Latest entry in the NETFLIX MARVEL GRITVERSE: Iron Fist

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.

liked this well enough, obviously the main actor is terrible and the character he plays is even stupider than daredevil (netflix version) which is going some. But 'Bunker' from Banshee is in it so that gets a tick. I'm not a comics person and Jessica Jones is the one out of these 4 series I enjoyed the most but really I'd be all in on a Madame Gau origin story. She's the best character by far in any of these.

The worst parts of Iron Fist were when they had the potential for dialogue that'd actually establish his disconnect from the world and completely left it on the table. For instance, Danny is walking around with a first or second gen iPod that he's apparently held on to throughout a plane crash and being stranded in an otherworldly place.

Could he charge it when he was trapped there? Is he grateful that he can listen to music again now that he's back? Claire compliments him on his musical taste as a kid and they leave it sitting there -- is there a reason why this silver spoon kid had those musical tastes? Why has no one helped him transfer his music on to a new phone or something?

apologies if they actually riffed on any of this in the couple episodes where I left the show rolling while I went to wash dishes

Could he charge it when he was trapped there?

ha, that's what i said about this too

it also briefly plunged me into a well of existential despair when i realised that the ipod, which seems to me like it only came out like five years or so ago, was actually released nearly 16 years ago and is now old enough to act as a signifier of the passing of a significant amount of time

xpost Yeah, no, of course they didn't. That was the first thing I thought of when they showed his iPod: what, has he been charging it with his chi?

I have a perverse desire to rewatch this and construct a writing class based around all of the things they did wrong.

I was plunged into existential despair every time an adult on the show mentioned some cultural touchstone from their childhood that I remember from my late college years.

lol yes

my other thought was that the ipod shown had a hard drive and was the one right before drop protection, so there's no way it'd have survived the crash if he was listening to music at the time

I had the second gen one in what, 2002? sometime when it was newish

The victim approaches

Iron Fist: Finn Jones Ready to Start Training For Season 2 https://t.co/zlUijuBItP pic.twitter.com/VgrRxe10Sg

— Comic Book Resources (@CBR) August 23, 2017

The murderer acts

Exciting. Maybe he'll be in a couple of fight scenes himself https://t.co/xCuJ3xUNUU

— Lexi Alexander ‎ (@Lexialex) August 23, 2017

https://rkcblog.dragondoor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/MK_FlawlessVictory.jpg

Shot.

Finn Jones Promises #IronFist Season 2 'Is Unlike Anything Seen Before' https://t.co/kWkZY2oAcQ pic.twitter.com/f4GJuPirZf

— Comic Book Resources (@CBR) May 10, 2018

Chaser.

It’ll be good? https://t.co/YjV3XnN4AP

— Ira Madison III (@ira) May 11, 2018

Really, this will be endless.

Worth noting again that Scott Buck was fired as showrunner after running this show and Inhumans into the ground.

I'll hand it to them, I made it through more of Iron Fist than Inhumans. Then again, I made it through ten minutes of Inhumans

didnt even know inhumans was a thing tbh

Seems like Marvel is okay with that. It's looking like it'll be the first MCU thing to not get a release on physical media. Even Iron Fist is getting a Blu-ray release soon.

I hope they flush it all the way down the memory hole so that they can use the inhuman royals in a real project someday

even when i was really into comic books as an adol/teen i had never even heard of the inhumans

As a kid, I could not wrap my mind around Crystal's hair as a reader of 60s FF reprints.

it is truly hilarious as marvel have tried to push the inhumans forward in the comics as being kinda sorta like mutants except they own the movie rights to them

they did some squirrely things when they first pushed it hard, too. moved a couple writers around because they were looking for the "right take" on the inhumans, which seemed to be "exactly like x-men"

I'm still a year and change behind but basically none of Marvel's recent Inhumans stuff has done anything for me.

Well there's this

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-first-pictures-from-iron-fist-season-2-include-a-ba-1827830959

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--kgmBB-YK--/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/vgzeietcysyx1zi2guuz.png

Jeph Loeb cosplayed as Akira Yoshida to promote Iron Fist at SDCC.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DigrWzOUwAAHKxF.jpg

They laid some groundwork for Daughters of the Dragon in the most recent season of Luke Cage. I hope they get their own show at some point, as I'd rather see that than another season of Duddy Rand.

best part of his appearance on the Luke Cage show was that he remembered how to speak English and no longer "Speaks. Like. This."

You might think Marvel would be more cautious with white people pretending to be Japanese