Marvel's Luke Cage

right!?

I dunno what kind of ingmar bergman shit ppl expect from this show.

we need our own *forget it jake it's ilx* nicholson scabby nose jpegs

God forbid everyone's not on the same page about something lol

nah, its not that. for me its more the "this show is kinda cliche" kinda thing. about a show based on a comic book. that was made for children. i mean the cliches are built in. i see that on ilx a lot. but hey people have high standards!

i see this all the time now when it comes to kid's stuff though. not just here. "that movie that was made for 8 year old children about the cartoon fish just didn't MOVE me like the first one did..."

ingmar bergman shit

lol this is... not what I'm looking for

this show is not for kids, it's basically a blaxploitation/noir homage, as noted upthread. the comic book stuff is more or less window-dressing. cliched writing is never good.

i'd say they were aiming for 14-21. male.

shakey otm. the argument that properties based on comic books don't have to be good holds no water. the entire point of the MCU and the reason for its success is based on the radical notion that filmed entertainment based on comic book properties doesn't have to suck.

i loved loved loved what this show was trying to do. tremendous cast and attention to detail in the production kept me going, and if you pressed me i could even tell you what it was about (vgl guy restores his future by coming to terms with his past), but in the most fundamental sense there was almost nothing by way of story or character. just this happened and then that happened and then oh hey this other thing is happening and now it's over.

that all the screenwriting techniques were present just made it worse bc none of them were put to any use. Commissioner Burrell saying "always forward" every other line doesn't count as plant and payoff; quoting scripture or wearing sunglasses doesn't make a villain interesting; and while all of the four major heavies bore structural relationships with the hero none of them actually served as foils.

tbf none of the netflix joints have really done much for me but this one was more of a downer bc it set its sights so high

i didn't say they didn't have to be good. just that genre stuff plays by different rules.

"I'm going to tell you what the story was and then turn around and say there was no story" is what I'm taking away from your post.

i feel like almost everything is held to the same standard now, and i think there are different standards. that's all.

(though it probably bugged me even more in the old days when people would do that: hey, this is actually pretty good for a horror movie/sci-fi book/metal album/etc!)

With most cultural objects, I feel that it's worthwhile to make a rational consideration of what the likely goals of the creators were and then judge the work on the basis of whether it succeeded in those goals rather than pooh-poohing when the thing fails to clear a bar I've independently set for it but that it was never trying for in the first place. YMMV, of course.

none of them actually served as foils.

― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Tuesday, October 25, 2016 9:25 AM (thirty-one minutes ago)

I think you have a weird definition of "foil"

old lunch otm. was this a pretty good comic book t.v. show? yeah, it was a pretty good comic book t.v. show.

"I lost my phone at the barber shop" smdh

That was really the only thing that irritated me

the music stuff reaaaallly pulls a lot of weight in making this enjoyable for me. I mean, they even used my favorite John Lee Hooker song ("It Serves You Right to Suffer") in a brief bit.

yeah the music is so good all the way through

ok yep that phone was some bullshit

everything else, i loved. crowd cheering luke uiring the fight was v cool

*during

I can't remember if I already posted this upthread but: anybody who doesn't dig Cottonmouth can fuck right off with their terrible opinions

... lol wait, I meant Diamondback. Cottonmouth was the boring villain.

Neither of them was boring?

dan otm

okay I may be overstating the case but Diamondback definitely outshone him... hell even Mariah outshone him IMO. and I saw some comments in this thread about how the series took a turn for the worse after ****SPOILERS**** the brutal death of mister stokes and subsequent refocusing on the other villains ****END SPOILERS**** so I was prepared for it to go down like that, and thus sensitive to the fact that actually, it did not go down like that

I loved Cottonmouth. I especially loved his ability to be genuinely amused by the things going on around him, even when he was angry or otherwise out of sorts.

I also really liked Domingo and his quiet, smug confidence. Literally nothing rattled him until Luke showed up at his gym.

cliched writing is never good.

Disagree. Cliches are neutral, it's all in how they're executed.

http://cbr2.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/mariah4.jpg?auto=format&lossless=1&q=40&w=700&h=1053&fit=crop

http://www.cbr.com/the-bizarre-history-of-luke-cages-black-mariah/
Did wonder if that was supposed to be the same character. She appears once in Hero For Hire #5 which i read a couple of weeks back. All the early stories seem to be pretty self contained apart from the back story since the Doctor behind the transforming experiment is helping to run the local medical facility that Claire Temple works at and Luke is therefore connected to.

I mean, 'same' in the sense that any of the MCU characters are the same ones from the comics. Everyone has been tweaked in their transition to the screen, some obviously more than others.

Cottonmouth was great. idg the "meh" reactions at all

Yeah, I kinda get the Shades shade and I can see if people thought the portrayal of Diamondback was a little too OTT but the rest of the major players were irrefutably good to great. Irrefutable!

DB's motivation was ice thin but I enjoyed him chewing the scenery.

The mix of character portrayals — more naturalistic in some characters, hammy and OTT in others — gave me some dissonance headaches. It wasn't as simple as "the heroes play it understated, the villains chew the scenery, that's one way to tell them apart" because Alfre Woodard's (great) performance was pretty cool (and made her moment of violence in E7 even more powerful). Overall I liked this better than both seasons of DD -- it and J.Jones S1 are more or less tied for first in my mind.

cottonmouth was the least worst of the uninteresting baddies, but it's mahershala ali who brings the greatness. pretty much across the board the cast worked miracles selling exceedingly weak sauce.

Not to much to enjoy in this apart from a likable lead performance and often excellent music. Terrible dialogue, cliched characters. Boring fight scenes, never the sense that Luke is remotely in any danger.

I wish it would embrace Marvel silliness a more. There's a scene in episode two maybe where Cottonmouth is standing over some snitch or something and the music is building up to something terrible, and I was really expecting him to open up his mouth to superhuman proportions and swallow the goon whole like a snake, but no he just beat the guy to death with his fists. Disappointing. Like, what's the point of using Marvel characters if you're just gonna tell a straight forward crime story a lot less competently and interestingly than dozens of other shows.

I've only watched the first four, maybe it improves.

never the sense that Luke is remotely in any danger [...] I've only watched the first four

yeah, keep going cuz things do change on that front

one of the things i liked most about luke's fights with low-level scrubs is the lack of tension, tbh - it's fun to watch a superstrong invincible guy stroll his way through a battle, swatting away opponents with an open hand. and mike colter is so good at projecting invincibility!

Exactly. DD has already given us the extended fight sequences where our hero gets his spleen kicked out through his butthole. It's cool that we get a counterpoint to that, as well.

rip DD's spleen

yeah i find most of the fights kinda comedic & enjoyable, it's fun seeing yr hero effortlessly CREAM the badguys

Cage rules everything around me.

I think the idea of power and black indestructibility that Luke Cage represents in this series is a desperately-needed media image, personally.

It has been a long time since Steve Urkel.

yeah the humorously-indestructible-during-fight-scenes things doesn't bother me a bit, I find the endless iterations of Marvel superhero fight scenes where the hero *is* technically vulnerable but the viewer knows nothing is really at stake way more irritating.

imo the near complete lack of reaction when shot is less humorous than it is symbolic. he doesn't even shrug off bullets, they're not a concern. the people shooting are denied the satisfaction of even a flinch

Luke's invulnerability in the early episodes sets up an effective contrast with his suffering in the prison flashbacks.

Boring fight scenes, never the sense that Luke is remotely in any danger.

Uh, isn't it known from episode 1 that he escaped from prison and is wanted by the authorities and could get sent back to South Carolina Supermax, or whatever the name of the institution is? He also doesn't have money or a stable place to live, after his building burns down. He might not be "in danger" while fighting, but the repercussions of those fights are definitely dangerous for him.

^^

finished this last night.
it looked and sounded gorgeous.
enjoyed the attempt at mixing social drama, and full on old school goodies vs baddies beat'em up.

at the end, of the two bad guys, i definitely preferred cottonmouth to diamondback.
cottonmouth had a more interesting back story.
his love of music, and keyboard skills that were put a brutal stop to.
the dilemma of 'what could have been', whereas diamondback it was just 'daddy loved you more than me .. '.

did chuckle at the anti-Cage rally in the club though.
at the back of the crowd, someone was holding up a sign : "the only superfreak we love is rick james"

lollll I missed that!

cottonmouth is a way better villain than db, yeah

Mariah is the best villain in the show