Marvel's The Defenders

I have obviously come late to this one-off Marvel series combining its four then-active solo heroes in one big arcing storyline. Moreover I haven't yet watched the Luke Cage or Iron Fist series so these characters, back stories and supporting characters weren't known to me apart from remembering Luke Cage as a brief boyfriend of Jessica Jones series 1. I have however watched all three series each of Daredevil and Jessica Jones and was attracted by this mega-crossover to see how these very individual characters could possibly be combined.

After watching all 8 episodes I'm bound to say it was all done well. My two pre-watched faves combined well, Matt Murdock's passion for his city of New York and ever-present humanity contrasted well with JJ's cynicism and selfishness. The Iron Fist character escaped me a little but I enjoyed getting better acquainted with Luke Cage after he left JJ series one early for his own show.

The story involving an unholy alliance between the five leaders of the worldwide crime syndicate The Hand, yes they are known as the fingers, to capture Iron Fist and use his power to access some kind of resurrection substance for their own nefarious ends was incidental, I found, to the interplay among the four reluctant heroes and by extension their group of friends and contacts. Sure there were a lot of reasonably entertaining ninja-style fight scenes, too many of them though enacted in the dark, but like any crossover, the fun for we comic-lovers is in seeing, for example, Cage and Iron Fist start to bond after initially knocking heads together, Jones pricking Murdock's "Protect my city" seriousness with acerbic one liners ("Love the ears!" she asides to Daredevil, the only one of them to go full super-hero and don a costume, "They're horns" he peevishly counters) plus it was just cool to see all their significant others hanging out too, as ever on the sidelines.

The big story, which principally revolved around a super-weapon known as The Black Sky, which turns out to be someone close to Matt, had enough twists and turns about it to keep me interested but it was incidental to just seeing the fab four gradually cohere into something capable of winning their fight to protect the Big Apple once again. Sigourney Weaver was the big surprise guest star as the head, or maybe that should be index-finger of The Hand and I also enjoyed seeing the return of the mystical Stick too.

Shorter than the usual 13-part series of the individual shows and noticeably less heavy on the psychology as the action-ante was exponentially increased, this for me was an enjoyable detour from the sometimes drawn-out problems of the individual heroes and probably will lead me too back to the series I've missed on Luke Cage and Iron Fist.

As a huge fan of Marvel I'm a little biased because I pretty much like everything they put out. My bias aside, The Defenders is a pretty good show. If you don't believe me just read through the reviews here and look at the ratings. Even the critics loved this show. It's definitely not as good as the characters original shows but it's still worth watching. This wanted to be like Avengers where they take a bunch of Superheroes from their core shows/movies and bring them all together for one amazing team up. This is not the Avengers. All four of these heroes (Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Iron Fist) are used to working as individuals but quickly realize that won't work this time and have to have to come together and team up to save New York City. The show starts a little slow but after the four heroes finally come together the show finally picks up and becomes a lot of fun. It blends the best of the four shows into one and makes it pretty enjoyable. This is a must watch for any fan of the MCU.

The fruits of Netflix's four Marvel series' come together quite nicely in this fun, playful team-up series that takes the Defenders name and makes a pretty engaging team out of it. It's a bit daft sometimes, particularly with the whole Elektra revivification arc, but it's enjoyable seeing the various heroes interact and the 8 episodes give it a lean structure and a nice pace. It does a decent job redeeming Iron Fist after his underwhelming first season. He's more likable and exciting here. Gives me hope that his second season might be worth watching.

While not as good as the original shows, The Defenders is still a pretty good superhero show that brings all of the Netflix Marvel heroes together in one show (except The Punisher). I have to admit that it wasn't as good as I hoped for a crossover, because most of the original shows were so amazing, but it's still a pretty good show that's absolutely worth watching!

It's unfortunate that most people who go through the trouble of writing IMDb reviews are pretentious, pompous, and hopelessly opinionated. As an effort to offset their negativity and wannabe film buff nonsense, I thought I'd chip in. I took some film classes in college, so I'm not totally ignorant when it comes to filmmaking, but I'm by no means an expert. I'll skip my criticisms altogether and just say that it's not a perfect show. Having said that, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was engaging, suspenseful and fun. The music, setting, acting, cinematography, etc was all pretty solid. It's a superhero show, folks...no one should expect something that rises to the level of 'high art.' There have been only 2 exceptions to that rule that I can think of: the dark knight and legion. Go into this expecting to redefine your view of the universe, and you'll undoubtedly be disappointed. Go into it expecting to be ENTERTAINED and not much else and you should be happy. Also, if you're the type that enjoys poking holes in plots and spotting every error possible, you might have issues....but really, people....it's NOT BASED ON A TRUE STORY. Fiction and especially comic books have the luxury of telling stories unencumbered by facts. They're more like modern day Aesop's fables (which have many plot points that don't make sense btw).

Enjoy it for what it is: Good entertainment.