Few things are as certain in life as death, taxes, and Netflix/Marvel superhero series featuring intense, delicately crafted hallway fight scenes. The Defenders is no different, as today’s gripping full trailer attests, and during a recent chat with Forbes (via Screen Rant), showrunner Marco Ramirez compared those scraps involving Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist to musical compositions.
On the one hand, there’s Matt Murdock’s Man Without Fear, the undisputed Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and pseudo-leader of The Defenders. Next up is a smart-ass detective/private eye played by Krysten Ritter, while we also know that Marvel’s ensemble series will herald the union of those iconic Heroes for Hire in Iron Fist and Luke Cage, the righteous ex-con eager to bust out of Seagate and return to Harlem, reuniting with longtime love interest Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) in the process.
That’s an awful lot of plates to spin simultaneously, but Ramirez is confident that The Defenders can effectively balance its four power players in such a way that each fight scene highlights both their superhuman strengths and inherent weaknesses.
It’s kind of like imagining a musical composition, and everyone has their own instrument. We have to work our way for Matt to do some cool parkour-y stuff, Danny to use his fist in some awesome way, Luke to use his strength and invulnerability in some cool way, and Jessica to just be a badass brawler.
Coming at them from an emotional perspective is how we write those fight scenes, so Luke ends up being the protector, and Danny and Matt end up becoming the offense. Jessica is kind of the reluctant punk rock member of the band who doesn’t want to be there, but who’s really awesome. It’s making sure each of the characters can really pop.
If you’ve been keeping pace with The Defenders, you’ll likely be aware that Marvel and Netflix’s bold ensemble series entered production shortly before Luke Cage and Iron Fist debuted. That presented the creative team with quite the task early on in development, but Ramirez stressed that the tight-knit nature of Marvel’s small-screen universe – both behind the lens and in front – will be enough to offset fears of pacing and/or continuity issues.
That’s an interesting creative challenge but all of the writers’ rooms were in the same building so we could visit with the other showrunners. Geographically it was very convenient to just walk over to ask a question of Cheo Hodari Coker, who created and ran Luke Cage. Also, Marvel was very involved in every step and they were very good at letting me know what was going on in the other writers’ rooms so I knew what to expect.
All eight episodes of The Defenders will pummel their way onto Netflix on August 18th. It’s been a long time coming, but you can drop your hopes, questions and potential concerns regarding Marvel’s team-up series via the comments section below.
