“Dark” and “gritty” are two words that have become so overused in Hollywood that you’re well within your rights to roll your eyes any time you hear them, but the terms do admittedly apply to Netflix’s popular run of Marvel Comics adaptations.
Technically acting as canon to the cinematic universe before Kevin Feige decided he didn’t want to play ball anymore, the streaming service’s lineup of street-level superhero stories may have been largely inconsistent across the board, but their hard-hitting nature was a breath of fresh air in an increasingly stagnant marketplace.
These days, you can set your watch to Disney Plus’ small screen exclusives to end with an effects-laden finale bursting with chaos and carnage, but veteran Marvel director Marc Jobst doesn’t see that as the main issue. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Daredevil, Luke Cage, The Punisher, and Runaways alum explained that character should always come first.
“The Marvel characters, if you ground them, if you dimensionalize them, if you give them a human frailty — and I don’t mean weakness — then the audience can believe them. If you just have them flying off into the sky without any kind of sense of being a human being, then it just looks a bit PG-13 or whatever.”
Coincidentally, Jobst’s comments apply perfectly to the Secret Invasion finale, which was lambasted as the MCU’s worst-ever offering due in part to its dismal final showdown that threw everything and the wall to leave absolutely nothing stuck to it by the time the credits come up. Netflix’s former residents are on the way, though, so fingers crossed they fare significantly better.