Netflix
and Marvel have collaborated on four comics-based television series
over the last few years, and while they share a setting (New York) and a
few overlapping characters, they’re pretty distinct. You wouldn’t
confuse “Jessica Jones” with “Iron Fist” or “Daredevil” with “Luke
Cage.”
Now there’s a fifth show, “Marvel’s The Defenders,”
available Friday on Netflix, that brings the four heroes together to
form a superpowered crime-fighting team. Marvel has done this before,
combining characters to assemble the blockbuster Avengers movies.
But
the challenge for the showrunners Douglas Petrie and Marco Ramirez (who
were in charge of Season 2 of “Daredevil”) is a little different.
Coming hot on the heels of the individual shows, each of which has
already devoted 13 to 26 hours to its story, they’re not just juggling
personalities and plot points. They’re also trying to mesh four
different tones, styles, rhythms, color palettes, music philosophies and
acting styles.
Through
four of the eight episodes, they do an impressive job on that score.
Without feeling like a paint-by-numbers kit, “Defenders” maintains the
essence of the misanthropic private eye, Jones; the haunted blind vigilante, Daredevil; the bulletproof Harlem mensch, Cage; and the hippy-dippy martial artist, Iron Fist.
It’s even deftly faithful to the original shows’ looks, going blue and
steely when the action centers on Jones, white and misty for Iron Fist.
But
the professionalism — and have no doubt, “Defenders” is very well put
together — comes with some costs. One is the standard problem for this
kind of assemblage: the need to give everyone equal screen time, and the
exposition required to make sense of their getting together, means less
of the things we come to comic-book stories for. There’s a lot of
getting-to-know-you and here’s-what-we’re-doing talk in the early
episodes, and not a lot of action or emotion.
That
story picks up shortly after the time frames of each of the antecedent
series, with Jones (Krysten Ritter) and Daredevil (Charlie Cox) licking
their wounds after deadly battles, Cage (Mike Colter) newly released
from prison and Iron Fist (Finn Jones) traveling the world seeking
revenge. Seemingly unconnected events — a new case for Jones, a Harlem
crime wave, an earthquake centered in Daredevil’s Hell’s Kitchen
neighborhood — are all connected to the Hand, drawing the four together.
None
of it seems very urgent, though. It would help if the series had a
better villain. The nebulous, largely faceless (ninja robes, after all)
forces of the Hand were a drag in “Daredevil” and “Iron Fist,” and even
with the addition of Sigourney Weaver as their leader, they’re pretty
dull here, too. The best Marvel-Netflix seasons have benefited from
larger-than-life bad guys: Vincent D’Onofrio’s raging Kingpin in Season
One of “Daredevil” and especially David Tennant’s icy psycho, Kilgrave,
in “Jessica Jones.”
“Jones,”
the best of the Marvel-Netflix bunch, offers Ms. Ritter’s barbed but
compassionate portrayal, and “Defenders” perks up whenever she’s on
screen. (In fairness to Mr. Colter, Mr. Cox and Mr. Jones, they have to
do a disproportionate amount of the obligatory arguing and explaining.)
The show also comes alive when Scott Glenn shows up as the no-nonsense
sensei, Stick.
There’s
nothing terribly wrong with “Marvel’s The Defenders,” but there may not
be enough right about it to make it worth the time of anyone but the
completist. By the end of the year, there are set to be 11 live-action
Marvel shows spread across five TV networks and streaming services. You
can afford to be choosy.
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