Marvel Cinematic Universe by Slider_Quinn21 (Page 16 of 16)

Spoilers

As far as I can tell, Mohan Kapoor was accused of sexual harassment by someone over Twitter. There have been no charges filed. No proof was posted, not even the supposed photos he sent. Anyone can pretend to be anyone on Twitter. Anyone can say anything on Twitter. Just because someone tweets it doesn't mean it's true or that they're who they claim to be. I'm not saying that the accusation is true or that it's false; I'm just saying that 'posted on Twitter' is not 'verified and credible' in itself.

As for Yusuf Khan showing up, I think it made sense! They had a bank robbery story, they needed a civilian ally, and this character was effective.

In Season 1 of THE PUNISHER, a traumatized soldier turned bomber publicly threatens Karen Page. Frank Castle goes ballistic. "This piece of shit's going after Karen. Nobody goes after her! Not on my watch! Karen!" He proceeds to intervene, exposing himself after having faked his death, getting shot, nearly getting blown up, also being severely beaten just to rescue Karen and contain the bomber in a walk-in freezer.

His absence in Season 3 of DAREDEVIL where Fisk was gunning for Karen and she was hunted by both assassins and the FBI is bizarre... unless you assume he was slightly off camera, killing ten assassins for each one Karen evaded on camera.

I'm sort of half-watching THE DEFENDERS while doing some design work.

The main problem: THE DEFENDERS is all about the machinations and grand plans of the Hand organization, and the creators clearly have no idea what this organization wants or why it does anything. It seems to me, just from an outside perspective: DAREDEVIL's Season 2 showrunners, Marco Ramirez and Doug Petrie, featured the Hand in their season and made them a mysterious and vague clan of evil ninjas with lots of ominous foreshadowing (references to the "Black Sky," a giant hole in Hell's Kitchen, disturbing resurrections) -- with the belief that someone else down the line would have to be the one to offer some explanations.

The imagery of ninjas and a vaguely Japanese aesthetic were viewed as sufficient definition, except the Hand even as originally created in the 1980s is based in exoticizing Japanese culture and history as ceremonially barbaric.

Then IRON FIST took hold of the Hand storyline, and didn't seem to know what to do with them either, at least not effectively. The Hand were presented as the enemy of Danny's people, of the mystical city of K'un Lun, except Danny seems as much an enemy to K'un Lun as the Hand in stealing the Iron Fist, and we can never see K'un Lun onscreen, so we have no idea why the Hand is opposed to them. The Hand is one mysterious organization defined by their opposition to another mysterious group, the city of K'un Lun. So again, due to the vagueness of K'un Lun, the Hand remained vague in Iron Fist. A distant ninja cult of different factions of unclear goals again.

Then the Hand returned to Ramirez and Petrie for their stewardship of THE DEFENDERS, and Ramirez and Petrie now had to come up with some answers for who the Hand were and what their goals were. Since IRON FIST's Harold Meachum had been ageless and immortal as the result of a deal with the Hand, they decided that the Hand's grand prize was immortality. And since IRON FIST had mentioned dragons a lot, they decided that the prize was acquired through a dragon corpse. They decided that the dragon corpse was holding up New York City and that the city would collapse if it were removed... but these 'answers' only created more issues.

The AVENGERS movie succeeded in convincing audiences that New York City was under threat from aliens thanks to New York City background plates and stock footage showing the metropolis under attack. But THE DEFENDERS never convinces us that Alexandra Weaver and Elektra and Madame Gao and others, wandering around corporate hallways and boardrooms, can actually destroy New York City. There is no visual connection between their conversations and digging and the idea that the NYC skyline will fall. There's no sense of urgency: it's never explained at what point in the ongoing extraction that the city will start sinking. THE DEFENDERS never makes it clear how close or far the city is from the end.

It also seems to me that extracting one dragon body is probably one of the smaller scale enterprises for a centuries old organization like the Hand where their immortal members have not been urgently waiting on fresh dragon corpses.

Looking at another shadowy organization of mysterious goals, the Syndicate on THE X-FILES: despite the common knowledge that its mythology was confused and improvised, I would say that it was coherent on a macro level even if, at the micro level, things got confused. The broad strokes: the aliens are the original inhabitants of Earth who left in the Ice Age, transformed into parasitical viruses that manifest as black oil, infected most sentient life in the universe, are planning to return to Earth to use humans as broodmares and (re)colonize the planet -- all that is pretty clear and an obvious criticism of Americans as colonists who destroyed Indigenous Peoples.

However, broadly, THE X-FILES knew what the Syndicate and the Colonists wanted and what the metaphors were (government corruption, Colonization, a select elite securing their own safety and security while the rest of humanity would be infected by Colonists who would rip apart each human host to birth their offspring). I do not feel Marco Ramirez and Doug Petrie even got the broad strokes worked out for the Hand.

The various rival factions of the Hand are confusing: it's never clear who's with whom. It's not clear why the Hand are so desperate for more immortality when they just spend their days having ponderous conversations. Is Madame Gao's ambition really to just limp around warehouses as hypnotized slaves package heroin? Alexandra's motive is because her immortality is failing, yet there is no panic or desperation in Sigourney Weaver's performance.

Yes, the Hand has no shortage of ninja henchmen and expensive real estate, but what are they doing with any of it? Ripping out dragon bones and incidentally destroying New York City seems like it's on the level of a working brunch for an organization of this scale, not the sum of their ambitions, except to see them onscreen, they seem to have very few ambitions.

What made Colonization on the X-Files compelling: it declared that Americans would soon be on the receiving end, from aliens, what European settlers had inflicted upon Indigenous peoples via the alien colonists.

What metaphor might there have been for the Hand?

To me, Daredevil's defining dialogue is when Fisk beats him into the ground, ranting, "This city doesn't deserve a better tomorrow! It deserves to drown in its own filth!"

Daredevil replies, "This is my city. My family."

So I think -- I would want the Hand to be the opposition of Daredevil's philosophy, where as far as they're concerned, New York City only exists for them as part of their machine. I guess, if we have to stick with the plot: all the industry and pollution (and nuclear waste?) of New York City has been deliberately guided by the Hand over the years to create chemical reactions to make the dragon body more volatile and powerful and, when extracted, it'll create an explosive chain reaction beneath the city.

The Hand leaders find merely walking on the streets of New York City to be intolerable and look forward to how after a few centuries, what was once the city will become a natural landscape. They both look down upon the common people while seeding their self-destruction. The Hand are hastening the reactions and sending their most expendable and devoted to create a pipeline that, upon extraction, will cause an underground collapse.

The Hand also offer the Defenders a deal to comply. Matt is offered the resurrection of his father. Luke is offered evacuation for his social circle in Harlem. Jessica is offered the chance to have her memories of Killgrave erased and to live without grief and pain. Danny is offered the chance to return to K'un Lun, resurrect everyone the Hand killed and rule it on their behalf.

I assume the they're all extremely tempted despite their consciences until Frank Castle shoots down every Hand representative, at which point Matt grudgingly thanks Castle.

MATT: "I was seriously about to cave, Frank."

FRANK: "I know you were, Red. You're only human. You going to have any issue with me taking out half the room?"

MATT: "This is some sort of death and resurrection cult, so... probably fine."