User blog:Lover of the Muse/Judging the Marvel Netflix villains

I'm sorry this blog took a lot longer than I thought it would and technically it's still not finished yet. Judging the Netflix villains is much harder than judging the movie villains because there is so much more content. I'm not done judging the Luke Cage villains but I decided to publish what I have so far and I'll add my judgements on the Luke Cage villains by the end of the week.

Criteria
The bullets closer to the top take priority over the bullets closer to the bottom. The sub bullets show I’m taking into consideration for each criteria.
 * Is the villain entertaining?
 * The villain needs to feel like a threat to the hero. I’m judging this criteria more harshly here than I did for the movie villains.


 * It helps if we see the villain defeat, hurt, or humiliate the hero.
 * It helps if the villain challenges the hero both physically and mentally.
 * It helps if it’s unclear how the hero could defeat the villain.
 * The villain have motivations which are clearly explained/easily understood.


 * Does their motivation make sense as a result of the backstory that is given?
 * The villain needs to be well developed and have clear, consistent characterization.


 * Does their personality make sense as a result of the backstory that is shown?
 * The villains actions and development need to make sense given his characterization, motives, and what’s happening in the story.
 * It hurts if the villain does something out of character for no reason.
 * It hurts if the villain feels one note.
 * Does the villain’s characterization or conflict with the hero tie into a larger narrative them

Daredevil

Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin
The best villains are always reflections of the heroes and Wilson Fisk is the best example of this particular comic book trope that I’ve ever seen. Both Daredevil and Wilson Fisk are natives of Hell’s Kitchen, and both are extremely violent individuals who prefer to operate in the shadows with nobody knowing their name. Wilson Fisk and Matt Murdock also have very similar fathers and parallel backstories. Their dads were big, brawny, physical types, who weren’t especially bright. Jack Murdock instilled important morals into his son, Bill Fisk just pounds in fear. The way these two men die is also the complete opposite. Matt Murdock’s father is used to taking a beating and feels like the only way he can provide for his son is the lose fights; the one time he fights to win he gets himself killed and because he cashes in his winnings and leaves it to his son, thus is also an act of self sacrifice. Fisk’s dad is constantly winning, but the only way he knows how to get what he wants is through violence and intimidation; the one time that little Fisk decides to stand up for his mom then old man Fisk gets taken down for good.

Wilson Fisk wore his fathers cuff links to remind himself that unlike his dad he wasn’t “cruel for the sake of cruelty.” Throughout season1, Wilson Fisk looks at a painting that resembles the wall he was staring at right before he killed his father. He carries the guilt and trauma of killing his father with him at all times, and that anger that Bill Fisk encouraged in his son only intensified in Wilson as he grew up. When he speaks, he tries to appear calm and will often stop and think, and in every one of these pauses you can feel a suppressed rage. Wilson Fisk is calculating and intelligent and can use logic as a weapon to get what he wants, but he could snap at any moment and when that happens you couldn’t use logic to reason with him (Leland Owlsy found this out too late). Wilson Fisk relies on violence and intimidation to get what he wants and feels no shame in doing so. The tragic irony of Wilson Fisk is that he couldn’t avoid becoming his father.

There is an element of class warfare to the first season of Daredevil and the social/economic positions of the hero and the villain shape how they see the city. Wilson Fisk’s apartment is white, clean, sterile and expensive looking meanwhile the law office and apartment of Matt Murdock is in gritty brick tones; while Fisk lives in a white heaven Daredevil lives in a red hell. Wilson Fisk is half mobster, half CEO and his evil scheme in season 1 is gentrification. He and the other villains “are trying to strong-arm people like Elena so they can sweep their homes away from them and build condos no one can afford”. Wilson Fisk has no nostalgia for the violence of the neighborhood he grew up in; he wishes to bring his expensive tastes in food, clothing, and food to the crime-ridden district.

There is a sort of cognitive dissonance with this character in season 1 which Madam Gao comments on “Man cannot be both savior and oppressor, light and shadow. One has to be sacrificed for the other. Choose, and choose wisely. Or others shall choose for you.” Eventually after he is exposed and his criminal network comes tumbling down, and he is taken away by the FBI, Wilson Fisk has an epiphany. As he’s being taken away he recounts the parable of the Good Samaritan, and he ends the story like this. [The Samaritan] did this simply because the traveler was his neighbor. He loved his city and all the people in it. I always thought that I was the Samaritan in that story. It’s funny, isn’t it? How even the best of men can be deceived by their true nature… I’m not the Samaritan… I’m not the priest, or the Levite… I am the ill intent who set upon the traveler on a road that he should not have been on.Fisk, up to this point, has seen himself as the Samaritan, the good man who saves the dying traveler. Now, however, he realizes he is the ill content, the ones who set upon the traveler and leave him for dead. He realizes that what he truly wants is not to save the city, but to destroy it so he can remake it in his own image.

Wilson Fisk escapes his transport and is about to escape the city and presumably have his happily ever after with Vanessa, but then Daredevil catches up with Fisk and derails his escape. After so long of living up in an ivory tower, Fisk has now been dragged back into Hell and after an intense fight in an alleyway he is defeated and sent to jail. What we see of Wilson Fisk in season 2 suggests his epiphany has fully set in and now he has become evil in a much purer way.

Is Fisk a Threat to the hero: Yes
Wilson Fisk is a match for Daredevil both physically and mentally. He is physically larger than Murdock and wears body armor designed by Melvin Potter. Daredevil isn’t able to win until he also has body armor made by Melvin Potter. The way the fights are choreographed shows you when the fighters (including the hero) are getting tired. After the fights Daredevil needs to get patched up by Claire Temple, by making the hero seem more vulnerable it seems easier for the villain to win.

Throughout season1 it’s unclear how Murdock could possibly win since it seems like everything is stacked in the villain’s favor. Fisk has paid off the police. It seems like he has people everywhere and everyone has been paid off so it’s the heroes against the world. In episode 5 Wilson Fisk blows up several buildings, taking out the Russian mob, and in episode 6 he successfully pins it on ‘the man in the mask’ thus turning the public and the cops against his enemy. In episode 8 when Ben Urich is about to write a newspaper article exposing Wilson Fisk, Fisk makes a calculated gamble and steps out of the darkness and into the spotlight. Suddenly the public not only hates ‘the devil of Hells Kitchen’ but they love Wilson Fisk. Murdock, Nelson, Page, and Urich spend a lot of time in season 1 trying to find something they can trace back to Fisk and prove he’s dirty but their enemy is just too good at covering his tracks. Matt Murdock doesn’t know if he can defeat Wilson Fisk without killing him and the first time he fights Fisk he gets his ass kicked (he was injured and weakened from his fight with Nobu at the time). At the end of episode 12 when Ben Urich is fired from the paper we are in a similar position to the end of episode 8; Urich plans to write a blog revealing everything about Wilson Fisk and it feels like he’s finally free to expose the truth. Before Urich can do that, Wilson Fisk breaks into his apartment and kills him.

Wilson Fisk is defeated and sent to jail at the end of season1 of Daredevil but doesn’t stay down long. No sooner has he been convicted than his lawyer starts working on appeals to get him out. In the meantime Wilson Fisk starts using his influence and money to gain followers. Wilson Fisk uses Frank Castle to take out a rival gangster so he can have complete control over his prison; Fisk then allows Frank to walk free, hoping that Frank Castle will stop anyone from getting strong enough to replace him, so when Wilson Fisk gets out the city will be his for the taking. Wilson Fisk promises that someday he will return “not to wage a war but to win one”. At last he assumes the mantle of the Kingpin.

I give this character an A+

Frank Castle aka the Punisher
Frank Castle is a trained soldier who has all the ruthlessness of Stick and fights criminals using military grade weapons which he buys illegally. Frank Castle does challenge Daredevil physically at least, and he is able to capture Daredevil. On the other hand Daredevil sends Frank Castle to jail in only 4 episodes, he is convicted and only escapes because he had help from Fisk.

Frank Castle started off entertaining but became less so as the season dragged on.

Frank Castle went off to fight in Iraq, he went to a place where it was not just okay but expected for him to kill. The day after he returned he and his family were caught in the middle of a three way mob fight called “The Massacre at Central Park”. Frank Castle received a bullet to the head which he miraculously survived (I suspect IGH had a hand in it). He decided to wage a one man war on crime. If nothing else his motivations are easy to understand.

I know most people won’t notice or care about this but I’m baffled by how competent Frank is at operating independently. Independence isn’t an option for a soldier, other people are always relying on you and you are always relying on other people. Frank is trying to wage war without the supports available to him as a marine: he has no backup, no intelligence other than what he gathers himself, no one to talk to, no strategy outside of what he devices himself, nobody (not even a Night Nurse) to patch him up if he gets injured, he sets all his own time tables and priorities. This season was supposed to be about his origins and they never explain how he got so good at operating solo. If the character or the story overall was better written this is something I’d suspend disbelief over.

Is this character well developed and have clear consistent characterization?
Frank Castle’s characterization was clear but also shallow, at least by Marvel Netflix Standards. It didn’t seem like a whole lot of thought went into fleshing out his character. I can’t remember Frank Castle ever showing an emotion outside of anger or sadness, most of the time he remained stoic.

As the season goes on we learn more details about his backstory and specifically the shootout that killed his family, but within the story itself Castle remains a static character from the beginning of season2 to the end. Were never show any flashbacks to when Frank’s family was still alive so we don’t know how much this incident changed him or how different this was before.

In episode 9 ‘seven minutes in heaven’ I lost the ability to see Frank Castle as an anti-hero with darker more brutal version of justice than Daredevil, at best he was a villain with a tragic backstory. That was the episode where Fisk manipulated Castle into killing a rival gangster so he could take over the prison then sets Castle free to step on anyone who would take Castle’s place. Keep in mind that almost all the criminals Frank kills in season2 he only targets because they were connected to the deaths of his family. Frank Castle showed when the chips are down he’ll chose vengeance over justice and the greater good be dammed.

Part of why I’m not cutting Frank Castle any slack is that he appeared after Jessica Jones season1 where we were introduced to a similar (but more interesting) antagonist in the form of Will Simpson aka Nuke. Will Simpson’s arc in Jessica Jones season 1 was a beautiful exploration of toxic masculinity and the selfishness of revenge. After seeing this male power fantasy archetype so skillfully deconstructed in Jessica Jones it was unsatisfying to see it played straight with no self awareness in Daredevil.

Given his characterization I thought it was strange that Frank Castle killed Ray Shoonover aka the Blacksmith with just one gunshot to the head. It just felt too quick and impersonal; not only was Ray the man responsible for the death of the death of Frank’s family he was also a mentor and a friend who had betrayed him. This scene and its aftermath should have added to Frank Castle’s character development. The lack of passion or torture that went into Ray’s murder could have worked if it was presented as Frank Castle showing him mercy, or if the point was that revenge is often unsatisfying but no, Frank remains stoic for this entire event and after it’s over we just see him steal all the weapons and stuff that Ray had.

Does his conflict with the hero tie into a larger theme?
The conflict between Frank Castle and Daredevil is intended to represent an argument on the nature of violence and vigilante justice but this argument isn’t handled especially well.

Both Daredevil and the Punisher love violence and are vigilantes. Daredevil operates outside of the law but he still believes in the law and believes it’s his job to help out the police, while the Punisher is content to act as judge, jury, and executioner and disregards the law entirely.

Daredevil season 2 is very fond of demonstrating all the ways that law and the justice system are imperfect and can be cheated or broken. The police were only able to capture the Punisher because Daredevil helped them. The trial showed the defense bringing up irrelevant information to defend a client who is obviously guilty and the prosecution being shady as hell. Episode 9 showed how people with money and power like Fisk can bend the system to their will. It gets the point where in Episode 11 Daredevil agrees that the Blacksmith should be killed instead of captured.

Daredevil season 2 doesn’t seem nearly as interested however in showing the faults and weaknesses in the Punisher’s way of doing things. Not once do we see Frank Castle kill someone who is actually innocent of the crimes he believes they committed; that is a real life danger inherent in the both vigilantism and the death penalty. Not once does Frank accidentally kill a civilian while trying to shoot a criminal. The only time when show seems to show Frank Castle’s methods as flawed is in episode 11 when Frank is ready to kill someone who has falsely confessed to being the Blacksmith but even then Daredevil stops him before he can do it.

Something else that weakens the argument is the incongruity between the motivations and priorities of the two vigilantes. Frank Castle, as I mentioned before, prioritizes his personal vendetta above all else.

I give this character a D.

Nobu Yoshioka
Nobu is probably the worst of the Marvel Netflix villains so far. He is introduced in season1 as a secondary antagonist whose primary function was to foreshadow the involvement of the Hand. For the majority of season1 he has very little character development or characterization outside of being grumpy. The first time he gets any real development is during the episode where he dies, in that episode he got some characterization as a proud warrior who fits the noble demon archetype.

If nothing else Nobu does come across as a legitimate threat to the hero. Not only does Nobu have the skills and strength to challenge Daredevil as fighter and also has ninja skills which allow him to hide from Daredevil’s super senses, such as being able to lower his body temperature and slow his heartbeat. He is also able to kill Electra.

Nobu is resurrected in season2 and is the closest thing that season has to a main antagonist but even in season 2 his character isn’t given much development. What I find most frustrating is that his goals and motivations are never made clear to the audience, hints are dropped but nothing is truly explained. I’ve read theories and speculation about what the Hand is up to and what the Black Sky is but it’s never made clear in the context of the narrative.

Daredevil season 2 was a clusterfuck which felt like it existed mainly to set up other stories, specifically a Punisher series and the Defenders, instead of being a satisfying story in it’s own right.

The conflict between Nobu/the Hand and Daredevil ignores and weakens the seasons argument about the nature of vigilante justice and violence. Introducing enemies that can be resurrected undercuts both Daredevil’s argument that murder is categorically wrong and the Punisher’s argument that his methods are more reliable and permanent.

There is also the fact that Nobu and the Hand feel out of place in the relentlessly gritty world of Daredevil’s Hells Kitchen. The final fight where Daredevil and Electra face off against Nobu and a bunch of other Hand ninjas on a rooftop felt especially comic booky. The Avengers films and the other Marvel Movies can afford to have fights that look like their ripped straight from the panels of a comic book because it fits the overall style of the film. If Daredevil season 2 as a whole was less gritty than season 1 I wouldn’t have a problem with this, but at the same time as the Hand stuff is going on the Punisher plot-line tries to ramp up the grittiness and seriousness.

I give this character an F. Keep in mind that I’m judging these villains by much harsher standards than I would judge villains in the movies.

Kevin Thompson aka Kilgrave
I have never seen a antagonist quiet like this before. Kilgrave is the most terrifying villain in the MCU because he can make you maim and kill yourself or someone you love, and there is nothing you can do about it. Because of his powers Kilgrave is used to getting whatever he wants so he’s developed into a spoiled manchild— his childish behavior leads to some incidental comedy–– with no concept of empathy or morality. When Jessica Jones breaks away from him he becomes obsessed with getting her back under his control.

Kevin Thompson was born with a neurodegenerative disease and his scientist parents subjected him to painful and seemingly endless tests and experiments to try and cure his condition. They were so caught up in trying to save his life that they neglected to show him affection. This caused him to resent his parents. Their experiments somehow gave Kevin mind control which he used to make his parents his personal slaves. One day when he was 10, Kevin got angry and threw a tantrum and made his mother burn her face with an iron. Fearing for their lives the parents abandoned their child. Kevin was left to fend for himself and for the next 20 years he had to force people to feed him and take care of him. That is the secret origin of Kilgrave.

What I like about his backstory is that nobody is really innocent in this scenario but nobody is completely to blame either. Kevin was just a kid when he got his powers and once he got them nobody was able to discipline him or place limitations on him. Consequently although Kevin matured physically and mentally, he wasn’t able to mature emotionally.

Is the villain a threat to the hero? Yes
Kilgrave doesn’t need to match Jessica Jones on a physical level because of his mind control powers. Kilgrave often has hostages ready that he can force to commit suicide if Jessica tries to hurt him and he can easily force others (including Luke Cage) to fight Jessica on his behalf.

His mind control powers function as a metaphor for rape which ties into the series’s general theme of abuse and victimization. Kilgrave once held Jessica Jones hostage for months, and during that time he physically raped her and made her kill Reva Connors. Somehow after killing Reva, Jessica broke free of Kilgrave’s control. For most of the first season Jessica is unaware that Kilgrave can’t control her and so is the audience, believing he could potentially control Jessica just makes him even scarier.

Jessica Jones herself is scared of Kilgrave and when she learns he’s back, she almost runs away. For the better part of the first season Jessica Jones is trying to get a confession out of Kilgrave in order to get Hope (a woman Kilgrave forced to kill her parents) out of jail.

Jessica Jones tries everything she can to deal with Kilgrave without killing him. She tries giving him what he wants, she tries to drug him, she tries living with him, she tries to rehabilitate him and teach him to be a hero, she tries putting him in a cell, she even tries to find a cure for his powers. Late in the first season Hope Schlottman kills herself so Jessica Jones won’t have anything holding her back anymore.

The stakes get higher later in the first season when Kilgrave discovers a way to make himself more powerful. He starts being able to control people longer and from farther away and even though electronics, and it’s not clear if he could gain the ability to control Jessica.

I give Kilgrave an A