Marvel's Iron Fist

High time to create a place to discuss the show more freely...I would say the first six episodes are fair game but after that, we'll use spoiler tags for at least a month, especially for the bigger surprises...okay?

And the first thing I want to praise the show for: I really liked that for example a bullet doesn't just vanish into the thin air but it is shown that this thing will end up somewhere. I also enjoy the "who is the worst Mechum" switcheroo the show has going on.

I'm surprised we didn't already have a thread for this.

Might want to tag those spoilers, they seem very very mild. But for the very first page, hours after the series is out....

I think it might be a good idea to have a very strict tag everything for the first page policy.

Just so people don't click on the thread and find them-self spoiled on something.

edited 17th Mar '17 7:52:16 AM by 32ndfreeze

I kinda see why some people have an issue with the fighting in this show, but at the same time I like it maybe a little more than the others we've seen before. Daredevil is more of a brawler/boxer mixed with some martial arts while Danny uses entirely martial arts, complete with more precision and graceful movements. For some reason Danny kinda reminds me of Aang from Avatar The Last Airbender, both youthful and naive but smooth and graceful when in their element.

The action is competent by any standard, but it fails in comparison to DD, by virtue of Daredevil being so visceral as to generate emotional responses from the bone crunching nature. Admit it, first episode of DD you probably felt your stomach jump to your throat when DD snapped that guy's knee because it was a very direct way of showing that Netflix isn't screwing around.

In that sense, Iron Fist fails. The fights are all competent, but they don't transcend just fighting. It's no coincidence that every memorable fight in all three shows is tied to something, a person, a goal, or even just a specific feeling that is brought out of the viewer. I'm only a couple episodes in, but so far Iron Fist has not transcended the fight. Maybe I expected too much, but I've seen modern re-interpretations of Kung-Fu style exploitation (Cowboy Bebop being chief among them) to recognize a good fight when I see it.

This also kind of brings me to my larger point of whether the endless criticism of Iron Fist was justified. I've been thinking a lot about what I've seen compared to what I've heard, and it's the first real example I have of experiencing extreme critical dissonance. USA Today called this a super fail, and IGN has been giving individual episodes 6.5s, which are crazy given their history. I'm nearly certain that a lot of the problems are due to critics taking the Netflix series too much into account when reviewing this, for the worse.

This raises a question though: All of us having seen IF in some form, is it valid to review this property with relation to everything else Netflix has given us from Marvel, and to let that negatively influence what would be a good show if it wasn't a Marvel Netflix show?

But the lack of bloody moments in the first episodes was actually something I liked...as good as the hallway fight on its own was, I felt that Daredevil was sometimes bordering on ridiculous when he was moaning through his fights. Ironically Iron Fist, despite the magic fist thing, feels more realistic overall to me because blood happens when it fits and not just so that the audience can be impressed and there is a lot of understanding of cause and effect in play.

It has become kind of a tradition to open the threat on the day the show drops so that those who watch it immediately have a place for discussion....the others can stick to the general Netflix threat. Worked just fine for the last shows, too.

edited 17th Mar '17 12:10:53 PM by Swanpride

Yes...and no.

Comparing something to other things as a way of critiquing and evaluating it is the start of criticsm, but not the end. Its why children used to call Border Collies "Lassie dogs" (back when Lassie was popular) and why adults call them Border Collies.

Its good to have a frame of reference, but that can't be your only point. For one thing, I guarantee if not now, then at some point, Iron Fist will be the first Marvel Netflix show some people watch. If not the first Marvel thing ever.

As for the gritty realism violence aspect of it, well that's honestly what I'd expect between the two shows. Daredevil is gritty neo noir with lots of darkness and grimness. Iron Fist was never that in the comics and was never really supposed to be that-it was more like your traditional kung fu/wuxia films where characters punch with enough force to break boulders but rarely draw blood, where characters don't stumble through fights because being punch drunk is an actual thing (not nearly as fun as being actually drunk) but rather dance and step lightly as though walking on rice paper.

In short, while Iron Fist might be similar to the other Netflix shows, it should be as distinct as Luke Cage's "black hero grows to accept his place as defender of his neighborhood" was from Jessica Jones "superpowered woman takes back her self-respect and creates an identity outside of her past victimhood".

Both are shows that involve reluctant superheroes. But they are also, very, very different and that doens't mean one is better than the other.

edited 17th Mar '17 12:19:35 PM by ArthurEld

Lassie is a Rough Collie◊, not a Border Collie◊

That was the useful nitpick of the day, don't thank me.

Yeah, a lot of reviews were complaining about the lack of Street setting in Iron Fist, since it was so typical for the other Netflix shows, but I actually liked seeing another perspective of New York which is really more than just dark back alleys.

Now that I've seen the first 6 episodes, I can see why the early reviews might have found them uninteresting or even just boring. Episode 1 is okay, but 2 and 3 are rough, and it isn't until episode 6 that the plot really gets going. That being said I am okay with the character building stuff going on in between, especially with Danny's siblings and Colleen.

I've only seen the first episode but I like it so far. A bit slow but Danny is likable so I don't mind following him onscreen. The acting could be better though. Danny and that martial arts instructor are the only characters whose actor's are believable to me.

I am quite far in the series, and I can honestly say that we can scratch the "Marvel's first failure" headline. Boy does this one manage to pull the rug away from under the feet of the audience....

Also the MCU has finally a proper magnificent Bastard villain.

I am starting to see the problem with the script as I get further in. Then again, I wonder if the show was doomed to have some awkwardness when it came to talking about martial arts. And I think the Aang comparison for Danny is apt, but he's a lot angrier than Aang.

I'm only on episode 3, and I'm interested enough to keep going, but it's been a very slow start. Having episode 2 be a virtual Bottle Episode was, to my mind, a huge mistake. There's very little momentum, and you kinda need some of that if you're going to build up interest. Luke Cage suffered from glacial pace too but that was in the later stages of the series. I hope this builds up, but it's not a great beginning.

Comparing fake martial arts to real ones will always do that.

I like Colleen, but the references to bushido make me cringe - there's growing evidence that it's all bullshit, invented by samurai trying to justify their own existence while the Meiji Restoration removed them from their over-inflated unjustified power.

I mean I love the samurai, I've been studying them extensively, but I don't downplay their flaws. The idea that they actually adhered to some sort of altruistic code of chivalry just isn't borne out by historical fact.

The character remains interesting though, and the plot is starting to intrigue me now (at episode 4)

The funny thing is that another Netflix original, Kuromukuro, has a samurai (long story, the show is Inuyasha with giant robots) outright say that, blaming it on a romanticized modern view of the code. Funny how all the Netflix stuff turns around.

edited 17th Mar '17 4:12:21 PM by Beatman1

Well to be specific Bushido as a broad concept did exist, same as the code of chivalry for the European Knights. It's just the word Bushido and the stratified, modernized code that is a modern invention (more specifically the "eight virtues of Bushido" which she mentions).

You can see shades of what would later be romanticized as "Bushido" in works like Monogatari The Hagakure and the Book of Five Rings as well numerous individual writings of the Sengoku Period. But again, they were all vague and broad musings on the concept of an ideal warrior and how he should act, never a stratified code of conduct.

What we call "Bushido" is essentially a modernized form of a vague ideal and philosophy widespread along the Samurai (primarily centering on loyalty, determination and self-discipline). It's kind of like if 200 years from now someone said there was "The American Way", which all American warriors followed and saying it entailed being armed to the teeth with several varieties of guns, praising the American flag and eating mcdonalds.

In a sense, it's true. But it isn't as well.

edited 17th Mar '17 4:15:10 PM by Gaon

So.. Danny Rand is a 900 pound puppy. Terror in combat, sweet and pretty, thick as a stack of planks. So many of his problems trace back to him just.. not being all that clever.

I mean, that's perfectly reasonable characterization. The guy was homeschooled to age 10, then spent the next fifteen years practicing martial arts full time. Education? What's that.

But it makes a lot of the plot a trainwreck as he is also the one making most of the plot driving decisions, and ,, well.. Watching people spell out why things are a bad idea and then watching him do them anyway gets pretty facepalmy.

No wonder Finn Jones equated the character with Donald Trump. Now it all makes sense.

Danny Rand is Donald Trump's flipside. He's Donald Trump if Donald Trump was a altruistic, loving person.

So he isn't Donald Trump, in conclusion.

Also: Danny's an idiot, but I like this trait about him. Him being naive and just making no bones about anything. Really sells him as The Heart of the future Defenders. He's just a very endearing, well-intentioned guy.

edited 17th Mar '17 4:55:54 PM by Gaon

I know. I was riffing on the "Watching people spell out why things are a bad idea and then watching him do them anyway gets pretty facepalmy" comment.

I actually think the earnest Idiot Hero thing sounds interesting and potentially endearing, especially because it makes Danny a different character from the other Defenders.

So he's a shonen anime protagonist?

Having seen the whole show now I can confidently say that they managed to sidestep the white saviour trope by a mile.

I am a little bit p... off about the camera work in some of the fight scenes...not all of them, but there are a lot with way too many fast cuts, and I don't think that they are there to hide anything about the fight choreography. It seems to me two directors wanted to be cool and totally ruined what looks like great work.

Did they sidestep it by having him rip his face off and turn out to be Asian the whole time? Because otherwise I highly doubt they could ever actually sidestep it.

So Danny is charming and likable at least so should the unintentional unsympathetic trope that says he acts like psychopath be removed?