Latest entry in the NETFLIX MARVEL GRITVERSE: Iron Fist

i'd be down with a non-white Iron Fist but more down with a show that has something to say about the idea of whiteness in stories like Iron Fist. 'cause clearly the "white person goes to THE EAST and attains knowledge which they bring back with them" trope is still very much alive and well, whether it's Darjeeling Limited or, well, Doctor Strange. i'm not sure how you have that cake and also eat the kung fu action stuff but it'd be a place to start.

or if you're not ready to tackle that yet, you could make it specifically about Asian-American relations or something - i mean we've got a president who is a jet-setting new york rich guy whose campaign was peppered with all these paranoid and antagonistic references to Chi-Na so it's not like there wouldn't be things to do with that and Danny Rand. i guess the more you do with k'un-lun though, the more you really need to include three-dimensional and nuanced contemporary non-mythic China to make it clear you're not just stuck in this vortex of shangri-la fantasies. conveniently, as a jet-setting rich guy danny rand could plausibly be going over there all the time - making deals, keeping up old friendships, falling in love with a contemporary novelist or whatever so i don't think that would have to be shoehorned in. might be a nice way to revisit and complicate the imperialist american superhero who "knows no boundaries" in that weird hong kong digression from the dark knight. but it might stretch the boxy-rooms budget just a bit...

to clarify: actually 1000% down with a non-white iron fist, just the other thing i'm babbling about are more up my alley. in a certain way, iron fist's premise is his whiteness, as with Caine in Kung Fu. there's not a lot there besides the tired and problematic "white guy goes to China and learns martial arts" stuff, so either think deeply about that and come up with a hook that interrogates it and makes something of it, or just do some other character. marvel has tons of them lying around after all. whereas i wouldn't even blink at a non-white Spider-Man.

Penultimate episode and it hasn't got much better.

Every time Harold Meacham's name gets mentioned I keep thinking of https://goo.gl/images/4oNQeZ

(Harold Maker, if that didn't work)

They clearly didn't give a shit about having a story to tell, a competent actor in the main role, getting good fight choreography. Anything really. But for some reason, it was really really important that the main guy be white. It's just really hard to shake the feeling that they decided to make an Iron Fist show without having any idea how to do it and what story to tell - I like Fraction & Brubaker's run, but I'm not sure it would fit a Netflix season - mainly because they wanted to do the Defenders and wanted to have at least half the cast be white dudes.

Which hero should they have chosen instead, btw? Who has a story like Jessica Jones / Purple Man that could work for a season?

I feel like the obvious recent story that would be translatable is the Hawguy run. But Jeremy Renner probably wouldn't do that.

going to finally enjoy this marvel series with an asian protagonist and take a big sip of my cup of coffee

A Claire Temple/Night Nurse story about the collateral damage of powers would be cooler than an IF story.

There are like a million great Marvel arcs and dozens of great characters in them. Just blurting out things from off the top of my head: I still like my idea of a light comic series, maybe a buddy cop deal with a couple of D-listers (Incredble Herc would be a good model), or Damage Control (which I think I heard was happening?). Cloak and Dagger need retooling but could be something. Doom 2099 would confuse everybody but potentially be awesome. Prime has a basically solid concept/arc, just needs freshening/tightening up. And hellooooo... Ms. Marvel. Runaways was basically created to be a TV series pitch, ditto Thunderbolts. Not sure how the X-rights work but e.g. Multiple Man is a great and resonant concept that works for a low-budget series.... it's not like Iron Fist is just the very last character left to get adapted. And if they didn't want to address his whiteness they could have done Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu.

(Prime was Malibu, I know, but Marvel bought them out and I think still owns the characters.)

a Cloak and Dagger show is happening

not on Netflix tho

they also got pretty close to doing a Runaways film, but I believe it was shelved because it didn't fit into the overall plan for the MCU. Seems like a no-brainer though

Damage Control show is also theoretically happening (although I haven't heard any news about it in a while) (kinda inclined to think they're slowly giving up on MCU TV projects outside of Netflix).

Every time Harold Meacham's name gets mentioned I keep thinking of

― Mud... Jam... Failure... (aldo), Monday, 20 March 2017 6:17 AM (six hours ago)

(Harold Maker, if that didn't work)

― Mud... Jam... Failure... (aldo), Monday, 20 March 2017 6:18 AM (six hours ago)

*googles*

oh OK cool

(Prime was Malibu, I know, but Marvel bought them out and I think still owns the characters.)
yeah as this series had a kid in an adult superhero body and dealt with his sexuality, even if it was done reasonably well... one of the creative team arrested for child porn in recent months, never gonna happen

I also kinda wish it was still the age of random, shitty, totally unfaithful adaptations where you didn't give a shit about respecting the comics or their fans. For example, I can imagine a pretty great, zero-budget Silver Surfer show where he's an alien who comes to earth, takes the form of a good-natured California beach bum, and then surfs around the country solving crimes, familial misunderstandings, crooked land deals, and the like. Or Cypher could just be the host of travel or news programming, where his mutant power is used as an excuse to dub the dialogue of everyone he interviews, so that older people don't have to squint to read subtitles. I dunno, just spitballing here. I think there are lots of great concepts in the Marvel Universe.

Holy shit I did not know that about Gerard Jones. OMG. That's fucking nuts because Prime, well beyond the concept, is full of specific scenes and characters that bring this aspect right to the fore - pedophile gym teacher for example. Teen love interest's mom has the hots for Prime. Wow.

Oh and there was a big storyline where people think *Prime* is a pedophile because he carries around a teenaged boy's change of clothes, and then the Impulse-type teen speedster character covers for him, says they're his because he wants to corner Prime into making him his sidekick. But IIRC, never inquires where the clothes are really from. It goes on and on. Man this is weirding me out because I have always repped for that comic, mostly, but it's really saturated with this stuff.

<choke> The shame! Hit by the snark of sic!

The phone autocorrected what should have read Harold Meaker. The picture was him, Ethel and Dobbin from Rentaghost, a popular children's television show from my youth.

I would be down if each episode was a 60 minute closeup of the poop emoji

― Rachel Luther Queen (DJP), Saturday, 11 March 2017 07:45 (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Poop Emoji For Your Home

Three episodes into this. I'm not going to go any further. I've not watched any of the other three series; is Jessica Jones best then?

it's probably the most satisfying as a self-contained story, and if you like supporting character luke cage (and tbh why wouldn't you, he's the best) you can go straight to his own show from there

I liked Luke Cage more than Jessica Jones but I really enjoyed both of them.

I've enjoyed all of the Netflix shows to varying degrees (still haven't seen any Iron Fist yet but word of mouth sure has me excited!!!!11!) but none of them have been able to shake the frozen breakfast sandwich syndrome (inevitably undercooked somewhere in the middle).

I'd say that's about right- all of them could use some trimming. I'd put the first Daredevil series as my favorite, followed by JJ, but the middle section of Daredevil s2 was pretty great. I thought they did well by both Punisher and Elektra. Though I have yet to finish Luke Cage, his origin episode (#4 I think) ranks as good as anything Marvel Studios has yet done IMO.

it's weird that they seem to feel obliged to make these all last for a million episodes. Like surely the beauty of the Netflix model is that you have the flexibility to only make a season as long as it needs to be

Aren't there only like 10 episodes for Iron Fist?

aye but every episode feels twice as long as it actually is

this many posts and no one has mentioned how this dude looks like hyde from that 70s show yet

n'sync era JT imo

that mop we really need to replace

thanks for reminding me of the most horrifying key & peele sketch

why does he get sucker punched or conned in every scene

were the monks too busy hitting him with sticks to teach situational awareness

why is he more naive than most teenagers

http://www.vulture.com/2017/03/lewis-tan-marvel-iron-fist-interview.html

becuase he's shit xp

lewis tan should have been iron fist, for sure

there's still something really weird about assuming it'd be more a story about a character "going back to their roots" though, since k'un-lun is basically the land of oz or hogwart's school or whatever mythical place comparison you want to make. maybe it's the being good at martial arts thing?

(that last line being written while I'm cringing my face off btw)

http://ew.com/books/2017/03/21/iron-fist-comic-creator-downplays-whitewashing-controversy/

“Yeah, someone made me vaguely aware of that,” Iron Fist co-creator Roy Thomas said to The Inverse in a new interview when asked about the outcry. “I try not to think about it too much. I have so little patience for some of the feelings that some people have. I mean, I understand where it’s coming from. You know, cultural appropriation, my god. It’s just an adventure story. Don’t these people have something better to do than to worry about the fact that Iron Fist isn’t Oriental, or whatever word? I know Oriental isn’t the right word now, either.”

Roy vey.

that is, back to roots would be a better narrative and add to the series, but I don't trust the current writers/producers to have gotten it right as something new and not a weird lens to frame what they went with

it'd be very easy to write around k'un lun being a 'mystical place.' just make it a dark and gritty urban hellhole, like the rest of china is nowadays. in fact, you could use that as a source of comic tension - some guy expecting a shaolin temple but showing up and getting spat on by a noodle cart vendor.

twitter thread
https://twitter.com/Lexialex/status/844196477941432320

leaving aside the issue of race for a minute (hard to do when that roy thomas quote is staring me in the face, admittedly) iron fist just straight-up feels like a bad fit for marvel's netflix shows - daredevil, luke and jessica have (relatively speaking) fairly straightforward origin stories and powers and then you've got a guy whose supernatural ability in kung fu was gifted to him after he bested a dragon in mortal combat on a mystical mountainside

there's an inherent mismatch there that could maybe have worked if they'd taken a cue from matt fraction and played up the inherent batshitness of the premise, which could be a cool contrast against the 'real-world; setting of the other shows, but it all just seems so half-assed and finn jones is so, so terribly miscast

good twitter thread mh, cheers for the heads-up

the comment from someone in there that finn jones' posture outside the action scenes doesn't fit that of a trained fighter is otm

i kept hoping they'd cut to the stunt double faster because when he's standing on one foot he wobbles like me wth a hangover

Even with 56 cuts, you get this moment:
http://oi68.tinypic.com/16qona.jpg

They couldn't even find a bearded stunt double...

The underlying assumption about the character of Iron Fist, that the netflix show's creators ran with even if it was never stated, is that the whole glowing fist thing is secondary to his main character aspect: he's a white man who's the best at this mystical, ripped from film, kung fu.

A number of writers have come at the character from different angles, but that's always been the back-of-napkin pitch. There are so many new takes you could do on the character: maybe he's not white or rich but the origin is mostly the same; he's not dropped into a mystical city but instead some sort of secret order takes him in; he's actually born into being the Iron Fist and shows up in NYC an outsider.

The show compounded that with the casting and quick shooting schedule (the writing is a separate, equally culpable aspect in the awkwardness of the show). Another interview mentioned that Finn Jones (had to look up his name again) had like a month of training followed by shooting all week and extra practice on the weekends. So casting someone without the right martial arts background, and having him fight against actors who have done this for years, if not their whole lives, when his character has supposedly done little but train for fifteen years is ridiculous!

I really have no idea what they cast him on, other than appearance and maybe line reading (and again, that script, wtf) so their take was literally "we need a guy who looks like a blonde white guy."

I threw this on in the background while I was doing some cooking until I finally got to the episode with Lewis Tan, which is one of the actually good fighting sequences -- just skip to it, you'll miss nothing.

Although I did hear a line where Danny admits he got hit in the head during the plane crash, which is something I kept asking my friend -- did he land on his head in the crash and that's why he's so hopelessly naive all the time?

https://twitter.com/GailSimone/status/844428725504692230

:)

Had no idea they'd bothered to make a 2nd series after the first was the first one of these Netflix versions i never got through. BUt just seen series 2 is up on torrent sites.
Has it got any better?

i had no idea it wa out yet, but the opening line of matt soller zeitz's review which i just saw seems... unpromising: "Iron Fist season two is an improvement on Iron Fist season one in the way that stubbing your toe is an improvement over jamming your finger in a car door."

lmao

Got through the first two episodes and shit the bed, this is terrible. A country mile better than S1 but still dreadful.

Typhoid Mary should be a great introduction but so far all she's done is walk round dazed and try to pick up Danny. It also doesn't help that the actress playing her is the double of Trish(? the one who ends up taking Nuke's druqs) from Jessica Jones or that in fact pretty much all the white people look the same.

The highlight so far is when some young kids try to hustle Danny and Colleen's favourite restaurant by putting a spike through a waitress' head and the Triad the restaurant owner is paying protection to turn up to sort out the young gang. Danny and Colleen defuse the situation by beating both sets of criminals up, trashing the restaurant in the process, to the great and eternal thanks of the owner.

10 episodes is a far, far better length.

Still not really any good, but quite balanced in terms of plot and didn't ever feel like it had too many characters or filler episodes.

Wearying by the end though after EVERY SINGLE FIGHT turned into the one from They Live.

SPOILERS

Colleen Wing is Iron Fist now and Danny is just a rich kid who knows a bit of Kung Fu. It seems to be set up that she's going to have a detective agency with Misty Knight because "knight... wing... has a certain detective ring to it". Which is possibly an interesting route for the Gritverse to go down.

EVERY SINGLE FIGHT turned into the one from They Live.

i’ll be honest, this is the first thing i’ve read that might make me wanna give this a chance

I don't want to mislead you, you absolutely shouldn't.

MORE SPOILERS

I posted before the epilogue. Colleen is Iron Sword and Danny is Iron Pistols now. No, me neither.

Didn't realize this was only 10 episodes! Very smart, Marvel. Wish you'd learned some restraint before now, but better late than never.

I guess I'm actually halfway through now. After a verrrrrry shaky, 'do I actually gaf about this anymore?' start, it's gotten pretty dece. I really dug Mary once the Typhoid began to manifest.

Finn is still the absolute worst, natch.

i still haven't finished luke cage s2, i dunno if i have the fortitude to even start iron fist

the formula of these netflix series has really worn thin tbh, and i'd never have guessed that the punisher would end up being the best of them

These would've been great as like six-episode minis. As is, the episodes are far-too-often like a single comic issue whose plot has been so unnecessarily stretched out that it takes an hour to read.

I'm often unsure whether it's just bad writing or if the writers very consciously give ol' Finn dialogue that makes his character sound dumb as a post. 'I'll never forget my mother's last words. She told me she loved me.' I'll never forget the last thing my father gave me. It was a sandwich.

the writing probably doesn't help but like jon bernthal and mike colter are good actors and charismatic screen presences so they can sell sub-par writing much more effectively than finn jones, who is more tepid pond water than man

Lol OL

Xp

Have only watched Jessica Jones S1, and get the feeling that's the best of all these Netflix gritversethings. Never got round to S2 because I enjoyed the villain of S1 much more than the main character.

season two of jessica jones is extremely bad, avoid like the plague imo

I basically like every actor on this show except for the one who's playing the title role.

Somehow I'm still wading through this. I think the only actor I actually like is Simone Missick (Misty).

Finished last night. An incredibly low bar to clear, I know, but this was better than the first season by a factor in the double digits. I might even go so far as to recommend it. Finn never gets any less awful, though.

I guess I've never seen Alice Eve in anything but her inauspicious turn in the second Star Trek film but I will be keeping an eye on her now. She's real good.

Womp womp

https://deadline.com/2018/10/marvel-iron-fist-canceled-netflix-daredevil-disney-finn-jones-jessica-henwick-1202482048/

there is still some justice in this cruel, uncaring world i guess

^