Douglas Petrie (the “Buffy” writer who went on to script and produce the first two seasons of “Daredevil") and Petrie partner Marco Ramirez oversee now “The Defenders,” a series that teams Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Daredevil and Iron Fist. The newly minted superhero team takes on The Hand, an organization headed by Sigourney Weaver’s new super-old rich-lady character.
... ** out of four stars. … at least in the first four episodes made available for review, the series can’t make the combination work. … Like all of the solo series, it’s poorly paced, and takes far too long for the heroes to team up. …
... movies are constrained, in a necessary way, by format and running time. But the sprawl of television allows a familiar story -- the protracted rivalries between differing superheroes giving way to hard-won if tentative cooperation -- to bloat beyond recognition and become too reliant on darkness. …
... a frustrating reminder that even at a relatively compact eight episodes, these Marvel Netflix shows still don’t have a great command of pacing …
... There’s nothing terribly wrong with “Marvel’s The Defenders,” but there may not be enough right about it to make it worth the time of anyone but the completist. By the end of the year, there are set to be 11 live-action Marvel shows spread across five TV networks and streaming services. You can afford to be choosy. …
... Alexandra has been around for centuries, but for some reason she’s now taken ill and isn’t expected to live much longer. So much destruction to wreak, so little time. She needs to move fast, but there’s a formidable opponent in her way: The series’ pacing. … Jones’ one-liners are the high point of dialogue that often gets bogged down under the weight of explaining just one more thing. …
** out of five stars ... a plodding, clumsy and unlikable dud. It takes too much time ramping up, wastes its resources on unnecessary characters and subplots and lacks the visual appeal of Marvel’s previous Netflix outings. Watching the four episodes provided for review (there are eight in total) was an unexpected chore. …
The San Francisco Chronicle says:
... The first four of the series’ eight episodes are enjoyable, and Jones, Colter and Cox are especially fun to watch. …
... Grade: C+ … It’s the formula Marvel used to great effect to launch “The Avengers” into the box-office stratosphere. In the Netflix universe, it just makes more apparent the flaws of the individual shows and the problems with creating a super-team on a limited budget. … Luke complains at one point, “I’m not looking for any super-friends.” Viewers are, though, and “Defenders” gets a thumbs-down.
... starts slowly but rewards patience …
... Suffering from a slow-burning self-importance, Defenders is punctuated by rousing action sequences and enlivened by an urban aesthetic grounded in realism. …
... it should come as no surprise that some eye-rolly writing drags down even the best parts of The Defenders, which is partly the fault of the writers of course but also partly due to the wholly weak comic DNA, where obvious shows of emotion and declarative sentences dipped in gooey cheese are part of the deal. And yet, despite all of that, The Defenders morphs into a likeable and enjoyable collaboration by the third episode … Elsewhere, Colter and Ritter (especially) prove in every scene why they hold down the two most compelling series. …
... a workmanlike series that gets the job done with a reasonable amount of energy and a few bursts of flair. …
12:01 a.m. Friday. Netflix.
