What do you do when your Marvel show, born out of a 1970s comic, turns out to be impossibly topical?
Maybe you falter, just a bit, under all that pressure.
“Luke Cage,” premiering Friday on Netflix, is about a bulletproof black man (Mike Colter) whose costume of choice is a hoodie. (Luke’s body was rendered nearly indestructible in a secret lab experiment — hence his superpower.)
His show, like “Jessica Jones” before it, is heavy on noir ambiance. It’s also loaded with crackling references to black history and culture, from the Revolutionary War to the Wu-Tang Clan. But it drops the ball when it comes to actual plot.
Created by Cheo Hodari Coker (“Ray Donovan”), the series follows the character we first met in “Jessica,” where the near-indestructible Luke was her bartending love interest. But where that series distinguished itself from the superhero hordes by taking a steely look at issues of rape and abuse and consent, “Luke Cage” wears race on its sleeve, yet fails to really engage with racism. Instead, the show strands its hero in a blah storyline about gangsters, guns and money.
Don’t blame Colter, who more than proves he can hold his own as a lead. Luke’s quiet confidence radiates from every line of dialogue and brooding silence (there are more of the latter). He’s so physically imposing — not to mention smokin’ hot — that people around him seem to almost wince when they look at him directly, like he’s the sun.
We find him lying low as a janitor at a Harlem barbershop, whose beloved owner Pops (Frankie Faison) urges Luke to do more with his powers than push a broom. When the gun-running activities of venomous club owner Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes (Mahershala Ali) and his politician cousin Mariah (Alfre Woodard) ignite a spate of local murders, Luke is spurred to take them down vigilante-style, with detective and one-time paramour Misty Knight (Simone Missick) and her jaded partner (Frank Whaley) hot on his trail.
It’s the kind of stuff you’ve seen countless times before. In truth, the most interesting aspect of “Luke Cage,” at least early on, is the sheer volume of its artistic and cultural references. The first few episodes feature shout-outs to American Revolution martyr Crispus Attucks, authors Ralph Ellison, Walter Mosley, Zora Neale Hurston, Chester Himes and Donald Goines, civil rights activist Madame C.J. Walker, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm and NBA legends Bill Russell and KC Jones.
The Wu-Tang Clan’s “Bring Da Ruckus” scores a standout set piece in which Luke storms a building full of thugs. Musicians Faith Evans, Raphael Saadiq, Charles Bradley, The Delfonics, Method Man and Jidennaa are featured in live performances at Cottonmouth’s club, where an enormous portrait of Biggie Smalls adorns the boss’ office. The soundtrack is composed by Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge of A Tribe Called Quest.
Savor those details — maybe even put together some reading and Spotify playlists while you’re at it — and hang on until the fourth episode, which finally delves into Luke’s prison-based origin story. The show begins to pick up energy at this point, so maybe it’ll follow Luke’s mantra: “Always forward; never backward.”
I sure hope so.