The Defenders (2017)

We have always already known it was all building to this. Back in 2015 (only two years ago!), Daredevil debuted with the promise that its protagonist would eventually join Netflix’s Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist in The Defenders, echoing the successful franchise building that culminated in 2012’s The Avengers. And so it is all but a little impossible not to compare The Defenders to The Avengers; on an instinctual level, Defenders is not as successful as Avengers, but then again it’s more successful than it could have been, and it has the unbelievable ability to make me care about The Hand.

How do these lovable nutjobs end up together? While Danny Rand, the Immortal Iron Fist (Finn Jones), pursues The Hand in fulfillment of his mission from the mystical K’un-Lun, Luke Cage (Mike Colter) rejoins Harlem and finds its youth in danger. Likewise, Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) becomes embroiled in corporate terrorism when her client tries to bomb his own office, and through a friend of a friend (Rosario Dawson) she finds herself represented by Matt Murdock, alias Daredevil (Charlie Cox). All the while, The Hand’s leader Alexandra (Sigourney Weaver) has sinister plans for her latest protégé Elektra (Élodie Yung), the new Black Sky warrior.

The Avengers did this remarkable thing where it built on what came before and moved it into new territory without ever losing sight of the audience members who might not have done all the homework from Iron Man on. The Defenders aces those first two categories, finding clever ways to bring these characters together while setting up some intriguing new stories for them, but it isn’t the best introduction to some of these characters, particularly Daredevil and Luke Cage (whose standalone seasons left them in places that Defenders contorts to resolve in time for them to unite). Then again, I’m not sure that there are too many folks out there who haven’t followed the Netflix universe as closely, and so maybe it’s folly to expect Defenders to be entirely its own thing.

Then again, The Defenders is such viscerally engaging viewing material that I almost wish they’d discontinue the bulk of the Netflix project and just do a few more seasons of The Defenders instead. The Defenders ably collects all of what works about each show, scraps what doesn’t, and blends it all together in a show that doesn’t have any dead spots – likely a casualty of its eight episodes (compared to Marvel/Netflix’s standard thirteen). For all that Daredevil can be a mopey sort, The Defenders pairs him with three others who will call him out on that. The show even seems hyper-aware of the creative problems of Iron Fist, hanging a lantern on Danny’s idiocy and protracted self-introductions, in the process matching him with characters who can finesse him into a more capable character. Jess and Luke change the least, for my money because they’re characters who are already in stellar shape, and it’s a real delight to see them sharing the screen again after Luke’s turn on Jessica Jones.

Without fail, The Hand has been the least inspiring aspect of the Marvel Netflix Universe; I didn’t care on Daredevil (and I really didn’t care on Daredevil: Season 2), and The Hand was just one more element that didn’t add up for Iron Fist. However, The Defenders takes The Hand bigger, showcasing their ancient influence, sweeping plans, and fascinatingly distinctive leaders, including Weaver’s Alexandra (who brings a genre pedigree to the role with charisma and grace) and my personal favorite, Madame Gao. While the Defenders learn to work together, The Hand struggles not to kill each other in a gripping give-and-take that feels a little like Game of Thrones mixed with the more interesting kung-fu bits of The Matrix. Elektra too, somewhat dull in the overstuffed second season of Daredevil, emerges on top as her character struggles to find her place within The Hand and at Alexandra’s side.

Where Marvel/Netflix has done well, The Defenders continues to thrive. What the universe hasn’t cracked, The Defenders patches up. I would have liked to have seen more from the non-super supporting characters, as The Defenders largely relegates Foggy, Trish, and Colleen to a police holding room; additionally, it’s a little surprising that there’s nary a nod to Frank Castle in here. Instead, The Defenders lasers its focus on its four protagonists, who crackle in every scene they’ve got; even separated, when the show feels more like an anthology than a team-up, there are fine moments of characterization and plotting that make The Defenders feel like a win.

Make mine Marvel, and roll on The Punisher (because I hear Inhumans isn’t very good).

The Defenders is rated TV-MA. Created by Douglas Petrie and Marco Ramirez. Based on the Marvel Comics. Starring Charlie Cox, Krysten Ritter, Mike Colter, Finn Jones, Élodie Yung, Rosario Dawson, and Sigourney Weaver.

Legion (2017)

Between weekly looks at Batman: The Animated Series and the occasional voyage into the realm of Marvel’s Netflix offerings, I may have to get around to rebranding myself – with all this television floating about, can I really call myself “The Cinema King” anymore? Then again, when television is as cinematic as Legion – eight episodes, closer to a miniseries or just a serialized long film – do those distinctions really matter?

Legion stars Dan Stevens as David Haller, a troubled young man who’s either the most powerful mutant in the world or a psychologically troubled lifer at Clockworks Psychiatric Hospital. David’s world is rocked when he meets Sydney Barrett (Rachel Keller), a new patient at Clockworks with a pathological aversion to being touched. When things go awry at Clockworks, David starts seeing things that might not be there; his best friend Lenny (Aubrey Plaza) appears when she shouldn’t, while David is dogged by painful childhood memories, competing agencies who fear his capabilities, and a morbidly obese demon with yellow eyes.

Legion is the sort of show that’s difficult to summarize because it changes tracks so quickly that the boundaries of a spoiler are almost imperceptible. For example, and without spoiling too much, one character dies partway through the first episode but continues to appear regardless, even remarking on the peculiarity of life after death. Legion is riddled with this sort of thing, head-scratchers that turn the screen into an irresistible magnet. Each episode contains at least two moments where everything you thought you knew about the show changes, prompting questions like, “Wait, why is he the coffee machine?” and “Was he always the deep-sea diver?” (Yes, actual questions I asked during the show.)

Legion is among the most visually stylized shows in recent memory, and it exploits that to its full advantage. The temptation now is to watch television with a phone in hand or while doing some menial task, but Legion is a different beast altogether. Long sequences play out with no dialogue, scored by some of the most inventive music on TV, courtesy of composer Jeff Russo – including an impromptu dance number set to Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” and one very memorable sequence from Episode 7, staged like a silent film, replete with dialogue cards, set to an electronic version of Ravel’s “Boléro.” The music plays into the wild unpredictability of the show, and – along with the nightmares – it’ll stick with you after the show ends.

For as brief as the show is, it’s got an impressively sized cast who get a striking amount of material. Stevens is fascinating as the unreliable protagonist, who’s never quite in control of himself or his rapidly evolving environment. Keller is sweet and mysterious, and she has a genuine chemistry with Stevens. Bill Irwin and Amber Midthunder are ones to watch as Cary & Kerry (about whom I really can’t say anything else), while Jemaine Clement is his quirky compelling self as an icy beat poet with a slipping grasp of the English language.

Far and away, though, it’s Aubrey Plaza who hogties the show, absconds with it, and then brings it back around to show you all the madcap things she’s done with it – and thank God for this, because after the one-two punch of Dirty Grandpa and Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates, I had just about given up on the actress who was perennially my second favorite character on Parks & Recreation (though, to be fair, she was the closest thing to a bright spot in those dismal, dismal movies). It’s become the stuff of television legend now to remark upon the fact that the role of Lenny Busker was originally written for a man, though Plaza insisted the role not be altered once she was cast, and yet it is impossible to imagine a man making this part work because Plaza’s offbeat gender-bent presence adds still one more dimension of existential uncertainty to the show. As Lenny, Plaza is Janet Snakehole by way of Inception, a wolf in Beetlejuice’s clothing with a penchant for delivering, baldly straight-faced, immortal lines like, “Unhand the reptile, space captain!” And if we could talk plainly about the show, I’d tell you so many more delightful things about Plaza’s performance, but the real delight of her act is that you’re never quite sure what to expect from her, and as David’s grasp on reality begins to falter (which is to say, within the first few minutes of the pilot), you can’t be certain what – if anything – is real.

Legion is gripping in a way that most television shows struggle to manage; Westworld aside, I can’t remember a show debuting this strongly. (Even Game of Thrones took a few episodes to really get going.) And for those who feel a slight creep of superhero overload, a numbing disappointment that maybe-just-maybe we’ve seen everything the genre has to offer, Legion rejects that premise out of hand and then proceeds to destabilize your faith in the very language in which you proposed that premise. Better still, though, Legion never leaves its audience in the dust (at least, not for very long) and instead patiently unfolds the answers to the mysteries it postulates in a way that never feels compulsory. Aside from a post-credits sequence, this first season of Legion manages to address very nearly all its central questions and wrap things up in a way that feels both satisfying and enticing; put another way, I didn’t need the slightly gimmicky cliffhanger after the credits to guarantee my attendance for a second season.

Legion is rated TV-MA for “language, sexuality, and violence.” Created by Noah Hawley. Based on the Marvel Comics. Starring Dan Stevens, Rachel Keller, Aubrey Plaza, Bill Irwin, Jeremie Harris, Amber Midthunder, Katie Aselton, Mackenzie Gray, with Jean Smart and Jemaine Clement.

Monday at the Movies - May 1, 2017

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” We’re not at the movies, though; if you’ve wondered what your Cinema King thought about the last few rounds of the Marvel/Netflix experiment, look no further.

Daredevil: Season Two (2016) – After falling head over heels for the first season of Daredevil, knocking it out in about four days thanks to the binge model of Netflix, I definitely felt the law of diminishing returns in effect for Daredevil’s sophomore outing, which took me a few weeks to wrap up. After last season’s singular focus on how Wilson Fisk’s rise paralleled Daredevil’s, this season has two main components: an arc introducing the gun-toting vigilante The Punisher (Jon Bernthal), followed by the return of the deadly Elektra (Élodie Yung) into the life of Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox). The first of these is exceptional, and had the rest of the season been as good it would have pushed Season Two to the top of what Marvel Television has been able to accomplish; Bernthal is frankly definitive as the violent, tortured Punisher, with iconic moments ripped from the comics and given their due. The Punisher’s arc over the season takes him to fascinating places, interacting with fantastic characters, and setting him up for a dynamite solo series (which, of course, is happening). It’s the second half, though, which failed to impress this reviewer, as it goes full ninja into what I think is the least interesting aspect of Daredevil – his battles against The Hand. The stakes of this conflict are nebulous – the city is in danger, but isn’t it always? – and would appear to pull their punches in advance of The Defenders. Though Yung is a fine choice for Elektra, the plotting never fully convinces us that she’s anything but trouble for Matt Murdock, who’s exceptionally angsty this season. Hat-tip, though, to Elden Henson, whose portrayal of Foggy Nelson ends up being a major show-stealer and a bright light in a season that can be dismally dark.

Luke Cage (2016) – Fresh off a stint on Jessica Jones, Mike Colter is back as the man with unbreakable skin, and his performance as Luke Cage deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the top performances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. His Luke is a resolute figure of unflappable grace, of tough decisions, and uncompromising morality, and for all that we say that superheroes are figures of admiration, Colter really embodies it. Put another way, I want to be this guy. Like Daredevil: Season Two, Luke Cage is narratively bifurcated, though it’d be a spoiler to say precisely why; suffice it to say that the villains, Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes (the recently-Oscared Mahershala Ali) and Mariah Dillard (Alfre Woodard, who’s deft enough to make you forget she’s an entirely different character in Civil War), are as variable and fascinating as Luke is stalwart and unfaltering. It’s unquestionably among the timeliest, most political material Marvel has turned out of late, and that thematic resonance gives Luke Cage a weight that I don’t think the other Netflix programs have quite attained (though Jessica Jones felt psychologically and personally heavy). Consequently, we feel quite tangibly all the struggles and expectations placed on Luke, justly or otherwise, as he finds himself in a position to navigate issues so much larger than a man without superpowers might be able to bear on his own. Notably, Luke Cage has a real pulse in the form of its soundtrack, which significantly differentiates it from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe; the show’s use of music, both diegetic and otherwise, becomes the lifeblood of the show and a fitting barometer for the mood of the community.

Iron Fist (2017) – For the past month, everyone’s been talking about Iron Fist, though not for the reasons Marvel would have liked. A good number of people are upset about the character’s race, while an even larger contingent is dubbing this show the worst thing Marvel’s ever done for other reasons altogether. For my money, and this may be a reaction to having my expectations titanically lowered by early reviews, Iron Fist is not terrible, but it’s not especially good, either. If you can power through the first episode (as seems to be the advice for most shows), you’re in the clear; Iron Fist has one of the least successful openers of any show I’ve watched, with characters who behave irrationally and without any sense of a motivation or indeed of characterization in any sense. As the show progresses, though, the characters crystallize a little more clearly, particularly the increasingly compelling brother-sister duo of Ward and Joy Meachum (Tom Pelphrey and Jessica Stroup). Aside from the fact that I still don’t care what The Hand is doing, a recurring problem for the show is that its titular protagonist Danny Rand (Finn Jones, late of Game of Thrones) is a bit of a stunted man-child who behaves like an idiot and makes one ill-advised decision after another between bouts of temper tantrums and social awkwardness. If the character is deliberately crafted that way, Jones is bang-on, but it’s off-putting to have a show where everyone knows better than the main character. The show’s women, though, end up its greatest strength; Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick) is the capable badass Marvel’s Netflix universe deserves, Madame Gao (Wai Ching Ho, back from Daredevil) is a captivating character and a continuity hound’s delight, and it’s always a treat to see Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) try to talk some sense into the self-destructive vigilantes who headline these shows. Iron Fist seeds a few tantalizing developments for a likely second season, but the show needs to do some major work on its eponymous hero if audiences are going to connect with this aloof kung fu dope.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

Last night while the rest of the world slept, fans across the country were united in projecting their hopes, dreams, and imaginations against the latest – and, some have said, greatest – Star Wars film.

This is not a review of that film. This is a review written by a very confused, very dissatisfied Star Wars fan who, for the first and likely last time in his life, inflicted upon himself the horror, the horror, that is The Star Wars Holiday Special from 1978.

Any attempt to summarize the plot of The Star Wars Holiday Special, such as it is, would be doomed to inevitable failure. Suffice it to say that something has happened to prevent Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) from attending some kind of festivity (the nebulously defined “Life Day”), leading the audience to be held captive for a series of bizarre and senseless vignettes which can only loosely be defined as tangentially relevant to the Star Wars universe, including the sale of a mustache groomer, a Wookiee cooking/drag show, a kaleidoscopic sex drug, and the first appearance of Boba Fett, which is in no way, shape, or form worth sitting through this monstrosity.

To say that this film is unwatchable by modern standards would be to pay The Star Wars Holiday Special a compliment. It is, in fact, unwatchable by any standards of any generation ever. Ten minutes in, I was already not sure whether what I had seen – an interminably long segment which consists of an apparent Married With Children script done entirely in Wookiee-speak followed by a hallucinatory juggling act with Chewbacca’s bloated son Lumpy as voyeur – was actually real or whether I had somehow died on the way home that evening and dreamt up the rest.

The Holiday Special – a poor name indeed, for it is neither festive nor special –  is so catastrophically mystifying that it is a great wonder that Star Wars became the fan-fueled juggernaut that it is today. One wonders how many fans looked at this thing and never returned to that galaxy far, far away, for fear of getting another Holiday Special as recompense for their entertainment dollar. After twenty-five minutes, I felt so insensate that I wondered if Jar Jar Binks might show up as the least offensive thing on the screen. That’s right; a racist cartoon rabbit would not only fit in perfectly in the milieu of the Holiday Special, but might actually have been the most entertaining part of it. Wrap the ethical centers of your brain around that one.

Thirty minutes in, I had to go to the bathroom. I considered leaving it run in my absence, wondering if it would make a difference. I started asking myself a lot of questions. Would I miss anything of merit? (No.) How the hell did they get Art Carney to appear in this travesty? Was this still canon, in the wake of the Great Disney Purge? Had it ever been canon? What had become of my life that I was thinking so deeply about this thing at eleven at night? Could I ever enjoy anything ever again?

Halfway through the Holiday Special, my computer abruptly restarted itself. A scan of my computer revealed no corrupted processes, no viruses, no malware. It is as if my computer refused to suffer any further indignity by playing a moment more of the Holiday Special than was absolutely necessary, as if it wished to spare me the perpetual suffering. As I verified that my computer wasn’t irreparably damaged by the experience, I found myself at a crossroads. I could go to bed, post the review as if I’d seen the whole thing. No one would know. No one would ever have to know, and I’d probably be doing myself a favor. But, equal parts stubborn and honest, I soldiered on.

Thank heavens I did. Not because the animated segment lived up to any expectations at all. No, I’m thankful I didn’t give up so that I’m never tempted to sit through this thing again. I can now say that I’ve watched the first appearance of Boba Fett, and the cartoon episode which interrupts the Holiday Special is as shambolic, plotless, and pointless as anything else in the ninety-some minutes of my life I’m never getting back. Then there’s a strange scene in which Bea Arthur cuddles with a hamster while tending bar at the Mos Eisley Cantina, in which the set and the costuming look even cheaper than their playfully hokey appearance in the original Star Wars film.

It’s at this moment in the Holiday Special that my mind returns to inquisition. Is this thing meant to be funny? Coherent? It’s certainly neither, though there are moments that playact at the former. In short, what the hell is this thing supposed to be, and on what level did anyone look at the finished product and say, “Yep, that’s something I want the rest of the world to see”? If this film was so much as shown a picture of a cohesive narrative, it wasn’t looking. It’s as if George Lucas had a child with David Lynch, and then that child were given a box of Star Wars action figures and a Betamax video camera, and then that child snorted a tremendous amount of cocaine and passed out. The Star Wars Holiday Special is that fever dream.

Thank God I’m going to see The Force Awakens in a matter of hours. I had said of the new film, “It can’t be worse than The Phantom Menace.” What I should have said was, “It can’t be as unfathomably inaccessible as The Star Wars Holiday Special.”

The Star Wars Holiday Special is rated why are you even still reading this.

Jessica Jones (2015)

It took me four days to get through the Netflix-exclusive Daredevil back in April, but this weekend’s release of Jessica Jones only lasted me two days. Not that Marvel has delivered fewer than 13 episodes this time around – same Bat-time, same Bat-channel, true believers. It’s just that I found Jessica Jones more engaging, more accomplished, and more addicting than the already first-rate Daredevil. As wonderful as Marvel’s first Netflix series was, Jessica Jones is the new crown jewel in Marvel’s television stable.

Krysten Ritter stars as the eponymous private investigator, hard-talking and even harder-drinking. Using her remarkable super-strength only when she has to, Jessica picks up the case of a missing athlete (Erin Moriarty), only to discover that the case is linked to an old enemy (David Tennant), whose fixation on Jessica makes him a dangerous foe. Against her instinct to isolate herself, Jessica draws on the help of her old friend Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor) and new flame Luke Cage (Mike Colter), while her lawyer/employer Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss) wrestles with an impending divorce.

I’ll say right off the bat that I think the major reason I rank Jessica Jones more highly than Daredevil is freshness. Not that Daredevil was stale, by any measure – and I should also clarify that my praise of Jessica Jones isn’t at all to denigrate Daredevil; rather, it’s a mark of how much higher Jessica Jones sets the bar, due largely to the character’s novelty. We all had a sense of how Daredevil was going to play out, tracing the simultaneous rise of Hell’s Kitchen’s greatest hero and villain, culminating with... well, you know how these kinds of stories play out.

A few hours into Jessica Jones, I realized that I couldn’t say the same for this show. I know how I wanted it to end, certainly, but I couldn’t guarantee that we’d get the ending we wanted. Indeed, there are a number of twists and turns in the show that I honestly didn’t see coming, which makes for a comparably more enjoyable show in terms of edge-of-the-seat viewing. I don’t want to spoil anything here, but the narrative winds around story beats that are really only possible when a character isn’t caught up in 50 years of iconic stories (because let’s face it, Daredevil has had many long-running arcs to which any adaptation must pay homage).

At the center of it all, you have two extraordinarily dynamic performances from Ritter and Tennant, who get to play off each other much more than Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio, who were kept apart for much of Daredevil. Ritter gives Jessica Jones the hard edge the character needs, distinguishing her from other “strong female protagonists” by emphasizing the brokenness under the surface, a tragedy repressed by alcohol, cynicism, and casual sex. Her character crackles, especially in scenes with Tennant, who plays the sadistic sociopath Kilgrave (known to comics fans as the mind-controlling Purple Man). Tennant is getting cascades of praise for his role as the show’s villain, and rightly so – short of Kingpin and maybe Loki, Kilgrave is Marvel’s new best villain because of how intensely and immediately loathsome he is. And yet – there’s a creepy way that Tennant pitches for the audience’s sympathy, even in light of his casual and frankly terrifying violence; there’s something of Kingpin’s childish tantrums in Kilgrave, but in a way that’s more horrifying for how little he seems to care.

The supporting cast are equally strong, with only Colter’s Luke Cage managing to wrestle the show away from its two leads – in large part, that’s due to Luke being next in line for his own Marvel show, but he also has a unique chemistry with Jessica that makes me think neither standalone show will be getting a second season; rather, I’d put money on a Jones/Cage team-up (following, I’d wager, the comics couple’s quirky courtship). There are winks and nods to elsewhere in the Marvel continuity; the films are kept at arm’s length, but we have allusions to Hellcat, Nuke, Iron Fist, and maybe even Spider-Woman and Gladiator (because, to be fair, how many Melvins are running around Hell’s Kitchen?). But as a piece, Jessica Jones doesn’t feel too tied into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. I think there’s room in the MCU for these standalone stories, which can easily be woven into the larger tapestry later. With Jessica Jones, Ritter is poised to be the next big star of the MCU, and it’s easy to imagine an Avenger turning to her to track down someone, or just to lift a car over her head.

Along with feeling a step away from the MCU proper, there is the matter of tone to consider – by which I mean that Jessica Jones is the uneasiest entry in the ten years of Marvel productions, giving me the feeling of physical revulsion more often than ever. At one point, I literally had to stop and shower, and not just because I’d been in my pajamas for hours at a stretch. This show is much more uncomfortable, more unsettling, and more frank than anything else we’ve seen with a Stan Lee cameo (and yes, he’s in there). Kudos to the showrunners for sticking to a vision and a tone which must have rattled the bottom-line-conscious brass.

Jessica Jones is dark, it’s daring, it’s uncomfortable – and it’s bloody brilliant, television most foul as in the best it is. As the best binges induce, I want more.

Jessica Jones is rated TV-MA. As Marvel productions go, it’s the sexiest; although there’s no nudity, there are some pretty intense sex scenes and frank discussions of rape. Language is fairly salty in the S-words range, but the violence is substantially less graphic than in Daredevil. Psychologically, though, it’s much more troubling.

Daredevil (2015)

2003’s Daredevil left a bit of a stink on the character – a special shame, given the talented cast and the ample source material on which to draw. Twelve years later, one senses a bit of Marvel challenging themselves once more; having aced it with Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel attempts once more to make something work which sounds impossible on paper: here, reboot a character whose last incarnation branded him with failure. And, of course, they’ve done it again – the hype is real, and Daredevil is not to be missed.

In thirteen Netflix-exclusive episodes set in a Hell’s Kitchen devastated by the Battle of New York, Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) is building his law practice with partner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) while Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) builds his criminal empire. Their paths begin to intertwine when Nelson & Murdock serve as the defense for Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), a woman accused of murder. Meanwhile, Matt Murdock tries to better his city in his nocturnal guise as the vigilante “Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.”

Daredevil isn’t a television show so much as a thirteen-hour operatic drama (that, and your votes, are how I justify reviewing it here) which does well to participate in the Marvel Cinematic Universe without enslaving itself to that larger world. By comparison, ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has always found itself in tension between the world of the films and its own narrative; Agents has never been unwatchable, but one can tell the difference between strong episodes and episodes that are treading water until the show will be affected by the events of an upcoming film. (Case in point, Agents was clearly in a holding pattern for much of its first season until the fall of SHIELD as presented in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, after which the show picked up steam again.)

Daredevil is in no such position, and aside from one or two very brief references the show would succeed just as well as a standalone entity divorced from larger proceedings. Daredevil’s greatest strength is its ability to build from within, to craft a plot that bows to its characters, who are themselves very thoroughly developed and fantastically executed. At opposite ends of the moral spectrum, Cox and D’Onofrio are fabulous performers; Cox’s Matt is pretty much note-perfect from the comics (I say as someone who’s read as many Daredevil comics as I can reach), while D’Onofrio is more “man who would be Kingpin” than the titanic juggernaut of crime in the comics. Behind this incarnation of Fisk, we can see glimpse of the mob boss to be, and D’Onofrio plays a psychologically compelling figure, broken in places but resolute and terrifying in others. One of Marvel’s greatest abilities has always been in the casting department, and these two are welcome additions to the MCU pantheon.

The supporting cast are equally gifted, and again they seem to pair off quite nicely. Foggy Nelson is a tough character to get a bead on, but Henson is an absolute scene-stealer, as is Bob Gunton as Fisk’s associate Leland Owlsley; both are the indisputable comic reliefs of the show, and they’ll leave you begging for spin-off appearance from each. As for the ladies in each powerful man’s life, Woll is a gifted performer and carries a range of emotions at a moment’s notice, while Ayelet Zurer as Fisk’s love Vanessa plays a wonderful approximation of a Lady Macbeth-to-be.

Being a television show and not a more streamlined film, there are so many other wonderful characters to discuss, like Rosario Dawson’s Claire Temple (the future Night Nurse, true believers know) or even Peter McRobbie as the priest in whom Matt confides. The most memorable star of the show, though, is Daredevil’s astonishing and exhausting action sequences. By now, you’ve probably heard tell of the legendary hallway scene of Episode 2, a long-take fight in which no punches are pulled and no quarter is given. The best action sequences should leave the audience with a strong emotional response – either cheers of enthusiasm or sighs of exhaustion. With Daredevil, the intensity often yields the latter; just as the performers are often visibly drained, we too feel that same depletion. The relentless combat, the stellar direction, and the stakes proposed by the narrative make me seriously wonder if these are better than the action scenes in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (though Winter Soldier had, if one may nitpick, truly remarkable sound editing).

The only false note struck by the show is, intriguingly enough, in the very middle episode, the seventh, amid a fantastic appearance by Scott Glenn as Stick, the blind man who trained Matt Murdock. While Glenn is the best possible casting for this important role, and he positively crackles against Cox. There are, however, too many unanswered questions in this episode, a design flaw only made apparent by how tightly self-determined the rest of the episodes are. One must, of course, permit the Marvel Cinematic Universe its interconnectedness, and I’m certain these issues will be addressed in a subsequent Netflix series (Iron Fist, perhaps).

This one moment of absent resolution, however, doesn’t negate the overall success of Marvel’s first foray into bingeable streaming content. It does leave me wanting more in a way that feels more artificial than the way the show demonstrates that more of the same will be a good thing. Daredevil is somewhat unlike everything we’ve seen since 2008’s Iron Man, in terms of its intensity and its grit, but it demonstrates Marvel’s recent genre versatility – Iron Man 3 was an 80s action film, Winter Soldier a 70s espionage drama, and Guardians a space opera. Daredevil is a full-fledged neo-noir crime drama in which the protagonist just happens to dress up in a costume.

Put another way, we have at least four more Netflix shows coming down the pike – AKA Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and team-up The Defenders (think The (Television) Avengers). If we’re being honest, I was going to watch them anyway, superhero shill that I am, but Daredevil guarantees that I won’t do so with an ounce of begrudging. Whether you watch them all in one go or one at a time, the episodes that comprise Daredevil are among 2015’s best thirteen hours.

Daredevil is rated TV-MA. There is no nudity, save for a fleeting moment in the first episode (played to emphasize Matt’s blindness, so nothing is seen). It is, however, quite violent, certainly the most violent piece to carry the Marvel name; in addition to being visceral and gory, the series as a whole has a very gritty vibe to it that gives each moment of violence the additional gravitas of brutal realism. The profanity is on the higher threshold of PG-13, with a preponderance of “S-words” (not “swords”).