-- DISCLAIMER: THIS BELOW IS ENTIRELY MY PERSONAL OPINION, YOU MIGHT NOT AGREE WITH IT --
So "The Defenders" is out, or how I like to call them "Heroes for Hire" (Whatever happened to that anyways?)
The Defenders, is the endpoint of each and every single one of the stories we've seen so far in the Netflix MCU.
It puts closure on all of the characters, not indefinite, but closure of what we've seen of them so far.
Because of this, I was not going in with high expectations, and thankfully in doing so, I didn't leave entirely disappointed.
Here's the catch tho,
I believe we can all agree that - this - is Marvel trying a more "serious", a more "adult" way for their MCU.
We can all agree that we cannot expect a Netflix series on Daredevil, JJ or even the others to be action-packed, mindless punching, d!ck hard-straightfoward-nofucksgiven-whatdoesthepoliceevendoanyways as much as we're accustomed to see on the big screen with The Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy.
But let me tell you this:
There is a point - in time - where a man (or a woman) has this "we're the police let us do our job" - "you gonna end up in jail" - "You shouldn't do this, that" kind of bullshit talk so far up his butt, that it is impossible not to hate it.
The extent of milking out minutes and minutes, adding absolutely nothing valuable to the story is REALLY starting to annoy me very much. It was very light in Daredevil, it started showing in Jessica Jones and from Luke Cage it really went downhill. There's a whole new way of talking around, and around, and around pointlessly in these last shows that is really tiresome.
I'm talking about the side characters pointing out the same things, over and over and over and over, one time after one time after one time after one time.
"We are the police we can help you"
"Let us help you, you can't do it alone"
"You're gonna get in trouble"
"You're gonna go to jail"
Listen, screenwriters: shut the fuck up! They gonna do whatever the fuck they want anyways. We know it, you know it. And it showed.
I believe we can all agree (or at least try to) that Marvel won't ever (hopefully not) come up with something so profound, so intense, so serious (Maybe like we've partially witnessed with Logan) because they are too focussed on cliches, too focussed on this bullshit way of having to show how rebelious their characters are, and never focussed on the actual emotions and portraying them or conveying them to the people. I don't necessarily believe they should, that they are trying to do this, but at least... cut the bullshit a little, huh?
And I'm not adding more to that statement.
Alright, since that's out of my system, let's talk everything else.
The baseline of the show and the story aren't that bad. I like that finally we get to see the Hand entirely, for what they are and who they are without the mist of bullshit that we ingested the past shows. The action "side" of "things" isn't quite as horrible as we witnessed in Iron Fist, so that's a huge pro.
The fighting coreographies weren't really that stale, let's be honest: who doesn't enjoy watching JJ or Luke simply lifting goons, or watching Daredevil jump around and that fucking metal batoon hit sound, ohhh so good...
But then... here comes THE LIVING WEAPON. HURRAAAY!
No. Definitely no hurrays for him.
Let me tell you this, chaps, and I won't put spoiler marks on this part because there's nothing new to this:
Danny Rand - did not - evolve from his standalone show, his character depth and importance is just words in the wind, his appeal is just as strong as watching a golden retriever with his face out the car window and his dribble splattered all over.
He's A FUCKING NOOB, and yes, I did scream that out loud, a few times. (Same goes for his girlfriend).
Someone needs to explain to me why Danny got a scar on his chest tattoo in the first episode and then it disappears for the rest of the season.
Plus, someone needs to explain to me if elektra can punch JJ and Luke so hard that it makes them shake a little bit, why doesn't she destroy Daredevil or Iron Fist with the same punch? How can they sustain a damage that can make Luke Cage feel pain?
And that's really most of what's wrong with this show.
Believe me tho, once you see it, you'll understand why I can get so upset.
What more could be said?
Music was good, I enojyed the few pieces, they were well placed.
The colors are always fucking cold and stale, the light almost always dark.
Sigourney Weaver is a great actress portraying a terrible, empty character, but ehhh, whatever.
It is definitely worth watching if you liked Daredevil and Jessica Jones. I could bare Luke Cage more here, he was kind of different, in a good way.
You know what's missing from this show?
A FUCKING GOOD ASS VILLAIN. BRING ME FUCKING KINGPIN.
Jesus christ I fucking hate Danny Rand and his stupid fisting duracell fetish.
I started to watch this a few weeks ago as the "next" big project to watch after finishing X-Files that I never fully watched as I was a bit too young when it originally aired and only seen a few episodes in the later seasons.
I must say this has some resemblance to the X-Files but only in terms of the "monster of the week" episodes. I like that.
But this show lacks the ingenuity that X-Files has with the most of the time incredibly great scripts and the overall fantastic cast.
Nick, the Grimm (David Giuntoli) is a terrible, terrible miscast. I have watched the first two seasons now and I still really dislike that guy and still think another person would have been better for this role. So far, the show is greatly carried by Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell), Rosalee (Bree Turner) and Captain Renard (Sasha Roiz).
It is said that the Grimm has some "powers" that make him who he is, additionally he is a Detective, making him, generally, somewhat smart figuring stuff out to solve cases. But when it is about Grimm stuff, he is stupid as f*ck for plot reasons only, even if they are obvious.
There's also this gimmick of his phone ringing, interrupting whatever he is just doing. This is probably the most annoying thing in this whole show, starting to seriously piss me off. This show pushes this really, really hard to a point, where you start to anticipate it in any kind of precarious situation that would solve plots right there if it wouldn't ring and in 9 out of 10 cases (felt) it does ring..
Just as unlikable as David is, so is Russell Hornsby (Hank) overstrained as an actor with his role as it seems. He is such a sterile cardboard character that I wouldn't mind if he gets killed off as cannonfodder at some point, there's no (believable) depth to his character at all.
The Juliette arc was awful as well, it held the complete show back in terms of progressing deeper into the Grimm story. The time that is put in here could have been better used when cut in third, the rest of the time put into more monster of the week episodes or to flesh out Hank's backstory.
The Juliette arc and Hank's arc to get to know the Grimm world were both overly dramatic and as I said for Juliette's part too much.
If you'd see someone change his appearance before your eyes after you shot him, you wouldn't go insane, you'd try hard to rationalize what you've seen. You'd think you're overworked, or tired. That the scenery played tricks on your eye or something. You might be shocked, at least for the moment, but you wouldn't start to become whiny as Hank did.
As a German the pronounciation of all the words could be improved immensely. I have to watch some episodes in German to see how they translate it or deal with it in general.
Can't be good, synchronization is terrible most of the time, the German voice of Rajesh ("The Indian Guy") from the Big Bang Theory is (yet?) borderline racist.
Some of the words seem to be very, very literal translations, like Glühenwolk[e]. "Glowing cloud", I assume, Glühen = Glowing, Wolke = Cloud but Glühenwolk[e] makes no sense, that's not proper German, correct would be "glühende Wolke". Glühenwolk[e] is like saying "glow cloud". They did this a couple of times with names.
There also seems to be only a single person on this show who tries to pronounce the German as correctly as possible most of the times: Monroe.
When he says more than a single word, he really tries and it shows - and pays off. He does a good job here.
Really lazy and almost bored seems David by doing so. He lacks passion in his job, he is so not trying because he doesn't care. As I said, miscast person.
There are some pet peeves that I have, aside some forgivable grammatical errors, though:
The pronounciation of Löwe or plural Löwen as it is used here. It is spelled like "lawn" just with an o as in "lown". Couldn't be more wrong. It's better to say "lowe" like "lo" and "we" as in whe[re].
Another word is Wesen, all creatures who are able to "vogue" or "woga", some word I can't identify. Wesen means creature or better: being. They say it like "Vessin".
And of course this woga thing. Still trying to figure out what they say here. There are probably more that annoy me but these three come to mind first.
You would assume they'd hire someone who speaks proper German for a show where German is such a centric part. But they apparently didn't, or took someone who had a German course in college but didn't do anything there.
That is somewhat disappointing.
Overall, this show has mixed qualities. Episodes are a complete up and down from week to week, depending on what the topic is but are usually - when good - only okayish, never really outstanding. There's no brilliance in this but it is able to entertain you, especially when Monroe and Rosalee have a good portion of appearance in the episodes.
