Radar Love: DAREDEVIL show on NETFLIX

latest trailer's out for the new daredevil show on netflix, due on april 10, the first of marvel's netflix-exclusive shows which will lead to a defenders team-up show a ways down the line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAy6NJ_D5vU

it looks way more grim-n-gritty than any marvel studios project so far, but i guess it's appropriate for the character, and the casting seems solid. i really hope that black costume doesn't hang around for long, though - maybe they're holding back the classic red suit as a surprise for a few episodes in?

I rolled my eyes a lot at "You're blind, but you see SO MUCH."

J. Geils Band 'live' dvd 1979...sweat, hair, leather and sunglasses. Get it!

So is the fate of the whole world at stake here, or just New York? Because that trailer feels like the whole world might be at stake.

It's Marvel so, y'know, same thing.

They should have a superhero show set in like Omaha.

Great Lakes Avengers

grim & gritty just looks boring to me now. i blame frank miller.

they always leave the gritty part out...

I don't think it's Frank Miller's fault, it's just the default setting of Hollywood action stuff i.e., grim and "serious" or buddy comedy. there are no other options.

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/eat-drink-play/files/2014/07/Hells-Kitchen.jpg

i wouldn't mind those hell's kitchen COLORS in a superhero thing.

I think the black costume is taken from the Miller/Romita Jr. retelling of DD's origin, where it's his first, home-made outfit? And IIRC the comic ends with him donning the classic red costume, so hopefully the black one well be only temporary in the series too.

man d'onofrio and glenn are so well cast. like glenn especially feels just inevitable. couldn't be happier they were able to get him.

casting does look good; the guy playing foggy, elden henson, more or less nails the visual for me.
http://www.hggirlonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/54f0cf4ed397e.jpg

Totally!

the season's up on netflix now. will it be good?

miller nerd at NYT sez: meh
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/arts/television/review-in-daredevil-a-superhero-is-sightless-but-not-blind-to-crime.html

he's seen less than half of the season, i think, so it might get worse!

tbh I have higher hopes for the Heroes for Hire series or whatever it's called

why because Luke Cage and Iron Fist and Jessica Jones

in the background, Murdock’s hulking alter ego, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), also a son of the neighborhood.

uh don't they mean nemesis or something

His gist seems to be that this doesn't hold up as a filmed adaptation of Miller's Daredevil. I also find that I'm generally disappointed when things fail to be what I want them to be but which no one ever claimed they were supposed to be.

uh don't they mean nemesis or something

maybe they've veered more wildly from the miller template than they're letting on

does anyone actually proofread anything at all?

tbh I have higher hopes for the Heroes for Hire series or whatever it's called

why because Luke Cage and Iron Fist and Jessica Jones

i think mike colter will make a great luke cage for sure

i think he means kingpin also is a local new york kid.

Sepinwall liked the first 5 eps

That review from the NYT actually made me more interested:

It’s just that too much of the story feels indistinct, like disconnected chunks of a much-better-than-average cop show. I found myself waiting for the fight scenes

The result, while eminently watchable, isn’t the Daredevil some of us remember.

Not really looking for a Frank Miller-esque blood-fest out of this, so I'm looking forward to watching...

all i want from this show is a long mid-season run of episodes revolving around mike murdock and the mystery of why he and matt are never in the same room together

Yes. All Mike Murdock and Leap-Frog, please.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2015/04/daredevil_on_netflix_the_best_superhero_tv_series_i_ve_ever_seen.html

The creators made a big deal in an earlier interview about how slow they want to take the pace of the show.

“When you’re working on a network show, especially a pilot, the notes you get are, basically, ‘Cram the entire first season into that first episode, so everybody knows what they’re going to get,’ ” he said. On Netflix, Mr. DeKnight said: “It really is the exact opposite. It’s more, ‘Slow things down, let it breathe, explore it.’ ”

The Netflix model also means that subsequent episodes don’t have to spend time recapitulating what happened in previous installments. “We had a brief discussion about it,” he said, “and decided: ‘Eh, why does that matter? People are going to binge-watch this.’ ”

Mr. DeKnight said that the first season of “Daredevil” was as much a chronicle of Matt Murdock’s first adventures as a story about Wilson Fisk (played by Vincent D’Onofrio), a fearsome crime boss better known to readers of the comics as the Kingpin. Other prominent characters from the Daredevil comics, like the ninja assassin Elektra or the mercenary Bullseye, could appear “sometime in the far-flung future — I’m not saying it’s Season 2, or 3 or 4 or even 5,” he said.

how fat is D'onofrio now

http://www.cinemablend.com/images/news_img/70702/Captain_America_Civil_War_70702.jpg

From the Times review: "During my comic book days, Daredevil, featuring the blind vigilante crime fighter Matt Murdock — situated somewhere between Spider-Man and Batman on the superhero spectrum — was the book I waited for each week."

I call shenanigans! Comic books are monthly, Mike Hale. I bet you never even bought one!

just watched the first episode - it was pretty good. it's clearly a bit different from the other marvel adaptations so far, especially in the pacing. they really don't do a huge amount to foreground matt's powers or outright explain what he's capable of, or at least less than you might expect.

first impressions:

- the fight scenes aren't edited to shreds - i could actually follow what's going on, which is great since the daredevil's physical grace is one of the things i appreciate most about miller and janson's artwork (as well as many of their successors)
- the creators of the comic book are credited as 'stan lee and bill everett', which was a pleasant surprise
- the guy playing foggy is nailing it. deborah ann woll as karen page seems pretty much perfect too.
- not entirely convinced by charlie cox, though - he doesn't even have red hair ffs!
- also, hell's kitchen actually looks like a pretty liveable neighbourhood from the few scenes outside - it's not exactly the godforsaken, blasted hellscape i'd expect from the comics. blame giuliani i guess?
- it's hella teal and orange in places

tbf to mike hale, he doesn't say he bought the comic each week, just that he waited for it. maybe he wasn't the brightest kid and was disappointed three-quarters of the time.

Lol

He must have been disappointed a lot - in its early years Daredevil was a bimonthly book.

just watched ep1:
so much teal
so much orange
so great

like man i wish powers was like even a quarter this solid

Well they're not skimping on the violence

Jesus

3 episodes in, pretty good so far. Points added for the Oldboy style 1-take fight in #2, a good bit of fun. Points subtracted for the ridiculous method of the death at the end of #3. The title sequence looks great with the dripping red, but I hate the theme music. (All the MCU music seems a bit generic/crap to me, films and tv shows.)

I really like this, they seem to even have captured some of Wilson Fisk's multifaceted nature.

Enjoyed ep 1, will watch more. I like the non-corniness of his costume.

I'm down to the third episode, this is pretty good so far, but I'm not sure why it has to have such graphic violence? The episode 3 end kill was pointlessly gory and indulgent, I'm pretty sure people aren't coming to watch a Marvel superhero series to get their gorn kicks. Don't get me wrong, I like that the action is fairly credible and street-level (no crazy kung-fu moves nor acrobatics), but enough is enough.

I'm liking the actors a lot in this one, everyone pretty much nails their part... Except for Vincent D'Onofrio, who is otherwise okay, but I don't get it why he has speak in a corny bad-guy whispery voice? It's incredibly obvious it's not he's real voice, which makes it look like the Kingpin is trying to impress everyone by how evil he sounds.

They seem to be hinting at a romance between Matt and Claire instead of the canonical Matt/Karen pairing? I think it would be a refreshing change, because otherwise this is pretty much following the basic plot beats of the Miller DD comics.

Got to ep 6 and really enjoying this, although I'm a bit concerned Fisk's motivation (as we see during his first date with Vanessa) is an Alex In NYC-esque protest at the gentrification of the city. Looking forward to seeing where it goes, as it's just escalated big style. Having trouble working out exactly which DD era we're supposed to be watching. The state of Manhattan makes it look like Miller-era because OH THE DEPRAVATION but as Tuomas says, Karen seems to be set up to be with Foggy.

Worst violence so far was Fisk and the Russian, even I found that a bit much and I've got a pretty high tolerance for that sort of thing.

I really like the way d'Onofrio is playing Fisk. Confident (but not entirely stonefaced) in business dealings, but very short on social skills and more of a nervous mess when trying to talk to Vanessa.

i have a huge crush in Charlie Cox, really digging this. Gritty but no too much, slow but more methodical, and yaaay characters arent vomiting exposition the way they do in some of these shows
fight scenes are a+

Just started the episode titled "Stick!"

tbh I was really hoping he would show up. Hard to beat a wise mentor whose training regime involves hitting you with... a stick.

this is good stuff

it's dark but not really the tone of miller's diet of reactionary bullshit, and not pretentious either - it's not pretending that this is any sorta grand statement about the human condition or w/e. action is indeed great, well-choreographed and edited.

have been a charlie cox fan since he wandered into boardwalk empire and it's cool to see that so far - 2 episodes in - he's a respectable lead

he was great in boardwalk

I've got as far as episode 5, thankfully there wasn't any violence as ludicrously gory as Fisk vs. the Russian guy in that one, it was just stupid. I'm still not convinced on their take of the Kingpin: I get it that they're trying to humanize him by showing him in the early stages of his empire-building, showing his courtship with Vanessa, and it seems they're also setting him up as a counterpart to DD (both grew up in Hell's Kitchen, both lost their dads when they were young, etc), but that doesn't make him a particularly impressive villain... Together with D'Onofrio's weird hushed voice acting and fairly average physique, he doesn't have the larger-than-life villain quality the comic book version has.

Based on how Matt explains his powers to Claire in ep 5, it seems the TV Daredevil doesn't have the radar sense of the comic book version! It's weird if they're not using it, it's such an important part of the character. Maybe they thought it'd be too hard to depict visually in a live-action series?

honestly I prefer violence that's actually unpleasant and disturbing to the endless parade of bloodless shootings and beatings in most PG-13 marvel action

so this is a breath of fresh air, in that it's never fun to hear the surround sound of crunching bone

2 eps in, really into it

flashbacks with his dad are great, legit teared up over some of that

The funniest thing is watching this and the 1943 Batman serial, which TCM is showing a chapter per week on Saturday mornings. All cut from the same cloth — dames in peril, bad guys dressed up as cops, you know the drill. Both fun.

Have only watched one. Unlike most, haven't loved the action scenes so much; I can't get past non-superpowered people taking brutal hits and then in one second recovering to whip out another sequence of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon moves.

Two episodes in; enjoyed it! The Park Chan-Wook rip off corridor fight was nicely put together. A bit maudlin/cliche/sadistic I suppose but not too much for the better bits not to land.

FOGGY BEAR

Melvin Potter!

Yeah!

If anything I am impressed by how many characters they included with minor alterations while leaving them completely recognizable. Owlsley, Turk, both good. The casting for Foggy and Karen is excellent. D'Onofrio's large man physicality is exactly how I'd expect Fisk to be, and there are a few shots (including one where he, let's be vague to avoid spoilers, pulls open a rolling door in the last episode) where he has great body language.

finished 9 episodes. this has been outstanding tbh, far exceeding any possible expectations - which for me are pretty low given that I have only liked a few recent marvel things (like guardians). it has its own voice and tone, which (aside from guardians and some of the iron man films) is not a quality of the marvel shit

Just finished chugging the last four episodes. I'm going to hold off on judgments for the time being.

bowling ball was a bit O_o

seven episodes down and i'm really enjoying this. charlie cox has definitely grown on me, and i actually kinda like his black costume. i'm less sure about the red one which netflix have blithely spoilered by including it in their thumbnail for the show - i guess it might look better in motion when it shows up?

one thing that bugs me is that they're happy to depict graphic violence but seem oddly reticent about swearing, restricting themselves to a couple of 'shits' and a 'dickhead' each episode. depicting severed hands and car-door decapitations and endless brutal beatings: just fine. foggy saying 'fuck' once in a while: not cool.

Not really looking for a Frank Miller-esque blood-fest out of this

Miller's Daredevil comics were produced under the Comic Book Code, and are not especially bloody.

it's dark but not really the tone of miller's diet of reactionary bullshit

Can you point to the issues of Miller's Daredevil that are politically reactionary?

are you his lawyer?

I haven't read the daredevil comics he wrote, it was a general and figurative statement on what miller starting turning into with the dark knight strikes again and apparently took to ran new heights with holy terror and most certainly took to further parodic extremes with his issues of (IM THE GODDAMN) batman and robin. honestly that's the whole miller tone. didn't think it was that controversial to call it reactionary, even if that's not the perfect word.

*started

You were worried that they would adapt comics you haven't read for the Daredevil TV series and then add some reactionary politics from comics that aren't about Daredevil (that you have read?)

Tuombot.

lol wtf

Yeah, the series has enough real problems without dragging imaginary ones into the mix.

The quality of the dialogue in the 2nd half of the series went howlingly bad. And Woll and Henson as Karen and Foggy were great casting physically, but they are horrible terribly shitty actors.

Still, I give the overall series a B+.

my whole point was that as dark as this daredevil series has been, it's still not quite going for the ironic-bitter-chuckle "THIS CITY'S GONE TA HELL" tone that miller invented largely in his narration. (I guess it doesn't count against sin city if you consider that a work of pastiche exaggerated for effect but I'm not sure miller meant it as such tbrr)

which is a good thing. fucks sake.

xp to self "popularized in the mainstream" is prob a better qualifier than "invented" before anyone decides to drop more truth bombs

Miller's runs on the book are not the right primary reference point for this series, imo. I'd call it 80% Bendis, 10% Miller, 10% Lee.

I really like this new cover of "Peace Train" but it's weird that there aren't any lyrics about supporting the fatwah against Salman Rushdie.

I think the Frank Miller reference wasn't really to his Daredevil comics, but the fact that his adapted work as of late (Sin City, 300, etc) has thrust a particular image of him into the popular eye and the public, and possibly the writers, would be interested in capitalizing on the "Frank Miller's Daredevil" theme by incorporating some 2015 Frank Miller.

fwiw I think Miller's work on Daredevil is pretty much the primary reference point for every writer that followed

The Spirit and the last Sin City both bombed. I don't think anyone wants to directly associate Frank Miller's name with their product right now (whatever about his influence on the actual content)

i am genuinely not seeing much miller in the first two eps i saw. too much humor and lack of interior brooding.

did the comics deal with matt's catholicism much before miller picked up the reins? i agree they've not leant as hard on miller as i thought they might but the confession scene right at the start, with the 'forgiveness for what i'm about to do' stuff. seemed brooding in a miller-y manner.

miller would've had the priest be a pedophile and matt is punching him through the confession window
i agree that this feels way more bendis-y. i am hoping it makes the turn into Brubaker which is my fave modern arc.
daredevil is one of the only capes and tights books i got in the habit of buying on sight so it's a pleasure to see they didn't fuck it up too bad.

Vincent D is a good actor but I think he's miscast or maybe just misplaying it here. Reads too sensitive and insecure for Kingpin for me. But overall I think this is a pretty good series.

sensitive/insecure kingpin is a take on the character that was done quite a bit in book (that part would be Miller-esque)

I guess, but it feels like by that point in the comics they've already established that he's a ruthless criminal mastermind. Leading with it just feels a little off to me.

i kinda feel like vanessa is going to be the one to provide fisk with the steel to become the kingpin

also: how did i never notice vincent d'onfrio has a such a fucking massive head before

Also I think it was mentioned above but Kingpin is truly a physically terrifying figure in the comics. Character in show as just a normal slightly to seed bald dude feels weird.

also: how did i never notice vincent d'onfrio has a such a fucking massive head before
--bizarro gazzara

No idea. He has a huge head in FMJ

would have thought they'd do some LTOR style framing to make Fisk appear enormous.

Also I think it was mentioned above but Kingpin is truly a physically terrifying figure in the comics. Character in show as just a normal slightly to seed bald dude feels weird.

the comics kingpin is six-foot-seven and 450lbs, which i guess is kind of a tough nut for casting directors to crack. he seemed scary enough to me when he was literally smashing a man's head off with a car door.

Really? He seemed like a pissy out of control weirdo.

You give anyone enough tries they can smash a dudes head off with a car door you know. Big whoop.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

Cool just put yr head right here and let put on my head snapping smock.

Character in show as just a normal slightly to seed bald dude

Dang, I must have watched a different series entirely because I didn't see that at all.

To be fair I'm only on ep. 8 maybe he gets more impressive....

I'm 4 eps in and generally find it pretty good, but a little OTT violent than it needs to be.

I feel that this is better than it has any business being.

very much enjoying Ben Urich. I'm assuming they don't have the rights to the Daily Bugle.

yeah, vondie curtis-hall was inspired casting for urich. i guess the bugle rights are tied up with sony and the spider-man movies? urich's editor is no j. jonah jameson, that's for sure.

I loved this, but it was maybe a misstep to have Kingpin and Daredevil's genesis stories running alongside each other. One of them has to lose in the end, so it creates an anticlimax in that arc. But maybe that is actually awesome bc it means there were actually stakes built up for that last episode.

also soundtrack turns all espresso machine for kingpin's coming out party

foggy has gotten reeeeaaaaallllly annoying (or perhaps just weakly acted) in the last few episodes

This whole thing should have been done in about 10 episodes instead of 13. They figured out their 3 act play, divided up the major plot points and story beats by 13 and then realized they didn't have enough stuff for Act III, so we wind up with crap where people are almost literally saying "gee it's so great that we're all friends again" and neverending scenes of drinking at Josie's.

I'm at episode 4 and still find this very plodding. Foggy is eminently punchable

I'm up to episode 9, and I thought it was weird how Rosario Dawson's character has just disappeared for several episodes now, without explanation. Though based on what happens in this ep, it seems likely she'll appear in the next one. It's still odd though, the last time we saw her she was staying at Matt's for safety reasons, and then she's just... not there anymore.

There was a long conversation between Foggy and Matt about relationships and Matt said they broke up. She was only there because the Russians were a threat, which they weren't any more, and we saw them kiss so I guess they started seeing each other. My assumed timeline for the series is over at least weeks, if not months, so I had presumed they dated for a while then stopped.

That's not how I interpreted it, it seemed like the kiss was the only romantic thing that happened between them, we never saw them in the same bed or anything. Then in the next scene they're together Matt says something like that he doesn't want to endanger her, so it seems like he decided they shouldn't date because she would get even more mixed up in the DD business? The story he told to Foggy seems to have been more of a white lie so he wouldn't have to go into detail? So I guess after that, Claire just packed her bags an went home? But it's weird that none of this (whether they dated or just kissed that one time, whether he broke up with her, whether she went home) was ever addressed onscreen, she just disappeared.

Also, I've come to accept that the bad guy in this series is a wholly new character who just happens to share the name with comic book villain. Now that they've given him a Freudian excuse for becoming a villain and everything, it feels like the only thing common between the comic and television Fisk is that they're ruthless crimelords and that they're bald. If you look at TV Fisk as a new character, he's actually a pretty interesting villain! Except that I still can't get past D'Onofrio's faked hoarse voice, it sounds so goofy, even goofier than Christian Bale's Batvoice, because at least Batman was intentionally faking it.

watched first 3 eps last night.
looking forward to catching the next 3 tonight.
just rather glad i didn't allow mk2 to watch it with me as he is 11, and we normally watch all the Marvel stuff together.

Yeah, this is pretty much the only Marvel movie/series that's clearly not for kids.

i do wonder how many parents are going to be wrongfooted by the marvel branding and end up showing their kid some pretty unpleasant stuff by mistake

absolutely, if i had not have checked this thread then i would have definitely sat down with mk2 for this.

Well, the Netflix rating clearly says "adults", but I'm not sure how much parents care about those?

(xpost)

actually, i had not noticed the adult rating (bad dad !), as i just saw marvel/DD,
that said, if i had, i would have just assumed a bit of bad language/comic book violence etc.

Kingpin has a domestic violence origin in Punisher Max.

Yeah that Kingpin origin is not new, although I can't remember which DD run it was in. I've not read Punisher Max - it was also in a DD comic

rosario dawson is in this!? okay, maybe i will watch it now...

first i have to finish watching Michael Bay's THE LAST SHIP on hulu though...

ugh why, i bailed on that p early

I also found it weird how Dawson dropped out, musta been a scheduling thing

she's meant to be night nurse, yes? They may be linking her more closely with the continuity of all four netflix shows?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Nurse_%28comics%29

My guess is more a budget thing than a schedule thing.

Just watched episode 10, and it gets even weirder, because her character is shown to have done things offscreen but doesn't appear onscreen. So yeah, it definitely looks like money or her schedule (she's mostly a movie actor, right?) interfered with doing the show, because it makes no sense for her not appear in this episode if she was available.

"ugh why, i bailed on that p early"

i have absolutely no excuse or justification.

<3

people on my facebook are definitely mentioning the "gritty frank miller" qualities of this show. but i don't know if those people are comic people or not. mostly thumbs up though here and also there. will watch.

V-Grrl, there IS one totally awesome moment on THE LAST SHIP where they are leaving this drug lord in the jungle who has terrorized jungle people and they've got the monkeys they came for and one of the navy guys thinks they should go back and take out the drug lord and they look to the captain and they ask him what he wants to do: go back to the LAST SHIP or go back into the jungle and get the bad guys and he takes the loooooooooooongest pause and then big close-up on his big rock face as he says............WE CAME TO HUNT! *cue music and commercial*

kinda the most uber-Bay moment ever in history.

looool

i was hoping the show would be more that level on the reg but i found it kind of a snooze mostly

is d'onofrio doing brando? he's doing brando isn't he...

he's not not doing brando, i'll say that

the voice actually bugs me a lot less when I think of him as Wilson Kurtz

https://scontent-lhr.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/t31.0-8/s2048x2048/11162049_839976229371833_2895384487992364348_o.jpg

I hope the eventual Defenders thing has him in his yellow tights & sleeves for at least one ep.

Really surprised by how good this is

i like the use of silence. like, art movie use of silence. always happy when t.v. people are bold enough to be quiet. it's also very dark! as in the absence of light. but in a nice HD way.

Yeah, this is pretty much the only Marvel movie/series that's clearly not for kids.

― Tuomas, Tuesday, 14 April 2015 10:34 (4 days ago) Permalink

Punisher movies, man

not technically "Marvel movies"

they do have Punisher and Blade back now though so it might be interesting to see them pop up in one of the Netflix shows

They have really nailed this series, it's the Miller Daredevil but improved for the small screen.

I think the casting for Foggy and Ben Urich are great.

just finished episode 7... 5 was a bit of a let down with too much plot jammed in (vanessa goes from art dealer to "let them all burn" over dinner) and i'm sad they let go of rosario but carradine as stick is pretty much perfect.
conversations go on for about ninety seconds longer than they need to almost every time. it's still good binge watching.

this is actually one of the more intense t.v. shows i've seen in a while! totally not expecting that. so, in every way a pleasant surprise. and i really like whatshisname as daredevil. it helps that i don't know who he is. i'll have to check out what the makers of this have made before. it's very well done. and lemmetella, i haven't been a fan of the "gritty" superhero thing in a long time.

charlie cox is daredevil he's prob best known for playing an irish mob bodyguard to steve buscemi's character in boardwalk empire for 2 seasons

scott the creator is prob best known for directing cabin in the woods

oh wow cool love cabin of course.

i still haven't seen boardwalk. is he irish or english?

the character he plays is irish I'm honestly not sure if the actor is actually irish or just english doing an irish accent in that role

he does an american accent decently enough in daredevil but still has the telltale lilt to certain words

charlie cox is english irl

Finished the series last night and really impatient for more. Is it going to be another year before that? Will presumably be at least September anyway. I'm assuming that's when autumn season starts.
Can't think what the frequency of OrangeITNB seasons is & that's the only other Netflix Original I can think of.

I saw that Fisk as Kurtz or Corleone thing in at least one scene. Just realised further description = major spoiler. But yeah did see it. Will have to IMDB the actor, also Vanessa.

Thinking of Brando, the location of the series is the same area as On The Waterfront. Possibly not an association you'd make immediately not knowing New York.
I'm wondering what the source of the name Hell's Kitchen is. Was it a nickname, is it still?

Was and still is, although most of the associations are long gone at this point.

On The Waterfront is filmed in New Jersey btw and my understanding is most of the docks are south of HK, but I can stand to be corrected.

Sounds like there are going to be four other shows (although DD will be in Defenders) before another season of Daredevil.

this is what i will always remember forever about hell's kitchen. used to pass it all the time when i was a kid and thought it was so cool.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bSNIqBHBubs/UVT4Q9xlqPI/AAAAAAAAEDM/-nAUaXRi-Is/s1600/JESUS-02A.JPG

pretty frank miller right there...

got one more episode to watch (hopefully tonight, if not, then definitely tomorrow).

i have really enjoyed it.

and damn, scott, thats an album cover right there.

Okay, I finally finished watching this, here are some thoughts for the whole series...

(WARNING, SPOILERS FOR THE FINALE OF THE SERIES WILL FOLLOW!!)



* The climax with Kingpin escaping the carriage was okay, but even in a superhero show it was kinda straining credulity that 20 guys with guns could just get away with killing a bunch of cops and whisking away a crime boss in the middle of New York while everyone was there to see it. I'm sure the cops would have had helicopters and various surveillance devices pointed at them, so there's no way Fisk could've just gotten away like he did. Okay, he ordered the men to take care of anyone who follows them, but how exactly are they gonna do it? Do they have their own helicopter who'll shoot down cop helicopters? Who the hell would even take part of suicide mission like that, no matter how much Fisk paid them? It just doesn't make sense.

* The final fight between Daredevil and Fisk was a bit anticlimactic... D'Onofrio simply isn't big or menacing enough to play the Kingpin as the sort of brick wall he is in the comics, so it never felt like he posed any real threat to him. I did like his final Bible monologue before escaping though, the one where he finally realized he's the villain of this story. I guess this was as much the origin story for the Kingpin as it was for DD.

* I was sad they killed Urich, because Vondie Curtis-Hall owned the role so memorably. I guess they had to kill some major character to up the stakes before the finale, but it still felt a bit pointless; they could've used the Urich storyline from Born Again (where Kingpin threatens him so badly he doesn't even dare to mention the name "Matt Murdock" before the finale) to a better effect. Maybe Curtis-Hall simply couldn't/wouldn't commit for more than one season, though?

* In the end, Rosario Dawson's character was completely wasted, wasn't she? She and Cox had good chemistry, and it looked like they could've made her into an interesting "voice of reason" type of character to contrast with DD's bloodlust, but then she just faded away with only one brief goodbye scene in ep 11. If the series-makers knew they couldn't use her any more, why not just write out the whole character and give her scenes to Karen? Seems like they're setting up the canonical Matt/Karen pairing anyway, so in the end Claire didn't really make much sense in the larger narrative.

* Am I the only one who was expecting some big revelation for Wesley? I thought it was kinda odd that they showed him to be this guy who's utterly devoted to Fisk, and yet there was no explanation what he himself got out of it. At some point I thought they were gonna reveal him to be Richard Fisk/Rose; him being the Kingpin's son was the only thing I thought would've explained his loyalty, as well as Fisk's emotional reaction to his death. But it doesn't look like we'll learn anything more about him now. I guess they could still bring him back in some "I only faked my death" manner, but given that the show is in the more realistic end of superhero fiction, it doesn't seem likely.

* All in all, I thought the show was pretty good, and that was mostly because of the well-cast of actors + good atmospherics and nicely directed, claustrophobic action pieces. In the end, the plot was fairly predictable: what they didn't borrow from Miller and other DD writers was fairly generic action/cop movie stuff, though admittedly there weren't any big missteps either.

* I still think D'Onfofrio's OTT acting was one of the weakest points of the series, so hopefully in the next season Vanessa will be the main big bad, and Fisk will be more in the shadows... Or they could bring in Bullseye, the Hand, and other costumed baddies from the comics. (I guess they couldn't call it "the Hand", because that's already been used in the Wolverine movies, but they could just give it another name, Fox can't own the copyright to all shady ninja organizations.) Only one ninja during season 1 wasn't enough! Seems they were already dropping hints towards that direction with the mysterious dude Stick was talking to, and with Matt and Nelson discussing Matt's Greek girlfriend from college...

carradine as stick is pretty much perfect.

― Premise ridiculous. Who have two potato? (forksclovetofu), Saturday, April 18

um...

lol, freudian slip. GLENN is pretty much perfect; david carradine would've been better of course.

sorta ridic the pace they're going w/these, they're talking abt seasons 3, 4 of this but 5 years btwn each?

like at a certain point your cast is just gonna start dying of natural causes

i know it's way late in the thread to call bs but slothroprhymes idef takes posting out yer ass to some heights here. we all know miller went bonkers around the same time everyone started ignoring him but that doesn't change the work that came before. if anything the miller/janson DD is still firmly in the camp of not taking the law into yer own hands etc etc.

frank is that you? i still like TDKR and sin city has its moments fwiw

glad you managed to revive an argument i more or less clarified and conceded like...a week ago?

w/e this was a good show & an unexpected/pleasant surprise

xpost didn't you already use that crack the first time?

anyhoo haven't re-read the man without fear mini but is it challops to say the miller/janson run is real good and like, groundbreaking and important esp wrt where miller was headed artwise but the bendis run is really where it's at?

probably, yes

I dunno, you can already find the seeds of Miller's reactionary politics in his and Janson's DD run... There's some third person narration describing New York as a cesspool of crime and so on, there's the infamous drug story with Punisher that has all the conservative war on drugs cliches of the 80s, and I the issue where DD lets Bullseye fall from a great height was pretty shocking at the time: Bullseye doesn't die, but DD makes it clear he wishes he would, so he couldn't commit any more crimes. Obviously all of this isn't as extreme as in TDKR and the later comics, and there's still bunch of cool ninja action with no politics in sight, but even as teenager whose first Miller comics those DD issues were, I remember thinking this guy clearly had pretty different ideas of right and wrong than liberal writers like Claremont.

(xpost to Rogermexico)

tuomas otm miller's politics just gradually curdled/became more obvious over time

xxxxp last time i asked if it was miller's lawyer

iirc someone already shouted out bendis, i've only read two of his powers books but liked those quite a bit, not looking to get in a beef over any of this regardless

bendis' avengers and spider man runs are A+ and worth reading; his daredevil is excellent but the miller run is what's up.

I've only watched 3 eps and so am not reading much of the thread yet for fear of spoilers. I'm enjoying it. But having lived in NYC in the Bloomberg era, I find the whole urban hellhole thing hilarious. Hell's Kitchen -- home of my favorite Midtown wine bar. "Chelsea North" as one of my friends puts it. ("We all come up here now because Chelsea's too full of toddlers.")

obv the miller run is groundbreaking, esp visually, and introduces some crucial dynamics (e.g. elektra, the hand/japan stuff that will play out in the Wolverine mini/Ronin, the bullseye opposite-number stuff that will play out in TDKR) but it's till super comicbooky and can't quite shed the inherent goofiness of the dd premise, which bendis handles by making the entire thing about matt murdock. plus obv bendis' pulp/true crime background.

tuomas otm miller's politics just gradually curdled/became more obvious over time

― Οὖτις, Monday, April 20, 2015

well yeah. but at the time of his dd run he's still writing this:

http://imageshack.com/a/img912/3886/92iOTN.png

Bendis is obviously going to be a pretty big influence on the Netflix shows as a whole, given that they're adapting Alias next

and thank god for that. the powers mess on sony is heartbreaking in its ineptitude.

Did you watch all of Powers?

Season 2: Elektra. Season 3: Born Again. Season 4: Bendis. Season 5: Brubaker.

by the time they get to season 5 there will be several more decades of canon to pick from

xxpost I'm an episode or 2 behind but I'll grit my teeth and see the thing through. among PSN's many errors they release one episode a week like it's Game of Thrones or something.

lol, freudian slip. GLENN is pretty much perfect; david carradine would've been better of course.

― Premise ridiculous. Who have two potato? (forksclovetofu), Sunday, April 19

i'm a glenn stan since THE RIGHT STUFF tbh. feelin a little Lance Henriksen in the performance as well.

i really did like ronin when i was a kid. that seems like a million years ago now. felt way mod at the time. so did the wolverine mini-series. though he didn't write that... haven't read those since they came out. and yeah the daredevil issues were so cool. it's not like i read about the change in daredevil anywhere at the time, all of a sudden you were just buying daredevil every month. back then i was probably more of a sienkiewicz fan. elektra:assassin was completely fucking nuts! now i kinda want to read these again...

also, i wish that boring fucking priest had died on this show. hate the priest! worst part of the thing for me. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz...........

ALSO FINALE SPOILER:

didn't you think the way the urich widow talked about him in the present tense at the funeral meant something....i kinda felt like he didn't really die. somehow. but i'm probably completely wrong.

i could go for a high goth netflix moon knight. speaking of bill s.

you have to try and realize how punk rock a cover like this was in 1982.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/5b/4d/dd/5b4dddd52125619a65cc256c86473b8c.jpg

elektra: assassin is legit batshit

and sienkiewicz is legit dope

he just got weirder and weirder.

not gonna totally hijack this thread but yeah, sienkewicz. i mean...

http://www.billsienkiewiczart.com/images/rzaasbobbydigital.jpg

you have to try and realize how punk rock a cover like this was in 1982.

http://cache.coverbrowser.com/image/love-rockets/1-1.jpg

he just got weirder and weirder.

for about three years, then he got normaller and normaller. wasn't he inking Sal Buscema by 1994? there's nothing outre in the storytelling (there's not really even any storytelling) in the Moby Dick and Hendrix adaptations.

after his third attempt at writing (in A River In Egypt) started to look like his third story about child abuse, it seemed he scared himself away from actually expressing anything ever again

^ things I probably post here every three years

yeah i just meant punk rock for marvel. i mean in comparison to Dazzler or whatever. or john byrne/alpha flight stuff which probably felt really fresh and new wave to some people at marvel in the early 80's. that's why stuff like that wolverine mini-series and then ronin stuck out so much. but everyone knows all this. actual punk rock comix like L&R were awesome too obviously. i grabbed that first issue of love & rockets as soon as i saw it at the comic book store! mind-blower.

i was probably still buying elfquest at the time...and high society-era cerebus...speaking of new wave.

sienkiewicz on new mutants was really out there sometimes

(i was also lucky enough to have access to prime judge dredd at that time too. also a mind-blower...)

Obv the design on that Sienkiewicz Moon Knight cover is pretty rad, but the actual drawing on the two main figures still owes a huge amount to Neal Adams.

Sienkiewicz was never really the same - or never anywhere near as productive - after Big Numbers.

yeah, those new mutants covers! wow, they were so great. next-level.

http://www.comicbookreligion.com/cr/NewMutants/images/NewMutants_px300_20.jpg

probably why i warmed to sandman, lobo, etc when i first saw them after not buying comics for a zillion years.

really into Foggy's ex

The Foggy's ex subplot is great and definitely a recognizable turn of events

xp I was just thinking that. I like the way she talks. Actually I just like her. I'm tired of all the do-gooder wincing and soul-searching and "Is there a Devil and does he have toenails?" confessionals.

may I repeat

FOGGY BEAR

idk i just kinda sigh when foggy's ex is on screen cause those scenes are so much more predictable and less interesting to me than most of the rest of the show, especially karen's stuff.

I want her to tell me office gossip while I give her a footrub

I enjoy their predictability and relatability and it makes Foggy a deeper character than some of the others

lol Matt

We don't get a lot of character development in the series that isn't an origin story or directly in service to the plot in this series.

series series proofread before posting

whenever I do that I rationalize it as a good use of repetition, like Mamet

Also, I hate Vincent D'Onofrio, I hate his face, I hate the stupid way he talks. I've never understood his star power at all.

he's like a failed actor who somehow didn't fail

his henchmen guy is doing the same bullshit overacting but way better. Also henchman guy sounds like Liev Schrieber what's that about

Yeah Wesley is the one who's actually scary, and he has better timing and delivery, too.

D'Onofrio should have switched roles with the Bates Motel kid

caught up through Stick. things I am still not on board with:
- partner's ongoing harassment of firm's sole employee
- sra cardenas, the magical guatemalan
- the kingpin of crime who is always on the edge of soulful tears

he has an efficient soulful-tears-to-rage transducer

Fisk wants to save the city! isn't that ironic wow

c'mon now, it's good but it's not brilliant

did u think I was serious forks

maybe

i think kingpin was fine. for some reason i thought they were gonna reveal that he met wesley at the orphanage when they were kids and wesley owes him his life or something. because wesley said he came because he was needed. and that they had some sorta unrequited thing cuz kingpin's secretly gay and his mom said that kingpin's dad liked guys? or was that another husband of hers. but none of that happened! in general i am as sick of gourmet bad guys as i am of "gritty" comic book stuff, but it all kinda worked for me in this.

i mean i even liked the omelette thing and how he ended up making two omelettes. it was well done!

just finished the last ep, p pleased overall

i will say i thought Wesley came out of the box marked Number Two Henchman, he seemed kind of anonymously on the nose to me

i haven't read daredevil in 15 years so i'm (uh) foggy enough on potential upcoming plot twists that i'm effectively in the dark, which i enjoy

did it bother anybody else that Karen went from barely being able to translate a sentence that Ms Cardenas said, tossing off that she just remembers a little Spanish from high school, to basically speaking it fluently a few episodes later?

library montage was needed

she has Babelfish contact lenses

for all that Hoos and I remember about this comic, learning spanish very quickly at an old age could be her super power

but she should get her brain checked for tumors just in case

i do remember thinking that was odd--was there any sense of the passage of time? hard time nailing that down.

finished this over the weekend and really enjoyed it overall. really intrigued to see how alias turns out now.

the thing which bugged me the most about this was the previously ultra-anonymous fisk giving a press conference to a gaggle of journalists about his plans to save the city. would the press really be falling over themselves to cover a speech full of outlandish promises by some dude they'd never heard of before?

also, dd's new costume kinda sucks. wally wood's comic-book design is streamlined and beautiful but i can see why it might not work perfectly in live-action. the super-generic buckle-covered battlesuit matt ends up with is ugly as hell.

Marvel and Netflix are proud to announce that "Marvel's Daredevil" will receive a second season, available only on the streaming service in 2016!

With the first season of "Marvel's Daredevil" proving a smash success with both audiences and critics, Netflix and Marvel will continue to create further adventures of the Man Without Fear! Doug Petrie ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "American Horror Story") and Marco Ramirez ("Sons of Anarchy"), who worked closely with Executive Producers Steven S. DeKnight and Drew Goddard during the first season, will serve as showrunners for Season 2. Petrie, Ramirez, Goddard ("Cabin in the Woods"), and Jeph Loeb ("Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.") will serve as Executive Producers of Season 2.

"Marvel's A.K.A. Jessica Jones" comes only to Netflix later this year and "Marvel's Luke Cage" premieres on the streaming service in 2016. Future series exclusively debuting on Netflix include “Marvel’s Iron Fist” and “Marvel’s Defenders,” a mini-series event that reimagines a team of self-sacrificing, heroic characters.

This must be hella successful huh

when people say 'alias' itt they're referring to the book that will become the show 'aka jessica jones' right

yep

hoos! read that one.

tbh it came out right before or around the time the tv show "Alias" started

right thats why i was confused

they should have really messed with people by casting Jennifer Gardner as Jessica Jones

"would the press really be falling over themselves to cover a speech full of outlandish promises by some dude they'd never heard of before?"

they made a pretty big point of showing how kingpin owned the cops and the press and everyone. so, he probably just told them to be there.

well right he owned the media and also hell's kitchen had *just* been hit by a series of bombings--a native son with a fancy suit in front of a fancy building saying he has the funds to rebuild the neighborhood, presumably flanked by local politicos, could probably get some press.

we love our rich people

how can someone "sound like" liev schreiber

does liev schreiber even sound like liev schreiber

and yeah his new suit made it look like he'd fit in with the CW shows

aw how much do i love that they worked Melvin Potter in? complete with spinning blades even. hope things don't go too badly for him...

reading about Potter on wikipedia:

He was later forced into working for the Kingpin's elderly predecessor Alexander Bont, who claimed that Potter had a four-year-old daughter that he had never met and that she would die if Potter did not help.

Making up four-year-old daughters for coercive purposes seems like a nice renewable resource for a crime lord.

Funny, just watched Theory Of Everything since I 'd missed it til now. Guess who the wife's love interest is? Or was that already mentioned?

Kingpin apologized a lot in this.

obviously born canadian

I'm really hoping Vanessa will become the main villain for the second season while Wilson is in prison, she was more interesting than Kingpin himself in this. Didn't seh take hsi place at some point in the comics too?

"didn't she take his place"

I liked this quite a bit but was a little let down by the conclusion - some have already commented on the relatively showdown between DD & Fisk, but my disappointment was more that he went to prison so soon. One of the things I always loved about Kingpin was how untouchable he was - no criminal record, nothing. Of course I haven't ready any comics in years so he may have been in and out of jail many times over by this point.

In any case, good effort overall.

relatively brief and uninspired showdown I meant to say

in some versions of the comic vanessa is a major domo. but then, in some versions, her grown son dresses up in a bondage mask and tries to kill the kingpin, so who knows.

I'm still watching this so sorry if this has been mentioned but LOL at Vladimir tricking the guy who can hear things miles away with the old "whisper to get the guy to lean in close before attacking" move.

ha!
They really downplayed DD's powers in this, at least from a visual perspective.
I meant to say I liked the black outfit a lot actually, though I kept waiting for someone to ask him how he can see out of that mask.

Dupont Cashbundle
‏@crushingbort
FISK: my MOTHER ordered her pizza 40 MINUTES ago...your PIZZA TRACKER online said it would be here in TWENTY

lmao

i've taken to talking in kingpin-isms around the house
"I'm THINKING... about having DINNER.... around SEVEN. would that BE ALRIGHT... OR... should we consider AN EARLY DINNER?!?!?"

I don't know what it is about this show, but I feel like I'm never going to be able to get through it. More than anything else I watch on tv, it just puts me instantly to sleep. It took me 4 or 5 tries just to get through episode 3 because I could only make it through maybe 10 minutes at a time before I was completely unconscious. I'm not even saying I don't like it, I feel like if I could stick with it, I'd enjoy it, but it has this bizarre physical effect of knocking me out immediately.

kingpin voice might be the new way I talk to my cat

he got tired of bane voice

This show had some of the best hand to hand combat scenes I've seen in a long time

"it has this bizarre physical effect of knocking me out immediately."

it can be very dark and quiet. trance t.v. i like that about it.

yeah, it could be the many foreboding, half-whispered conversations that do this to me. I really want to watch this though!

scenes with young Wilson really affecting in ep 8 :(

seeing people reluctantly perform acts of violence/harm against people on command is unsettling to me. really love this show tho.

my MOTHER ordered YOUR...pizza...more than TWENTY MINUTES AGO and it has NOT arrived

wait i just re-made a joke

:(

^good Bee-Gees sequel

after I order a pizza, I generally consider it my pizza

maybe that's incorrect

I enjoy this show but it is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo corny

finished it a week back, it was fun but now i barely remember it.
the whole thing needed editing; every single conversation goes on for about three lines of dialogue too long.

should have been ten episodes tbh

yes.

yes.

yes.

https://nypdecider.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/daredevil-ep3-ben-urich.gif

gOOD GOD THE VIOLENCE IN THIS.

So erotic

Karen Page is v v pretty though.

wanna point out again that the casting is so excellent and key to the show being as fun as it is

Yeah, no complaints about the casting, D'Onofrio's Kingpin intriguing as hell to watch, also what seems like subtle subversions of the DD origin story (the couples seem to lining up as Foggy + Karen and Matt + Clara).

But the violence is gross. Do I have to put up with more stuff like car door decapitations?

that's about as bad as it gets, but tbh the leel of violence inflicted on Matt specifically bugged me a bit, it gets to be a bit much

*level

On one hand I agree that they went too far with the violence, on the other that they produced some stellar fight scenes - the hallway fight of course and the ninja showdown were both about as good as these things get. Also it was the first time I can remember anything of its ilk really going into the bodily toll going out looking for trouble would bring. But he's catholic - he suffers.

yeah even in DArk Knight Batman wasn't like, fucking suffering hospital-grade injuries. it also shows his recovery time is a factor in fighting crime, all the days he can't go out and patrol the street cos BROKEN LIMBS.

i joked with mr veg they shd do truncated 2/3/ 4 ep seasons & then hiatus for recovery time "Due to severe spinal injuries Daredevil will return next season"

Is this the first Marvel property besides the Punisher films with such extreme violence? Bones protruding, heads slammed into pulp, the dude who impales himself ... It's a little weird that after setting up the Marvel movie universe as a relatively bloodless kid-friendly zone that this should go so dark and red.

Alleyway fight with the metal shard the worst imo.

For as much talk as they've done about a 'cohesive' shared universe, there's a pretty big gap between the movies and what they've done for TV so far. A few vague references to the 'battle of New York' have been about it. Apparently that's to do with some sort of rivalry between the film & TV divisions. But they couldn't even bring themselves to have a couple of the Agents of SHIELD show up in Avengers 2?

Was re-watching the first ep with my cousin Alan, seeing it for the first time. As most of y'all know he's a former Marvel artist, and he loved it. Just a few minutes in, as soon as he came on screen, he remarked, "GREAT Foggy!" and he was thrilled when Karen Page showed up. (He was also discussing the comics Kingpin, and said, "Whenever I got a Daredevil assignment and would turn in pages with Kingpin, John Romita would say, 'Fatter! Make him fatter!'")

^^^ wow! Love anecdotes about the Marvel Bullpen behind-the-scenes

He's been telling me so many great stories, and it's hilarious how . . . he doesn't even name drop, he'll just say, "Wally Wood always used to say X" or "At one point everyone in the offices started talking like Stan all the time," etc. When I mentioned this evening the new Ms. Marvel series and the fact that Lockjaw from the Inhumans showed up, he said, "Kirby used to draw a funny animal book called Lockjaw the Alligator, an upright alligator in a business suit. And then he used it for the dog. Even Kirby never threw anything away."

You should record his reminiscences. Seriously.

This morning's anecdotes:

-- When Walt Simonson first moved to the city, he, Howard Chaykin and I lived on the same block. Walt furnished his apartment with stuff he found on the street. He had this weird old chair that he kept up on milk crates. I hung out there all the time, but it disgusted me sitting in that chair.

-- I had a friend named Jerry, who was my marijuana dealer. Horrible guy but he sold cheap pot. He was always taking things he found on the street. One day, at home, I dislocated my shoulder, and Debra was out, so I called Jerry to help me reset it. By the time he got to my apartment, he was carrying a bunch of record albums he had found on the way. I said, "You asshole, my shoulder is hanging here and you stopped to rummage for records?!"

-- Jerry also coached a girls baseball team. When I was drawing the Little Orphan Annie Sunday strips, Jerry asked me if I would draw him naked pictures of Annie. What kind of man coaches girl's baseball and wants naked pictures of Annie?

Also, after trying and failing to do any drawing last week (he made an attempt at the Hulk, saying "It doesn't really matter how ugly you make him") he had a steady hand for the first time since I've been out here, and knocked out this Daredevil sketch in about 2 minutes. He's so happy because he has outstanding commissions.

http://i.imgur.com/NNsZuFG.jpg

Awesome! Thanks, Phil D ( and your cousin!)

"Blinder! Make him blinder!"

What issues of Daredevil did Alan Kupperberg draw?

Beats the heck out of me, ask him!

http://comicbookdb.com/creator.php?ID=1181

(none according to that)

"A bunch of years ago, Alan Kupperberg wrote, penciled and inked a story for Marvel's 'What If?' title, called 'Daredevil: 2013'."

I think he probably ghosted some pages for other artists on earlier runs.

In the year of 2013, Foggy Nelson is the vice-president of the United States and Matt Murdock his advisor. They are at the airport waiting for the president of Russia, Natasha Romanov, the previous Black Widow. She will talk at the World Conference against Terrorism. A terrorist attack happens during the Conference, and Daredevil and Black Widow fights along side again and they discover that the attack was sent by Kingpin, whom Daredevil thought was dead years ago. At the end Daredevil fights Kingpin and the villain gets killed.

basically black widow is putin, kingpin is ISIS

might have done some public service / advertising comics, too. I think they use bullpen staff for that stuff

I need to take a picture, but Alan has a little tupperware container with a little portion of Steve Gerber's ashes.

every anecdote I've ever heard about the Marvel bullpen is a treasure and these are wonderful as well - thanks for sharing.

the gerber's ashes thing is amazing; did he just split them up among friends?

jon bernthal cast as the punisher for season 2 - seems like a really good fit!

Eww @ Pun, but I guess that goes with the GRIM N GRITTY more. Still, I was holding out for Elektra next season ever since they seemed to inch towards bringing in the Hand.

there was a also a throwaway line indicating he met during college in reference to Man Without Fear

you mean elektra right, not frank castle? The showrunner has gone on record as saying they plan on bringing in elektra and bullseye but not next season

there was a also a throwaway line indicating he met during college in reference to Man Without Fear

― Nhex, Wednesday, June 10, 2015 12:13 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah some crack about a greek girl he dated in college

yep, Elektra

didn't know they're not going to do that angle for another season, that's cool, i'd rather see the Hand stuff pay off that they set up this year sooner

“Looking forward, there are so many stories to tell,” says showrunner Steven DeKnight, speaking exclusively to SciFiNow. “The Hand, Elektra, Bullseye… with a 13-episode arc you don’t have to rush it; you can explore. That’s not to say we are going to do Bullseye and Elektra, but it’s on the radar.”

Can't believe I missed the Elektra reference. :\

Or maybe not, as I thought "Man Without Fear" was the title of one of the episodes, not the FM/JRJR mini.

omg even after the impaling and the decapitation, I was not ready for the violence that D'Onofrio inflicted upon the Chinese language.

i was just wondering why Billy Corgan was so angry

THEY KILLED BEN URICH. O_O

Those bastards

http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/daredevil-elektra-elodie-yung-1201535579/

Full speed ahead I guess! Can you even do the Elektra / Punisher arc without introducing Bullseye?

just finished season 1. really enjoyed it, but the whole "now I'm a superhero!" aspect of the finale left me a little unmoved. I think the choice could come off less arbitrary - maybe if there'd been some kind of "villains are a cowardly lot - i'll be the devil!" monologue.

and i really hope foggy's job isn't looking scared every time matt leaves a room now

Reposting a Facebook braindump:

So I just finished the last episode of Daredevil last night and I'm ambivalent. On the one hand, the dialogue was often so cliched that I knew what a character would say a beat before they said it. There was far too much of Foggy and I don't believe that anyone who looked like that at college had only tried weed once. There wasn't enough thought given to the moral cost of Daredevil beating information out of everyone (IRL this is known as torture). Some of the set pieces were extremely derivative of Goodfellas, Silence of the Lambs, etc. The depiction of journalism was some basic, hectoring Aaron Sorkin/Wire Season 5 bullshit - come on Ben, it's 2015, you know what a fucking blog is.

BUT at its heart it understood what Daredevil is about. It's a struggle for the soul of a corrupt, struggling city (the "city" being Hell's Kitchen rather than New York) between two high achievers from humble backgrounds, both of whom see themselves as saviours and justify brutal actions because they believe their motives are pure. Ultimately it all rests on D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk, with his confused sense of self; his immense power, husky menace and violent rages vs his nervousness around Vanessa, protectiveness towards his mother and affection for his right-hand man; the strange childlike uncertainty in his face and body language; the fundamental truth that the worst people in the world believe they are doing the right thing. It's an incredible performance, without which the whole show wouldn't be worth watching. By contrast, Matt Murdock gets off too lightly. There's not enough guilt and darkness in him. We're never really asked to question the choices he makes or recoil when he goes too far.

Apparently there'll be a new showrunner next season. If he can find some writers who can actually handle dialogue - that being what makes the Bendis comics so great - and make Daredevil unsympathetic for a minute or two then this could be as good as I want it to be.

OTM.

But I guess I'm in for season 2 now that they've cast E, wily bastards.

thought for one horrible moment there you meant kevin connolly

THEY KILLED BEN URICH. O_O

― Falconetti Pot (Leee), Saturday, June 13, 2015 7:48 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just finished this; decent to very good acting, direction and plotting, terrible terrible dialogue. Also me and Chapette pissed ourselves laughing when he was revealed in costume, which I don't think was the desired effect.

Still, certainly on board for season 2.

I would expect a pretty significant fix on the costume next season.

fuckin' well hope so. he looks like a fetishist at the moment.

Worse yet, a cosplayer.

Wait until you see his season 2 costume:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3e/Hot_Stuff_the_Little_Devil.png

there was a strong resemblance to Scott Stapp, early version of the costume.

they've changed the costume for season two but will admit i spent most most of first season thinking 'plz keep putting it off'

kinda curious what would come out on top of a poll of all the TV comic spinoff series (this, Arrow, Agents of SHIELD, Gotham, Flash etc.)

i really think they just needed a little more build-up in the dialogue leading to the suit. a little more devil metaphor talk, someone pointing out that his current get-up makes one wonder how this guy can see, etc,

it's weird to think of flash and daredevil both only being one season in because the flash had almost twice as many episodes, and didn't spent half of them on the villain's lovelife (not complaining, those scenes were great, but still)

daredevil easily best tv superhero show for me (well, after the bruce timm dc shows)(and maybe 60s batman). i liked agent carter but it barely qualifies and i've been tempted to give agents of shield a shot but due to 'looks like it could have what i enjoyed about alias' much more than Marvel reasons. the wb shows look like wb shows. gotham looks awful and like a real missed opportunity since gotham central was a comic begging to be adapted into a tv show.

xpost yeah but the Flash spent half its time on Barry mooning over his sister

the bruce timm dc shows

yeah I will rhapsodize about these to just about anybody

they are all-time greatness

Add in Young Justice and Teen Titans.

I don't think I mentioned on ILX how one episode of YJ actually brought me to tears.

I think I've liked DD the most so far, but, as noted, there are far fewer episodes thus far. SHIELD is probably next. People love to shit all over it but it would be much more well-liked if it were judged on its own merits rather than in comparison with the MCU on the whole. GA/Flash are pretty much one show, both entertaining and dumb with like one or two decent actors and a whole lot more who should be buying their agents gift baskets for keeping them out of the soap operas they should be on instead. Never watched Gotham, have no desire to.

And, yeah, the Timm shows are the best. Nothing currently airing tops those.

we're halfheartedly going through Young Justice now (since it's on Netflix) but I can't say I like it's tone as much - everybody is all brooding all the time, and visually everything is so unrelentingly dark, etc. Teen Titans looks more promising and I didn't even know that existed until like a year ago, I need to order those DVDs since the kids *really* love Teen Titans Go! and that seems like it splits the difference between that and the Timm shows.

xp

Agent Carter also very good but not really a superhero show per se.

holding out on the daredevil vs flash TS until i see whether either manages a decent season 2

btw for anyone who once read comics but doesn't really anymore and really don't have the time to deal w/ torrents really marvel unlimited really is fantastic, enough so that i'm pissed there isn't a dc unlimited

i mean really i said really

yeah i wanna get that, came up when i told someone i had a hankering to read claremont's whole run of x-men but didn't want to do it with b&w phonebooks

idk how you guys can stand to read digital comics tbh I just hate hate hate the format

you're right to say really quite frankly; along with netflix/hulu/mubi/spotify/amazon prime, marvel unlimited is a for sure forever yearly sub worth keeping up.
i would pay 100 bucks a year for DC Unlimited btw

Recommend me your fave Bruce Timm shows?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NgU-mW95Ow

I would rate them all about equally tbh. Batman is maybe the most nuanced, but Superman is such a wonderful encapsulation of the character, it hits all the right notes. I prefer slightly prefer Justice League Unlimited to Justice League just because of the bigger cast and the whole plot arc + finale of the first season.

jlu my fave but a lot of that is dc dork on my part.

I still need to watch JLU (I own all the Timm-verse sets, except for Batman Beyond, so I'll get to it someday). Everyone rightly reps for Batman, but I think Superman is the best for the reasons Shakey notes. It's the best Superman adaptation by a mile.

he did a great job of building and maintaining continuity without making it too cluttered and impossible to follow, just enough to make it feel lived in and expansive. also handled all the Kirby stuff with an unusual amount of obvious respect and affection, which means a lot to me.

guess I should note I never got around to Batman Beyond either

yeah there was a little batman beyond in jlu, i think one episode as a proper finale for it or whatever, was never super interested though i guess as those 'we need an xtreme 90s take on this dc hero' goes it was better than what was actually going on in the comics

we're halfheartedly going through Young Justice now (since it's on Netflix) but I can't say I like it's tone as much - everybody is all brooding all the time, and visually everything is so unrelentingly dark, etc. Teen Titans looks more promising and I didn't even know that existed until like a year ago, I need to order those DVDs since the kids *really* love Teen Titans Go! and that seems like it splits the difference between that and the Timm shows.

First season of YJ is on Netflix, let me know if, uh, you need help with the second.

It definitely is brooding, but I thought it was an interesting/novel take on a lot of the characters, esp. Superboy, whom I'd known really through the original LOSH run. It's a lot more character-driven than it is fun-powered.

Teen Titans Go is kind of awful from what I remember, but the OG Teen Titans series is great, though it gets into teenage melodrama (but I'm basically emotionally stunted so there).

BTAS is a little dated to me, mostly because it was before Timm revamped the character designs. Will rep hard for the Mask of the Phantasm movie, though.

JL/JLU are both awesome, the final Cadmus arc in the first season is magnificent.

TTG is super goofy and only marginally related to the comics but its fine for lil kids imo, its mostly for yuks

TTG is amazingly stupid and funny, a completely shit-take on the drama that was in the earlier (still good) series

Thanks for the recommendations!

Working on this in anticipation of Jessica Jones. It's good, not great. I like the noir aspects and Rosario Dawson/whatsherface from True Blood are solid.

The fight scenes are too staged - you punch here then I roll here then we swap positions - ala bad martial arts movies.

that's an interesting comment on the fight scenes given all the praise they got--are you like a fight flick guy

also i guess this is the wrong thread for this but who the fuck told me watchin gthe flash was a good idea, what the shit

i like that they don't cut the fights up too much editing-wise, that you get a sense of where they are in the space & the damage they're doing

the flash is goofy & downright stupid mostly but i like it, it's like a big dumb dog

hahaha xxp

When the JJones episode titles & descriptions leaked yesterday all I could think was "shit, that's a lot of typos and grammar/punctuation errors."

the fights in Daredevil start out pretty sloppy and get better - i rationalized it that he was wild and stumbling as a crime-fighting noob. i don't actually know if it was intentional in retrospect.

the flash is goofy & downright stupid mostly but i like it, it's like a big dumb dog

^^^

it's definitely more enjoyable than any other superhero TV show I've seen, including Daredevil (I couldn't even make it through a single episode - nice credits though)

feel like Daredevil's canonical vibe is late 70s/early 80s NY, The Warriors/Hardcore/Taxi Driver/Deathwish, "broken windows" policing, garbage strikes - just trash and scum and dangerous nutjobs everywhere, with a lil kung fu thrown in. would watch something like that, but this ain't it.

haha wait I forgot Hardcore takes place in LA scratch that one

outside of Agent Carter Marvel's so far missed the boat on doing period pieces.

the flash is goofy & downright stupid mostly but i like it, it's like a big dumb dog

― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, November 3, 2015 9:40 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok so this is what people were *liking* about it, i can get with that

i just went in expecting something on the order of DD i guess and came out like 'wtf did i just watch'

whoa yeah what would give you that idea. I'm 2 eps deep into Flash and like it quite a bit, but then I've repped for Arrow even during its dumbest moments.

I like that Flash commits to his "Rogues Gallery" of villains and all the ridiculous pseudo-science shit that the character has traditionally been involved in - time travel, parallel worlds, talking telepathic gorillas, etc. This sort of gleeful indulgence in far-out ideas, with less emphasis on the tortured grimness of the hero. He *likes* being the Flash, cuz being the Flash is awesome.

that being said I don't watch it with any regularity or consistency, but if it's on I'll watch it

Barry the Flash really is the lamest superhero though - run somewhere really fast, get ass kicked, rinse repeat

It also has a very corny oldfashionedness about it what with all the "speedster" stuff and whatnot

it is nice that every villain has the same origin story
saves time

also their biggest bad guy is named Leonard Snart

whoa yeah what would give you that idea. I'm 2 eps deep into Flash and like it quite a bit, but then I've repped for Arrow even during its dumbest moments.

― a silly gif of awkward larping (Sparkle Motion), Tuesday, November 3, 2015 9:54 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well the funny thing was that this time last year i sat down and watched 'arrow' with a friend while on vacation and we got a kick out of how dumb it was

then last weekend i reunited with that same friend and we settled for 'the flash' thinking 'hmm that could be good' and then FUCKING ARROW appears and we were like 'oh'

Leonard Snart

which is straight from the comics

xpost The walls between Arrow and The Flash are very porous at this point.

Both shows are dumb fun and fine featherweight entertainment but I can see leaving them behind as Marvel gets more stuff on the air (they have at least two new ABC series/miniseries in the works, from what I understand).

SNART

While I admire their adherence to details from the comics, it can occasionally be a stumbling block (SNART) for people who aren't already awash in the nerdery. When Jay Garrick put his helmet on, my gf was all, "wtf is with the stupid hat?" And I hemmed and hawed something something about Hermes something it's just what he wears in the comics something okay yes it looks incredibly stupid on a real person.

that hat needs to be hidden away in a closet and never shown again

and lets not say speedster or snart out loud anymore

Yes, every utterance of 'speedster' also gets a derisive SNART from my gf.

this is a web thing btw
http://snart-the-cult.tumblr.com/

whenever they say snart I chant "Snart snart snart snart" until mr veg tells me to shut up

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/0/40/352310-82273.png

also i guess this is the wrong thread for this but who the fuck told me watchin gthe flash was a good idea, what the shit

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, November 3, 2015

I stand with HOOS. I've come around on Agents of SHIELD but one episode of this was all I needed.

that's an interesting comment on the fight scenes given all the praise they got--are you like a fight flick guy

The fights remind me of House of Flying Daggers, which I hated.

nice to see they're going a bit more lighthearted for s2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5_A0Wx0jU4

They fixed his mask, and production values look better too.

Trailer part 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cn3DVV0LHY

looking forward to getting started on this over the weekend

Is season 2 on Netflix today? I'm down with flu, so it'd be a good way to spend the Friday night.

i'm hyped

xp - yes

Goddamn, three episodes in and this is goooooood. Lots of the rough edges have been shaved off. They pretty much jump right into the action and stay there. End of ep 3 has a sweet sequel to the infamous hallway fight from s1.

It was a total accident that I took today off without any real plans. I guess I have plans now.

Gave up on S01 two thirds in - can I skip the end of that season and dig right in the new one? Felt that Jessica Jones blew that show out of the water so i'm wondering whether to stick with it at all.

I guess I don't know why you'd want to jump to s2 if you couldn't make it through s1? It's kind of a refined version of more of the same. But, yeah, it's mostly a new story so I'd imagine you could make the leap without much hassle.

Having never seen Jon Bernthal in anything before, I thought there was a chance they just got some random meathead to play a human war machine but, man, I really should have more faith in Marvel's casting process at this point. He is so good, and he has a scene in ep. 4 (you'll know it when you get there) that wrecked me. My first MCU cry.

Damn, am I the only one binge watching this? I'm usually the one who's too far behind to engage in timely discussion about a show.

Re: my response to baaderonixx, this season is actually much more tied into the first than I realized. It's just that the threads don't reveal themselves for a while.

Haven't watched this yet but I really like Bernthal in general

First episode pisses on anything from season one. Was going to watch this just for Elektra but now I might actually enjoy the series.

First ep of s2 buildup to Punisher reveal was so good, loving this already

I am trying not to binge, we'll see how lkng that lasts

3 eps in everything that grated in S1 grates harder (general talkiness, Matt Murdock's aussie accent), but everything that ruled in S1 still rules. Bernthal is owning hard, and not just bc it's a good part.

fight scenes don't impress as much now that I've seen The Raid/Raid 2 but the choreo with chain and unloaded pistol was solid.

watched 3 eps last night, v satisfied

Matt Murdock's aussie accent

Charlie Cox is English, I'm never going to believe anything you say again. ._.

otm :(

lol I know and that's exactly what I told my gf when she pointed it out. now I can't unhear it!

same deal with Dominic West in The Wire.

If Bernthal is the Punisher wasn't he in The Wire too? Looks like a cop from there. Used to wear hiphop/gym gear.

Enjoying this so far but also watching a few other things so only to episode 3 so far. Just getting into the Expanse, Kimmy Schmidt, Twilight Zone, Elementary and a couple other things

he wasn't in the wire (was in show me a hero though), i think you're probably either thinking of dozerman or colicchio? i don't remember what either character did but i also looked at him and thought he was one of them

Yeah thought he was coliccio. Looks a bit like him, but no.

brazen and amusingly incongruous 13th Floor Elevators ref in one of the episodes.

bernthal in his white prison uniform looked unsettlingly like simon cowell sometimes

Bernthal was great in Show Me a Hero.

holy fucking shit at frank's big scene in ep9 O_O

All right, slowpokes.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS
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So, first: the bad. The ending really fizzled out and descended into cliche (a little too much in the way of on the nose dialogue and pat resolutions). I wish someone making this show was watching Arrow (which I watch and like okay but which I can admit is complete trash) because this season started feeling way too Arrow-ish at a point.

But the rest was good-to-great! A decided improvement on last season. The fight sequences were pretty OMG across the board, but a few were AMAZING. The stairwell fight with the biker gang! Punisher in prison! The hospital fight with the Hand (I actually gasped when DD saved Claire, and TV shows and movies never make me actually gasp)!

Bernthal was a revelation. It's a shame that his arc was backburner-ed a bit as Elektra and the Hand took center stage. Wasn't as crazy about that storyline but it was okay. I had no idea the Hand was happening this season but I knew what was coming when the one dude was like, "Who said we were yakuza?"

Great to see D'Onofrio briefly back and really inhabiting the role. Now that felt like the Kingpin I know and love. I look forward to his impending reunion with Frank.

I remember a lot of violence and at least implied gore (the car door beheading) in the first season, but this season was gooooory. Like hard R gory. I guess unsurprisingly, with the introduction of the Punisher. But I can see it being a turn-off for some people.

The status quo is shaken up quite a bit by season's end. I did kinda figure that that was exactly the way Elektra's arc would resolve, but everyone else is in an interesting place: Matt seemingly with no practice or job, Foggy working for Carrie Anne Moss, Karen hired as a writer for the Bugle New York Bulletin based on her amazing research skills and proving to be an unsurprisingly terrible writer after two episodes of staring at a blank screen (I can only imagine that the editor quickly ushered her out the door after reading a paragraph of 'What Is A Hero, Anyway?').

The Luke Cage teaser was a nice capper. It looks pretty sweet (christmas).
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END SPOILERS

Hope you guys catch up while I still remember enough to talk about it.

yeah, it's pretty good - it moves at a much quicker clip than s1 and is all the better for it. really looking forward to the next season (now that i think of it, will there be one before the defenders show starts?) old lunch very much otm on the fights, the kingpin and karen's story, which was sub-thought-catalog-level terrible.

i think the show walked an interesting line with the punisher, though, and i'm still not quite sure how i feel about it. in 2016, a story about a disturbed white guy who conducts heavily-armed mass executions against those he perceives as having wronged him pretty unavoidably brings up memories of real-life situations from the recent past, all of which are horrific. the punisher shooting up a hospital early on in the show made me feel pretty queasy and that feeling never quite left despite the numerous reassurances that he was only targeting 'bad guys'.

bernthal was genuinely great, and the credit for any sympathy the audience has for castle is pretty much entirely down to how bernthal plays him. but i can't help feeling that the cultural context for the punisher in the 21st century is very different than it was for a character who was conceived in the post-dirty harry 1974.

i realise of course that the show hardly presents castle as a heroic figure but i kinda feel like if you're making a mass shooter one of your protagonists in 2016 it's impossible to avoid raising the spectre of real-life atrocities, and i don't think they navigated it entirely successfully.

It's worth noting that, aside from Karen (whose wavering was understandable, based on her actions in season 1) and the Kingpin, no one condoned or approved of the Punisher's methods, and everyone on the side of justice agreed that he belonged in prison.

i liked the kingpin's pragmatic method of using the punisher as a weapon to further his own ends - made perfect sense for both characters.

i dunno, i'm having some trouble explaining why the punisher troubled me as much as he did. overally i really did like the season!

You're totally justified in being squicked by the pseudo-heroic depiction of that type of character, and you're totally OTM that the Punisher is a product of an era when his real-life analogues were an outlier rather than a recurring symptom of a chronic illness.

can we talk for a minute about the punisher's apparent indifference to having one of his feet mutilated with a power drill? for some reason his ability to just shrug that off seemed really ridiculous to me, even in a show where the main character is regularly beaten to within an inch of his life without long-term problems.

hahaha, yeah, I saw the scene where he takes a power drill to the foot and I was like "wow, whatever else happens, he's looking at months of surgeries and physical therapy" but I guess in superhero world that shit you can mind over matter through in about three weeks. Even non-superheroes in this universe are clearly a lot tougher than real humans. Otherwise Daredevil's "I never kill bad guys" ethos is hilariously naive... you're a lawyer, you dumbass, you have to know that death is very likely outcome when you throw a crowbar at some guy's head or roundhouse kick him in the face and let him fall down a staircase.

in the final episode dd seems pretty chill about having the punisher standing on an adjacent rooftop and blowing away the ninjas attacking him - his strictly enforced moral code is definitely a little more flexible than he thinks it is, yeah.

Also would like to see Daredevil's susceptibility to the brown note explored in future seasons.

Otherwise Daredevil's "I never kill bad guys" ethos is hilariously naive... you're a lawyer, you dumbass, you have to know that death is very likely outcome when you throw a crowbar at some guy's head or roundhouse kick him in the face and let him fall down a staircase.

He's never seen a corpse after doing any of those things.

VAGUE SPOILER MAYBE
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i liked the kingpin's pragmatic method of using the punisher as a weapon to further his own ends - made perfect sense for both characters.

they never really got to it w "the blacksmith" but i wondered if he did the same thing by acing frank's family --- knew he'd go ham and take out his rivals. also w/r/t frank getting his foot drilled and shrugging it (and so much other insane blunt force trauma): the fact that he took a bullet to the brain at close range and lived* seems to suggest he might have some history as a super-durable govt spook like those dudes on jessica jones

*nb i have both personal and professional experience with this and it's actually not super-uncommon, but still

anyway OL otm. i actually lol'd when karen started writing, it was so so bad.
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END

I feel like Karen's article had to be bad on purpose? For some reason? I mean, the writers on the show seem to know what they're doing, generally. They had to know that was execrable, right?

also binge-watching this made me appreciate one accomplishment --- this is essentially a 13hr action movie, and one intended to be watched if not in its entirety, at least with the expectation that ppl are gonna stack up 2, 3, 4 episodes at a time. i know that the netflix model (a distillation of HBO et al) is predicated on ppl mainlining whole seasons in a few sittings, but i got to give them credit for keeping up a head of steam from the jump almost up until the very end. i agree that the last few episodes got a little corny and paint by numbers, and even i can only tolerate so many ninja fights (something a 13yo me never would have believed), but dang if they didn't manage about ten hours of pretty good pacing within the confines of a genre that almost by definition is exhausting to watch.

xp well it had to serve as a corny voice-over for the end of the series. the only way they can come good on it being terrible is if, at the beginning of series 3, her editor tells her that the article was schlock trash

It'll be interesting to see the transition writers and showrunners make from writing for television proper (where each episode, even when it's part of a larger narrative, is treated as a discrete, framed entity unto itself and delivered one drop at a time) to writing for streaming services (where an entire season is available at once and is often consumed that way). I think people will get better at crafting an entire season as a single work and treating the individual episodes as porous chapters in a novel that don't need to individually offer much in the way of exposition or resolution rather than rote installments that sort of have to stand on their own.

One thing I did notice was the absence of a preshow recap. Obviously that makes sense if people are going to binge watch. But is something I'm used to seeing.
Yeah do wonder what getting used to the new release schedule model will mean in shaping storytelling.

On Ep 12 now. Why does anyone give a shit about Elektra? She just sorta seems like an asshole who enjoys violence. (A big theme in this season.)

She was rich and exciting? Otherwise back story is revealed possibly later taht episode.

I was wondering how many back stories to Elektra there were since the one I had been familiar with had her dad being a rich Greek tycoon or something. Here she's been an orphan. I guess he was first introduced in the 80s or 90s so there has been a long time for back stories to be changed to fit current needs.

Is this one new for the show?
Was also wondering if the show storyline arc mapped to a run in the comics or not.

Nah, this story is kind of its own thing. I don't think that orphan angle had ever been played before. Elektra died in the '80s and was later resurrected under circumstances I don't recall. She was believed to be leading the Hand for a while but was ultimately revealed to have been kidnapped and replaced by a Skrull. Yeah. Forget it, it's Marveltown.

Pretty much every MCU movie/show is cobbled together from a number of stories and sources. The only thing I can remember that followed the comics pretty faithfully was Captain America's origin story.

paul mcguigan has admitted on twitter that he's directed the first couple episodes of the upcoming luke cage show

i like half of his output so i'm hopeful

the end of this series was ludicrous but it's still lots of fun to watch... I like the Marvel series on Netflix a lot better than the films.

Elektra died in the '80s and was later resurrected under circumstances I don't recall

She was introduced and died during Frank Miller's first Daredevil run, and the resurrection happened during that same run. Except that in the comics she was working for the Hand when she died, and she got resurrected by Stick's good ninja cult, and that (alongside Daredevil's failed attempt to bring her back to life) somehow "purified" her, so she was a good guy at the end. So it's interesting they're doing pretty much the opposite: first she's a good guy working for Stick's cult, then she dies, and gets resurrected by the Hand, presumably as a baddie (though obviously there'll eventually be redemption for her).

yeah that's the original arc, but hasn't there been a bunch of crap/revisions after that...?

elektra dies and comes back at least once every couple years, it's her thing

I believe she was a dancer(?) for a stretch, during her horrendous Peter Milligan-scripted solo series.

I like Peter Milligan's work, but when he misses, he really misses

You speak truth.

she's in the End Of Days thing from 2012 i'm currently reading as a soccer mom

imo they did a good job of making her character being straight-up seductive poison for matt on this tv show

he's all about being a lawyer and being on the right side of things and within minutes of meeting he's in a stolen car

good counterpoint to the punisher, who isn't really shown enjoying _anything_, including his extreme violence. meanwhile, elektra loves killing

Punisher and Elektra were totally sexing with each other in the Thunderbolts series from a couple years ago.

Anyway, I finished watching season 2, and here's some thoughts on it:
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SPOILERS!
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* I totally agree with Bizzarro Gazzarra that they should have not made the Punisher into a sympathetic character. The Punisher loathsome character, the worst popular super "hero" ever to have existed. The era in the late 80s and early 90s when he had three different montly comic books depicting his "heroics" was the darkest time in Marvel's history. It's not just that he's an unrepentant murderer, but the criminals he kills are typically depicted (both in the comics and in this TV series) as more realistic than those most other superheroes face: not mad scientists or world-conquering tyrants, but the sort of people who exist in real life. So that makes him nothing but a reactionary "tough-on-crime" fantasy, a figure on which to project far-right prejudices about the causes and solutions of crime. (And as Bizzarro points out, the fact that many real-life wannabe Punishers have committed horrible acts between the height of his comic book popularity and 2016 only makes it worse to adapt him as sympathetic figure in this day and age.)

The only time the Punisher works as a character when he's clearly a psycho and a villain, when he's clearly contrasted with the heroes of the story. And at first it seemed like this series was going for that, but it started to waffle on it, to throw these "maybe he's not completely wrong, maybe his victims deserve it" questions in the air, and towards the end of the season he's become basically the bad cop to DD's good cop, his vitriolic crime-fighting bud, pretty much the same type of "superhero" he was in those 80s/90s comics. So fuck that and fuck the writers of this series for not having the guts to make him as vile as he should be, and instead making him like he was in the comics because that character still has some fans who see him as a good guy.

* In general, I think the Punisher's storyline was dragged on for too long; all that investigation stuff Karen did could've been dealt with in one episode (especially since most of the stuff she discovered was something anyone familiar with the comic book Punisher already knew), though I guess they couldn't figure out another seasonal arc for her, so it had to go on for 12 episodes. And the ending to Punisher's arc was just a stupid cliche; of course bad guy behind his family's death was his nice military CO! (Except that it seems those deats just happened by chance? The Blacksmith's gang meeting just happened to take place when his old marine buddy was in Central Park with his family, but this wasn't planned by anyone, it was just a ridiculous coincidence?) I was kinda expecting the Blacksmith would be revealed to be Vanessa, or even a MCU version of Rose. That would've been an interesting setup for the Kingpin's eventual return in season 3, but no, they had to go for the lamest type of revelation.

Even though I strongly dislike the Punisher, it still felt like this "it was my best friend all along!" solution kinda undermined whatever point there is to him as a character. In the comics, the reason he keeps on fighting crime is because his family died in a random shootout, and he feels something like that could happen to anyone, so he keeps on killing criminals, because he thinks that will stop other people from dying like his family did. But since this series changed the death of Frank's family from faceless crime to being orchestrated by someone he knows, and whom goes after, his killing spree feels more like a personal vendetta. So after he shot Blacksmith and his family was fully avenged, he should've killed himself, because what does he have to live for after that? But no, he just continues to do what he does, because you gotta have Punisher and his cool skull shirt!

* But I was happy that the ninja stuff was there to balance the Punisher plot, because when these shows go too deep for the vigilante aspect and for showing "heroes" fighting real-life street crime, I can't help but start to think about the politics behind glorifying vigilantism, and how DD's "no killing" doesn't work with the sort of realistic depictions of violence this show wants to do, becauce obviously some of those gangbangers he brutally beat up and threw down the stairs would've died from their injuries. You just can't have you cake and it eat it too; the combination of gritty, realistic-looking violence and glorifying your hero as a moral guy who never kills doesn't work.

So IMO ninjas are a better antagonist for Daredevil, because they aren't real, you can use ninja magic to justify why they don't die even after brutal beatings, so the fight between DD and them becomes more like your typical superhero conflict, a symbolic conflict between good and bad, not something which could happen in real life and whose real-life implications cannot stand moral examination. Superheroes shouldn't be realistic, because realistically your hero should then become Rorschach, and it'd be pretty hard to root for him anymore. Superhero stories are at their best as abstracted moral plays and character studies, they should not try to deal with social problems of the real world. So gimme more ninjas and less Punisher in season 3!
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END SPOILERS!

Superhero stories are at their best as abstracted moral plays and character studies

agree w this w caveat that silly cosmic shenanigans are also fun

Yeah, those are actually my favourite. The less realistic the better!

Thank you for your considered counterpoint, Tuomas. Your concerns are legit but I'm less concerned myself as the series is clearly geared more towards adults. The Punisher is a super problematic character, and I don't think I've ever encountered a Punisher story that was wholly satisfying in terms of tackling the issues you bring up. This series at least went some way towards both painting him as a fully-rounded human being and painting his methods as repugnant, so I guess this is about as satisfying as it's gotten for me.

I think the long-term impact of the Punisher as a character is that he shouldn't exist in this superhero world because the character shines a light on the dubious morality of vigilantism and the wish fulfillment of having super-powered characters that are able to tackle great things single-handedly. The essential part of the character is that he doesn't belong in this world, or if he does, he should be in jail, be stopped, be confined. No matter what anyone tries to do, though, he continues. Shoot him and he survives, throw him in prison for killing and he ends up killing even more criminals, cage him and the same forces he opposes secure his release.

By his very nature he's a character that no one can ever really be comfortable with. I feel like this show has captured that. An unstoppable killer whose existence is a thorn in the side of every hero is no more outlandish than a super-powered blind attorney.

The problem isn't that he's outlandish, it's that the show (as well as those early Punisher comics the TV writers clearly drew their inspiration from) makes him sympathetic and noble, makes it feel like like (by using Karen as an audience proxy) his solution to crime is almost understandable. There are ways to put him into good use as a character, but that means he has to be a clear villain, you have to show how sociopathic and vile a man doing what he does would really be. Alan Moore understood that, and Rorschach is pretty much what Punisher would be like if he wasn't used as a right-wing reactionary fantasy. (It's not a coincidence that the two best-known Punisher writers, Garth Ennis and Mike Baron, are both very much conservatives.) But the writers of this show didn't do that, for whatever reason (maybe they are tough-on-crime right-wingers themselves, or maybe they just had to protect Marvel's intellectual property?) they decided that it's okay to write the Punisher in 2016 as he was written during the Reagan era.

They made him sympathetic but I think they went out of their way to avoid depicting him as noble. And Karen wasn't an audience proxy. She was wrestling with the impact of her own Punisher-esque actions in season one and trying to believe that both she and Frank were good people capable of redemption.

Didn't Karen only kill Fisk's henchman because he was about to kill her? That's quite different from what the Punisher does. And besides her sympathetic POV on Punisher, there was the scene where he's about to kill the Irish petty criminal (IIRC that scene was taken straight from a Punicher comic book by Ennis and Dillon), and Daredevil has to decide whether to defend the criminal, and then of course it's then revealed the criminal was worse than we thought, so that the Punisher's viewpoint becomes more acceptable. That scene was clearly framed (as was the comic book it's based on) to make the viewer find DD's "no killing" argument weaker and Punisher's argument stronger.

the criminal was worse than we thought, so that the Punisher's viewpoint becomes more acceptable

imo this indicts the viewer who thinks killing is wrong, then decides killing is less wrong if the person was really bad

the punisher as a concept is always problematic and wish-fulfillment but framing it in a way that makes people examine whether they're already judging things in a morally grey area when they claim they're black-and-white when it comes to capital punishment is at least forcing the question

tbh claiming portrayals are bad for television and quantifying it with "but I read the entire Garth Ennis Punisher run" is kind of where I'm at

I think the long-term impact of the Punisher as a character is that he shouldn't exist in this superhero world because the character shines a light on the dubious morality of vigilantism and the wish fulfillment of having super-powered characters that are able to tackle great things single-handedly. The essential part of the character is that he doesn't belong in this world, or if he does, he should be in jail, be stopped, be confined. No matter what anyone tries to do, though, he continues. Shoot him and he survives, throw him in prison for killing and he ends up killing even more criminals, cage him and the same forces he opposes secure his release.

By his very nature he's a character that no one can ever really be comfortable with. I feel like this show has captured that. An unstoppable killer whose existence is a thorn in the side of every hero is no more outlandish than a super-powered blind attorney.

― μpright mammal (mh), Wednesday, March 23, 2016 9:31 AM (9 hours ago)

I agree with this take on the character 100%. I never really "got" the Punisher until the post-CCA landscape and the Ennis run.

We finished watching this today. JJones > DD1 > DD2.

No matter what anyone tries to do, though, he continues. Shoot him and he survives, throw him in prison for killing and he ends up killing even more criminals, cage him and the same forces he opposes secure his release.

don't think I've ever encountered a Punisher story that was wholly satisfying in terms of tackling the issues you bring up

Ennis / MAX?

I know it's supposed to be good but I haven't read much of it because, y'kknow, Ennis.

hearing the milquetoast tones of matt murdoch while he's chained, beaten & furiously pleading makes such a good argument in favour of christian bale's bat-voice

yeah, tbh not much about this season worked for me other than Bernthal

so wait did we find out why they wanted to dig a big fuckin hole? or for that matter why they wanted a decanter full of blood?

or i guess just the former actually -- just watched the last ep stinger which seemed to clear up the latter.

big hole was ninja housing and they were dumping sacred dirt from japan in it to build the black sky cocoon coffin works

It was...a plot hole.
http://www.lunettesde.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/david-caruso-csi.jpg

Boy this season got stupid in a hurry, didn't it?

My favorite stupid thing in the last few was Karen yelling at Big Pun about how if he kills the guy who got his family killed, this'll finally be the last straw. After he has already murdered upwards of 50 people at minimum.

lol at "13th Floor Elevators" on the security monitor in ep 6

Is that where it was, somebody mentioned it up thread and I didn't consciously notice it so have been wondering what episode it was in. Assumed it had to do with the soundtrack and conversation though. May have another look at it now.

Finished the season and

I mean, the writers on the show seem to know what they're doing, generally.

hahaha no way. The last two episodes were impressively incoherent.

Elektra was the only reason why I started with this season at all, but then the execution was so dumb. She's an expert assassin and we don't see her hold her own in most of the fights (young Ellie seemed much better actually!). Some Black Sky! She gets pulled from the dark side by Daredevil emoing at her.

And what happened to the bloodletting zombie kids?

I understand that they want to keep some mysteries for the following season, but it was pretty irritating that were didn't learn anything about Hand's plans. Besides the bloodletting kids disappearing, we didn't learn who their blood was originally meant for? Who was in that coffin before Elektra was put there? (I expected Kirigi to come out of it, but no.) Surely the Hand didn't plan for Elektra to die, so what were they planning with the blood/coffin? (It couldn't have been for Nobu, because Nobu seemed to pretty immune to damage without needing to go into the coffin.) What was that huge hole in Hell's Kitchen dug for? Why was Elektra being Black Sky treated as an unique individual, when in the previous season there was a random kid who was also a Black Sky, and who seemingly has the same powers as Elektra? What do they even plan to do with Black Sky?

They explained your second-to-last question. Elektra wasn't unique in being a Black Sky, just one of an extremely small number.

their blood, or whatever toxic goo they were being used to incubate, powered the coffin thing, which was empty but they were planning on putting their black sky person into it. pretty sure they knew the person was elektra, or at least knew that whatever was going to go down was going to happen in new york, and soon

as for what they were going to do with black sky: that's their leader

hand plans:
1. construct shadowy facility
2. set up incubator coffin w/toxic blood setup
3. find black sky, put them in coffin
4. be led by the evil creation that pops out, do evil ninja stuff

I guess I was thinking more about the comics, where Hand sacrifices the life energy of it member to raise its dead warriors from the grave: this is done to both Kirigi and Elektra. And it was also hinted that they do something like this in the TV series, when Stick tells Matt they have defeated death. This would also explain how Nobu came back in after he seemingly died in season 1. But if the coffin is a bring-back-the-dead device, it doesn't explain why they had it ready before Elektra even died? Maybe it was just for Nobu? Though in this season he fell from great height twice and just shook it off, so I'm not sure what it takes to actually kill him so dead he would need the coffin?

Also, it was never explained why the blood donors needed to be kept alive even after their blood was harvested, and why the Hand wanted them back so desperately after DD saved them, instead of just finding new donors... In the comics the ninjas who donate their life force to Kirigi and Elektra simply die after the deed is done. Maybe, if the coffin is indeed a immortality device, the magic blood grants the person who's been in the coffin immortality only as long as the original blood donors are alive? That would explain why Nobu can just shake off any damage done to him; as long as Hand keeps the people whose blood he harvested alive, he can't die either.

Anyway, regardless of what the coffin is, none of these theories explain why the Hand dug a huge, mile-deep hole in the middle of Hell's Kitchen.

as for what they were going to do with black sky: that's their leader

But that doesn't jibe with the kid in Season 1, who was also a Black Sky. If Black Sky is their leader, they already had one, but why was he brought to Manhattan instead of keeping him out of harm's way in their Japan headquarters? Seems like whatever the Black Sky is, they need to something with him/her/it on a specific cite in Manhattan. I guess that's what the huge hole is for?

cite = site

they have to put them in the coffin to transform them into whatever, the coffin thingy empowers them

they never explain in the tv show how they bring people back from death

But does the coffin thing empower them even if they're dead? And why couldn't they put the kid in season 1 to in a coffin in Japan, why did they need to bring him to Manhattan?

I dunno, the Hand/Stick/Elektra part of the story takes most of its elements from Frank Miller's DD run, and a super memorable part of that run was Elektra's death and later resurrection via a ninja magic (in the comic it was done by Stick's followers, but they used the same technique as Hand). So when Elektra dies here, and they have a coffin and a system of harvesting blood from living people (something which in fantasy fiction typically is used to transform someone's life force into someone else), it makes me think they're just adapting Miller instead of coming up with some new concept. Admittedly, the whole Black Sky thing isn't based on Miller, but it still remains vague, it's never stated that the coffin + blood thing is related to Black Sky rather than being a separate magical tool of the Hand.

secret accounting papers > *encoded* lines in secret accounting papers > freight train with dirt in > mile-deep unexplained hole was the most absurd waste of plot time afaict.

gone upthread again and seen mh's point about swapping in sacred dirt from japan, which i missed, but well, ok, i guess that's bare justification, which is better than nothing. i think. but still - new york hueg pit = plot hole, freight train of sacred dirt = plot filler.

Is this "sacred dirt" something that's actually mentioned, or just MH's theory? Because I don't remember any mention of the giant hole being refilled with anything? And the freight train was used to take away the earth from the dig site without causing suspicion, not to bring in new earth.

yes, that was what I got as well. 'don't know' is the answer. the idea that on a balance sheet 'inexplicable dirt taken out of big hole' would be encoded, and automatic weapons wouldn't be is comical. I don't much mind really, though it's egregious, and looks very much like terrible writing (how do we get so and so to this place in this many episodes? uh, not sure? big hole? yep ok that'll do.) Still feel i might have missed something, but 'pay-off in next series' won't wash, and is something that's crept into multi-season, available-all-at-once series - House of Cards has begun to feel like you're watching 12 hour yearly episodes, the way it crawls through its arcs.

oh, yeah, it's probably excavated dirt, n/m

best plot strand in this is calvin klein model blood factory

I want less Karen next season because wow that actress is terrrrible. She's reminds me of Paula Patton in that they have one expression when displaying "emotion" : open mouth in a half smirk and wrinkle your brow.

you karen haters are bad

She's bad at acting.

lol at "13th Floor Elevators" on the security monitor in ep 6

I've watched 1 1/2 episodes, and one of those early ones joked that a good name for a super baddie would be "Killdozer." Some old hipster clearly in the writing crew.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gJ1vtajDJbE/VIndAORkCaI/AAAAAAAAGao/kRG9lTZ70jQ/s1600/Worlds+Unknown+%235+killdozer.jpg

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3841/751/1600/Killdozer02.jpg

Deborah Ann Woll is fine and I like how much agency the character has, I just wish she didn't get saddled with being uselessly kept in the dark re: Daredevil, and for her whole silly arc with Big Pun.

xpost Ha, is that where the band got its name?

I'm I think at episode 4, and while this isn't as batshit as "Punisher: War Zone," it is quite possibly the most violent TV show I have ever seen.

I believe that's from the comic adaptation of the Killdozer book (which was also a movie, as Killdozer is a thing needs to happen in every medium).

yep, you're correct.

no lolz in the real life version tho'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer

that story never ceases to amaze me

For visibility, the bulldozer was fitted with several video cameras linked to two monitors mounted on the vehicle's dashboard; the cameras were protected on the outside by 3-inch (76 mm) shields of bullet-resistant plastic. Onboard fans and an air conditioner were used to keep Heemeyer cool while driving, and compressed-air nozzles were fitted to blow dust away from the video cameras. He had made three gun-ports, fitted for a .50 caliber sniper rifle, a .308 semi-automatic, and a .22 long rifle, all fitted with a half-inch-thick steel plate. Heemeyer apparently had no intention of leaving the cabin once he entered it. Authorities speculated he may have used a homemade crane – found in his garage – to lower the armor hull over the dozer and himself. "Once he tipped that lid shut, he knew he wasn't getting out", County Commissioner Duane Dailey said.

I have never heard that story before. That is completely insane. A very methodical and well-planned insanity but insane nonetheless.

it's the sort of batshit craziness combined with competence you'd expect from a tv show like Daredevil, not some guy pissed off at his community

Those are all different things, it looks like. Killdozer the 1974 movie looks like it was from the 1944 story, and the movie was adapted into a comic book also in 1974. Killdozer the crazy real dude was in 2004. Killdozer the band formed in 1983, so I guess took their name from the novella/movie/comic.

Anyway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbG9i1oGPA

just finished season 2.
and seeing as others have done spoilers, i have one question.
in the final episode punisher just before he torches his house, he breaks a picture and takes out a cd-r titled 'MICRO'.
was this something the viewer is supposed to know about, or, something for another season ?

"micro" is a character from the comic books

so, a tease for another season or spin-off or something

Microchip was basically the Punisher's admin assistant for a long time.

ahh ta muchly.
i guess this means a standalone punisher series, which i'd totally be up for.
enjoyed daredevil s2 a lot, but damn, it was quite gruesome at times.
the wooden spikes into the fingers for stick was particularly difficult to watch.

oh god yeah *shudder*

I saw the first four eps, and they all ended pretty tidily, like the end of a 4-issue limited run. Then Elektra arrives and I'm all, hmm, OK, this must be like the start of another 4-issue limited arc. But then I come across reviews of future episodes regarding the Punisher on trial and battling ninjas and it scans like a totally different season of the show. I guess I sort of like how erratic these things can be from episode to episode, or season to season - just like the comics - but I kind of wish it wasn't biting off more than it could chew, especially since the material is pretty shallow to begin with, imo.

that's how they make the shallow material work -- they just push it together into a whole mess of stuff at once.

marvel cancelled a promotional panel for the upcoming punisher show a couple of weeks ago because of the vegas massacre; there's interesting piece on that at io9 here which echoes something i wrote itt last year

i think the show walked an interesting line with the punisher, though, and i'm still not quite sure how i feel about it. in 2016, a story about a disturbed white guy who conducts heavily-armed mass executions against those he perceives as having wronged him pretty unavoidably brings up memories of real-life situations from the recent past, all of which are horrific. the punisher shooting up a hospital early on in the show made me feel pretty queasy and that feeling never quite left despite the numerous reassurances that he was only targeting 'bad guys'.

bernthal was genuinely great, and the credit for any sympathy the audience has for castle is pretty much entirely down to how bernthal plays him. but i can't help feeling that the cultural context for the punisher in the 21st century is very different than it was for a character who was conceived in the post-dirty harry 1974.

i realise of course that the show hardly presents castle as a heroic figure but i kinda feel like if you're making a mass shooter one of your protagonists in 2016 it's impossible to avoid raising the spectre of real-life atrocities, and i don't think they navigated it entirely successfully.

― Upset by racist left wingers calling me an egg (bizarro gazzara), Monday, 21 March 2016 14:16 (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

some pertinent quotes from the article, by charles pulliam-moore

Though he’s most often framed as a complicated antihero who abides by a personal code that defines his sense of justice, the Punisher is Marvel’s equivalent to a mass shooter. While his depictions in various comic books, television shows, and movies make a point of elevating Castle’s sense of morality to gel with the idea of him being a hero, it’s impossible not to see how he’s also a celebration of the kind of gun culture that makes actual mass shootings possible.

To make the Punisher the star of his own TV show is to valorize his character—and to ignore his potential as a symbol of and blueprint for an all too American kind of horrific violence. Those elements of his identity shouldn’t be erased; they should be pored over, deconstructed, and discussed in an open, honest way, as they were in Daredevil’s second season. Maybe Frank Castle’s solo TV series is looking to do the same—to establish him not as the MCU’s newest vigilante, but instead as a man who finds the ability to heal from his trauma without shooting up a city in the process.

But that’s a big “maybe,” especially given that the character has failed to do so for more than 40 years of comics, and it still won’t change the fact that the Punisher will always primarily be a “hero” that fights those he deems evil by riddling them with bullets. That might sound like a harsh assessment, but if Marvel and Netflix feel like even discussing The Punisher would be in bad taste after a mass shooting, maybe that’s a sign they shouldn’t release it at all.

i like jon berthal as an actor quite a bit but i've got a real bad feeling about this show - i dunno how it would be possible to make it anything other than massively offensive and wrongheaded unless it presents frank castle as an out-and-out monster

Maybe he trades in his guns for impassioned appeals to reason and decency, did u even think of that

tbh i'd be okay with 13 episodes of frank beating his weapons into ploughshares and volunteering at his local food co-op or whatever

i did enjoy lexi alexander's super-cartoony approach in the punisher: war zone movie tho

Lexi is a bona fide karate master fyi.

Also I'm three episodes into the new DD series and it sucks the big felota.

Aw rly? I’m looking fwd to it

Mite binge it this weekend

Allegedly The Big Fight Scene in this one is good. (Episode 4.)

So I assume everyone but me has hopped off the Marvel Netflix train at this point? Bummerz.

This season has finally brought the full-bore, scarily-omnipotent Kingpin we were denied in s1. Bullseye has been pretty well handled, also.

It's sounding very much like the upcoming second season of Punisher may be the end of the Netflix shows, so y'all won't have too much more of this stuff to ignore.

can you watch this season without having watched The Defenders?

i'll get around to it eventually i guess

weird how quickly these things ran out of steam, huh? just way too little story for so many episodes in most cases

yeah, and it was immediately obvious even from DD s1

can you watch this season without having watched The Defenders?

― dan selzer, Friday, November 9, 2018 10:01 AM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, as long as you know that everyone thought DD was killed by a collapsing building at the end of that series (he was not actually killed, so sorry 2 spoil), there aren't really any other strong ties.

If nothing else, I'd recommend y'all check out the fight scene alluded to by Ned upthread. It's a dope long take (something like 11-12 minutes) of Matt trying to escape a prison riot that they must've spent forever rehearsing in order to make it look like such an unstructured brawl.

The bulk of one of the late season episodes is a flashback to Karen's pre-DD days in her small Vermont town which goes a long way towards explaining why she seems so goddamn haunted all the time, basically like a little indie film casually dropped into the mix. YMMV as to whether that sounds at all appealing.

(Also this is probably a good place to once again express my surprise in discovering that Cloak and Dagger is actually, imo, at least as good as the best of the Netflix shows.)

yeah the only one of these shows I got into at all was Luke Cage but everything good about that show should've been compressed into a couple tight 8 or 10-episode seasons

i really enjoyed s3 of this tbh

punisher and dd are probably the only good superhero tv shows, and better than a lot of superhero movies

I appreciate how consistently oppressive it's been with the sense that Fisk controls every goddamn piece on the board and, with two episodes to go, there's no clear path for DD & co. to come out on top.

Also appreciate how Matt has mostly just been getting the shit kicked out of him all season with very little that might be considered a win.

I've loved all 3 seasons of DD. Actress playing Karen still the weak link for me (I skipped her solo episode) but otherwise one of the best superhero adaptations, IMHO.

they're good there's just way too much TV and that goes double for superhero stuff. I loved Legion and never even watched S2 of that

I'm about halfway through S3 and really enjoying it so far. Defenders kinda killed my interest in the whole Marvel Netflix thing (didn't bother with Iron Fist) but I'm glad I jumped back in. I completely forgot they even made Punisher until just now!

I watched series 3 about a month ago and enjoyed it. I thought I was coming to it late so surprised that it seems most people are watching it now.
MIght go back and watch the rest of Cloak & Dagger which i got several episodes into. Think other things turned up at the same time or something.

I know its not on Netflix anymore - anyone else watching Born Again?

First 2 eps seem pretty tablesetting-y but so far so good i guess?

I’m not loving the cgi-ness, hated the way the opening fight was shot and theres a lot of unnecessary camera movement that i find annoying but that is just a nerdy gripe not a dealbreaker tho

Will definitely watch when it's finished airing. (I can't do week-by-week anymore, even if that means the death of discourse.) But I loved S1 and S3 so I have high hopes here

I haven't seen the Netflix series. I was assuming this was an adaptation of the Miller Born Again storyline but that's not the case?

I had no idea this started. Funny enough, I liked the first episode of "Echo" but I never watched the rest of it. Neither did anyone else, apparently, given the complete lack of discussion anywhere, afaict.

My wife and I watched ep 1 Tuesday night. It was ok. I really like Cox as DD but d'Onofrio's ponderous mannerisms and Nosferatu voice as Fisk have worn out their welcome with me. I didn't realize until Tuesday that it's not going to be an 18-episode series as originally announced after all, but broken down into 2 seasons.

I watched the first two episodes. "Ok" seems like the definitive descriptor -- it's never completely terrible but it's also never particuarly good. It's very "content". Cox is a cutie, and I enjoyed the lighter version of Daredevil he played in the She-Hulk series, but I don't he's got the gravitas for this big, cod-operatic, Big Apple Daredevil. Everything dwarfs him. He could be Waid's Daredevil, but not Miller's or Bendis's.

I wonder if (spoilers from the comic follow, which might potentially spoil the TV show) the Foggy story will follow the Brubaker run.

It’s in the direction, I think. Cox’ DD felt really close to Miller’s for me in the Netflix series. In these first two new episodes he seems … blah. As does Kingpin. The grit and gravitas seems to have been removed.

I was also a bit bored by the end of each of these new episodes and it wasn’t because I don’t enjoy the material or the performers. I do think it’s the writing and direction.
PS Baby Gandolfini is not very good here.

I did lol at one review that said something along the lines of "it doesn't really hit its stride until the eighth episode, which is a shame as it's only nine episodes long"

lmao the children’s choir singing “We Built This City” for Mayor Fisk was upsetting & hilarious

also I liked this episode more than the last couple

I actually did like Born Again - not as good as the better Netflix seasons but still enjoyable. surprisingly very little action until the last few episodes but the story was intriguing enough. As vg called out, the oner fight scene in ep 1 was a very poor showing for a hallmark of the series. I thought we'd get a better one eventually but nope

yeah there was some good stuff that made it worthwhile but it wasnt great … apparently, or as far as i can understand it, this was technically a “miseason finale” so ~maybe~ the back half of this series will show some mettle? ie now that it is no longer a collection of frankensteined episodes & the irl showrunners have taken over? idk. or not, im not 100% clear on the state of play behind the scenes

*MIDseason finale

Yeah the episodes with Karen and Foggy had to be retooled iirc, whereas the new season was written after the switch. I imagine (and hope) we'll see more Karen and more action throughout

Heads up!

https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/krysten-ritter-jessica-jones-return-marvel-1236396594/

(Maybe they'll bring back Finn Jones just to beat him up.)