First of all, it is strange that the film is positioning itself as the first Russian superhero. We’ve had Black Lightning, Paragraph 78, and Superbrows – yes, it’s all screwed up, but how come we’re sure this time it’ll work out? Eye-climbing cons:
- Ler recites the prayer in an incomprehensible language. Subtitles appear "Our Father", the further translation apparently did not know even the creators, so just scored on it after the first line.
- Ksenia burns her abilities, demonstrating them in the circus. Is this the behavior of a person who is hiding?
- How did 3 men end up in her dressing room? Unnoticed, in different corners. At the same time, one grabbed a flower, and the second sat down with his back in a chair. I want to see how they rehearsed a number like this before they came to her.
- Of the 4 Russian heroes, only Xenia has a Russian name and image. Khan is a word directly related to the enemies of Russia, not its defenders, he looks like an obvious Mongol – this is exactly what the villain of the film could look like. Arsus is not a Russian word, but a bear as an image of everything Russian is a caricature of the Poles, which they successfully imposed on us. Lehr is a cross between an Armenian and a Kazakh, there is nothing Russian about him.
- The villain looks miserable, he has bad makeup, he has almost no lines, he has no motivation. Why is he carrying out his evil plan? All this could be justified only by the fact that he is mentally retarded and decided to play war, not understanding what he is doing. But in the script, he's a fucking genius.
- Lera is asked about his health, and he tells the story of his family for 2 minutes. All four of them have a similar monologue, and the stories they tell might be interesting if they showed it rather than just lip service.
- Cliche: holograms, transparent screens, lightning, clones, spider robots, instant recovery, a sword-cut machine falls apart with a delay of a few seconds.
- The bear tore his pants 2 times, turning. But in human form, he is back in pants, and in the same.
- There is no humor, no drama, no revealed characters, the action is unsaturated, the plot is sluggish and at the same time fluent.
There is no acting as such. All the characters walk around with absolutely stone faces. If the characters communicated lively (it is not expensive to communicate at all), then some shortcomings could be forgiven for this. It would be a life-saving straw, and the authors ignored it.
However, I must say a few words in defense. They say the graphics are terrible... Gentlemen, the budget of this film is 8 times less than that of Deadpool (which has almost no graphics at all), and 42 times less than that of Avengers 2. Just think about those numbers. “Defenders” absolutely normal graphics for a budget of $ 6 million, in the West, only an amateur art house, in which there is a person of 7 actors in the same house or in the woods, is rented for such money.
“Defenders” is a very bad film, but if you compare ge, it’s still better than the absolutely miserable “Batman v Superman”, which received a dozen nominations for Golden Raspberry and in which there is not a single minute at all, for which it would not be shameful, even the sequential scenes are not connected with each other. At least you know what you're looking at. It’s also better than Black Lightning, which was a frame-by-frame reshoot of Spider-Man with the addition of pieces from unfunny Russian comedies. There is still one important plus – our at least began to try to shoot blockbusters and reach the West. It is clear that it does not work yet, but more attempts are needed, and someday everything will work out. The later "Major Thunder" probably started from the negative experience that was accumulated here.