Latest entry in the NETFLIX MARVEL GRITVERSE: Iron Fist

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

:)

REVIEW: WEAK 'FIST' DILUTES BRAND OF RAND AND HAND

omg the Hulk tweet

lol

I was sick home yesterday so I binged on the 2nd half of this. It really suffered from being repetitive in the extreme. I felt like the same things were happening over and over. I didn't hate it but I couldn't find a whole lot to love about it. Hand Academy, come on.

oh you're from k'un-lun, do you have the iron fist, too?

did danny buy like ten of the same uniqlo hoody that keeps getting ripped up

are he and Luke going to bond over how many hoodies they run through

the CW shows are much better at all of this imo.

So we finally blasted through like 2/3 of this over the weekend. And, yeah, easily the worst of the Netflix shows but not actively terrible. An interesting perspective shift would've been to have the Meachums as the central characters who suddenly have to deal with the reemergence of this total douche who ruins their lives with his douchiness.

And Iron Fist is for sure a douche. It's hard to know how much of that is the character as written (which is pretty thankless) and how much is the actor. But having actually seen enough of the show to judge, I am now strongly supportive of the decision to cast a white actor in this role. Every other Netflix protagonist has had to overcome obstacles and grow into their roles as heroes. Iron Fist is a rich white dude who coasts on overinflated confidence but who's actually an ineffectual turd. That rings true to me.

Probably the best thing they can do is kill this iteration of the character off in the first episode of The Defenders and pass the Iron Fist on to Claire.

I feel like this material could've worked if they punched it up a bit and had cannier people running the show and making Iron Fist's awfulness more intentional and comical.

'I'm the Iron Fist. I cannot be beaten.'
(immediately gets put in the hospital)

the main thing which bugged me about this show - finn jones' corpselike performance aside - was the super-cheap-looking set design and dressing. the office sets are fucking dire and i found it really distracting that the views across the city were so obviously backdrops

at one point the meachums are waiting for a lift in their office and there's a visible gap between the wall and the lift doors which clearly shows the interior of the lift sitting there - i wish i'd taken a picture of it but it's embarrassingly obvious

I watch so many cheap old sci-fi and horror movies that things like that tend to pass right by me unnoticed (see also: discussion upthread of the shitty fight choreography which I didn't really notice probably because it's still on the polished end of the spectrum of fight choreography I've seen).

It occurs to me that Danny & Co.'s trip to China is an unintentional self-critique of the show. 'I'm going to China! I don't really have a solid reason why, and I definitely don't have a plan, and I'm not really sure what I hope to achieve when I go! And there's no reason for you guys to go with me and endanger your lives but...might as well! And naturally everything is going to go to shit when we get there. But we're going to totally bring Madame Gao back to the US........somehow!'

usually stuff like that doesn't bother me but in this case it seemed particularly emblematic of the shoddy nature of the show in general

like, if i'm noticing the sets it's because the onscreen conversation isn't holding my attention

They could've at least filmed the scene where they're affecting nonchalance while they go through Chinese customs with a squirming oversized duffel bag.

i wish they'd cast a squirming oversized duffel bag in the title role

it'd show more life than finn jones ever manages to muster

It's just now dawning on me that using MacGruber as the model for this show's tone would've made it perfect.

the main thing which bugged me about this show - finn jones' corpselike performance aside - was the super-cheap-looking set design and dressing.

lol I was joking a few weeks ago that Danny bought a bunch of the same hoodie from Uniqlo on his return to NYC. I have the same one and can only assume the costuming budget was like $200

Dad Meachum's "lair" is so corny-looking

The costume design for Hand academy was dreadful. '10-15 EXTRAS NEEDED. MUST BE YOUTHFUL IN APPEARANCE AND OWN AT LEAST 1 PIECE OF MAROON CLOTHING'

Okay so we finished this tonight, and speaking as the unabashed cheerleader who reps for absolutely everything MCU-related like he's getting paid to do it...this actually was kind of fucking bad?

He looks like a leftover from the 90s hippie revival, lika Kula Shaker leftover or something

And he's so dumb & bland & DONT TELL DOCTORS YOU HAVE SUPERPOWERS DONT YOU KNOW ANYTHING YOU FKING TWIT

I honestly feel like the writing is the real problem here. Character development and motivation was on some '80s Saturday morning cartoon level of complexity and consistency. And it was sooooooo repetitious. OH, DID YOUR PARENTS DIE, DANNY? OH, IN A PLANE CRASH, YOU SAY?

I was riffing on Danny's everyday life after things settle down, where he randomly drops his parents death into the most casual of daily interactions (with cashiers and baristas and what have you), where people are initially sympathetic because this is clearly a thing that just happened because the guy's so messed up about it but then they back away slowly when they discover that this is a dead (parent) horse he's been beating for thirteen years.

I also posited that the show would've been improved 1000% if Danny and Colleen and the younger Meachums were all like twelve a la Bugsy Malone. The dialogue would be so much more congruent if it were issued from the cracking voice of someone going through puberty.

Omg yes - we are still only 3 or 4 eps into season 1 and it's like okay when are we gonna be done establishing the plane crash because there us literally no-one in this show who doesnt know this now or repeat it on command like fkn north koreans

*is

Is Defenders' writing possibly going to improve him? Couldn't make him much worse really.
Not seen the comics since my brother's 40+ years ago so assume he was better there or he'd be forgotten totally innit?

tbf there's only so much that writing can do when the guy delivering the dialogue has all the charisma and screen presence of a damp sock

Not seen the comics since my brother's 40+ years ago so assume he was better there or he'd be forgotten totally innit?

For such a second or third string character, Iron Fist has had some unusually classy creators over the years - Gil Kane, exquisitely inked by Dick Giordano, on the origin issue, a short run by Claremont and Byrne that tied into X-Men continuity, a long run of the Power Man/Iron Fist title by Mary Jo Duffy that is fondly remembered, and more recently, even the Matt Fraction written iteration had pages drawn by the late great John Severin. He's definitely punched like unto a thing of iron above his weight.