[Aptorian]

I'm gonna try to watch through the whole thing today, since I probably wont have time tomorrow.

Just started the first episode. It opens on Iron Fist fighting some chick in the sewers. He still can't beat a single opponent in combat and he still doesn't have any awareness of his surroundings. Well, at least they're being consistent.

But then it shifted to Jessica Jones and it feels like there is still hope.

Regarding Luke Cage, my impression of the character in the show is that his strength hasn't really been tested yet. I imagine he can probably lift a car if needed.

This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 19 August 2017 - 09:30 AM

[Aptorian]

I'm watching episode 3 now. There's something that is slightly bothering me about this whole Hand thing. I know it's a silly quibble but I don't think the Hand actually makes sense in these Netflix shows.

The same problem I have with the downscaled power and skill of the superheroes applies to the hand. They're not "real" occult super ninjas. They don't turn to smoke when they die. They don't use magic. They're not particularly mystical. Oh, it's there around the edges. People returning from the dead, immortality, weird pseudo mystic body control, alchemy, etc. But it's not real spooky power.

Which leads to the question... what is the point of it all? A real shadow organisation would have evolved over time. Just like Japan replaced its Samurais with conscripted soldiers, The Hands ninjas and blades would have been replaced with elite soldiers and guns. Sure, they're very well trained, but lets be honest, dancing around and punching and kicking isn't quite as efficient as just giving your minions MP5s and having them dump a thousand rounds into the Iron Fist, Daredevil, etc.

In Marvel Comics it makes sense because the Hands footsoldiers are actually better than a guy with a gun but these shows are too realistic for it to make much difference.

This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 19 August 2017 - 11:25 AM

[Coco with marshmallows]

Finished the lot.

Great improvement over Fist (never finished it tbh)

ep 8 has a teaser for Punisher at end of credits as well.

[Aptorian]

Just finished episode 4 now. The fourth episode is much better than the first three but the writing remains aggravatng.

Spoiler

Sigourney Hand Weaver is standing right there among them. You telling me Stick wouldn't have put a blade through her while she had her back turned on him? Please. Not to mention how Rand keeps talking big about "I am the immortal bla bla my mission is to destroy yadda yadda" but for some reason every time he meets a Hand leader he just stands there looking like a lost child instead of punching a hole through them.

And then Electra walks in all scary but gets knocked down by a car. And instead of rushing over and stomping her into paste or decapitating her what ever, they all line up for a bullshit fight I know is probably going to suck anyway.

God damn the writing in this show pisses me off.

[Aptorian]

Watching episode 5

I think the director doesn't know what he is doing.

Spoiler

So you have the 5 fingers of the Hand. They're assembling for the first time in ages. The 5 characters surely will be very spooky, sinister, menacing in their mere presence. So, what does the director do? Assemble the 4 (none captured) leaders in a well lit, sterile and boring modern looking room. The 4 are just standing or sitting around, wearing normal every day clothes, talking like they barely know each other, there's barely any acting. It might as well be a line-read before the actual taping.

WTF?!

EDIT:

And then in Episode 6:

Spoiler

The head of the dead Finger has been sent to the 4 other fingers.

They're standing around and discussion their next step (of course it's again in a bright, sterile room). A servant of Segourney Hand reaches in between two of the Fingers to get the box with the severed head, pushing both, and then leaves. You're telling me these two leaders of this spooky evil cult would stand for such disrespect? This nobody would dare reach in front of them? He'd dare touch them? Any one of them should snapped his neck then and there.

But nah, they're just standing around doing their TV-villain thing.

Terrible writing. Just atrocious lack of attention to detail and lack of understanding of the universe.

This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 19 August 2017 - 06:02 PM

[Aptorian]

I'm guessing that each of the 5 actors have a contract that states they have to be paid lead actor money. Which makes it too expensive to pay them for 13 episodes.

[Coco with marshmallows]

i actually liked that it was only 8 eps - almost no secondary plots to deal with - granted it means secondary characters get limited airtime, but overall it felt about right in terms of runtime.

[Aptorian]

Finished the last episode. What a disappointing conclusion to 4 different shows and 5 seasons of storytelling.

I can't tell if The Iron Fist season soured me so much on the concept of these shows, that it retroactively made me feel like the other characters and the other seasons were actually bad or maybe the show really was that bad?

SPOILERS FOR ALL EPISODES:

Spoiler

What I could tell is that all that foreboding, all those hints, all those secret meanings came down to the equivalent of an occult bank job. All those scary Hand people we thought were working in shadows were just a handful of shallow, generic mobsters. Thinking back on how spooky that one Assassin was that Daredevil fought in season 1, you have to laugh at how ineffective and vanilla the Five Fingers turned out to be.

Nothing about that ending made sense. Where was the actual opening into Kun Lun? Were they just looking for Dragon Marrow on an ancient sea bed or what? How was this meant to get them into Kun Lun? And if the Hand did not have access to Kun Lun, then how did they (allegedly?) get into Kun Lun and kill everyone? They did do that right? Rand had visions of it, right? Did they only send in a kill team while the passage was open, with no intentions of raiding the place or what? What the fuck was "the substance"? Why would mining it out hundreds of feet below the city make New York fall? Are the Hand not aware of how strong the bedrock of New York is?

How long has Kun Lun/Iron Fists existed for them to have made that wall/gate in a place that has to be millions of years old? Why was School Master Hand Guy able to get shot and not die but Japanese talking Hand Guy and Sigourney Weaver died when they got stabbed/impaled? Why is Danny Rand so stupid? How was he the best student/warrior at this mystic temple? Did they just let him be Iron Fist because they felt bad for him? Like those stars they deal out in Special Ed? How the fuck did Daredevil make it out from there? Where is Electra?

At the end of all this I am once again struck by how bad of an actor the guy who played Daniel Rand was + How awful the dialogue he was fed was. Like oh man, how do you write a character this stupid?

Also it felt like Foggy and Karen Page were only in this show to be annoying shackles hanging around Daredevils legs. Man, they were frustrating.

All in all I think I might watch a third season of Daredevil if they run with the excellent "Kingpin destroys Matt Murdoch" story but otherwise no more please. I might also watch a second season of Jessica Jones because I like her character but otherwise I think I am done with these Netflix shows. The writing is abysmal.

Maybe there's hope for the Punisher show at least? I mean, that's not about super powers. That's just a guy who molests criminals for 40 minutes every episode. They can't ruin that, would they? Right? Oh lord.

This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 19 August 2017 - 08:28 PM

[Binder of Demons]

So I'm getting the feeling that you didn't really enjoy this APT??

In all fairness the writing is pretty bad a lot of the time (particularly Danny Rand). It is difficult to take how stupid they have made the character of Danny Rand, both in his own series and in this. Very frustrating. And to be honest, Luke Cage and JJ should both be doing some martial arts training or at least engaging their brains to take advantage of their considerable powers in a fight. The number of times Cage has a bad guy peppering him with shots while he flails around swinging haymakers and missing. Why not just catch any punch or kick they throw, hold on to them and then drive them into the ground like a nail. It's not like they can really hurt him initially anyway? At least JJ has the excuse of being open to damage.

I'm all for suspension of disbelief but its so annoying. Especially when both Cage and JJ will occasionally just start grabbing people and launching them into walls and ceilings and the see how effective it is.

[Aptorian]

Binder of Demons, on 19 August 2017 - 10:40 PM, said:

So I'm getting the feeling that you didn't really enjoy this APT??

It's not that the show was complete shit. It wasn't. I've watched worse... maybe... Nothing really comes to mind right now. It's more that this was a super promising project. Take the low level super heroes that don't need big budget special effects and make some shows about them. Make it down to earth, gritty, realistic. Build them up. Explore their character. Then put them together in a kick ass fight against the odds, etc.

And then they just flush it all down the toilet. They downplay their strengths, their abilities, the things that make them super. They pit them against shadows of the characters we knew from the comics. And some of the time it was okay, good, even great. That Daredevil Hallway fight scene will always be awesome. Punisher's introduction and evolution in DD season 2 was phenomenal, lots of little details. But the writing just kept getting worse and worse and it's clear that they had no real vision for translating the comics to the TV-screen in the end.

The way they completely ruined the Hand during Iron Fist S1 and The Defenders is just... offensive is the best word I can come up with. So much potential and they spoiled it with shoddy writing and generic bullshit TV tropes.

[Nevyn]

Yeah I found this mildly disappointing.

I watched to ep 7 last evening and left the final for today. That shouldn't happen. Like a good book the story should pick up momentum that you simply can't wait to finish. I didn't much care.

Cage and Fist benefit from the team up , mostly as they suck on their own. Jones and Daredevil we're better in their own stories. They have actual characters something can be done with, and sharing screen time hurts them.

The hand and black sky seem wildly underpowered in this. This does not seem like to organization that caused so much trouble before. And we never get a sense of why black sky was meant to be a big deal. Not invulnerable or unbeatable or scalable, just a good fighter. Well that was worth risking what they risked .....

Among other things ... They made this seem like something the cops could have helped with.

[Aptorian]

Nevyn, on 20 August 2017 - 07:28 PM, said:

Among other things ... They made this seem like something the cops could have helped with.

No, no, Nevyn. You don't understand. The Hand are very dangerous. You don't know these people. The police/FBI/SHIELD couldn't possibly help. Only 4 bumbling buffons with super powers could possibly stand a chance against the Hand.

[Primateus]

Alternative Goose, on 20 August 2017 - 08:22 PM, said:

Nevyn, on 20 August 2017 - 07:28 PM, said:

Among other things ... They made this seem like something the cops could have helped with.

No, no, Nevyn. You don't understand. The Hand are very dangerous. You don't know these people. The police/FBI/SHIELD couldn't possibly help. Only 4 bumbling buffons with super powers could possibly stand a chance against the Hand.

While I enjoyed the show, I have to agree. The Hand seemed horribly incompetent as opposed to in Daredevil where they were rather scary.

Danny Rand was slightly better in this than in Iron Fist, but not by much.

It's a little sad, considering how they started out so well with Daredevil seasons 1+2.

[acesn8s]

Alternative Goose, on 19 August 2017 - 04:44 PM, said:

Just finished episode 4 now. The fourth episode is much better than the first three but the writing remains aggravatng.

Spoiler

Sigourney Hand Weaver is standing right there among them. You telling me Stick wouldn't have put a blade through her while she had her back turned on him? Please. Not to mention how Rand keeps talking big about "I am the immortal bla bla my mission is to destroy yadda yadda" but for some reason every time he meets a Hand leader he just stands there looking like a lost child instead of punching a hole through them.

And then Electra walks in all scary but gets knocked down by a car. And instead of rushing over and stomping her into paste or decapitating her what ever, they all line up for a bullshit fight I know is probably going to suck anyway.

God damn the writing in this show pisses me off.

Finished this episode last night. One stand out thing that bothered me was,

Spoiler

Right before Electra gets hit by the car, she approaches the group with her sword and Luke takes a step back...
So does everyone else, but Luke? WTF!

[Aptorian]

I'm guessing this is a problem between the manuscript and the directing.

I bet that the manuscript says that Electra comes into the restaurant, her mere presence instilling a feeling of danger and dread as she begins to stalk them.

Of course the way the show is filmed everybody in the shows feels about as menacing as a character on the Big Bang theory.

So, while Cage's actor knows he's supposed to get scared. The show doesn't actually convey these emotions to the viewer.

[Khellendros]

Our house binge-watched the series over two days. We all thought it was bad - but also bad in that hilarious kind of way that you want to keep watching to see what stupid thing they will do/say next. Our watching was peppered with shouts of, "You're a joke, Iron Fist!" every time he would do/say pretty much anything.

Seriously, this was one dumb show.

I enjoyed most of JJ, and I thought the first half of LC was great, before they ran out of plot and the second half turned into a terrible terrible show (I've never noticed such a drop in quality in a TV show's season before). Haven't watched any of IF, but if he was like he was in this, then I'm glad I didn't (though it might be amusing to watch). DD I watched most of the first season before growing bored of it, so was never particularly invested in his arc in this show.

This mash-up just seemed...cheap. Like, it seemed weirdly low budget, as if most of the show's expenses had gone on the lead actors' salaries and there wasn't much left over for effects or scriptwriting. The dialogue was dismal and the action was dull.

But at least Iron Fist injected a lot of unintentional hilarity into it.

[Abyss]

Disappointing.
I barely got thru DD S1 and then only with a metric tonne of ffwding (basically anything that didn't directly involve Matt) and just flat out skipping eps , and have procrastinated JJ, LC, DD2 since... was mildly excited for DEFNDERS but the response has been so tepid at best.



Meh.

[acesn8s]

I'm curious to see how it ends, but I think Alexandria's biggest mistake was not killing Stick and turning him into Black Sky. He's the scariest one I've seen so far.

[Aptorian]

acesn8s, on 21 August 2017 - 02:56 PM, said:

I'm curious to see how it ends, but I think Alexandria's biggest mistake was not killing Stick and turning him into Black Sky. He's the scariest one I've seen so far.

Wait, what? Did I miss an episode? Are you hooked on the crazy pills?

[Nevyn]

Primateus, on 20 August 2017 - 08:43 PM, said:

Alternative Goose, on 20 August 2017 - 08:22 PM, said:

Nevyn, on 20 August 2017 - 07:28 PM, said:

Among other things ... They made this seem like something the cops could have helped with.

No, no, Nevyn. You don't understand. The Hand are very dangerous. You don't know these people. The police/FBI/SHIELD couldn't possibly help. Only 4 bumbling buffons with super powers could possibly stand a chance against the Hand.

While I enjoyed the show, I have to agree. The Hand seemed horribly incompetent as opposed to in Daredevil where they were rather scary.

Danny Rand was slightly better in this than in Iron Fist, but not by much.

It's a little sad, considering how they started out so well with Daredevil seasons 1+2.

And at least DD had an element of not necessarily being able to trust cops, not just "I can do this and you can't".

Spoiler

Because it turns out most of the hand are not immune to bullets. And if you went in with full swat before they got more of the substance, they'd all be gone for good. But nope, lets collapse a building on to them into a hole trapping them along with the substance that brings them back from the dead. Problem solved forever.


And while ranting about things, how about Danny knowing the one reason he has been brought into the hole is because the iron fist might open it. And Electra is basically telling him how important what is inside is. Not opening that portal is basically winning the war. Which also means she can't and won't ever kill him.


And so .... he starts fighting her with the fist right next to the wall.




And one more loose thread ... what happened to Danny's buddy monk last seen talking to the hand? He is left for a solo Iron Fist plot in the future? Because I mean ... there just might not be a need for an Iron Fist season 2.