Echo Review: Marvel Studios’ first TV-MA series suffers heavy losses

Disney+ eagle eye The miniseries is intentionally bloodless in violence to ensure the same family-friendly TV-14 ratings as all of Marvel Studios’ in-house produced streaming projects. But with characters like Maya Lopez, played by Alaqua Cox, and her army of tracksuit-wearing mercenaries, eagle eye It also highlights a brutality that feels decidedly out of place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and more like what one would expect from older Marvel shows on Netflix, e.g. Daredevil or jessica jones.

For years, Marvel has had fans wondering what would happen to Matt Murdock and the rest of The Defenders after the studio’s partnership with Netflix ended eagle eye The goal is a similar tenacity.It’s exciting to see Vincent D’Onofrio reprise his role as Kingpin because — even though the character feels a little different — his appearance suggests that Marvel Can Bring back more faces from the Netflix era, if you will. Charlie Cox has since returned in Daredevil. she-hulk and new announcements Daredevil The show has confirmed that this is the case, but it’s unclear what Marvel plans to do considering Netflix’s older superhero shows were much darker and more mature than those on Disney+.

exist echo — Marion Dayre’s new live-action Marvel series — You can clearly see Disney taking at least one promising path by having all its street-level heroes and villains run together in the same cinematic universe.And at the same time echo It could be a standalone spinoff of another show tailored for younger audiences, but it also feels like a promising blueprint for how Disney plans to bring more adult-oriented content to its streaming platform.

Set after event eagle eye, echo Follow Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) from the streets of New York back to her hometown of Tamaha, Oklahoma, as she searches for a way to crush Wilson Fisk’s (Donofrio) powerful criminal gang and reshape it in its own image.Maya, a woman on the run who recently shot Fisk in the head, seemingly killing him in the process echo Open first. Although she burned all the bridges while working for a crime boss, there were plenty of people she could safely turn to for help – a deaf amputee with a bounty on her head.

as eagle eye, echoThe story delves into how Maya came to think of villains like Fisk as her own family after the murder of her biological father, William (Zayn McClarnon), and how her experiences with loss, grief, and discrimination over the years have left her She became strong. While Maya’s tragic background doesn’t give her superpowers, it sets her on the path to becoming a warrior whose purpose is to attack, and someone who sees revenge as the only acceptable form of justice.But despite eagle eye Casting Maya as a morally gray character trying to survive in the criminal underworld, echo The effort pushes her in a more anti-heroic direction by pitting her against her former colleagues and exploring the lives of those who truly love her.

as echo Introducing Maya’s uncle Henry (Chask Spencer), grandmother Chula (Tantu Cardinal), and cousins ​​Bonnie (Devere Jacobs) and Biscuit (Ko (Dee Lightning), you can see and feel how much effort the show’s production team put into transforming the Atlanta location. The location is in a part of Oklahoma where Choctaw culture still thrives. In addition to its fantastical reimagining of Choctaw mythology, the series also hints at Maya’s personal story and her Native roots, with characters closely related to Maya infused with Plains Indian Sign Language and American Sign Language, as you’d expect from Growing Up and Growing Up As easy as one would expect to be with a deaf woman.

Even though Cox is an awesome presence eagle eyebecause echo With more signature roles under her belt, she’s able to bring a different, more dynamic energy to her performances, conveying more of Maya’s personality outside of her fighting persona. Even when she’s facing off against “augmented” individuals with unique powers, there’s no doubt that Maya will get at least some goodwill from just watching Cox fully commit to Echo’s many well-choreographed fight sequences. But the tender moments that emerge as Maya crosses paths with family friend Scully (Graham Green) and others are surprisingly touching because they illustrate so well how much Maya’s stoic exterior is She insisted on it to protect herself from those who didn’t like it. I don’t really know her.

for all the warmth and softness echo The drama is dominated by the depiction of Maya’s complicated relationship with her family. The large number of knockdowns, delays, and bloody fight scenes are the reason why Marvel Studios’ first drama to win TV-MA ratings.Although after Daredevil’s brief appearance, there are some concerns about what a more lively Marvel movie might look like she-hulk, echo This feels like a clear sign that the studio knows exactly how it wants to bring more grit to the MCU in small, manageable doses.

When Maya launches her motorcycle like a missile at a group of police officers and then snaps a man’s neck with her bare hands, it’s clear that even though it’s mostly a family-friendly message about forgiveness and gumption — echoDefinitely not a show for kids.Those who follow Maya are hell-bent on killing her and anyone they think she might care about, and echoShe has been consistently described as someone who took such threats seriously without regard to the law. But the show doesn’t just give her a gun to shoot her enemies, it throws waves of thugs at her and zooms in on the endless fight for her life. How to survive.

While the show’s fight choreography is beautiful and cringe-worthy in its own right, what really makes the fight scenes shine is the way they’re fought echo Its sound design lets you feel what Maya is feeling, all the way down to background noise and louder sounds of her heartbeat. This quietness is often contrasted with disorienting sharp cuts back to maximum volume, which both signals a change in focus and illustrates how sound can be weaponized, and it works because the show is careful not to overdo it This technique.

In addition to being the first TV-MA Marvel series on Disney+, echoIt’s also the first to debut under streaming’s new Spotlight banner. While it initially seemed like the branding might mean the show was designed to exist in its own bubble, over the course of a few episodes, that didn’t seem to be the case. What the term “Marvel Spotlight” might ultimately mean is very different as more and more projects are launched under the banner, but in echoic In this case, they seem to indicate that Disney is laying the groundwork for telling more Marvel-branded stories about fallen and sordid characters.

It’ll be fascinating to see how Disney’s transition to “adult” superhero programming plays out, especially considering Marvel is also about to release its first R-rated MCU movie.but if echoAny sign that the studio knows what it’s doing, the Marvel Cinematic Universe could start to get bloodier around the edges in a very satisfying way.

All five episodes echo Coming to Disney+ on January 9th.