In spring of 2015, the premiere of Daredevil was among the most exciting things in the Marvel franchise since beginning of the MCU itself, if you ask me. It was just before the release of Avengers 2, and promised something drastically different, but also was among the most “faithful” adaptations of it’s source material compared to the modernization of characters like Iron Man, Black Widow and the rest. It was the first in this mega-multimedia franchise to offer dirty, gritty realism. The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s’ true Rated R content was to be found on Netflix, and it launched to great acclaim.
In less than two years since, it’s received another season, and, like Captain America and Thor before them, we got introductory seasons to new characters in anticipation for a team up in Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and in Iron Fist, plus a standalone Punisher series on the way.
In the time since Daredevil’s season one, however, the superhero fatigue has hit full swing, and while audiences adored Jessica Jones even more than Daredevil, Luke Cage was released to mixed reviews (despite being something I found to be tonally much more enjoyable than Daredevil’s 2nd Season), and finally Iron Fist being the first thing in this franchise to be critically panned, and is personally the only occurrence that I’ve entirely skipped made by Marvel Studios due to disinterest, even through all those blu ray one shots and Agents of Shield seasons.
Less than a month after Iron Fist’s release, we get this trailer for The Defenders, the first real ensemble of superhero characters we’ve met since the Avengers, and while I enjoy these characters individually in their comic, animation, and mostly live action iterations, I can’t help but wonder if this will succeed. Not necessarily because of Iron Fist, superhero fatigue or it’s cumulative 13 hours of episodes after effectively 4 seasons prior to with 13 episodes to each on their own. My concern with The Defenders is if it will lack any sort of charm. There are hints of it in this very brief trailer, but unless the grittiness of this underground Marvel Netflix series has a schtick strong enough to bind these four characters together well enough, I wonder if these characters spatting with one another prior to doing a team based hallway fight or two will engage audiences the way that we were by the first Avengers, or by Daredevil’s first season.
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