her attorney, but she gives him the slip and is able to see him doing some ninja parkour shit(3).

Then there’s an earthquake.

Luke gives Danny an earful about privilege, and the four each make their way towards Midland Circle, an upscale newly built corporate headquarters full of evil and built on top of the big hole from Daredevil Season 2. Danny goes in all corporate to declare war on the Hand, only for their leader, the mysterious Alexandra, to order him captured. There follows a massive fight, with first Luke, then Matt and Jessica showing up to help, and the four of them finally being driven off by Elektra.

This restaurant scene has been a focus of the hype, and it was pretty cute.

Our totally not a superteam repair to a Chinese restaurant to regroup, with Matt and Danny explaining to Jessica and Luke who the Hand are(4) and that they will go after their loved ones. Stick then pops up to let us know that the Chaste – who were formed by the Elders of K’un-Lun, incidentally – have, other than him, been wiped out, give some deep background and name the five fingers of the Hand – Alexandra, Madame Gao, Sowande – the man in the white suit – Bakuto and angry Japanese challenge-seeker(5) Murakami. These five were booted out of K’un-Lun for trying to live forever and have been at it ever since. From scenes of the Hand, however, we learn that Alexandra blew the last of their stores of ‘the substance’ to resurrect Elektra. Jessica leaves, Alexandra catches up with them, but Jessica returns and hits the Black Sky with a car before another big brawl, in which Matt stuffs it by going after Elektra alone and trying to get through to her.

Our heroes get police protection for their friends, but play it coy with Misty for the sake of tension. Luke is able to capture Sowande, and from Alexandra’s actions and his taunting they realise that the Hand wants Danny. Stick kills Sowande after he tries to escape with Danny, and the rest of the team decide that Danny needs to be kept off the front line until they know what the Hand want with him. Danny isn’t having it, because he’s the Immortal Iron Fist, damnit, so they have to tie him to a chair. He and Luke bond a little, but then Stick uses drugged incense to incapacitate Luke and tries to kill Danny. Unfortunately, he drags it out too long, Matt and Jessica get back from finding the architect’s plans to blow up Midland Circle and bury whatever the hole leads to, and in the end Elektra clashes the party, kills her father figure and kidnaps Danny, before murdering Alexandra and declaring herself the new boss of the Hand.

Punchy punchy kick kick.

 Jessica, Luke and Matt are picked up by the cops in suspicious proximity to one stabbed guy and one decapitated corpse. They eventually break out of the precinct and go to Midland Circle, where they fight the remaining fingers of the Hand to an inconclusive result. Colleen meets them with a stack of explosives, which she and Clare go to set up while the others go down to rescue Danny, who has let himself be gulled into fighting Elektra, allowing her to redirect the Iron Fist and open the dome structure buried deep beneath the city, which turns out to be a vault covering a dragon’s skeleton. Because why the fuck not.

Gao explains that the Subtance is basically ground up dragon, and that removing the bones from beneath New York will basically fuck the city’s foundations, because never mind rock and roll, they built this city(6) on dragon’s bones. The others arrive and a battle royale ensues, while Coleen and Clare set charges and battle Bakuto and some goons. Misty shows up with the assist, and gets her arm sliced off before Coleen decapitates Bakuto, who inconsiderately falls on the detonator controls, starting an unstoppable countdown.

Matt gets the others to evacuate, while he tries once more to get through to Elektra, despite the fact that she was a dangerous, thrill-seeking egoist at her best. Murakami gets thrown off the lift, Gao gets fatalistic, Jessica catches the falling lift by its cables and Luke persuades the police to evacuate before the building comes down on top of Matt, Elektra, Murakami and Gao.

Nuns!

The police drop the matter. Jessica reopens Alias Investigations. Luke goes home to Harlem. Danny offers to pay for Misty’s treatment at a state of the art hospital (presumably doing great work with robot arms,) then crouches on a roof like he’s Daredevil. And Matt wakes up in what appears to be the Budapest convent hospital from Dracula.

So, that was The Defenders, a perfectly serviceable series which takes the uniqueness of the four Netflix Marvel series and combines them into something kind of generic. The best stuff stylistically is when they’re operating apart and cutting from the visual style of one series to another between scenes – perpetual darkness for Matt Murdock, seventies sepia-toned for Luke Cage, washed out noir for Jessica Jones, entirely bland television colours for Danny Rand(7) – but that only carries the story so far, and when they unite the series proves to share Iron Fist’s lack of a distinct visual language. Sadly, it also shares the lacklustre martial arts work, although having the other three means that you get their distinctive styles, and say what you will about Charlie Cox’s Daredevil, but there’s a thesp who put the hours in on his fight training.

Name dropping historical events liek s

The story is decent enough, but suffers somewhat from being basically what the League of Shadows/Assassins is all about in Batman/Arrow – take one city, add ninjas, stir until well and truly done – but with less ruthless Utopianism and more dragons. Elodie Yung does her best with what she’s given, but Elektra is just too much of a cypher and the Black Sky prophecy too vague for the show to paint a compelling picture of the Hand’s internal power struggles. It is also unclear how using up the last of the Substance makes them vulnerable when Bakuto has come back from the dead and can still shrug off bullet wounds in the chestal area. They still seem to have little to fear save decapitation and massive organ failure, putting them just one down on Connor MacLeod.

The Fingers of the Hand are a mixed bag, with Sigourney Weaver a menacing presence, but never a physical threat because of the characters frailty. Murakami has quirks, more than character – only speaks in Japanese, seeks a challenge(8) – and while Sowande has some personality, Bakuto is as bland as everything else coming out of Iron Fist, leaving Madame Gao to do most of the heavy lifting. It was also frankly disappointing that, after Stick warns Luke that Sowande can mess with the functions of his body and kill him without physical trauma, Luke turns out to be as impervious to the old pressure point deal as he is to blades, bullets and harsh language. 

And watching Danny try to kung fu Luke is priceless.

Truth to tell, Luke Cage is a bit of a problem here all around, his power set being basically a massive fuck you to all martial artists. One on one he could have a good fight against someone agile enough to make him wear himself out, but it never happens. Occasionally he gets slapped around by Danny or Elektra, but he really just gets up again. Danny, meanwhile, once more demands the question ‘how did you become the Iron Fist?’ I know he plunged his hand into the molten heart of Shao Lao, but how was this yoyo the greatest martial artist in K’un-Lun when he gets his arse kicked so much? He’s really got nothing but the Fist going for him a lot of the time, and not even that when he’s trying to charge off despite knowing that’s what the Hand wants, or getting suckered into shattering the vault created by a former Iron Fist. Never has a character so ably converted a strength into a liability.

Despite this, some of my favourite character moments in the series are between Luke and Danny, and I confess I’m broshipping them more than a little, and that at least is something that they’ve got right. Luke Cage might have another solo series in him, but I’d definitely take a Heroes for Hire show over Iron Fist season 2.

Speaking of characters, let’s talk about journeys.

Welcome to the Jungle.

Jessica Jones begins the long walk back to humanity, and probably has the best arc of any of the leads. Now in part this is because she appears at the start of the series slightly regressed from the end of her first season, still refusing to take on the cases being thrown at her since she became famous, and by the finale is seen opening up the office again. Luke Cage has a lot to do with that, of course, giving her the chance to cauterise one old wound for reals, but working with a team, be it ever so dysfunctional, brings her out of the darkness. It’s a shame not to see Trish and Malcolm play more of a part in that, but so it goes. We’ve got a lot of characters knocking around and some of them are going to miss out. I did like that they acknowledge her turning this particular corner by greeting Malcolm with something other than an angry insistence that he stop trying to get her to act like a human being.

Luke Cage and Danny Rand do their best work playing off each other. Danny is a big picture guy, while Luke looks after his own. They help each other see things from another perspective, with Luke knocking a sliver of sense into Danny, and Danny showing Luke that he can’t always protect his own by being insular. It’s disappointing that Danny doesn’t grow more significantly during the course of the series, but he is at least forced to confront the fact that he has issues, even if he doesn’t really do anything about them.

The big problem with Elektra is that she is less a character and more Matt
Murdock's issues.

And finally, Matt Murdock, who… Well, if he had died in this series, it would have been no more than he deserved, and actually an apt ending to the arc established in Daredevil. Unfortunately, they kind of take a weird direction with him. He is pitched as the team’s natural leader, but besides his reflexive secrecy, he repeatedly prioritises saving Elektra, even after she proves herself to have utterly embraced her dark side, leaving the team to their own devices because of this. One of my friends was pondering to what degree Jessica Jones gets a pass for being a bitch because she’s pretty, but Matt at least is willing overlook frankly a lot of murder, purely because he really fancies Elektra. I get it; she’s his dark reflection, and saving her means he is not damned, but this is an arc which does not sit well with this ‘natural leader’ thing, an informed trait if ever there was one.

So anyway, that’s The Defenders, which if nothing else provides strong evidence that secret ninja magic crime cults may be over as a thing. Compared to their appearances in Daredevil, the Hand just don’t seem all that mysterious. The Five Fingers are near-immortals with thousands of years behind them, but only Madame Gao has the right sort of unearthly feel to her. Sigourney Weaver does fine work with what she has, but lacks the time to get properly established. They just come off as regular – if highly successful – criminals, and even the dragon bones that they are digging for don’t really feel as epic as they ought.

In fact, ‘not as epic as they ought’ is pretty much the watchword of the series. Like the Avengers movies, it has a lot to fit in, and in doing so doesn’t reliably do any of it much beyond ‘quite good.’

(1) The fact that Spider-Man is a thing in the MCU does sting The Defenders’ cred a little. I mean, even if Iron Man has moved upstate, the friendly neighbourhood wall-crawler is only in Queens. Does spider sense not work on ninjas? Does MCU Spidey even have spider sense?

(2) The second of many times I thought Malcolm was going to get fridged.

(3) Not sure how she manages this, since she’s a good PI but he’s supposed to be able to track a heartbeat at half a mile.

(4) A spiel which goes down like a cockroach sandwich.

(5) That is literally his character: He’s angry, he’s Japanese, and he seeks for something to challenge him.

(6) And by implication, given how much time they spend talking about this being ‘just a city’ and that Elektra can expect to see many cities fall, many, if not all cities.

(7) Seriously, the sin of Iron Fist – well, one of them – is not really having a style to back up its lack of substance. It’s almost unique in being a series that needed its foreign language scenes to be dubbed instead of subtitled.

(8) And yet is not determined to pit himself one on one against the Iron Fist (which would probably be disappointing) or even the Black Sky.