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Luke Cage

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Jace911 said:
Just finished episode 3. Stokes is evidently an alumnus of the SB/SV School of Escalation. :o
My thought process when I saw him on the rooftop: "Oh shit he's gonna shoot her in front of Luke oh wait nevermind that would be sane"
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There are no brakes on the Cottomouth Train
22:41MoiraTheRed Who doesn't want Patron
22:41 MoiraTheRed I love that shit
22:42 MoiraTheRed IS THAT A-
22:42 MoiraTheRed HOLY FUCKING WHAT
22:42 Shinaobi where are you now
22:42 MoiraTheRed THE FUCKING ROCKET
22:43 Sarpedon thats where I ended
22:43 Sarpedon just
22:43 Sarpedon that straight escalation
22:44 Sarpedon WELL BETTER HIT THEM WITH A THERMOBARIC ROCKET
22:44 Shinaobi not even that
22:44 Shinaobi he took the time to center Cage
22:44 MoiraTheRed Suddenly, its Metal Gear Solid
22:44 MoiraTheRed Black Snake
22:44 MoiraTheRed (Cottonmouth)
 
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Watching Episode 3 and being bored out of my skull. Good God, the pacing is killing me, why is everything so slow? DD and JJ were progressing much faster than this.
 
Ohohohoho, what the fuck.

Misty: You are connected to all of this.
Luke Cage: Find out the real killer instead of messing with me.
Misty: These two are one and the same...
Luke Cage: Okay, if you have a problem with me, come by and we'll fuck it out.
Misty: ...
Luke Cage: You might even bring the handcuffs. (c)
Me: *doing his best Picard impression*

Like, wow. Way to handle your female characters, series.
 
Melancholeric said:
Watching Episode 3 and being bored out of my skull. Good God, the pacing is killing me, why is everything so slow? DD and JJ were progressing much faster than this.
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The first few episodes spend more time establishing Harlem and the people in it than Jessica Jones and Daredevil did with their respective locales because Harlem is more of a character than Hell's Kitchen or Midtown was in those shows. It starts to pick up at the end of episode 3.
 
Yeah, after watching the show I liked it more as it went along. The first few episodes, it seems like they were confused as to whether they were making a superhero show or The Wire. When they pick superhero show after a few episodes everything fits together better.
 
Having finished the series, I do have to agree that it's strength is definitely in the slow burn. It doesn't grab you early with thrills or horror like Daredevil or Jessica Jones; it builds everything from the ground up, going higher and higher as the show progresses before reaching its climax (innuendo unintended but not unwelcome). That said there were still enough twists and shakeups* to keep things interesting and keep the pace varied.

Of particular interest to me are the political undertones woven throughout the plot; unsurprising given the subject matter and the current social climate the show exists in. Some will undoubtedly complain about Marvel "going political" by making a show where the hero is a bulletproof black man in a hoodie who has a troubled relationship with the police, but it would be just es equally political not to acknowledge the rather obvious elephant in the room. That said, the show manages to handle the issue with both gravity** and deftness*** that should be a credit to the writers and cast. I strongly believe that Luke Cage is stronger because it chose to make a statement rather than sidestepping and pretending that it exists in a vacuum.

I'm honestly torn as to whether I would rate it higher than Jessica Jones, but the fact that I can't decide says great things about it.

*
Cornell's death halfway through, the shift in antagonist to Diamondback and the revelation of his ties to Luke, and the ending resolution
**
The most emotional scene of the show was probably when Luke, still gutshot, was stopped by police. The look on his face, the music, the cinematography; the creators knew we knew how this was going to go, how it always goes, and the tragic inevitability of it.
***
It would have been so easy to have the NYPD cops arrayed against Luke be white, but it was especially brave of the creators to stick to their guns in casting a majority black cast and have the police also be mostly black officers, at least the major characters. The black officer who beats the teenager in interrogation demonstrates the cruel reality that there is no such thing as absolute solidarity and that some identities can override others; the boy's distraught mother accuses the police of "being blue, which means you're just as white as the rest of them!" At the same time the show goes to great pains to demonstrate that police in the system do know that it's dangerously broken and yet still cling to the belief that it can work, as exemplified by Misty. Whether she'll leave the department it stick it out after Candace's death we'll have to find out in season two.

And as always the intro is absolutely banging.

 
I liked it overall but
There were some serious issues. Diamondback is simply not an interesting antagonist. Luke's run from the cops and the way it plays out is great, but Diamondback is half a shitty version of TDK's Joker, half SAO Abridged's Laughing Coffin. The cellphone falling out of Misty's pocket and into Shades' was such an asspull to force drama. The final fight was terrible with the story it tried to tell (and then explained after the fact again) of "letting go of the hate" having already been told. You don't always need a superhero vs supervillain bash! You can have a great story about the black Terminator trying to be a good person!

Mike Colter is mmmmmmmhhhhhhh tier though. I mean goddamn.
 
I actually really liked Diamondback, I thought he was a pretty decent foil to Luke.

After they killed off Cottonmouth I was really worried about Mariah and Shades picking up the slack since they didn't have the same spontaneity as he did, and then Diamondback flipped an ambulance and quoted The Warriors. :V
 
Jace911 said:
I actually really liked Diamondback, I thought he was a pretty decent foil to Luke.

After they killed off Cottonmouth I was really worried about Mariah and Shades picking up the slack since they didn't have the same spontaneity as he did, and then Diamondback flipped an ambulance and quoted The Warriors. :V
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Okay, that part was awesome. The rest just felt far too clichéd and forced
 
shinaobi said:
I think that's a little bit of Diamondback's point, and it's where a lot of the friction he has with other characters comes from. He's trying too hard, and it puts people off and gets him in actual trouble.
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With Shades eventually, but that's basically it and that didn't even matter! Hell, he would have won if he hasn't totally flubbed the Judas shot in the club.

He simply came out of nowhere as some sort of murder ninja with a cringeworthy motivation, made all the worse that he ended up contrasting with a very well written villain.
 
I liked it, although like JJ I did find the first few episodes dreadfully slow. After that it kind of picked up quite a bit, and getting bullets to penetrate his skin was actually pretty cool. Most especially when we saw what they actually did when impacting normal materials. I mean holy hell, they're some series bullets.
 
On episode 3 so far. I love the slow burn of the Netflix shows. Mike Colter said that the hoodie was a reference to Trayvon which is nice. Black Twitter is calling for a Misty Knight show.
 
Mutton said:
With Shades eventually, but that's basically it and that didn't even matter! Hell, he would have won if he hasn't totally flubbed the Judas shot in the club.
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How on earth did it "not matter"? Shades and Mariah split from him, that was a huge butterfly on the plot! It was a major part of the finale! :jackiechan:

He simply came out of nowhere as some sort of murder ninja with a cringeworthy motivation, made all the worse that he ended up contrasting with a very well written villain.
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They were foreshadowing Diamondback in the literal first episode, man. The only way he could've come out of nowhere is if you and I were watching very different first acts where he didn't come up in every other conversation between Cottonmouth and Shades.
 
Jace911 said:
How on earth did it "not matter"? Shades and Mariah split from him, that was a huge butterfly on the plot! It was a major part of the finale! :jackiechan:



They were foreshadowing Diamondback in the literal first episode, man. The only way he could've come out of nowhere is if you and I were watching very different first acts where he didn't come up in every other conversation between Cottonmouth and Shades.
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Except he was going to go fight Luke in that suit regardless. Them splitting off didn't matter. And I'm talking about how his characterization and motivation were pretty out of nowhere. We knew about a mysterious gun dealer that Shades worked for, his whole massive hate-on for Luke and their backstory just felt like crappy forced family drama.
 
I want to say that it is hilarious to think of this conversation as two guys saying "Spoiler," at each other with varying intensities and intonations.
 
Netflix releases a show about a Black superhero in Black Harlem as an allegory for modern Black struggles and all of a sudden white people start caring about diversity. :V
 
Note to self: Never go to any place owned by, employing, or associated with Luke Cage. They tend to blow up.
 
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