I’m only five episodes into Luke Cage and I think I can say Marvel’s managed to hit it out of the park again. Like the prior two Netflix series, Daredevil and Jessica Jones, Luke Cage manages to draw on all the strengths of the MCU in a smaller-scope more street-level fashion. It perfectly encapsulates one chief strength I’ve mentioned before, superhero as trope as opposed to genre. What Winter Soldier owes to 70’s era espionage movies, Luke Cage owes to the Blacksploitation flicks of the same era, while still being relevant, modern, and part of the wider Marvel universe.
It also shows that Marvel’s Netflix lineup continues to avoid one of the major problems of the MCU. (See, I’m not a complete drooling Marvel fanboy, I admit the movies do have some problems.) Like its two small-screen predecessors, Luke Cage has a primary villain who isn’t a non-entity, a plot device, or completely ‘meh.’
My favorite Marvel movie, Guardians of the Galaxy has an antagonist that could be swapped with the one from Thor: Dark World and no one would even notice. How many great scenes do you remember with Red Skull or Whiplash? Do you even remember anything about the villain from the first Iron Man movie beyond the climatic fight scene? When the high water mark of cinematic villainy is the guy from Ant Man and Ben Kingsley pretending to be a terrorist, you have a bit of an issue.
But in Luke Cage, Cottonmouth is a villain that’s as fascinating and scary to watch as Wilson Fisk or Killgrave. The achievement is that much more impressive since a lot of his character echoes that of Fisk; the snaps of violence, the deep roots into his city, the desire to be a pillar of his community… but the acting sells it. Cottonmouth has an edge of desperation that makes him both more sympathetic and more threatening. Whenever he starts laughing, you expect someone to die.
Yeah, the series is recommended.