They Came Together

And here is where the NetflixOriginally started as a disc-by-mail service, Netflix has grown to be one of the largest media companies in the world (and one of the most valued internet companies as well). With a constant slate of new internet streaming-based programming that updates all the time, Netflix has redefined what it means to watch TV and films (as well as how to do it). Marvel franchise all fell apart. In theory a television version of the Marvel Cinematic UniverseWhen it first began in 2008 with a little film called Iron Man no one suspected the empire that would follow. Superhero movies in the past, especially those not featuring either Batman or Superman, were usually terrible. And yet, Iron Man would lead to a long series of successful films, launching the most successful cinema brand in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe. formula makes sense. You introduce a group of heroes, give them their own adventures while teasing small crossovers and connected events, all while establishing a villain that they all need to fight against, and then you smash everything together in a single, unified project that plays to all their strengths. It’s so simple that it’s amazing no one was able to pull it off before Marvel and their cinematic universe.

But just because an idea is workable in theory, that doesn’t mean it’ll actually work in practice, as The Defenders illustrates. There are a number of flaws in the plan that only become obvious once you get into the grand crossover event and realize how poorly it holds together. What should have been The Avengers for the television division fell apart because Marvel Television was working on a concept without actually realizing how that concept couldn’t work. But I guess once the train was rolling, there really wasn’t a way for them to stop it from crashing.

Even before we got into the event itself there were already signs it wasn’t going to work. Of the five projects that preceded The Defenders – Daredevil: Season 1, Jessica Jones: Season 1, Daredevil: Season 2, Luke Cage: Season 1, and Iron Fist: Season 1 – only two and a half were really successes. The first seasons of Daredevil and Jessica Jones were brilliant and even a decade later they’re still really watchable pieces of television, start to finish. But Daredevil’s second season is only really half of a good show (the half about The PunisherAn anti-hero who was never meant to be a hero in the same way as the Avengers, the Punisher has taken on his own life in pop-culture, but that doesn't change the troubling qualities to his characterization.), while the larger story it sets up about The Hand really doesn’t work. Luke Cage loses steam half way into its first season, and Iron Fist is a complete dud… while also, once again, setting up a boring story about The Hand.

Is it any surprise, then, that once we get into The Defenders itself, with yet another story about The Hand, any sense of momentum was lost? The three seasons leading into this didn’t work, and the villain at the center of it all was a barely sketched collection of ideas that had, functionally, already been defeated twice before (in Daredevil and Iron Fist). This wasn’t a story that felt necessary or immediate, especially not to all the heroes involved in this piece. It was a train wreck waiting to happen.

Although for one episode it almost feels like it could work. The very first episode slowly introduces the heroes, letting us know where each of them is. Matt Murdock is working as a pro bono lawyer helping the poor and unfortunate while avoiding putting on his mask at all costs. Jessica is trying as hard as he can to avoid work while she drinks herself into a stupor. Luke gets out of prison and just wants to go back home to Harlem to enjoy his life. The only one actually fighting on the streets is Danny Rand, who is continuing to track down The Hand after they attacked Kunlun and killed the warriors there.

The four heroes end up joining together, though, after an earthquake causes chaos in New York. Each of them, following their own evidence, ends up at an office building in the center of New York where, as we learn, The Hand are operating. They’ve built their headquarters over the massive hole that Matt found (over in Daredevil’s second season), and they’ve been busy, continuing to dig for something. The heroes aren’t sure what, but what is clear is that The Hand needs Danny (specifically, his iron fist). And if they get what they want, well, all hell will break loose. Or New York will rot from the inside and die. Or something. Honestly, nothing about their plan is especially clear.

A lack of clarity is a major issue with The Hand, and it’s a big factor into why this mini-series doesn’t work. What we’ve seen from them before is that they’re an organization of highly-skilled and well-trained ninjas who work like a criminal syndicate, running drugs (and other things) worldwide as they build their empire. We’ve seen two of the fingers of The Hand, Madam Gau and Bakuto, and each has come up against one of the heroes and lost. But beyond that, little is known about this shadowy organization. They’re like the League of Assassins, but somehow both more evil and less interesting.

To fix that, this series introduces Alexandra, played by Sigourney Weaver, who is the leader of The Hand. A centuries old traveler, she’s been everywhere and seen it all, thanks to a kind of immortality she and the other fingers of The Hand gained when they all trained at Kunlun. However, they went rogue, under her guidance, and moved off to create their own organization. An evil one, apparently, although there’s no explanation for why they went evil. They disagreed with how Kunlun did things so that automatically makes them heroin dealers? That part is really unclear.

Also unclear is how a white woman ended up at Kunlun for training. This is a secret temple hidden in the Himalayas, far from civilization. How a single white lady, presumably of European heritage, somehow learned of Kunliun, made it out there, and was accepted for training as a kung fu monk (let alone then went on to lead the group of renegades) is also not shown. We’re told it happened, but it’s never illustrated for it, so it all rings hollow and false. Not unlike Weaver’s performance here, which feels incredibly phoned in. It’s clear she couldn’t invest in her character, because there’s barely any character here to invest in.

And their whole plan is basically to dig down under New York where an ancient tomb of dragons (spoilers for a nine year old crossover even no one cares about now) is buried, all so they can dig up the bones and distill them, somehow, into their immortality fluid. Again, what is going on here is both poorly defined and really stupid. Nothing we’re shown about The Hand in this mini-series lines up with what we saw from them before, and it certainly doesn’t align with what we’ve been told in the past. What we have is a story that’s actively making it up as it goes along, no matter how it aligns with the television continuity, all to tell a meaningless story that doesn’t connect with the heroes at all.

Because, to be clear, only two of these heroes are even knowledgeable about The Hand. Both Matt and Danny faced off against them before, but Jessica and Luke have been off in their own stories, totally disconnected from the overarching storyline. Pulling them into this story makes as much sense as doing a crossover for these four heroes and having them fight The Hand. It doesn’t work at a fundamental level, in large part because the mini-series has to go out of its way to justify why Jessica or Luke would even care about the shit going on. It would have made more sense if, say, Luke and Danny had starred in a crossover together first (as they famously did for years in comics, Heroes for Hire) before this mini-series. Then Luke would feel connected to Danny, and when Danny has to go off to fight The Hand, Luke would naturally follow his friend. Maybe that’s how you get Jessica in as well, but she’s still a poor fit for this either way.

We also have the fundamental issue that these four heroes aren’t really that different. Sure, personality wise Jessica and Matt are pretty different, as are Luke and Danny, but all four are functionally all hitters. Luke is invulnerable, and he punches people. Jessica is really strong, and she punches people. Danny has an iron fist which, yes, he uses to punch people. And Matt goes around in costume and punches people. There’s a distinct lack of variety here, which leads to a ton of very boring action sequences where all the heroes are (interchangeably) running around and hitting people. In comparison to The Avengers, where each hero had their own powers and things they were good at, there’s nothing here that really differentiates each character.

There are certainly ways the series could have built itself to rely on the strengths of the characters. Jessica has her private eye instincts, and she’s really good at research, so she could have been the one to dig up the mystery at the heart of this all and discover (for the team, not just for herself) where The Hand was operating. Danny has mystical knowledge, so when questions about what The Hand wanted, he could have been the guy to figure that out. Matt could have been on the front lines, both as their lawyer and as their team captain (kind of like how Captain America was in The Avengers). And Luke is the heavy, so you throw him in to really use his powers and take the damage.

But that’s not what the series did. Instead it treated the heroes like four entities, bickering and arguing and spending way too long discussing things instead of actually doing their jobs. The mini-series is only eight episodes long but it feels like an interminable amount of time. There’s enough story here to fill, maybe, a two-hour movie, and even that is being kind. The efficiency of the storytelling that Joss WhedonOnce considered a great Hollywood writer/director who also had the "feminist" bona fides, in recent years Whedon's star has faded as reports of his on-set behavior has tainted his entire catalog of hits. (much as we all hate him now) brought to The Avengers is missing here as showrunners Douglas Petrie and Marco Ramirez simply didn’t know how to make the story work within the time and space that was given to them.

What works in this mini-series is what worked over in the other Netflix shows: the main cast, with their strong performances and lived-in character work. But that’s not enough to save a mini-series that actively doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing. The Defenders should have been the culmination of Netflix’s superhero storytelling ambitions… and in a way it was. It perfectly illustrated why this crossover was a bad idea and should have been taken back to the drawing board before it saw the light of day. Instead we ended up with this mess. After, Netflix slowly, worked on extracting themselves from their contracts, wrapping up production on the shows they’d bought before letting everything fade away.