Seeing it just after, I can't help comparing it with Iron Fist.
Iron Fist was cheap but fun. Can't say any effort was put in any particular aspect. Story, acting, visuals, nothing stands out, nothing is really good. Nobody will praise it for its artistic or intrinsic quality. Yet it's fun and the watching pass by pretty fast.
On the other hand, Luke Cage is shit in very expensive make up. A lot of work has been put into it. Clearly. And yet watching it "please god let it end" is what goes through your mind most of the time.
The visual, the atmosphere, the soundtrack, you can really see and feel the effort to create something here. There is a real style and identity. Not really one I particularly enjoyed (jazzy's not my sound, yellow's not my color), but can't help but have respect for that.
However it was a little, I don't know, out of place ? It actually did not fit with the show.
For the biggest part, the Cottonmouth arc, it is a neighbourhood gangster story. Not a Luke Cage story or even a Marvel story. It is the most cliché gangster story you can think of, everything is a total cliché. The setup, the plot, the characters.
:arrow_right: The local gangster. He hides behind a sophisticated facade, but make him angry and he can't control his rage and beat people up.
:arrow_right: The dirty politician that hides her criminal dealings behind a neighbourhood spirit front.
:arrow_right: The OG gangster that turned his life around and tries to keep the kids off the street
:arrow_right: One of said kids, that became a cop
:arrow_right: Her partner, who is dirty
Every single one of them is more cliché than the other, to a point that is barely believable. And every one of their interaction follows the exact schema you expect in a story you already saw 20 times. Luke Cage is barely an element in the story, replace him by whatever cliché protagonist you'd get in that story, guy coming back to see his young days neighbourhood has changed, maybe the father looking for vengeance for his daughter, and you get the exact same story.
Again not saying it's badly done, it's mostly good or even top level performance for Mahershala Ali. He's really good. BUT. He is not on the Luke Cage set. He's playing in his own unrelated gangsta movie. And despite the performance, everything is so cliché and expected that it's rapidly boring as fuck.
On the other side of actor's performance spectrum is Mike Colter. He looks the part. He has a great back to stop bullets. And that's it. Anything that requires a little bit of acting, he sucks. It can mostly pass as being a stoic guy, so it's actually not an issue most of the time. But there are a few times where it is painful.
Meeting one of his idol in a shop ? Would have been a fun cameo scene, but can't sell it.
His whole life turned upside down when he learns that Stryker is his brother or that Reva has been working on the experiments all along ? Barely registers.
The flirting, first with Misty then Claire ? Makes for a passable awkward one night stand flirting, but who could ever buy that as romance ?
And what's worse ? The second arc is actually a real Luke Cage story instead of a copy paste gangsta movie, and boy does it turn bad as soon as they don't copy an existing story.
Diamondback might be one of the worst villain ever.50% corny lines, 50% daddy issues. He's pretty pathetic and uninteresting, certainly a downgrade from Cottonmouth,while not being that much of an upgrade in a fight against Luke.
The problem with Luke is that he has three moves and that's it. Just grab a guy and throw it. Turn his back to stop bullets. And make a ball out of guns. So you hit a limitation in action scenes pretty quick. He seems to have trained in boxing as a kid. You definitely don't see that in his fighting technique. Combined with that the difficulty of finding an antagonist that can actually hurt him.
You get three choices.
1⃣: something more fantastic than these Netflix shows allow.
2⃣: make him fight while full of kryptonite shrapnels. It's done, this plotline is passable but still full of holes
3⃣: give the baddie a supersuit. Done also, it's pathetic. I mean, the final fight needs sitcom like crowd shouts to be watchable
On the good points ?
Claire. She's not as fun as in Iron FIst, and totally sucks, by no fault of her own, as a love interest, but still.
Shades. By far the best character that appears to be a part of this show (unlike Cottonmouth).I liked almost
every single one of his interventions (not the prison part, but that actually shows the character's growth. Great that he stays for season two, certainly more interesting than Mariah. Though we're still missing someone to fight Luke.. I'm still not sure if I genuinely enjoyed this character or if it was the lack of competition that made him shine.
Wu Tang's Method Man's "Bulletproof love" rap is the best moment of the season. But here I know that it's by lack of competition.
This takes Nolan's Batman style to the next level, I love the cinematography and how they capture the grit of Hell's Kitchen in this show, especially during the scenes that take place at night.
I'm also seeing a lot of influence from Breaking Bad in how they handle Fisk's crime organization.
Whenever there's action on the screen, it's absolutely phenomenal. The choreography and camerawork easily beat every other tv show, and most films as well.
The characters are all very strong and interesting (Foggy was a bit hit and miss for me in the early episodes), and Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio give career best performances.
What D'Onofrio's doing is especially bold: every scene he's in he's about to cross the line of going into campy territory, but he never does, and it's amazing to watch.
The plot is also very strong: you could take the superhero aspect out of this show and you'll still be left with a very decent legal drama. It's constructed in a very smart way: you essentially have the main characters investigating a crime syndicate, and every episode they find a new character that's a little higher up in the organization, until they eventually get to the final boss. It's a great format for serialized storytelling, and we've also seen it work before in the earlier seasons of Arrow.
Judging it as a whole, it does feel a little stretched out though.
It loses a bit of steam and focus in the middle, often going into side stories that aren't all that important for the main plot, or giving the main characters more development.
This would've probably been perfect if it was just 10 episodes, which would've made the pacing a little tighter and given each episode a little more action.
8/10
Such an amazing season of television. The cinematography was impeccable, I loved the fighting choreography and the visual storytelling which defined this show, particularly Fisk and the white wall, and Matt and boxing. The storytelling was great two, I loved watching Matt, Nelson and Karen edge closer and closer to unraveling the criminal doings of Wilson Fisk, as the learned more about more about the crime syndicates of Hell's Kitchen. The characters, besides Karen, were amazing too. I loved watching Matt/Daredevil's inner-struggle about the kind of man he is and will become as he continues on this path of vigilantism. And man, Wilson Fisk was one terrifying villain throughout the show, a calm composed man who has full control over everything and everyone, yet will become emotional and erratic over the people he loves, particularly his lover Vanessa. And man did the actors sell their performances, I loved seeing Vincent De'Onofrio act out this larger than life villain, and Charlie Cox perform Matt Murdock and Daredevil. And man, did I love the ideological and physical battles between the two, with both men wanting to rebuild Hell's Kitchen into a new city, and rid it of everything that's corrupt. And man, the setting felt for gritty and real, like it really was apart of New York City, and I really felt like the main cast was shaped by their upbringing in said environment.
