Posted in: Marvel Studios, Movies, Netflix, TV | Tagged: marvel, netflix, the defenders, tv

The Defenders: There Is No Way To Avoid Comparisons To The Avengers

When it comes to the Marvel/Netflix series, they have had some fantastic villains. When it came to the big finale of this series, the team-up in The Defenders, showrunner Marco Ramirez knew he needed a good villains. While speaking to The Hollywood Reporter Ramirez spoke about creating a great villain.

It was exactly that: It was about not painting her as a mustache-twirling villain who wants to do nothing but bad things to this city. Each of these shows have featured very compelling antagonists, whether that's Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk or Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle or David Tennant as Kilgrave. There are a lot of very intellectually interesting people, some of whom aren't necessarily "bad people." I would go as far as to not call them villains; they're just antagonists. They want the opposite thing that the heroes want, and that doesn't always make them bad. To me, it was important to introduce Alexandra in a way where she's actually vulnerable. She's not a "supervillain." It was also very important to Sigourney. She wanted to play a character who wasn't two-dimensional. If she was a member of the Hand, she didn't want to be a nihilistic dark force. She wanted to really enjoy life. She wanted to enjoy living. She wanted to embrace the positive in what they're doing.

There was no way for The Defenders to avoid comparisons to The Avengers but Ramirez drew more inspiration from other team-up stories.

When you have literally the footprints that The Avengers had, there's kind of no way to avoid the comparison and no way to avoid referencing it in the writers room. It's an incredible achievement and a great story told really well. But to me, aside from that, in the formation of the show in the writers room, it was important to me to talk about story templates and influences. We talked about The Dirty Dozen and Seven Samurai. We talked about movies and cinematic stories where characters came together who did not want to come together, who had their own in-fighting but ultimately came together to fight something bad in some way. I would like to think the influences are wide in that way.

Summary: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist team up to fight crime in New York City.

Marvel's The Defenders, created by Douglas Petrie and Marco Ramirez, stars Charlie Cox, Krysten Ritter, Mike Colter, Finn Jones, and Sigourney Weaver. It will stream to Netflix on August 18th.

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