The Defenders

Let's change gears for a post.
Let's talk about comics.

I just finished watching the Netflix series "The Defenders" based on the Marvel Comic series (that should be plural, I suppose!).  It wasn't bad.  It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad.

Here's why it wasn't bad.  It did a good job at pulling the characters together in a short amount of time and resolving the story line in a short amount of time as well.  In some respects, the series was the vehicle for the next seasons of Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Jessica Jones (and probably Iron Fist, but I will get to that in a minute).  It pulled the stories of these heroes together and provided them with direct knowledge of each other and a (mostly) willingness to work together.

The Defenders is a tough comic to bring to the screen, large or small.  That's because the more recent iterations of The Defenders focuses on the idea that it is a non-team, but a name that applies to a particular group who operate together for a short time.  In fact there was a six part series a few years ago that focused on that very premise - it was six issues with about twelve different heroes under the title of Defender.

The difficulty lies in the fact that before the more recent iterations of the Defenders, there was a group and comic called the Defenders and it was an actual team.  It was a lot of B and C list heroes (think Moondragon, Valkyrie, Gargoyle, the Beast (who was in the X-Men and the Avengers too) and so on) who worked together.  They were akin to the Champions, which featured Ghost Rider and Hercules and Iceman to name a few, and were never a top level group, but that was kind of the point for both the Defenders and the Champions - they were groups that weren't the Avengers or the X-Men - but the were comprised of people who had some tangential connections to the larger Marvel universe (like the original Guardians of the Galaxy) and could tackle some B and C level bad guys.

They were fun reads, and the Defenders got pretty serious near the end of their run - some of the heroes were turned into a stature of stone and ash on a mountain - a story line that wasn't resolved until the Earth X series.

The issue there is backstory.  Each of these characters had a back story as did the team.  And Marvel has gotten their act together in providing back story with stand alone movies and series that are then combined into compact stories such as Avengers and the Defenders.

The trouble with the Defenders is that part of the plot revolves around the plot of all four of these characters (Daredevil, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, and Jessica Jones).  The tremendously artistic first episode does a fantastic job of presenting the stories of each character with the same style of filming and color scheme as each individual show.  They blend together when they all meet up.  That was a very nice touch.

The plot line, which revolves around the Hand stories that connect the dots (though not so much in the Luke Cage story) is a thin one that is more of a plot from Daredevil and Iron Fist.  And here is, perhaps, the real problem.  Iron Fist.

His series was, in my opinion, the weakest.  The story started strong but faltered quickly and made Iron Fist/Danny Rand a pretty weak character.  As one reviewer said, Iron Fist is a powerful man-child that can't figure out what he is doing, why he is doing it, or why he alienates people.  Defenders does little to improve his image.  He comes across as a whining adolescent who can't work well with others when they won't go along with his ideas.  This isn't in keeping with the Iron Fist of the comics, nor does it set up the partnership that was Luke Cage and Iron Fist (Powerman and Iron Fist - and, by the way, Luke Cage is called Powerman in his series, but jokes off the name as he does his original costume).  The two tolerated each other, but they didn't seem to be on the road to a partnership that the comics had.

There are a few digs at Iron Fist in the Defenders itself.  Most come from Stick, a character that trained Daredevil and is affiliated with the same cause as Iron Fist.  Stick refers to Danny Rand as a "thundering dumb-ass" and "the dumbest Iron Fist" ever.  It works in the show, but I also have to wonder if this isn't something of a reaction to the Iron Fist series which didn't produce the hero Marvel fans had come to expect.

As such, the team was strong, but not strong enough.  Luke Cage was the strong man for the team, with Iron Fist refusing to work and Daredevil refusing to provide information.  Jessica Jones was in, initially tangentially, but was willing to see the story out.  There were good team moments, but it never felt like a team.

That may be in keeping with the non-team feel of contemporary comics.  But it doesn't make for compelling watching in that when it ends, it feels like the team has ended as well - ironically with the episode that is titled "The Defenders."  While the Avengers ends with something of a disbanding, the following movies indicate that the team continues, even if the original members aren't going to always be there.

I am still happy to see the comic book characters I grew up with hitting the screen, big or small.  The writing and acting has been, for the most part, strong, but The Defenders could have been more.  That may be because the individuals who Marvel chose for this iteration didn't have the strong narratives they needed to go into the series.  It was still enjoyable.  But think about this:  the original Defenders were Sub-Mariner (not an A list hero, but no slouch), Dr. Strange, and the Hulk.

That would have been an interesting show!