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zoux posted:Does anyone know if these shows are intended to be one offs, or if there is a chance of additional seasons? Seems to me like the way they are doing it is that this is structure like "Marvel: The TV Show" with each story being one of five seasons. The answer, I can only imagine, is "however many remain profitable." If Daredevil is super popular, then why wouldn't they make more? They have content, and sequels are way easier to make than new poo poo. The one-offs will be whatever series underperforms. Which may be none of them. Have they cast Iron Fist yet? Seems like that's a decision they'd have made at this point since Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Jessica Jones are already accounted for.
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Apr 3, 2015 06:46
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tsob posted:Does Iron-Fish have much history or fluff to draw on outside of that stuff? Some, but more of his stories sink than swim. Seconding that after seeing how great and visceral the fight choreography is for Daredevil, they could loving kill it in Iron Fist. Though it's tough to find awesome martial artists who can pull off that choreography and also act competently. My current neckbeard moron fancasting is Tom Wu, who played Hundred Eyes on Marco Polo.
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Apr 4, 2015 11:59
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AbsolutelySane posted:I'm actually just now getting up to speed on the last couple of seasons of Spartacus. I watched the first season and Gods of the Arena when they aired (Netflix still had a deal with STARZ, at the time). Now that the rest are up on Netflix, I'll probably finish it. It will be weird without Andy in the lead role, though. I just started watching this, to get a sense of Steven S. DeKnight's style. I'm glad people metered my expectations for the first few episodes, because they...aren't great. Also, Spartacus and Crixus may have the gayest romantic tension I've ever seen on a TV series. Are those two going to gently caress or what? (I'm sure Daredevil will be fine.)
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Apr 8, 2015 22:24
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Valeyard posted:11 I don't think your good protagonists should be doing stuff the same way as the evil antagonists 1x11 It's almost like this was a central theme of the show. Karen is a severely traumatized woman who had been attacked *several* times by Fisk's organization, including in her own home and by a corrupt cop while in police custody. And this dude just said he'd murder her and everyone she loved. How is that not literally the very definition of self-defense? Even Daredevil kills people when he has no choice, as with Nobu; the show takes pains to explore the complexity of those kinds of moral questions...and frankly, the grayness of it all is fully earned, in my opinion. As a general aside, I got a total Smithers vibe from Wesley and it made me laugh constantly.
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Apr 13, 2015 03:24
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etalian posted:It's a good TV series since it gave us a origin story in a satisfying way in terms of explaining character motivations. Yeah, the slower burn to his origin is what makes it good to me. I think I like this version of Daredevil more than most versions of Batman, because of how nuanced his back story is. Batman's "origin" is so reductionist by comparison; the Waynes are Good People and Bad People killed them in this one highly symbolic act of violence. It's so much cleaner...Daredevil is dirty in its complexity. [Edit: I thought we didn't need spoilers anymore?] Matt Murdock's dad in particular is fascinating, because he's essentially a gently caress-up. He's a caring father and he wants to do right by his son, but he's not necessarily a "good person" and certainly doesn't make good decisions. It's more compelling to me than the Waynes, because it feels more honest about the social reality they're trying to depict: everything has context, and moral choice doesn't happen in a vacuum. Poverty, fear, and powerlessness dictate so much of people's decisions, and Jack's death is both a tragic thing done *to* him and a foolish thing he *chose* to do. In general, Daredevil gives this nuance dramatic weight. The guy who tries to kill Karen in her jail cell is a "bad guy," but actually you first meet him as a victim who wants only to protect his daughter. Even Fisk, who's the main villain, is deeply sympathetic...his first act of "evil" is killing the man who abuses his mother, and his masculine violence is itself the result of being victimized by his father in the past. The Catholic aspect to this reflects a lot of these ideas. The moral universe of the show is one where the world is flawed and all people are sinners. As the priest explains during various conversations, he believes Evil exists as a material, but that the ways people interact with it are seldom simple and almost never cut-and-dry. Basically, the challenge of being moral is recognizing Evil in the first place, and then having the strength and fortitude to resist it. Forgiveness is important because being moral is difficult in a world this lovely. It's a way more complicated argument than even similar "dark and gritty" heroic narratives tend to have. Xealot fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Apr 13, 2015 |
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Apr 13, 2015 05:36
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Quote != Edit. Sorry folks.
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Apr 13, 2015 05:37
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dj_clawson posted:He's such a useful character! There were some great stories that focused on him, and he was also useful for plot reasons to both Daredevil and Spider-man, so yeah, I think they made a bad call there. Possibly. I suspect what happened was the writers realized they'd made Fisk too sympathetic. And a scene where he personally murders a character we've grown to care about was the best way to remind us he's the villain. I support the decision dramatically, because it elevated the stakes and contributed a lot of pathos to the show. I wasn't necessarily sold on D'Onofrio's take on Fisk at first...the violent man-child thing seemed like an odd choice. But the flashbacks actually helped a lot to crystalize the point of that, and now I'm into it. This take on Kingpin is the opposite of the Michael Clarke Duncan's. Fisk in this show *resents* the things that make him so formidable. He's physically defined by his hugeness, but his personality is the exact opposite: meek, awkward, stilted. Other versions of the character thrive on attention, and embrace the spotlight with their white suit. But this version is sheepish and quiet. He's happiest when he's serving Vanessa fancy wine, and angriest when someone reminds him of who he REALLY is: a fat kid with an rear end in a top hat dad who grew up in blue collar poverty. The bourgeois affectations make sense in light of this, because that's what his aspirational self is. His father was crude and loud and abrasive, so Wilson tries to be this restrained, refined aristocrat. He wears bundled up black suits and sits in starkly modernist furniture, and every morning he has his OCD ritual of gourmet food and classical music, literally trying to forget his nightmarish youth. His extreme awkwardness is appropriate, because he's playing this role that is a complete fantasy. The irony, of course, is that the apish, violent monster his father wanted him to be - the thing he wishes he wasn't - is who he NEEDS to be in order to achieve his goals. That's how I interpreted his speech about the Good Samaritan. His sobering realization that he can never stop being the fat, violent, sadistic behemoth he resisted being. He's not some Prince of Hell's Kitchen or some wealthy altruist who hangs out in art galleries. He's his father's son. He gets the big, billowy white suit from the comics in the end...in jail. Staring at the wall once again, the way his dad told him to.
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Apr 13, 2015 08:52
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Wolpertinger posted:Honestly, this. This was so much more satisfying than a 2-3 hour movie. I even love the lighthearted silly CGI-heavy marvel stuff too, it's a shame they can never get the TV treatment too - The marvel movies often end up feeling especially shallow even if they are fun, because they have to shove an entire comic book plot, plus oftentimes character origins and introductions, into just 2-3 hours. Yeah, that really sucks. I can't think of a feature film I've seen in a long time that compares, artistically, to a good dramatic series that follows characters and themes for longer. It's crazy to me that, because of however it is that differing revenue models for features and on-demand TV work, a single film that costs $200 Million will earn $1 Billion. But that same $200 Million used to create 5 separate series and 60 hours of content, released over 2 years, is somehow a riskier or less profitable model. Maybe it's the lower revenues of services like Netflix? Or just the event nature of a blockbuster release? I understand when it comes to really CG-heavy features like Avengers; you couldn't make that into a TV series in a cost-effective way, I'm sure. But not every property is like that. All I mean is, I hope this Netflix experiment is wildly successful and encourages them to trust this format for other properties. Because I can't describe how much better this was than some Daredevil rebooted feature, and it cost WAY less than that would have...in theory 1/5th of the $200 Million Defenders price tag.
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Apr 13, 2015 10:43
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XboxPants posted:I saw someone suggest once that the best way to adapt Spider-Man isn't a movie, but a serialized TV series. And it'd be goddamn awesome, definitely. I mean, I agree that Marvel probably won't do that. But it'd be so much better than trying to fit 3 villains into a 2 hour movie, which somehow Sony has tried multiple times now. Though, I could see Marvel trying something bigger than the Defenders characters eventually. I can't shake the sense that these Netflix series are a test, to see how viable the format is. Which is exactly what I'm led to believe Blade was about in 1998...a test-case for Marvel (pre-Marvel Studios) to adapt its comic properties into live action features. They used a less high-profile character like Blade before moving on to big guys like X-Men and Spider-Man. Though this may be apocryphal; I don't know how much say Marvel had over what New Line or Columbia or whoever were going to do.
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Apr 13, 2015 11:32
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Tatum Girlparts posted:This guy totally has the gravitas to have just done 'I'm a rich bastard who wants to be richer gently caress the po-lice' like lots of lazy uses of him have and it would have been good, but instead we got a legitimately sympathetic, conflicted, Kingpin who actually felt like a real person. Yeah, that's how I feel, as well. My fear was that they'd take a lazy route with the character, and make him a Colonel Kurtz-esque type who delivers scary monologues in the dark and then kills guys brutally. It'd sell the menace of the man, but otherwise be totally generic. What we got was really disarming, because of how contradictory he was. He had that capacity for brutal violence, but was otherwise almost sweet and gentle. D'Onofrio took a big character and played him small. Which isn't something I've seen in this kind of story before.
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Apr 13, 2015 20:08
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Sorvah posted:I wonder if they want to keep doing sequels for these though or move on to other heroes...Punisher is an obvious one but so is someone like Moon Knight (who was alluded to in a throwaway comment in Cap 2), Namor and Madrox. I'd want to see Blade, which would actually make sense given the tone and some of the supernatural / magical elements in Daredevil. If they can do secret underground magic kung fu alternate dimension poo poo, vampires aren't that absurd of a premise. My weird choice is a Hannibal King series. Not in the Ryan Reynolds sense of the character; I could see them reconfiguring Hannibal King as a sort of John Constantine figure for the MCU. Which would play into a general trend of more supernatural characters (other than Blade) like Moon Knight or Cloak & Dagger.
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Apr 13, 2015 22:26
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Hollismason posted:Did anyone notice the cover change on Daredevil on Netflix ? I don't remember him being in the suit and now he's in the suit. Or am I imagining that. You're not. It happened over the weekend at some point; the thumbnail changed. My prediction is, they didn't want to spoil what the suit looked like for binge-watching nerds and held off on that for a few days. Now there's a suit so more casual watchers will know, "hey, superheroes." Edit: Hijo Del Helmsley posted:I've saw it posted on various places, but I really hope when they cast Danny, they make him Asian-American. I never realised how "and the white guy arrives and he's better than the natives automatically" Danny's origin story was until it was pointed out. Totally. Which is especially annoying because Dr. Strange does this exact same thing. They might wind up with two of those stories in the same year. I get the complaint that casting an Asian guy as a mystical Ancient Chinese Secret kung fu wizard is racially exotifying. But let's be honest: there is no way to avoid this complaint for a show called Iron Fist, regardless of who the lead is. I'd argue an Asian-American protagonist would at least mitigate that distaste a little. And when else will they cast an Asian guy for a lead role, if not for that? Xealot fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 01:18
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zoux posted:Prepare yourself for Danny to not be Asian. It seems more possible here than with most Marvel properties, though. The leads of the other two shows are a white woman and black man, and Daredevil himself is already a white guy, so I could see a situation where diversity-minded casting is important and they select an East Asian actor.
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Apr 14, 2015 01:40
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Wolpertinger posted:http://www.imdb.com/search/title?num_votes=5000,&sort=user_rating,desc&title_type=tv_series I feel like that always happens. It's why The Dark Knight was (and maybe still is) in the top 10 of all movies ever. Voluntary response from nerds who really want to make a point about their preferred media. Don't get me wrong, Daredevil is a great show. But the third greatest show ever? Sure, ok.
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Apr 14, 2015 10:48
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Wolpertinger posted:I prefer it if he can't actually read almost any non handwritten paper (the indendation left behind by a pen or pencil isn't terribly farfetched him for him to feel) or computer screens. If you're going to make him blind, even with super senses, it seems important to make at least SOME things difficult and keep a bit of the whole blind thing authentic. But that is already (mostly) true of the series. Monitors and phones/tablets and so on are useless to him. That's why his ringtone is just the caller's name repeated over and over. He also has that spoken-word clock that says the time; there are definitely things he can't use because he's blind. LORD OF BUTT posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uybTJ7kUdb4 This is insanely great. I definitely questioned how they'd do anything comparable to how awesome the visuals are, but this is some Raymond Chandler poo poo. I'd listen to this as a non-blind person.
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Apr 15, 2015 10:26
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Snak posted:Kingpin is somehow the most interesting character, which I would not have expected. Yeah, I did not expect what we got. I was totally prepared for some brooding Heart of Darkness poo poo..."moral civilization is a hypocritical lie" or whatever, a philosophical antagonist like the Joker. Which would've been...adequate, I guess, particularly with the Satan-as-adversary stuff. But this was way, way better.
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Apr 16, 2015 02:10
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Steve Yun posted:The point of their scene picking out suits was that the virtuous Vanessa, dressed in white, was getting the villain Fisk to ditch his usual Darth Vader blacks for a gray suit that represented his softening temperament. It's really basic color theory. I don't think it's about virtue or softness, I think it's about being seen and about personal confidence. Vanessa doesn't seem to give a poo poo about how "virtuous" Wilson is; she merely wants him to "step out into the light." He doesn't stop doing criminal poo poo when he steps out, either...if anything, he becomes more ambitious. In that sense, Wilson wearing lighter colors actually communicates how removed he is from virtue, because it speaks to his greater acceptance of who he is: the Kingpin. The black suits earlier on are him at his most reserved, his most uncomfortable and most shy, but also his most conflicted about his purpose. He's not Darth Vader, he's a sad, quiet introvert who wants to blend into shadow. By the end of the season, he's given up on his fantasy of altruism and accepts his role as a violent criminal. And it's not coincidental he's also wearing a huge, billowy white shirt in his cell. The brighter color is him being louder, embracing his size and his power, which also happens to suggest he's embraced villainy.
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Apr 16, 2015 05:20
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Steve Yun posted:I kinda liked the idea that he would keep being called the Devil of Hell's Kitchen in the news, that Wilson Fisk would never be called Kingpin, etc. I did, too. Mostly because "Daredevil" as a name implies a disposition that's way less central to this version of the character. A daredevil is someone who's an adrenaline junkie, who takes risks because they're invigorated by them, or who lives dangerously because they're impulsive. Which, I suppose, isn't *untrue* of Matt Murdock...but this is a pretty joyless take on the character. He's a suffering Catholic martyr who approaches vigilantism as a necessary evil. As yet, he's not really yelling "woo!" as he leaps off rooftops. He's getting stabbed in an alley trying to keep children from sex traffickers. Steve Yun posted:...people have said [the opening credits are] a ripoff of the opening titles for the Hannibal series, and maybe it was inspired by Hannibal, I'm positive Hannibal had some influence on the show, in general. Fisk's plotline involves a lot of Hannibal-esque moments of rich guy fetishism. Starkly-composed shots of modern art galleries, stylishly curated apartment spaces, an endless closet full of suits...and certainly the gourmet cooking montages with orchestral music. I think his first date with Vanessa literally involves Bach's Goldberg Variations. I kept expecting Laurence Fishburne to show up for puréed liver and wild mushroom pâté. (I guess we got the other Jack Crawford, instead.)
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Apr 16, 2015 12:05
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Steve Yun posted:What.... how? I can't imagine what that would've looked like. That said, Vincent D'Onofrio is easily one of Marvel's best "gets," as actors go. His casting was what made me invested in Daredevil. David Tennant and Krysten Ritter are also super great choices. I'm not familiar with Mike Colter, but Netflix Marvel's casting choices have earned a lot of good will with me, so I'm in.
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Apr 17, 2015 20:08
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Blackchamber posted:Yeah wanted to chime in on this and say any scent left from the gun she fired would have been really obscured by the heavy scrubbing she gave herself in the shower afterwards, followed by all the alcohol she was drowning herself in, above all the other junk girls do to smell nice normally. If there was anything left to detect I'm sure he wouldn't have picked it up without trying hard to screen for it. Yeah, Matt clearly suspects something went down, but it seems entirely based on her evasive behavior. The specificity or her having fired a gun isn't part of it, I don't think.
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Apr 17, 2015 21:45
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Gaz-L posted:I think Foggy's phone had the bright colour back that MS's Lumia line normally have, yeah. If only giant corporations paid out more. They could've gotten Hawaii 5-0 product placement. "Going home? To China?" "Far further than that...fortunately, I have my Lumia 940 on the Verizon Network. Not even the Steel Serpent can defeat the user experience of Windows 10 on Verizon's expansive network!"
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Apr 18, 2015 11:38
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Shadoer posted:I agree. You can even see it in the episode where he goes on his first date with Vanessa. He act's like he's going into some dangerous mob meeting or something and the way he told Wesley "stay here, I need to do this myself" just seemed like he was going in to bust some heads and it seemed like a super big deal. Revealing he was just going out on a date really hit home how introverted he really is. That was also Wesley at his most Smithers. I appreciate in these kinds of stories when the villain isn't arbitrarily always a villain. It's such a cliche to show how ruthless a bad guy is through how cruel he is to his underlings. But Fisk and Wesley clearly have this mutually caring connection...it's much more nuanced than the plot requires. Fisk kissing Wesley on the forehead is such a disarming moment, after finding his body. It's so tragic, in a way I definitely didn't expect.
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Apr 19, 2015 06:13
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Vag Assault Weapon posted:Fisk as a character says and does things several times that are supposed to clue you in that he has asperger's or some other severe personality disorder. Just completely off the top of my head I didn't read him as autism spectrum. 12-year-old Wilson strikes me as fairly normal, if somewhat introverted because of his abusive dad. As an adult, he definitely has anxiety problems, and has trouble socializing. But those things all seemed circumstantially true. I viewed them as a result of severe psychological trauma. I mean, his dad routinely insulted and abused him, and brutally beat his mother. Then he killed his own father as a 12 year old boy. He wasn't born that way. Which is, itself, thematically relevant. The criminal nature of Hell's Kitchen is depicted as a systemic disease. Every victim is a victimizer and vice-versa.
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Apr 19, 2015 06:59
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zoux posted:Also Steven DeKnight looks like a gay porn star. You have just explained everything about Spartacus: Blood & Sand. Jessica Jones chat: I agree with whoever said she'll probably be an Agents of SHIELD power-set character, like Mockingbird or Melinda May. It wouldn't make sense for a Supergirl-esque character to exist in the MCU, but also somehow nobody has ever heard of her. Re-conceiving her as a Black Widow-like figure is way more feasible. And would fit with the stakes established in Daredevil; Matt Murdock is "powered," but not dramatically. He's still mostly dealing with mooks and they're still providing a challenge.
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Apr 21, 2015 22:05
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mikeraskol posted:I don't think anyone said that. They said she could be mind controlled and forced to fight Agents of Shield people, rather than fight the Avengers who are not going to appear in the show. Yeah, that's what I was reiterating: it seems more realistic to me that she'd be an Agents of SHIELD-level figure than an Avengers-level one. Someone like Black Widow or Mockingbird would be a challenge for the former and an absolute joke for the latter; I'm talking about the character's possible power-set and limitations. They obviously could make her as arbitrarily powerful as they want, but isn't the idea for all the Defenders characters to be smaller and lower-stakes? Kind of hard to do if one of them is effectively Superman; they're going to need to team up eventually, presumably because they're all outmatched individually. Though I guess Hawkeye is an Avenger alongside a god and an invincible rage monster, so I guess that doesn't matter. Xealot fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Apr 21, 2015 |
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Apr 21, 2015 23:01
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Light Gun Man posted:Daredevil is happening partially because a magic hammer wielder trashed some poo poo while fighting aliens. It's already part of the world it takes place in. I get what you're saying, but fiction still isn't reality. Your life doesn't revolve around a small set of themes or conform neatly to a particular structured series of events. The complex nature of the real world isn't relevant to fiction, because real people don't need to fit coherently into an overarching narrative when they meet each other. If Daredevil met Star Lord, they would have to. Ignoring that is how you wind up with people saying, "hey, why didn't Steve just call Tony Stark to help with HYDRA?" He didn't because that's not what the movie was about; creating an in-universe reason is unnecessary. In a similar way, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that although Thor objectively exists in Daredevil, it makes no sense and would be dumb for him to show up in the story as-presented. Though, I'm still down for magic ninjas in Daredevil. Daredevil is a blind martial artist who does mindful meditation. He's already balls-deep in orientalist pulp, so that's actually perfectly consistent with the setting despite the grit and shadow.
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Apr 22, 2015 02:28
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Steve Yun posted:As an Asian™, I grant permission to Marvel to cast a white person as an expert in Asian martial arts. Xin Wong was an ordinary Chinese immigrant. Until he ate some magical quinoa at Whole Foods and became: The Social Media Marketer. But how will he defeat his arch nemesis, Black Tumblr Memes He Struggles to Understand? What if they cast a half-white, half-Asian guy as Iron Fist? Does it neutralize the problem or double it?
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Apr 23, 2015 02:05
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Modus Operandi posted:Who is going to be cast as Fu Manchu. It'll be Ken Watanabe. It's always Ken Watanabe. "But, he's Japanese!" you might say. Too bad. If you want a wizened Asian man who lives in some sort of vaguely pan-Asian pagoda castle...you call Ken Watanabe.
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Apr 23, 2015 02:19
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Skeesix posted:Personally I would be quite happy to not have minimal ninjas in this thing just because they were such a 90s thing and it still feels a little too close to the "Real Ultimate Power" days. There's no way they won't do completely crazy ninja poo poo. Already, our first insight into that world is a magical Chinese woman from a kung fu dimension who hadoukened Daredevil into a wall. And a demon inside a child-monk. And a ripped karate guy with patterned scars all over his back in some sort of secret temple. Daredevil is a blind martial artist who fought a yakuza ninja in a Shinobi costume. The fight ended by setting the ninja on fire. That's how these shows introduced the premise.
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Apr 23, 2015 11:25
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Phylodox posted:Daredevil is basically The Wire if McNulty was a ninja. In some alternative reality, Michael K. Williams is Luke Cage. Snak posted:I love that Marcy, who is first introduced as a "nightmare ex" is also not as shallow as she appears and just went a different way in life. They still hook up, because despite being really over, they haven't actually moved onto other committed relationships because they are both just trying to keep it together. And now they might get back together. It's really organic. Yeah, I totally bought Foggy and Marcy's relationship. They could've made him a dumb, spineless sidekick who awkwardly fails with women, but instead they gave him real talent and real gravitas. And he takes no bullshit...and more to the point doesn't spare Marcy the same treatment. A lesser show might've paired the maneater ice queen type with the Nice Guy schlub for comedy reasons; instead, they gave us a mutual honesty and admiration between them that felt very realized.
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Apr 24, 2015 08:30
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Matt Murdock doesn't kill. He just throws rigid 30-pound appliances at people's skulls. And off 6 story buildings into metal dumpsters. No big.
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Apr 26, 2015 05:00
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BottledBodhisvata posted:I dunno he has a weird face This super-ripped and handsome leading man actor is somehow not conventionally handsome? He's an attractive man, by any real standard...I guess I'm confused by the argument. And isn't Matt Murdock supposed to be super attractive? He's a total womanizer who self-medicates his problems with sex. They didn't cast Adam Driver in the role or anything.
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Apr 27, 2015 09:08
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dj_clawson posted:In the show, they've started a bit of that, but while Matt is into Karen, he's also into Claire, Vanessa, the real estate chick, Foggy, and anything else with a heartbeat. He's more late-Daredevil omnisexual Matt than someone who wants to marry Karen and have her be his 60's housewife/secretary. Yeah, I vastly prefer a direction where Matt's like the Don Draper of superheroes, who womanizes incessantly to cope with the various traumas of his life but is more or less incapable of a stable relationship. Giving him *one* girlfriend misses that point; it's way stronger to me if sex is some therapy he abuses to make himself feel like a normal person. (It also helps to differentiate him from Batman, who's basically asexual.) In general, I like this version of Daredevil more than Batman, because it's essentially what a non-libertarian Batman would look like. The social justice argument is often literally that socioeconomic reality is complex, and that even criminals are motivated by larger forces of inequality. The "big bad" of the season is basically gentrification and corporate malfeasance; the most important villains are defined by their extreme wealth and insulation from the damage they're doing.
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Apr 29, 2015 19:35
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dj_clawson posted:The real modern bad guys of New York are overseas billionares buying up condos they never use so they can stash their money and hide it from their governments. Manhattan is turning into an international tax shelter, and it's kind of a problem for people who actually live here, so it was good to see Daredevil address it. This is also true, though to a lesser extent, of Los Angeles. It kind of sucks. Yeah, it's kind of odd that Nolan's Batman films are so conservative politically when disparity of wealth is such a visible part of the setting. Like, they portray WayneTech as run by obtuse dicks, but there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it being a giant weapons contractor. It's dickheads like Rutger Hauer loving it up; when Lucius Fox runs it, it's totally fine because he's an A+ guy. It echoes how militarized police tanks or panoptic NSA surveillance are fine as long as Batman is doing it. The entire basis for morality is unencumbered moral choice...systemic realities barely play into it. The villains are also reflective of that. They're religious extremist outsiders like Ra's al Ghul, or an anarchist like the Joker (who among other things burns a mountain of money), or an outright Socialist like Bane (who attacks the stock exchange.) They're people who used their capacity for moral choice to support the "wrong" idea. In that sense, Batman is basically a defender of entrenched capitalism. Meanwhile, Matt Murdock is a pro bono lawyer who defends disenfranchised people against corrupt corporations. The aesthetic modernism of Marcy's law firm echoes the curated spaces Fisk lives in, or the bespoke fanciness of Wesley or Leland...the true villains aren't cackling maniacs, they're snooty wine-drinking aristocrats. ...which gets weird when you think about someone like Vladimir. He's an awful guy - a drug dealer and sex trafficker - but he somehow still goes out as an anti-hero. I attribute this to his background as a poor immigrant; we're shown the meager poverty he comes from and asked to have sympathy for it. I think his "men like us" speech speaks to it: he discusses the difficult choices his circumstance forced him to make, the brutal realities of his life that he only encountered because of where he came from. It's almost appropriate that his heroic last stand is a final act of control over those circumstances..."this is not how I die." It's a decidedly Left political point, that in Daredevil's universe is ultimately lionized. (Sorry for the novel, everyone.)
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Apr 29, 2015 22:36
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Snak posted:Fisk and Matt have opposite opinions of what's worth saving about Hell's Kitchen. Fisk thinks that the people are lovely, not just the buildings. This, exactly. In-keeping with the Catholic themes of the show, I also read a shame and guilt component to this. Matty's experience of Hell's Kitchen is marked by pride, for his community and his family. He wants to save the Hell's Kitchen of his youth. But Fisk remembers it as a brutal, traumatizing, shameful ordeal. The murder of his father literally haunts Fisk to this day; he sees it every morning. It's unsurprising the offense that got Ben Urich killed was uncovering the truth of that past. And it's unsurprising that Fisk's version of saving Hell's Kitchen is burning it to the ground and rebuilding something better from scratch. It's what he attempted to do with his very persona...which is an irony, because the only way to secure the power he needs is to become the same apish thug his father was. In that sense, Hell's Kitchen is less a disease Fisk wants to cure as a secret he wants buried.
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Apr 30, 2015 20:29
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Serf posted:According to what we know from Thor, their magic is actually just highly-advanced technology, beyond our understanding. Which is bullshit considering what it can do, but that is the canon explanation. How this relates to Dr. Strange and Iron Fist and the Hand I don't know. I'd love for Thor to see Dr. Strange cast a spell and just go "okay yeah that's magic." Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. That explanation works for me, because magic is only "magical" in the sense it's inexplicable. If you could explain it on some technical level, it'd become something else.
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May 17, 2015 10:22
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nelson posted:The red costume has very little to do with Matt Murdock or Daredevil. The best of Daredevil is really a story of a man trying to fight for justice in an unjust world. I agree. And I'd say similar things are true of most of Marvel's successful characters, even if the world they occupy is tonally or thematically very different from this one. Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in particular are very well-conceived, in that you could describe both at length without even bringing up their power-set or costume. Their perspectives and goals and personalities characterize them so coherently and completely, scenes with them are compelling just in plainclothes. Marvel may be a sausage factory in many ways, but they definitely get their characters and hire people with a strong sense of how to represent them. Comparing this show to the Ben Affleck movie is so jarring, because here, they really get it. And in that movie, they really, really didn't.
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May 17, 2015 14:24
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Snak posted:Right, but not a creepy/business panel van. A minivan. A purple soccer-mom van. For some reason, I see it as a purple Nissan Cube. Van-like, but imbued with some special douchiness. Still purple, though, certainly.
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May 23, 2015 12:51
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Aphrodite posted:Exotic isn't even the word you use for Greek. "Mediterranean," probably.
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May 28, 2015 02:03
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Gyges posted:I think people are really overselling the amount of expensive mysticism in Iron Fist. It's like almost entirely limited to kung fu with glowy hands and a dragon corpse that'll show up once. If the other Immortal Weapons show up you add some green mist and spiders, while upping the set destruction by 5 or so. Yeah, I agree. I don't get why people are so hung up on how difficult it'd be to portray more mystical/fantasy elements. Daredevil already introduced a lot of the fantasy wuxia stuff with mystical ninja clans and interdimensional kung-fu grannies and demons inside children, and that fit just fine with the rest of the show. I imagine they'll just play fast and loose with the Iron Fist source material, and tone down the magical elements. Mystical Chinatown spice shops, subtle ki power effects, magical doorways...they just have to imply a hidden magic universe underneath the gritty NYC setting, which has way more to do with atmosphere and implication than blunt-force effects work. Actually showing a magic Chinese city or a fight with a dragon would be more demanding, but I can bet both of those things will be discussed more than shown.
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Nov 2, 2015 21:59
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