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Posted: |
Mar 20, 2017 - 5:51 AM
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By: |
mastadge
(Member)
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Weirdly, while all the previous Marvel Netflix shows have exploded my social media on release, no one seems to be talking about this one at all. And there's this weird discrepancy on Rotten Tomatoes: currently, the critical rating is a savage 16%, while the audience score is 86%. So it looks like this is one of those shows people determined not to like before it came out, to the extent that most of the audience who wouldn't like it stayed away leaving behind the hardcore fans? I don't know.
Anyway. I watched it this weekend and it was . . . fine? Not great, not the abysmal trainwreck you'd think based on the early reviews.
A lot of the criticisms are valid. A big problem is that the action is a let down. The lead can never match the physicality of Luke Cage and never gets his ass kicked like Daredevil, and the martial arts are rarely thrilling or even convincing. This is a show that really needed some style to its action and there it failed. Making things worse is Trevor Morris's completely lackluster score. This is a show that really, really could have benefited from an orchestral score infusing the visuals with some of the mysticism and energy that they lack on their own, like what Poledouris did for that stupid movie The Touch.
And Finn Jones is really out of his league in the role. Aside from the martial arts, his character and motivations seem to keep changing and he isn't able to sell that. Also, while he's kind of a tool and kind of a dolt, he's not the earnest buffoon he is in the comics and there's just not much to latch onto there to anchor the show. And while I don't mind that they stayed true to the comics version of the character, I do get that after the thematic and representational triumphs of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, this seems like a regressive face-slap with a rich white dude mansplaining martial arts to a woman who herself has also been steeped in martial arts her whole life, the outsider white man coming in and gritting his teeth to become a better fighter than any of the natives. So there's that.
Also as fine as David Wenham can be, he's no match for what Vincent D'Onofrio, Mahershala Ali, and David Tennant brought to their various antagonist roles.
And there's some stupidity involving The Hand here that just isn't worth going into.
Despite this litany of complaints, I found the show enjoyable enough to keep watching. It added to the foundations laid in the other Marvel Netflix shows, and the supporting characters brought the goods, mostly. Jessica Henwick was good as Colleen Wing, and Rosario Dawson continued to be good as the thread running through all these shows too, though how she affords her home I don't know. Tom Pelphrey provides the most compelling character arc of the season, despite his wardrobe manager who should probably be fired. And despite my complaints about the action above -- and it could definitely be better -- it mostly serves the drama fine and I'm not expert enough in Kung Fu or any other martial arts here that this was distractingly bad for me.
One thing I don't understand is the complaints about the pacing. The last three Marvel Netflix shows have all had terrible pacing, and two of them did this weird thing where they were one thing for 2/3 of their episodes and then switched direction and did something else. This one, the speed is not great but the pacing is consistent. Honestly, 13 episodes is too much for what Marvel's trying to do with each season and I think they'd be better off released 3 8-episode seasons each year rather than 2 13-episode seasons. I think an 8-episode season would offer a much tighter, more intense experience for almost any story they've told so far.
Sorry for the ramble. To sum up: this is the weakest Netflix Marvel show to date but it certainly didn't earn the critical rating it currently has, and is worth checking out if you're a fan of the property.
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