I'm late to the Marvel Netflix party, and right now I still haven't watched most of it. But I enjoyed The Defenders miniseries which seems to be uncommon.
Most of the criticisms of it I've seen so far are levied mainly at The Hand being allegedly weak antagonists. I already made one blog post on why I am okay with Superhero stories where the villains are weak.
And frankly the kind where I least care about the villains are the big team up stories, or at least the first time a Superhero team of people who also have their own solos adventures team up. In fact in something that's film length, 2-3 hours instead of 8, I'd potentially consider it an impediment for the villains to take too much attention. Loki in Avengers worked because he was Thor's family so he brought more to Thor's character then antagonism.
The point of these stories is seeing these characters people already like on their own come together and play off each other. For reasons I can't explain I'm vaguely watching these Netflix shows out of order, I went into this having seen the first 2 seasons of Daredevil and 2 episodes of Jessica Jones. In that context it perhaps worked for me that they took their time assembling them, this wasn't Nick Fury premeditating forming this years in advance. So I got a sampling of how the ones I wasn't already following tend to look on their own. My main point is, what I watch a team up for this provided, I found all their chemistry fun even though I wasn't a fan of most of them going in.
That said, a lot of the complaints about The Hand I don't get. I mean I am uncomfortable with how Yellow Peril they come off, especially on Daredevil, but that's not even the focus of the Patrick Willems or Nando v Movies video essays on the subject.
They are indeed not motivated by an ideology strictly speaking. But the confusion these critics express regarding what they are driven by I simply don't get. It's about a group of villain who want to live forever and have been prolonging their lives, and lately they've been acting more desperate because they need to replenish how they've been doing it. I've gotten quite used to antagonists like that from all the Anime I've watched, but I suppose it's a theme the West isn't generally used to.
Sigourney Weaver's character was humanized in a way I feel works just as well as what everyone praised about Wilson Fisk. They are far from my favorite shadowy secret society, but they did what they needed to do for this show just fine.
On a related note Daredevil season 2 is sometimes considered not as good as season 1. I think a lot of the complaint there is how the Hand and Punisher storylines are so unrelated. I have criticized TV shows for having different storylines that are too unconnected to each other, True Blood starting in season 3, Game of Thrones, and more recently Gotham. But in Daredevil season 2 they are connected by that Matt Murdoch is involved in both stories. And maybe Superhero stories should do that more often, show that there is no guarantee you'll only have to deal with one Supervillain at a time. And for the middle act of the season it's largely Punisher is Murdoch the Lawyer's job and The Hand is Daredevil's problem, so their being otherwise unrelated is where the double life drama comes from.
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