The Defenders: what happens when you send 4 fighters into a campaign?
Anyone who has played D&D will tell you that a party needs to be balanced if it is going to survive a campaign. There needs to be a fighter, a cleric, a mage and a thief in order for a group to successfully face all of the problems that occur during a typical dungeon crawl. The fighter absorbs and dishes out damage. The mage detects and uses magic. The thief finds and disables traps. The cleric, who no one ever wanted to be, was tasked with healing the others in the group. Which leads me to the problem I have with Marvel and Netflix’ The Defenders. Aren’t they all the same character?
In old D&D terms, you have 4 fighters. At best, you have a rogue, a paladin and 2 fighters. But really you just have 4 of the same characters teaming up to beat the crap out of the bad guys. Even the fighting styles are similar with 2 being tanks and 2 being martial artists. Dig a bit deeper, and you will find that these characters have more in common with each other than just fighting class.
Luke Cage, Daredevil, and Jessica Jones have all proclaimed a love for their respective areas of the city. Danny Rand is the odd one out because he is supposed to be the hero of a, now decimated, K’un L’un. They are all outcasts for various reasons. Cage and Jones choose to be with Jones alcohol abuse being a large part of the problem. Matt Murdock is blind and has chosen to fight for the people as a lawyer rather than take the high power position he could have had. Rand has spent too many years in another dimension. Cage, Murdock and Jones are firmly based in gritty reality. Rand is a spoiled rich kid whose ideas come from a new-agey monks’ paradise.
Marvel could play off the idea that people dislike in others what they see of themselves. That might make an interesting place for tension to come from while exploring something that seems difficult to get a handle on. But there just doesn’t seem to be that much different in each of the characters to get them to participate in a full story.
Clearly, the show will follow the Hero’s Journey formula. That’s a given, but it seems like a team this unbalanced should be easy to defeat. The question is whether or not the win that this team will post by virtue of being the main characters will be worth watching.
My review of Marvel's The Defenders
In old D&D terms, you have 4 fighters. At best, you have a rogue, a paladin and 2 fighters. But really you just have 4 of the same characters teaming up to beat the crap out of the bad guys. Even the fighting styles are similar with 2 being tanks and 2 being martial artists. Dig a bit deeper, and you will find that these characters have more in common with each other than just fighting class.
Luke Cage, Daredevil, and Jessica Jones have all proclaimed a love for their respective areas of the city. Danny Rand is the odd one out because he is supposed to be the hero of a, now decimated, K’un L’un. They are all outcasts for various reasons. Cage and Jones choose to be with Jones alcohol abuse being a large part of the problem. Matt Murdock is blind and has chosen to fight for the people as a lawyer rather than take the high power position he could have had. Rand has spent too many years in another dimension. Cage, Murdock and Jones are firmly based in gritty reality. Rand is a spoiled rich kid whose ideas come from a new-agey monks’ paradise.
Marvel could play off the idea that people dislike in others what they see of themselves. That might make an interesting place for tension to come from while exploring something that seems difficult to get a handle on. But there just doesn’t seem to be that much different in each of the characters to get them to participate in a full story.
Clearly, the show will follow the Hero’s Journey formula. That’s a given, but it seems like a team this unbalanced should be easy to defeat. The question is whether or not the win that this team will post by virtue of being the main characters will be worth watching.
My review of Marvel's The Defenders