This is good to hear. I finished The Defenders up a few days ago and am about to start on The Punisher. Even as an unabashed Marvel fanboy that owns all eleventy billion MCU movies, I too am getting tired of seeing The Hand as the villain group in the Netflix shows. I will admit that it was pretty neat to see everything come together in The Defenders, as based on all of the shows for the individual characters I had thought Madame Gao was the head of The Hand and that it didn't have several "fingers" like the Heads of HYDRA.ghostrunner wrote:Copying this over from the movies thread:
The Punisher is far and away the best of these Marvel Netflix shows. Has none of the pacing issues I mentioned above and its still 13 episodes. There's a subplot with a bombing that gets close but it still ties in thematically and mostly works. (Karen Page is a character I somehow like while recognizing she does nothing for the shows she's in.)Popeye_Card wrote:Defenders was shorter, but I was pretty meh on it. I'm pretty worn out on the Hand as the primary villain.ghostrunner wrote:It's a plot adapted from the comic books. Which doesn't mean anyone has to like it. The genre is wearing thin with me, mostly because of the formula and escalating stakes. The Netflix shows could be much better and they have their moments. They really need to trim the number of episodes down. Almost every season starts well and drags to the finish or turns absurd.
It handles PTSD issues with sensitivity and I thought it both criticized and honored the military fairly. There's some 2nd amendment commentary that feels clumsily worked in, probably because The Punisher has to shoot people with regularity and it ought to just steer clear of that topic.
I think it helps that it's the most realistic, i.e. least fantiastical or to do with superpowers. And that going in I had little interest or love for the character might have actually worked in its favor. Really it's just executed extremely well. The showrunner worked some on Hannibal, and while it's nothing like it, it's the same kind of competence and focus.
I thought I was going to hate Frank's partner in the beginning but he turned out to be an endearing character. The government agencies and officials are also refreshingly competent even though they screw up. Almost every character's actions and motivations make sense and ring true, which isn't something I can say for the other Marvel shows.
It is kinda neat seeing how Marvel has incorporated the Defenders team into the MCU, as they were always more of a street level group trying to clean up the city streets rather than being global/galactic peace-keeping units like the Avengers or Guardians are. I wish they'd put Dr. Strange back in the group though, as he spent FAR more time in the comics as a Defender than as an Avenger.
