The Defenders, Season 1, Episode 4: Royal Dragon
In contrast to the first two episodes of the season, "Royal Dragon", the fourth episode of Marvel's the Defenders, involves all of our main characters -- the titular Defenders and Stick -- sitting in a restaurant and talking. Sure, Jessica says "fuck you" and buggers off for like the second half of the episode, but that's all they do. Yet it's so much more interesting and engaging than the weird book-keeping and errating jumping around we had in the first two episodes. From the moment that the episode begins with a shot of the titular Royal Dragon, a Chinese restaurant that the Defenders quickly hide in after escaping from Midland, and the clever visual hint that the Royal Dragon's neon signs has only the four primary colours associated with our four heroes in the opening credits (Matt's red, Jessica's dark blue, Luke's gold and Danny's green), it's the place where our heroes end up getting finally properly acquainted, trying to struggle to comprehend all the crazy shit going on with each other. Oh, and comprehend each other. This is the kind of a slow episode that really deserves to be made, one that truly explores characters and shows interactions that are interesting.
Also, the episode makes Danny Rand finally likable, something that 13 episodes in his home show never managed to do. I can't help but think that the writers tried to redeem Danny in both the audience's eyes after the blowback on Iron Fist (nice to know I'm not the only one that doesn't like that show), which is definitely nice. And it doesn't feel like a complete retool of the character either, which would be inelegant. Danny is just this over-excited puppy with his extremely naive views on superheroism, which isn't hard considering his manchild mentality and his 'I am the destined hero, so we MUST fight them!' gung-ho attitude. We have had Danny be admonished twice in this season, first by Colleen and then by Luke, and seeing him here relatively excited to potentially have allies against the Hand, while still being enough of a prideful (but ultimately noble) tit to talk back to anything he desn't agree with, makes him work a lot better. There are also hilarious moments of him being accidentally insensitive, like earning the Royal Dragon's staff's cooperation through what initially seems to just him talking in Mandarin, but apparently he basically all but bought the restaurant with his boy billionaire money, and his proud "hey, guys, I did a thing!" excited little-brother smile is fun. More of fun, noble-idiot Danny and less moping, entitled-shit Dany, please.
The four principal members of the Defenders have a common enemy, but they are all four well-defined characters who have gone through some serious shit in their respective shows. And unlike the Avengers, there was no Initiative. No SHIELD and Nick Fury that acted as the big good organization to tie them together, and in any case, with the Avengers half the team were actually working for SHIELD by the time the movie began. Sure, the Defenders all have a common friend in Claire Temple, and they all live in New York, but that's about it. They are a bunch of people who just don't trust other people easily, and even the characters who know each other before all this mess -- Luke and Jessica -- aren't super keen on working with the others. And that's not to mention all the hot emotions running right now. Matt's frustration and anger at seeing Elektra alive but not exactly herself, Jessica's streak of bad luck, Luke working out frustrations over Cole's death and... Danny's actually pretty chill in this episode and that sort of makes sense.
Add all the hard-to-swallow stuff like the existence of the ninja clan called the Hand, the Immortal Iron Fist, dragon-punching and all that, and the Defenders just find each other's story hard to swallow, even if they do calm down a little after Danny orders five of every single item on the Royal Dragon's menu. Stick also shows up around the halfway mark to deliver some much-needed exposition and to call out Matt and Danny out -- the former being uncooperative, and the latter for being, in Stick's own words, "the immortal Iron Fist is still a dundering dumbass." becuase him calling Colleen basically tipped off their location to the Hand. But before that... story time! Luke's chill and cooperative despite his suspension of disbelief, but Stick's attempt to get Jessica Jones to SIDDOWN ends up with Jessica going "fuck you" and leaving, easily a highlight of the episode.
The conversations are well done, blending characters reacting to things the audience already knows like the general disbelief about Iron Fist's claim that he punched a dragon -- Luke has the perfect eyeball-rolling scene. Luke and Danny actually have some really great chemistry that builds up from their previous meetings in the second and third episodes, and I wouldn't mind seeing them team up as a duo show, which is apparently something that happens multiple times in the comics. Matt is, rather surprisingly for me, the most uncooperative of the bunch. Whereas Jessica is irritated and sticks around long enough to listen to the information she wants to know, Luke is chill and Danny is excited, Matt continues to want nothing to do with the group, something that makes a lot of sense considering how he doesn't even actually want to become Daredevil again until circumstances forced him to. Jessica's dry insistence that he return her scarf is hilarious, and Danny's constant "whooaaa how did you do that" look any time Matt comments on things with his super senses are hilarious.
Matt gets super-irate when Stick shows up, being a gigantic douchebag towards Stick and insisting that whatever Stick does isn't going to end well for anyone else -- he may be fighting the Hand, but that doesn't mean that he's working for everyone's best interests. At the moment, though, Stick is being cooperative, and despite his missing hand (there are some times where the stump prosthetic looks fake, though) Stick is in a talkative mood and catches both the heroes and the audience up on the state of things. The Chaste is formed in accordance to K'un Lun's orders -- not that it matters because it appears that both K'un Lun and the Chaste are basically wiped out, and confirms that the dead bodies that Danny, Colleen and Luke stumbles upon in episode two are what's left of the Chaste. We also get the revelation that the Hand is controlled by the Five Fingers, five heretics from K'un Lun that were exiled, but are also immortal thanks to obtaining certain... mystical things in K'un Lun.
These five fingers are the big players of the game, as we learn the identities of the five fingers. Alexandra and Madame Gao, obviously, and I did find Danny and Matt's confusion that the other knew Madame Gao to be more hilarious than I shold. "White Hat", or Sowande, the black dude that Luke has been following and we saw working with Alexandra last episode, is another, and Bakuto, the main villain of Iron Fist, is confirmed to be another (presumed dead, but maybe not) finger. The final member is a character we meet in this episode through Alexandra scenes, a Japanese man named Murakami, and is confirmed to be Nobu's leader. There is the weird oddity that apparently despite the bickering between Gao and Nobu, and Gao and Bakuto, the Hand's actually multiple organizations embroiled in constant alliances and rivalries... but it sort of kind of makes sense, allowing some tie-in to the sometimes inconsistent motivations that Madame Gao seems to have -- the Hand factions we see in the three different seasons they showed up in aren't necessarily the same faction. Their motivations being immortality might not be super original, but it's believable enough.
And through this all, the five main players in the room (four after Jessica leaves) exchange some great lines of dialogue. Without going too in-depth about it, it's just generally well done, with everyone's point of view being well-defined, and the moments when Luke and Matt decide to finally let go of their reluctance to team up with Stick and Danny is definitely well done. All of them are heroes, as much as they don't want to admit it, and despite Luke's reservation about this "magic" and Matt's hatred of Stick, they still know that people are going to get hurt and they can't have that. Matt also gets some of his alternate goals made known when he talks one-on-one with Stick about Elektra, and expresses some hope that, shit, Elektra might recognize him. Stick, heartless blind bastard that he is, is basically telling Matt not to be blinded by his emotions.
Jessica, meanwhile, takes some time to finally say "fuck you" to everything, but curiousity gets the better of her, and she finds out that, yeah, the handwritings found in the records she photographed all match each other, leading credence to Stick's talk about immmortals. When she returns to investigate Michelle Raymond's house, she finds a thug watching the family, and while protecting them Jessica confirms the existence of the Hand. She shows up finally at the end of the episode, using a car to break through the walls and smack Elektra down, giving us a pretty badass dynamic entry and a cliffhanger for next episode as it promises another Defenders-vs-Elektra fight.
Alexandra gets some scenes to break up the restaurant stuff in this one, and it's pretty neat. There's the scene where she shows up to talk to Murakami, who speaks entirely in Japanese, before showing up in the restaurant, sitting on a chair, while everyone is distracted. While we do kind of know some bits about her -- she's an immortal who, for some reason, is dying, and is accelerating things faster than the other Five Fingers are comfortable with -- she's still mysterious enough. She asks Danny to come quietly, otherwise everyone else dies. Threatening their personal lives, as well as the fact that she's basically indirectly caused the death of Luke's buddy Cole, means that there's not really going to be peace. She then unleashes Elektra upon them, and while I highly doubt that four-on-one she's going to pose a threat to Iron Fist and Luke Cage, Jessica smacks Elektra with a car instead. Doubt she's down for the count, though.
Definitely a win in my book. Perhaps a bit slower, but the right kind of slow that allows us to explore characters and character intereactions, instead of the weird meandering tone we had in the first two episodes. More please!
No comments:
Post a Comment