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Also finished up the current season of Jessica Jones.   Luke and JJ bump uglies and we finally return Sweet Christmas to the Marvel lexicon.

When they introduced Kilgrave, I was pretty concerned about how icky the storyline would be if the show were really faithful to Alias.  Things definitely got sketchy but not to the point where I was so uncomfortable that I stopped watching.

Probably because I was already braced for it after having endured the comics.

 

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It got pretty icky to me.  Where it about became too much for me:

 

 

Just everything that happened to Hope Schlottman was really a bit over-the-top at times for me. She's raped, assaulted, forced to kill her own parents and orphan her brother.  Impregnated by a monster and has to get an abortion, and then she kills herself.  It was almost too much for me.

The show spent most of the season with Jessica trying to capture Kilgrave because Hope was going to be her redemption, but then Kilgrave leaves dozens dead just because she won't kill him when she has the chance.  And all that strife happened because she refused to kill him just to save hope.  Then they kill Hope just so it's OK to kill Kilgrave.  I think they lost sight of things in the last few episodes.

 

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Getting back to Daredevil: I'm on episode 12, and maaaaan, you guys weren't kidding about the repetitive, monotonous nature of those CONSTANT NINJA FIGHTS.  It would be one thing if they were particularly well-choreographed action scenes, but they're not.  Compare any of them to the gorgeously brutal "Frank versus ten convicts" prison massacre, and it really highlights how phony and trite all the Hand fights feel in comparison.  Hell, even a relatively simple scene like Karen's apartment being riddled with bullets had so much more real-world weight and gritty plausibility than anything in the various spot-monkey martial arts setpieces.  That even extends to the story; it's immeasurable just how much more I care about the stuff with Punisher, Kingpin, and Foggy/Karen than my utter apathy for the whole Elektra/Stick/Anonymous Ninjas With No Personality side of the story.  

 

An individual detail: when watching the raid on the boat and the subsequent police cleanup, was anyone else thinking "okay, Daredevil showrunners, we GET it, you really really REALLY love The Usual Suspects"?  

 

 

EDIT: they finally revealed the secret villain, and I almost felt like turning the whole thing right the fuck off.  Such a terrible, arbitrary choice of a random character, like a Scooby-Doo unmasking.  ALMOST as terrible as the whole "Hand ninjas are dead silent... but only sometimes" nonsense, which is the worst contrivance in the whole series. And that's saying something, considering the characters' abilities to magically track each other's locations via apparent psychic powers of precognition is still in full effect.  (How the hell did Frank find Karen and He Who Done It?  How the hell did Matt just happen to find the Hand's lair?  How the hell did Elektra find Matt and Stick?)

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As someone that didn't love the first season, I actually liked the second season better than the first. I think the second season was structured and paced better than the first season. That said the first half of this season was definitely better than the second half. The first half was well paced and organized, the second half seemed a bit unfocused and felt a little like they didn't know how they wanted to get the characters to where they wanted to leave them at. Plus the off and on commitment to the mysticism of The Hand made for clunky storytelling. Matt ends up coming off like Scully in the later seasons of The X-Files where the viewer starts to become frustrated with the character's refusal to believe. 

I have to get around to watching Jessica Jones but Luke Cage should be fun.

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Honestly, everything other than The Hand stuff was great this season.  I did find myself really not wanting to see Matt or Elektra at all though, which probably wasn't intended.  Matt was such a selfish, inconsistent character, it made me really dislike him.  Every other character was top notch though.  I popped huge for Frank assisting at the end.

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Also, brutal honesty: I don't think Charlie Cox is that great.  He's okay, he's competent, but he feels very much like "insert generic CW Network unshaven prettyboy hero Here" rather than a truly compelling lead.  I think he gets blown right off the screen by Woll, Henson, and Berenthal; let alone the real heavy hitters like D'Onofrio and Glenn.  And having known several blind guys in real life, I don't always buy his "blind" routine, he's doing too much acting with his eyes and is all too often looking other people directly in the eye when he's talking to them, real blind people never do that.  

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I'm 11 episodes in now. We got set back by the flu and what not, but this is probably my favorite take on Punisher ever. He's very bitchy, passive aggressive, like... there's a bit of Tony Danza playing the Punisher in him or something. He's vulnerable in a way they'd never let the comics version be. I've read hundreds of Punisher comics and appearances and I much prefer this take. Are all the xtreme wackos that honestly love the Punisher from the comics hating this version or are they just seeing what they want to see?

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What I love about this Punisher, like you said, there is good in him, but they make you earn it from him.  The Thomas Jane movie was ass, because he just came off like a slightly more aggressive Batman.  They let his good side show too much.  The comics makes him borderline unredeemable at times.  I thought this take was perfect.  If he wasn't portrayed in this way, the scene at the end where he helps DD would have meant nothing.  We had to think he was lost forever after killing the colonel for that to mean anything.

And yeah, Cox is ok.  I thought he was MUCH better in season 1.  His blind acting felt a little more natural.  Also the character wasn't an unrelenting douche in season 1 either. 

My hope for season 3 is that we get more legal stuff, oddly enough.  I loved the first season felt like superhero Law & Order.  We got SOME of that here, but I wanna see Matt the lawyer more.  It helps ground him.  I don't want Nelson and Murdoch to be done :( #avocadoatlaw

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1 hour ago, RandomAct said:

I'm going to ask him to sign my petition to get someone likeable as Elektra.

That character was fucked from the start by the way the show writes her.  They can never make up their minds whether she's a cold-blooded manipulator or a woman-child who can't control her temper; whether she's the most deadly fighter in the world, or if she's merely a wannabee compared to Matt/Stick/Chinese Scarface; whether she has some kind of intricate mastermind plan, or if she's just making this all up as she goes along; whether she really gives a damn about either Matt or Stick, or is just using them towards her own (vague and unexplained) goals.  Hell, they can't even decide which CONTINENT she's from, picking a French actress of Cambodian ethnicity who has an English accent to play a Greek character who was raised by Americans.  Poor Elodie Yung had no chance fighting against all that horseshit, regardless of whatever her level of talent is.  

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True dat, yo!  The Elektra movie was one of the single worst superhero films I've ever seen in my life.  Much worse than the lowest lows of any Batman or Superman or X-Men or Spider-man or Hulk movie ever.  Right up there with Catwoman and Ghost Rider and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Supergirl and The Spirit and pick-your-least-favorite-version-of-Fantastic Four in terms of terrible modern superhero franchise adaptations which seemed like they were actively trying to piss off the existing fanbase for those characters.  Come to think of it, did they even attempt to make ANY explanation of how Elektra didn't, y'know, DIE when Bullseye stabbed the fuck out of her in the previous movie?  

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OK I'm like six episodes or so into Daredevil and I'ma just lay down some thoughts:

  • This has officially replaced the Dolph Lundgren version as my favorite Punisher. Although Dolph is still a pretty solid #2. Didn't give a fuck about War Zone. The Thomas Jane version sucked partly because they bought into the "comic book movies need a name hamming it up as the villain" theory and cast Travolta, and partly because they based it heavily off the horrendously bad in-universe Ennis stuff where he wrote Punisher like he was writing fucking Hitman.
  • Elektra sucks, but Elektra always sucked. She's a dimestore femme fatale-turned-woman in the fridge for DD. She's an ur-Sin City character who'd be better off hanging out with the ninja prostitutes in Old Town than running around Marvel's NYC.
  • Seriously, what the fuck was up with the Lucky Charms Mob? Denny O'Neil writing the fucking Gael wasn't as bad with the Oirish as this shit... 
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38 minutes ago, Jingus said:

True dat, yo!  The Elektra movie was one of the single worst superhero films I've ever seen in my life.  Much worse than the lowest lows of any Batman or Superman or X-Men or Spider-man or Hulk movie ever.  Right up there with Catwoman and Ghost Rider and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Supergirl and The Spirit and pick-your-least-favorite-version-of-Fantastic Four in terms of terrible modern superhero franchise adaptations which seemed like they were actively trying to piss off the existing fanbase for those characters.  Come to think of it, did they even attempt to make ANY explanation of how Elektra didn't, y'know, DIE when Bullseye stabbed the fuck out of her in the previous movie?  

Deleted scene in Daredevil had her body taken by The Hand iirc.

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On 3/29/2016 at 5:14 PM, The Comedian said:

OK I'm like six episodes or so into Daredevil and I'ma just lay down some thoughts:

  • This has officially replaced the Dolph Lundgren version as my favorite Punisher. Although Dolph is still a pretty solid #2. Didn't give a fuck about War Zone. The Thomas Jane version sucked partly because they bought into the "comic book movies need a name hamming it up as the villain" theory and cast Travolta, and partly because they based it heavily off the horrendously bad in-universe Ennis stuff where he wrote Punisher like he was writing fucking Hitman.
  • Elektra sucks, but Elektra always sucked. She's a dimestore femme fatale-turned-woman in the fridge for DD. She's an ur-Sin City character who'd be better off hanging out with the ninja prostitutes in Old Town than running around Marvel's NYC.
  • Seriously, what the fuck was up with the Lucky Charms Mob? Denny O'Neil writing the fucking Gael wasn't as bad with the Oirish as this shit... 

You know the characters who were in the Lucky Charms mob were created by Garth Ennis, who is from Northern Ireland.  So...blame him I guess?  

Also the actor playing Finn Cooley was Scottish.  Not sure if that's a faux pas.

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The amount of love  D'onofrio gets as Kingpin is mind boggling to me. Someone needs to sell this guy to me. He isn't intimidating. His 'Kingpin voice' is hokey as fuck as is his overacting. Plus he looks like a giant baby in his prison jumpsuit.

 

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I got the "giant baby" thought too, that was not a flattering outfit at all.  In D'Onofrio's defense, he was used much better in the first season, pretty much everything involving him in S2 leans heavily on the viewer having seen all his stuff from the previous year.  

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55 minutes ago, Dirty J. said:

The amount of love  D'onofrio gets as Kingpin is mind boggling to me. Someone needs to sell this guy to me. He isn't intimidating. His 'Kingpin voice' is hokey as fuck as is his overacting. Plus he looks like a giant baby in his prison jumpsuit.

OK I'll try. He looks like a big baby because he is one. He's a man-child, albeit an exceptionally intelligent one. He stopped "growing up" when he murdered his old man. He's a seething ball of pent-up anger and hatred pretending to be a civilized adult. It takes an undue amount of effort for him not to throw childish tantrums.

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That's because he is.  D'Onofrio even said that his version of Fisk was both a child and a monster.  

I would say at least unlike Lex Luthor, it was a fairly faithful interpretation of the character at least as we've come to know him over the years.  

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