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Offline Dither

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1800 on: July 01, 2017, 11:54:16 PM »
Watched "The Fury" for the first time last night on Netflix.

This was a much more honest portrail of the destruction of the human psyche during wartime.
The dinner scene, where the threat of immanent rape by the good guys seemed to hang in the air.
And the stare of the girl by the side of the road "she'll sleep with you for a chocolate bar"
These are the reasons why the WW2 vets didn't like to talk about the war,
My own Father was in WW2 and he told me nothing other than he caught a form of polio. 

The crossroads scene played out like Zulu, German soilders being nothing more than cannon fodder.
Not likely to have happened quite that way in real life, but the other scenes seemed reasonable.
Probably the best tank movie ever made, or at the least, the most accurate. 
   
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Offline Snupes

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1801 on: July 02, 2017, 12:28:58 AM »
Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017)

Went with my friend and my nephew to go see this two and a half hours ago. It was really good. However, they spent the car ride back gushing about the movie and I can't help but feel like it disappointed me. A lot. When it was good it was utterly fantastic, but there was a lot of dead space in that movie, scenes that were just kinda...there, or felt really generic, or didn't move the movie forward, that just had no momentum or called for feelings that weren't there, like the entire romance subplot.

Man. I never thought I'd say that about an Edgar Wright movie, but this was kinda dull. It was technically very impressive, it looked great, the shots were fantastic, the writing was, er, quippy, but the visual style and some of the quirky bits felt like the only things I couldn't get from any other well-refined blockbuster movie.

idk. That was my least-favourite Edgar Wright movie.
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Offline Dither

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1802 on: July 02, 2017, 03:37:42 AM »
The Baby doesn't arrive till the 13th of July here in Aus and I can't wait to see it.

Once I heard "Nowhere to run" in the trailer I couldn't help but think of that other great chase movie The Warriors.
I'm a sucker for movies like this, running from stuff is in my nature. I saw Fury Road 3 times at the cinemas.

I have read some reviews that say BD is overhyped, thats ok, I'll lower my expectations a little.   

« Last Edit: July 02, 2017, 03:49:49 AM by Dither »
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Offline juner

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1803 on: July 08, 2017, 01:47:00 AM »
Spiderman: Homecoming

It's great. *

Go see it. **

* there are many not-so-subtle nods to Marvel's new SJW approach.

** third best movie in the current movie MCU behind OG Iron Man and OG Avengers.

Also, Spider-Man is objectively and literally the best superhero in the history of the universe don't @ me
« Last Edit: July 08, 2017, 01:48:36 AM by junker »

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Offline honk

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1804 on: July 09, 2017, 03:08:45 AM »
ur retartet but u donut even no it and i walnut tell u y

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Offline Snupes

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1805 on: July 09, 2017, 07:55:11 PM »
Iron Man Cleans Up Spider-Man's Messes: Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2017)

This was pretty good. I was really disappointed with it; this was probably my second or third-favourite Spider-Man film and I left the theater extremely underwhelmed, but it was overall a fun flick. The Vulture was fucking awesome, though, and that suit's design was just absolutely beautiful.

Hopefully they do better next time.
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Offline juner

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1806 on: July 09, 2017, 08:49:34 PM »
Iron Man Cleans Up Spider-Man's Messes: Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2017)

This was pretty good. I was really disappointed with it; this was probably my second or third-favourite Spider-Man film and I left the theater extremely underwhelmed, but it was overall a fun flick. The Vulture was fucking awesome, though, and that suit's design was just absolutely beautiful.

Hopefully they do better next time.

They really need to detach it from the whole Avengers storyline :(

Would also help if he was a little older. He gets treated like a scrub even though he'd wreck 90% of Marvel superheroes (including shitty Captain America, contrary to Tony Stark's assertion otherwise).

The Venom movie starts shooting in a couple months. Hopefully they're on a collision course and it is done properly this time.

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Offline honk

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1807 on: July 12, 2017, 05:14:05 AM »
Would also help if he was a little older. He gets treated like a scrub even though he'd wreck 90% of Marvel superheroes (including shitty Captain America, contrary to Tony Stark's assertion otherwise).

I haven't seen the movie yet, but it seems like you're glossing over the key dichotomy of the character - he has tremendous power, but he's still a young teenager struggling to sort out his life. It's why he's treated like a scrub, and it's also why Captain America, a trained soldier and experienced fighter, was able to get the better of him in their last encounter despite his lower power level. And for what it's worth, I actually really like that this movie (by all accounts, that is; again, I haven't seen it) prioritized appealing to teens rather than older capeshit fans, what with all the "modernizing" of Spidey and his environment. We had Raimi's movies. Let the youngsters have this one.

Quote
The Venom movie starts shooting in a couple months. Hopefully they're on a collision course and it is done properly this time.

lol
ur retartet but u donut even no it and i walnut tell u y

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Offline juner

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1808 on: July 12, 2017, 03:16:50 PM »
Would also help if he was a little older. He gets treated like a scrub even though he'd wreck 90% of Marvel superheroes (including shitty Captain America, contrary to Tony Stark's assertion otherwise).

I haven't seen the movie yet, but it seems like you're glossing over the key dichotomy of the character - he has tremendous power, but he's still a young teenager struggling to sort out his life. It's why he's treated like a scrub, and it's also why Captain America, a trained soldier and experienced fighter, was able to get the better of him in their last encounter despite his lower power level. And for what it's worth, I actually really like that this movie (by all accounts, that is; again, I haven't seen it) prioritized appealing to teens rather than older capeshit fans, what with all the "modernizing" of Spidey and his environment. We had Raimi's movies. Let the youngsters have this one.

I'm not glossing over it, I fully understand why. I just think it's gay af because Spidey is dope and Cap sucks balls.


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Offline Snupes

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1809 on: July 13, 2017, 03:13:39 AM »
FWIW, the movie treats Peter as monumentally useless for the majority of its runtime, and (IMO) it grew old really quickly. Sometimes his ineptitude is played for laughs, but it just doesn't sit right with me for some reason.
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Offline juner

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1810 on: July 13, 2017, 03:31:02 AM »
FWIW, the movie treats Peter as monumentally useless for the majority of its runtime, and (IMO) it grew old really quickly. Sometimes his ineptitude is played for laughs, but it just doesn't sit right with me for some reason.

Animated series Peter is best Peter.

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Offline honk

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1811 on: July 13, 2017, 04:16:08 AM »
I beg to differ:

3 Dev Adam [3 Giant Men] (T. Fikret Uçak, 1973)

This was both amazing and baffling.  Captain America and Santo travel to Turkey to take down the gangster "Spider," who's into stealing rare artifacts and counterfeiting money.  The movie has a couple of sex/nude scenes, some very violent deaths, and of course almost nothing in common with the source material for these characters beyond some really shitty costumes:



It's objectively terrible, of course, but I'd be lying if I claimed I wasn't thoroughly entertained by the spectacle.  Forget Civil War, this is the real capeshit throwdown you need to see.

Well, I don't know if this guy's real name is Peter. But he's still the best Spider-Man...uh, Spider.
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Offline juner

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1812 on: July 13, 2017, 04:39:24 AM »
Well, I don't know if this guy's real name is Peter. But he's still the best Spider-Man...uh, Spider.



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Offline Shane

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1813 on: July 19, 2017, 12:16:57 AM »
Been to the cinema a lot lately

Baby Driver:  was good

Spiderman:  I liked a lot

Planet of the Apes:  was ok. Disappointing

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Offline beardo

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1814 on: August 05, 2017, 05:55:24 AM »
Tombstone (George P. Cosmatos, 1993)

p. good
« Last Edit: August 05, 2017, 07:40:18 AM by beardo »
The Mastery.

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Offline beardo

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1815 on: August 06, 2017, 02:43:17 AM »
Wyatt Earp (Lawrence Kasdan, 1994)

Not as good as Tombstone, but still p. ok, and perhaps a bit more historically accurate.
The Mastery.

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Offline Dither

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1816 on: August 07, 2017, 11:26:19 AM »
Seeing that your on a western binge,
How do you rate the new Mag 7?

I was a tad disappointed with it to be honest.
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Offline Crudblud

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1817 on: August 22, 2017, 12:41:44 PM »
So many spoilers I just blacked the whole thing out, capeshitters beware!

Marvel's The Defenders

The latest instalment in Marvel's Netflix franchise, The Defenders sees heroes and supporting characters from previous series team up to take on... Sigourney Weaver! A sad lady who pops pills and listens to Brahms while being sad, and that, aside from telling other people that she is not to be messed with, is literally all she does. Sadgourney is also responsible for creating the Black Sky—yes, that's right, the main villain is yet another big player in the mystical crime ninja underworld—which it turns out, to no one's surprise despite a great many attempts to shroud it in mystery, is actually Elektrik “Which Hemisphere Is My Accent From Today?” Nachos, back from the dead and not quite herself.

The basic plot is thus: the Hand has been digging a hole (previously seen in season two of Daredevil) under a skyscraper, and at the bottom there is a mystical door with mystical writing on it which they believe will lead them to K'un Lun. To that end, they are looking for one Ron Fist, who has been tracking down Hand members around the world with his Chinese ninja girlfriend who still walks around densely populated urban centres with a lethal weapon on her back in plain sight without attracting the attention of police officers or literally anyone, for he alone has the power to unlock the door. Returning to New York after a brief encounter with Our Lady of Cheese-Drenched Tortilla Chips, they find themselves gradually becoming involved with Luke Cage, Matt Murdock, and Jessica Jones, all of whom are either unwittingly investigating Hand-related activity, or very much wittingly investigating someone who is unwittingly investigating Hand-related activity.

Defenders is really where the Hand stuff from previous shows pays off, kind of, in a roundabout sort of way that makes you wonder why they didn't come up with something else. Buh “KAHLEEEEN” Kudo is back from the dead, and now he's allied with Kung Fu Grandma, African Scanner Pimp, Japanese Taxidermy Man, and of course Sadgourney. No, it's not a prospective list of villains from Hideo Kojima's planned but unrealised Metal Gear Solid 6, but in a way it might as well be. These are the Five Fingers of the Hand, ancient evil persons of a racially and sexually diverse nature, natch, who were exiled from K'un Lun (that or they just left of their own accord, it seems like even they aren't really sure anymore) a billion years ago because they wanted to use the power of Fisting for evil.

Contrary to the speculation that Daredevil would be the main character, it turns out that most of the show is about Danny Rand being put in his place by just about everyone on the planet. The interpretation of his character from my I, Ron Fist review seems to have been in line with what the writers intended, or at least with what the writers of this particular version took from his original series, and his confrontations with his fellow Defenders are shown to be childish and silly, even often detrimental to their success in the fight against the Hand. Anyone still on the fence about the Iron Fist character will probably be convinced by the end that his obnoxiousness is entirely intentional in the writing, and that the other Netflix heroes find him just as insufferable a good amount of the time as the audience does. Even Colleen gets in on the action, making fun of his tendency to ramble on about how he is Ronnie Fisticles to anyone and everyone regardless of whether or not they want to hear it.

On the villain side of things, there isn't really anyone worth caring about. BuKAHLEEEENdo is as bland and insipid as ever, and the other Handy Finger Bois don't really have enough screen time or personality to feel like anything more than minor players. Perhaps the greatest offence is found in the lacklustre portrayal of the once fearsome and mysterious Madame Gao, who here seems more like a disgruntled old maid with about as much power and intrigue as a bargain bin AAAA battery. But there is hope on the deadly old persons front in the form of Stick. Cranky and ruthless as ever, our first scene with him involves him fighting off multiple mystical ninjas while chained to a pipe before cutting off his own hand in order to escape the Hand (see what they did there), and generally his scenes involve him killing people or berating them in the extreme, the former of which is about as bad-ass as the show gets, the latter often the only source of genuine comedy in a relatively dry show. Jessica Jones tries to pick up the slack but her one-liners come off forced and unfunny.

In case you can't already tell, I think Sadgourney's characterisation is extremely weak. It's unfortunate because we all know Weaver can deliver a great performance, but her screen time here shows signs of poor writing and poorer direction. It's like they thought “oh wow, Sigourney Weaver!” and expected they could give someone of her stature a supermarket receipt for a script and she'd come up with something good. What character moments we do get are pretty weak. The string quartet scene in the second episode very much comes across as “we looked up Brahms on Wikipedia”, and it just feels incredibly dumb to me. I also feel like they shouldn't have had Weaver speak foreign languages so much. I've heard it said that D'Onofrio's Chinese in Daredevil was kind of stilted, I didn't notice because whenever I hear spoken Chinese it just sounds like random noises, but I can definitely tell Weaver was coached for all of five minutes in Japanese and Turkish for her scenes. They really want to make her seem like someone who has lived for a very long time and experienced a lot of things, but I feel like they wrote her as a series of bullet points rather than as a person. Weaver is a good casting choice, but the script serves her poorly.

Elsewhere things are somewhat better. The main foursome and their friends all feel believable, relationships developed to some degree from the other shows, although I will say Daredevil's Foggy Nelson feels like an afterthought in a lot of ways, and his lines come across choppy and uncharacteristic in several scenes. There is a general sense, much as I feared there would be, that they tried to pack in too much, just like the Avengers movies. It's not quite Age of Ultron bad on that front, but there are definitely plenty of times when the desire to luxuriate in a particular scene or character is at odds with the need to push ahead with the plot. After all, the show only has eight episodes, and for all that's in there it feels like there's too much of one thing and not enough of another.

Fight scenes are kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, Iron Fist definitely looks more competent early on than he did in his own show, there's less cutting and more clear shots and Finn Jones has clearly been practising, but later on fight scenes quickly become incomprehensible messes. I'm thinking of one scene in particular in episode seven where the Defenders and three of the Hand's leaders face off, and while it's not Liam-Neeson-climbs-a-fence it's definitely edging towards that territory, located on the other side of the world from the thrilling and now classic hallway sequence in Daredevil's first season. Cinder blocks fly, punches, kicks, throws and flips dance around fire and the Force, cars are crushed, walls are smashed, blood is spilled, but spectacle gives way to not being able to tell what the fuck is happening or who is making it happen. Cinematography in general can be a little annoying, with tons of clumsy shots that exist only to show the Defenders as a group regardless of whether it looks good or appropriate or whatever.

The soundtrack tries too hard in some ways and not hard enough in others. Early on it tries to mirror the feel of the original shows as it follows each character, but it can't match the authenticity of Luke Cage's blend of jazz, blues, funk, and hip-hop, nor can it create any tension the way Daredevil's and Jessica Jones's soundtracks did. Later on, once they're all together, even this sense of at least trying to be character appropriate is gone, and the whole thing disintegrates and reforms as a bland amorphous mush of generic gestures and moods, becoming one of the least memorable parts of a show which makes of the forgettable its bread and butter.

It's not as gritty as Daredevil, as pulpy as Luke Cage, as paranoid as Jessica Jones, or as richly characterised as Iron Fist. Its villains are bland, and the plot is essentially tying up loose ends from other shows which I'd be surprised to learn anyone really cares about anymore. The Hand was best when it was a mysterious shadow organisation you couldn't quite reach out and touch, now that we know it's mystical crime ninjas it ceases to be as interesting as it once was, especially as it is now appearing for a third major outing. In this way it mirrors The X-Files's alien invasion “mytharc”, which became less interesting as it went on, partly due to diminishing returns, but mainly because Chris Carter clearly had no grand plan for how it would play out, and evidently still doesn't, but without the great characters and chemistries that show had/has to keep the drama rolling along through its most bafflingly stupid moments, The Defenders feels like a lot of sound and fury. The direction is inconsistent, and the often messy fight scenes are a microcosm of the show itself, too much going on at once forcing cut cut cut and often losing any sense of rhythm it manages to establish in its quieter moments. I'm ragging on it a lot, but for all its many many faults I actually enjoyed it. It's silly and messy and unimpressive, but I was entertained by it and managed to get through it in just a few days, so take that for what you will.

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Offline xasop

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1818 on: August 22, 2017, 07:44:03 PM »
I just got done watching a series of BBC documentaries that fit very nicely together.


Walking with Monsters (2005)

The story begins with the Cambrian explosion; the time when our most ancient sentient ancestors, the fish, and their 500-million-year-old rivals, the arthropods, first began to emerge in the world's oceans. It runs through the development of our ancestors into amphibians and then reptiles, along with the concurrent evolution of insects and arachnids, through a number of periods of prehistory.

Finally, it tells of the Great Permian Extinction, the single greatest mass extinction in Earth's history, which ushered in the start of the Triassic. After the extinction, it introduces the very earliest of dinosaurs, making a convenient segue into the next show.

I liked this one a lot. I actually find the Paleozoic much more interesting than the Mesozoic, and it was interesting to see how some of our most basic features evolved because once, in the distant past, they were crucial advantages for survival.


Walking with Dinosaurs (1999)

This was the original Walking with... show, and while I personally find dinosaurs overrated, it is nevertheless an interesting watch. Mainly focusing on the giants of the Jurassic -- not only the dinosaurs, but also the marine reptiles and pterosaurs -- it also includes glimpses into the less fertile Triassic period and the more barbarically carnivorous Cretaceous.

Naturally, there is only one way for such a series to end, and that is with a visual recreation of the meteor strike that blasted away almost all traces of dinosaurs from the face of the Earth.

This one was good, but if you've grown up in the past 50 years, you've already heard all about dinosaurs to death. This was easily my least favourite for that reason.


Walking with Beasts (2001)

A sequel to Walking with Dinosaurs, this picks up where its elder brother left off. It details the rise of mammals in the void left by the dinosaurs and marine reptiles. Two of the last three episodes feature human ancestors to some degree, a theme which would be picked up in more detail by Walking with Cavemen.

Indeed, the final episode covers the woolly mammoth and the two species of hominid who hunted them: first Homo neanderthalensis, then Homo sapiens. It ends by describing the mammoth's extinction and how humans would go on to create museums dedicated to these beasts of the past.

This series was interesting, albeit somewhat disjointed. It feels more like a set of unrelated glimpses into the evolution of a variety of different species than a coherent series, which isn't a bad thing, but it does stand out as different from the other series for this reason.


Walking with Cavemen (2003)

This covers a period concurrent with the last few episodes of Walking with Beasts, but with exclusive focus on human evolution, and why the particular traits that make us who we are survived in ice age Africa. This was my absolute favourite of the Walking with... shows, and highly recommended for anyone who is curious where they came from (and who isn't?).


Andrew Marr's History of the World (2012)

The only series here not part of the Walking with... collection, this covers a smidgeon of the same material as Walking with Cavemen, but thereafter quickly goes on to deal with agriculture, society and civilisation after the out-of-Africa migration. It is very well paced, running through the entire history of human civilisation in just eight hour-long episodes. Hardly a comprehensive guide, but it manages to cover the fundamentals.

If there is one criticism that I have, it's that Marr tends to let his own political biases colour his description of historical events, particularly regarding more recent history. This is not a huge problem, but it did stand out to me a couple of times.

This show is great on its own, but even better paired with Walking with Cavemen. The reason is that History of the World tends to focus heavily on human nature as the driver for many changes throughout history, while Walking with Cavemen explains the reasons why our nature developed as it did, serving as a nice complement.


I also watched some of the Walking with... specials, of which The Ballad of Big Al (about the imagined life of an allosaurus fossil from the late Jurassic) stood out as particularly good. They don't fit neatly between the other series above, though, which is why I didn't review them separately.
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Offline Snupes

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Re: Just Watched
« Reply #1819 on: August 22, 2017, 10:44:58 PM »
Marvel's The Defenders (Douglas Petrie & Marco Ramirez, 2017)

Well, Crudblud pretty much echoed all of my sentiments, so there's not much for me to add. Myself, my friend, and my nephew all waited until our schedules aligned (9pm last night) and binged the whole show from start to finish. Basically, for me, the first half was the best of the show, the second half was bland af but still enjoyable. I know it was incredibly in-your-face and obvious, but I enjoyed how, when they were separate, lighting and colour themes and music was adjusted to each character, especially when it was done more naturally (like the yellowing leaves in the background of Luke Cage's scenes, the way when Matt and Jess meet up the door Matt comes through is red while the walls are purple, then the neon clusterfuck of red, purple, yellow, and green of the restaurant they meet up at).

Anyway, yeah, Alexandra was pretty dull, Elektra was a boring generic evil villain, their overall plan was...uh...I'm sure there was something there, the fight scenes became a blurry mess, etc. etc. They should have had more individual character fights, the cramped situations they kept putting the heroes in didn't lend themselves well to showing them as group scenes.

Only real thing I can add that Crudblud didn't cover was that my favourite part of the show was the Defenders coming together and the heroes getting to know one another. They're all well-characterized and realized, so watching those relationships form was genuinely fun, funny, and heartwarming. The Cage/Rand bromance leaned a bit too hard on the viewer knowing they're best friends in the comics, but I'm a sucker for it so I was perfectly fine with that. Jessica and Matt surprisingly make a great team IMO, with Jessica's inability to just accept ridiculous circumstances making a good play off of Matt's more serious demeanor. Her making constant fun of his outfit and powers was great. Also, Matt played his own theme song on piano and that was neat.

So, yeah, flawed but fun, and I was destined to enjoy this because it's great fanservice and I've wanted this since I was a kid. I don't really enjoy writing reviews for stuff anymore so sorry for the disjointed and rambling nature of this, but I felt like I had to because it's The Defenders.
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