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Small Screen Reviews: Luke Cage
Luke Cage: Punching crime with the might of the Seventies!
So let me say this up front: Marvel and Netflix are a match made in Heaven. They should stick together and have many superhero drama-children as long as they both shall live until death do they part. Okay, now my review is getting confusing, and it’s not even the end of the first paragraph. But I think that’s a decent summary already. It’s just one service I provide. Okay, it’s the only one. This time.
Luke Cage is the latest Marvel-Netflix offering along with Daredevil and my so far personal favorite, Jessica Jones. The title character was introduced in the latter of these two series, a super-strong, nigh-invulnerable man with a lost love and a past he’s reluctant to discuss. After being compelled to battle to the death with Jones, Cage leaves to get his own tv-streaming series. Good deal.
Unlike the Marvel films, which take place across the globe and even the galaxy (only when accompanied by your Guardians), the Netflix shows have taken place in neighborhoods of New York City. DD and JJ in Hell’s Kitchen, Luke Cage in Harlem. This is one of the many strengths of the Netflix shows: the local story focuses on the character of the neighborhood as well as the character of its protector, exploiters, and destroyers.
Knowing Luke Cage was to be set in Harlem, I was a bit cautious at first. It could easily go bad in so many different directions. It could have devolved to black-on-black violence caricatures. Or power-broking white antagonist caricatures. Instead the direction keeps a story which, despite featuring super-powers, maintains a level of verisimilitude that does not talk down to any view regardless of race. Moreover, it’s done in such a way that I just couldn’t see the roles played by whites. Doing that yet making the story engaging and compelling takes a lot of care and talent that can be appreciated by anyone.
The story begins simply. Luke Cage, still in hiding from his dark past, works as a dishwasher at a nightclub and an assistant at a barbershop with a man who proves a great mentor and teacher. Poor guy. We all know what happens to them. Anyways, when two of the young men who frequent or work at the barbershop try to rob Harlem’s homegrown crime boss, they set in motion events that lead to disaster and force Cage to decide whether he will stay hidden or stand up and use his abilities to bring down those who exploit and abuse his home town.
Well this being a tv series he decides the latter, of course, and this is where the super powers come to play – Luke Cage muscles his way through various criminal spots, invulnerable to bullets and with super strength. If it weren’t for those, this show could fairly strongly stand on its own as another story where a man has to decide whether to stand up and act for his community or not. The body count is high, and there’s a couple of twists and turns here and there.
Ricochet member Henry Castaigne elsewhere mentioned this might be one of the most conservative shows Netflix has to offer. I’m not certain about that, but it is indeed refreshing to see a show like this not to default to making straw men arguments and scolding the audience. I find it refreshing in a similar way to how I find Adult Swim cartoon “The Boondocks” refreshing: The truth is presented with little decoration. The writer might project a few of their own biases, but never so much as to dilute the truth too much.
If I have a complaint, it’s perhaps that for some time I don’t find its villains as fascinating as in other series, at least not until the very end of the series. The primary antagonist believes himself in a Cain-and-Abel type relationship with Cage (though I find that an Ishmael-Isaac relationship would be a far better analogy), but I just don’t find it compelling. But this is really a small complaint for me. Nobody really matches the sheer intensity of D’Onofrio‘s Fisk, or sociopathic hedonism of Tennant‘s Killgrave. There is an ruthless intensity in Mahershala Ali‘s Cottonmouth, but … well I am avoiding spoilers here.
Though I don’t find this as good as my favorite, Jessica Jones, or Season 1 of Daredevil Luke Cage remains a strong addition to the Netflix-Marvel series. I anticipate more, and I really can’t wait for even more. Great show, go watch it. Just look out for violence. Seriously, all of these are like being in an ice cream parlor. Sure, I have some flavors I favor over others, but it’s still all ice cream and delicious.
Published in Entertainment
Totally!!! Not unintentional! I maintain that Black communities are conservative but so well-deceived!
I’m a big fan of WWII-era Captain America Comics with such stories as “The Ageless Orientals Who Wouldn’t Die!!”.
Maybe the distance of time helps. 70’s isn’t that long ago that something like that rubs the wrong way. WWII-attitudes that today we’d decry as racist just seems quirky.
He says Sweet Christmas as an homage to his Baptist father. They also keep a Swear Jar because Pop’s and Luke Cage don’t abide by young men being disrespectful.
He also only resorts to physical violence and instead of shooting people he knocks them out. This moralizing is always hilarious to me in Super Hero stories like Batman or Superman. Sure, nobody gets shot, but they have lifetime traumatic brain injuries from being knocked unconscious.
Not enough
So I finally finished watching. Coincidentally I had paused at the most pivotal episode of the series, in which we finally meet Diamondback.
I have conflicted feelings about the back half of the show. I think it got stronger and more confident on a technical level – direction, editing, music, etc. – but Diamondback is such a badly written character it undermines the final arc. And he is dropped in so suddenly, with all sorts of cliched baggage that I don’t believe was ever alluded to previously, that I just can’t get on board with the grudge match. Cottonmouth is a much better, more nuanced antagonist.
Exactly! I had much the same feeling. Even Mariah and Shades made a better antagonist combo than Diamondback. I think that’s why the show just didn’t meet up to the same level as some of my other favorites. It’s good, but flawed.
Valid point.
I know Marve managed to make a talking raccoon and a mobile tree work, but I don’t think they could have made Luke Cage’s original look work.
I was happy with the Easter egg.
IM DYING!!! HAHAHAHAHHA
I felt it was more about explaining Harlem and the Harlem culture, rather than blacks.
Edited for readability because words and grammar be hard, man.
It was good. It suffered from what I like to call “failure to make me care.”
The story carried less tension than it could have because it made no real effort to endear certain characters to you before it put them in jeopardy. When Pop died my reaction was “meh”. When the female cop was shot I thought “eh”.
Again, I thought it was good. Just wish it spent some time making you root for the good guys.
Something I hadn’t considered. I just noted the antagonist was just lacking, but that seems to be something of an issue for more of the characters than I realized.
That was fan service. It was a little more exciting for people familiar with the character.
Yeah I really thought she was going to lose her arm right there. I thought man that was fast work but they played it off, possibly foreshadowing…
I thought the scene was effective.
I think that’s all fair but I love how much of an over-the-top scenery-chewing ham he is. He is undeniably silly but for some reason his crazy references to the Bible always give me a kick.
I think they missed the analogy there. The writers liken the Diamondback-Cage relationship as a Cain and Abel thing when it’s clearly much more an Ishmael-Isaac dynamic. It’s a small thing, but the metaphor works so much better there. I suppose we can blame America’s Biblical illiteracy on that.
Yeah. For those of us who spent the whole season wondering when that hammer was going to fall, the whole extended refusal to seek treatment added tension for scene after scene. On the other hand, it emphasized how incredibly fast she healed to the point where she didn’t seem uncomfortable, which was a little odd.
I cared about the Cage/ Cottonmouth relationship, and I thought that the Cage/ Night Nurse and Cage/ Knight relationships were well done (I really liked Simone Cook’s acting). Scenes in which Diamondback was involved made it hard to care about anything, though, because it was just so hard to see how he amassed his power. Why was Hammer Industries giving him all its best stuff? How did it come to be that Shades was working for him? How did he become super wealthy? I mean, I guess those might all have the same answer but without a hint of it his endless string of bad ideas just made me wish he was off the screen whenever he was on it. I liked his scripture use, but it was chrome on a terrible vehicle.
On politics, the full on hate for African American politics was kind of impressive, with Sharpton being particularly hard hit. The gun control stuff about fear of black violence was awesome. The constant harping on the need for fathers was nice, and it was impressive that they avoided having any hint of a concession to those on the left who claim to have debunked this stuff. It was a shame that Dr. Burstein was so semitic.
I mean, it wasn’t the greatest thing out there. But considering how crappy the acting was in Daredevil and Jessica Jones–it was the gold standard for Marvel on Netflix so far.
In Marvel Comics, Noah Burstein is the son of Abraham Erskine, the German-Jewish Dr. that created the super-soldier formula and Captain America. Dr. Burstein also gave Luke Cage his powers in the comics. So I can’t really blame the writers for giving the evil Dr. the most Jewish name ever.
Well it took me a bit longer to go through the series, but I have and now I’ve read your review. I can basically say that I agree with it. It is a solid show, and it manages to elevate Luke Cage above the potentially trashy Blacksploitation roots it could have reverted to. The characters are all genuine, and while the show touches upon numerous issues in the black community it treats them all in a very respectable manner that is easy for anyone to understand and relate to. In that way it reminded me of the Wire. Though I don’t think its characters were as strong or enticing.
The biggest complaint I have about the show is that compared to Jessica Jones or Dear Devil I never really felt pulled in by this show. The reason being, that the villains are very lack luster in comparison. None are as interesting or even as dangerous and so for much of the show about seven episode you never feel like Luke Cage is in any danger, because he isn’t. While the show eventually finds away to even the field a bit, it never really builds up any kind of climax. Daredevil is a man fighting wicked mobsters and immortal ninjas. He is constantly left bleeding and hurt. Jessica Jones is facing a psychopathic villain that can control peoples minds, and seeks to control hers. Luke Cage is a bulletproof man facing a bunch of guys with guns.
It is true that the villains are definitely weak compared to the other shows. Cottonmouth never had a way to kill Luke Cage and while I do appreciate how cool Cottonmouth was played, he seemed more ice than human. Killgrave and the Kingpin were rich and terrifying characters.
I agree that the name was something the writers weren’t wholly to blame for. I think that they changed other things of greater magnitude, so they could have there, but my primary disappointment was that the character seemed to resemble the Jews of anti-Semitic mythology in his physique, his mannerisms, and the plot. Particularly concerning in a show aimed at African Americans.
Cottonmouth wasn’t good at direct confrontation, but he and Mariah had a lot more resources for indirect confrontation. Cage’s problem wasn’t Daredevil’s problem of physical vulnerability, but of financial and social vulnerability. That overstates things; Daredevil didn’t have unlimited funds, Diamondback and later the police had Cage killing bullets, and Diamondback a Cage killing suit, but the foci were different. The attack on the hero’s conscience seems more interesting to me than the attacks on his person, and that’s true of all three series. Diamondback’s climactic fight with Cage seemed like one of the dullest segments of the show because of course Cage was going to end up beating him down. Same with Jones and Murdock in their big climactic fight scenes. The death of Miller, the disciplinary action against Knight, the funeral scene, the injury to Knight’s arm, the Cage idiot tax; there were plenty of times that Cage was in danger.
All of the Netflix shows have villains who are primarily good at social manipulation and heroes who are primarily good at punching things. All the heroes will almost always win if the question is “can I punch harder than the guy in the room/ copious number of guys in the room”, but that’s not the chief difficulty they face. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s a similar disparity with Rand, the only Defender with a serious bank account.
You and I can no longer be friends.
Smooches Frank
I wouldn’t go that far. But please be aware that your opinion is definitely in the minority.
What else is new, my friend.