#JustaQuickiePlease: Marvel: The Defenders (TV Series 2017) Review

The producers of the first outing of Marvel's Daredevil brings us the cumulation of 5 seasons worth of gradually worsening story telling, mostly solid character development, and some of the most breathtaking fight scenes ever captured on screen (not counting Iron Fist).  The Defenders are, in essence, a Nolanesque take on The Avengers,  removing all the cool powers, tech, humor, and flair of the Whedonverse and replacing it with a dark, gritty, mostly realistic tone and feel.   What was once an inspired launch to a more hard core approach to some of Marvel's E-List heroes, has now become the typical cash cow, trading substance, and sophistication for a hurried product rampant with flawed progressive ideology, ad nauseam exposition, bland villains, and either overt predictability or outright unbelievability.   Daredevil uno and dos gave us two of the best comic features to ever grace the small, or silver screen, as well as, The Kingpin, Elektra, and Punisher fandom deserved.  Jessica Jones redefined what a comic book film or series is and gave us the most frightening bad guy in the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Cosmos.  The first half of Luke Cage provided a long awaited, well earned, dignity to one of my favorite printed heroes.  Then, without warning, the shark jumped itself, as the latter episodes of Cage became outright propaganda and delivered one of the most disappointing climaxes in geek history.   Kung Fu Justin Timberlake followed, um...I mean Iron Fist, which was mostly one dragon sized train wreck, rampant with horrific choreographer, frustrating redundancy, and the birthing of the infamous excess exposition.  The Defenders should have been the saving grace, instead, it provided a fitting bow to a crap package.  Luke Cage can't get hurt until the plot requires him to.  Jessica Jones can lift an elevator, but has a problem with the equivalent of the Hand's Yoga instructor.   Daredevil can best a stairwell full of thugs but struggles when it comes to one on one.  Then there is the Karate Kid, who is an annoying mix of Eddie Haskel, Ricky Shroeder, and that one Cobra Kai kid who got kicked out because he just couldn't cut it.  Add in the most vanilla villain they could conjure, and the fact that club dread's only real weapon is unending exposition, and you have an absolute profanity when it comes to concluding a story arch.   The only highlight is Elektra who can kill entire rooms of highly trained ancient ninjas but has a bit of trouble taking out her former beau...which wasn't predictable at all, total shocker.   In the end, the script was inferior, the action cool, and humor hit or miss, mostly the latter.   Let's hope The Punisher will bring us back to the glory days when Mike Murdoch first graced the Netflix stage.  Not to mention the set up for a possible Born Again plotline.  2 out of 5 Kernels: Still trying to figure out what exactly they were defending, and, especially, how a skyscraper haphazardly imploded without affecting a single building around it.