Yahoo News The Defenders review: Lighten up, guys
Although they take place in the same fictional universe, there's always been a seismic mismatch, tonally speaking, between the scrappy, street-level drama of Netflix's Marvel shows and the glossed up super-heroics of the MCU.
Apart from a few oblique references to the NYC-flattening events of The Avengers, the big-screen movies have been the elephant in the room of the Netflix shows since Daredevil kicked off this telly universe in April 2015.
That's not really been much of a problem until now. It was always easy to see why Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist were taking on their human (and mortal) adversaries on their tod, without needing to speed-dial the Avengers.
But with New York City being subjected to a Hand-inflicted earthquake (as it is at the end of The Defenders' first episode), this series, far more than the others, begs the question, "Where are the other lot?"
Showrunners Douglas Petrie and Marco Ramirez have spoken a lot about the "easy comparisons" between The Defenders and Marvel's other, more famous superteam. But that was always going to be the case, so maybe it would have been savvier of them to take charge of that.
We've only seen the first four episodes of this madly-anticipated hook-up, but so far there's been no mention of the A-word. When our four street-level heroes sit down together in a Chinese restaurant at the start of episode four and talk gingerly about teaming up, no-one says, "Hold on, couldn't we just call the Avengers?"
It's been a rough road from that first Daredevil series in 2015 to this. We've had the highs (the first seasons of Daredevil and Jessica Jones), the stumbles (Luke Cage's mid-season Big Bad switcheroo) and the lows (every single interminable minute of Iron Fist).
And while The Defenders doesn't quite match the punch-the-sky brilliance of that inaugural Daredevil season, it's far from being an Iron Fist-style calamity.
The Defenders' chief strength is that it's telling its story in just eight episodes, as opposed to the other series' 13. Lumpish pace and thin plotting has blighted other Marvel Netflix shows, and while this one isn't exactly breakneck (it still has the steady, unhurried canter of a cable drama), it only takes three episodes for our heroes to... erm... assemble.
For much of those first three hours, The Defenders feels like it's stitched together using scenes from each of the four series. There's Matt Murdock in court, wowing a jury with his ace legal mind, there's Jessica Jones on the 'tec trail, and there's Luke Cage strutting down the streets of Harlem, soundtracked, Baby Driver-like, by a steady shower of creamy soul and thumping hip-hop. Of course, that leaves Iron Fist, whose presence here is the big dropped stitch of the entire series.
In spite of the brickbats lobbed at his solo venture, there doesn't seem to have been much effort to make Danny Rand any more likeable or less preposterous. Not only is Iron Fist the dullest superhero of the lot (what's the use of an iron fist when one of the other three has an iron body?), but he's saddled with some knuckle-chewingly bad dialogue.
With lines like, "I'm the immortal Iron Fist, sworn protector of K'un Lun", the series is hungry for a Tony Stark-type figure to puncture the pomposity, but there's no-one, bar Jessica Jones maybe, that's playful enough to do it.
Trouble is, the Defenders are a pretty colourless, stodgy combo, and when you see this nascent supergroup sat round eating chicken fried rice and shrimp foo yung, it's a far cry from the sugar rush of seeing the Avengers butting egos on board the Helicarrier. We've spent two-and-a-bit years readying ourselves for this moment, but the reality of The Defenders is that, boiled down, it's just four people in suits, a leather jacket and a hoodie.
Pretty much everyone who's ever appeared as a regular in any of these shows (I would say bar the dead ones, except that one deceased character does make a welcome appearance, albeit in not quite the way you remember her) pops up, including Daredevil's Foggy and Karen, Jessica Jones' Jeri Hogarth and Trish Walker, Iron Fist's Colleen Wing and Luke Cage's Misty Knight.
But most of these, so far, have been kept on the peripheries, leaving ample stage room for the series' main attraction, Sigourney Weaver, who stars here as the apparently ageless Alexandra, a chilly-hearted New York businesswoman who, it appears, is also the Hand's head honcho.
Weaver does her best here, but it's an identikit role – another sharp-suited tycoon with a lust for world domination. Weaver may be a starrier name, but she doesn't have half the dramatic clout of Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk or Mahershala Ali's Cottonmouth. But, of course, we've only seen the first four episodes, and bearing in mind Marvel's habit of doing a mid-season swerve (i.e. introducing the Hand in Daredevil season 2, and Diamondback in Luke Cage), we're not writing the character off just yet.
There's a lot to like here. The brawl scenes are happily more Daredevil than Iron Fist, while the Hand have been made a much scarier and deadlier threat since first being introduced. And there's always joy to be had in hearing Jessica Jones' waspish putdowns, especially given how buttoned-up everyone else here is.
What they, and the series, needs to do is to loosen up a bit. It needn't go full Joss Whedon, but The Defenders needs to know it's not The Wire – it's a superhero team-up series, and it needn't feel shy about that. "Don't say the H word!" Jessica says at one point, while Luke Cage tells somebody else, "Hero's your word, not mine."
The Defenders is a series that appears so ashamed of its comic book roots that it's forgotten to be fun. What felt tonally fresh two years ago is becoming a stylistic straitjacket now. Maybe it's time for the super-sober small-screen Marvel to borrow some of the lightness of touch of its big-screen siblings. After sticking with this universe for 65 episodes, we could do with a smile.
All 8 episodes of The Defenders will be available to stream exclusively on Netflix from Friday (August 18).
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