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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
One of the main problems with Danny is that his main Freudian Excuse for his flaws (I.e the fact he's a Tyke-Bomb) is skimmed over in his actual show as we never actually see his childhood in K'un-Lun, despite the fact that could have made him a lot more sympathetic.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."The show where the main character's past informs his present (as well as setting up a lot of background for the war between the Hand and the Chaste) much, much more than any of the other Defenders, is of course the show which hardly gets any flashbacks at all. And RZA's episode shows you could've still managed to drop in some flashbacks even if you didn't want to spring for monastery sets.
The lack of flashbacks also results in a staggering failure to do adequate worldbuilding around K'un Lun. There are so many unanswered questions around this concept, and not in a good intrigue-building way but in a basic sense that interferes with the plot.
Like, the city only intersects the world every fifteen years. Okay, why? How? What does that even mean? Because I took it to mean that K'un Lun literally fades out of existence and only returns every fifteen years.
"The Iron Fist guards the pass." Why does he need to do that if entry is only possible every fifteen years? And why just the one guy?
"Because he punched a dragon." What? Why is there suddenly a dragon? What does the dragon have to do with anything?!
Punching the dragon gives the Iron Fist the power to destroy their most bitter enemies, The Hand, with whom they are perpetually at war for however many days every fifteen years that they are on Earth. He does this by guarding the pass that spends 98% of its time sealed off forever.
This lore is so stupid it hurts. And then Danny goes back to the pass in the end and finds it empty but for some dead monks and takes this to mean that K'un Lun has been destroyed, but I don't know because isn't fading out of existence something it's supposed to do on its own?
edited 7th Nov '17 8:59:43 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I get your overall point, but Danny says it's in another dimension entirely. So every fifteen years there's a bridge between it and the rest of the world that opens, and when that's done it closes. It's not complicated.
You're right about everything else though.
If the deal had gone through, we might just have gotten Deadpool saving the world by kicking Captain America in the balls. It is a sad day for superhero media that this moment is still unlikely to ever come to film.
edited 7th Nov '17 9:05:06 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I love one of the suggestions there: a PG-13 Spider-Man and Deadpool team-up movie where Deadpool is completely aware he's in a PG-13 movie, but he rolls with it because he wants to hang with Spidey and Peter's still a minor. There's only one "fuck" allowed per PG-13 film, and Deadpool is saving it for a good moment, but someone else in the movie steals it, which pisses Wade off.
As soon as I heard it I was thinking it probably won't go through. Mergers that large have to go to the supreme court to ensure it doesn't violate antitrust laws, especially if they are in the exact same business field. Disney has already grown enormous from the acquisition of Marvel and Lucasfilm, which were mostly for their licensing stable rather than their resources. Completely absorbing another studio would make them a MegaCorp on the level of an 80's dystopia film.
Funny enough, I was actually thinking how this would give them the rights to A New Hope before I even thought about X-Men.
Yeah. I think this is the crux of Rooting for the Empire. We expect the heroes to be right, and the plot treats them as right, so when they do something definitively wrong, don't learn from it, and the plot doesn't call them out or punish them for it, it's very, very easy to turn on them. In a way, it's kinda unfair: the villain can do what he wants, even being sympathetic, but the hero has to be so many things: interesting, cool, someone we can relate to, etc, and when they aren't these things, we turn on them pretty easily.
Danny still sucks mind you. I just felt like getting that off my chest.
One Strip! One Strip!@Tobias You actually don't get what I was saying. I am not talking about the relationship to parental figures, I am talking about social expectations. Parents play a role in this, but not the only role.
Take Danny. One of his main sticks is that he NEVER behaves how society expects him to behave (which, btw, might be part of the reason why some people reject him that hard). Sometimes this is really charming - for example when he randomly puts together an origami for the secretary while talking to her. Sometimes it is really annoying, for example when he randomly crashes a meeting. (On a side note, I see no difference whatsoever between the way Danny is in the beginning too forward towards Colleen and Tony's idea of "flirting" - honestly, due to recent event the "joke" that Nataly is a sexual harassment case waiting to happen has changed from "this isn't really that funny" to "this is a REALLY uncomfortable joke". I am ready to forgive Danny his behaviour because he is established as socially awkward and because he honestly doesn't mean anything bad or expects anything in exchange when he buys her dojo. I am ready to forgive Tony because while the way he first sleeps with women and then looses all respect for them because they fell for him (minus Pepper, but that is because she was really hard to get) is really off-putting, it is also an expression of the deep self-hatred Tony feels. I still see it as a double standard to act as if the same behaviour is an automatic deal breaker in another character).
Anyway, I was talking about social expectations vs self-determination. And about Danny. Danny spends the whole first season trying to figure out his place in live, and yes, that is kind of a problem, because what Tony does within the first act of his movie takes ages for Danny and is STILL a work in progress. He should have found his centre around episode 10, and they barely get him to a point that he is ready to confront his irresponsible actions, just so that he can discover that his decisions had dire consequences.
As a character I actually think that he is more interesting than Matt and Luke. Sorry, but Matt is going on my last nerve with his constant whining and "heroic suffering" (I also think that his martyr complex is incredible egoistic). If I didn't like the child version of Matt so much, I would outright hate the adult version of him. And there isn't really much interesting about him, because he is basically going in circles with his so called arc. And Luke doesn't really have much of an arc aside from realizing that he can't just step aside instead of using his powers. Which he realizes by episode 3 and from this point onward the show has nothing to say anymore about Luke or his relationship to Harlem (aside from changing the reaction of the public to him to whatever just happens to suit the plot). He is interesting in tandem with Jessica or even Danny, but on its own or with Claire he is a snooze of a character. They better put either of them - or both - into his next season.
Honestly, when it comes to good characters, Agents of Shield has the Netflix shows beat anyway. Jessica Jones and Trish are brilliant, but I really don't see them developing into unexpected directions. Agents of Shield on the other hand, wow, watch the first season now and you are getting all nostalgic about how the characters used to be compared to what they have become due to their experience.
Yeah I just can't agree with that assessment because I think the writing in Iron Fist and Finn Jones' acting are so mediocre that Danny ends up being a very whitebread, unconvincing character with no charisma. I addressed the comparison to the other Netflix MC's earlier; whatever problems there are with Luke, Matt or even Tony if you want a vaguely similar character from the films, their actors can bring a certain gravitas to their roles, and they're not emotional vampires that drain the audience's investment when they're on the screen. I don't think any serious screenwriter or critic would consider Danny a successful or well-realized character.
edited 7th Nov '17 10:35:34 AM by Draghinazzo
A strong actor can prop up a weak script and a good script can carry a lifeless performance, probably the former more than the latter, but Iron Fist really doesn't have either, and @Swanpride I still think you're reading deeper intentions into the show that never occurred to anyone working on it.
edited 7th Nov '17 10:33:08 AM by Unsung
"Agents of Shield on the other hand, wow, watch the first season now and you are getting all nostalgic about how the characters used to be compared to what they have become due to their experience."
I disagree, May take foreer to actually devolpt from the "cold badass and black widow expy" while Skye, Alias Daisy, Alias Quake, is pretty much a diferent chararter now, Coulson is pretty much the same, going with manpain crisis in the Hive Arc.
And that is, of course, getting into Ward......yeah.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"![]()
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I don't think so...the themes are too consistent for this to be an accident. Hell, the whole park bank scene is centred around the same themes.
Not that I am denying that there are issues with the execution, there are, but thematically Iron Fist is pretty strong. I actually think that the question asked is way more interesting and creative than the law vs justice stick from Daredevil, which is really, really overdone.
You do realize that you just confirmed my assessment that the characters changed, right?
edited 7th Nov '17 11:14:28 AM by Swanpride
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Kinda but not that much, Daisy is a good example as does Fitz(I feel Jenna is a times to much....there) but Coulson is the same, May barely move on from the cavalary and Ward was the same mess after season 1 ended, with Hive being a enterely diferent chararter.
*she
And I think May's opened up, but not in a huge way. She still hasn't fully moved on from Bahrain, not to mention Andrew. And maybe she won't, not fully. That's okay. People say 'static character' like it's a dirty word, but Tropes Are Not Bad. Sometimes a character being caught up in the treadmill of day-to-day life and being unable to change their patterns, that's relatable.The contrast between static and dynamic characters provides insight into both.
The show keeps trying to find new ways to use May, ways to change and develop her, but I find the best hours we've spent with May use that same time to try and understand her as she already is instead, trying to detail what makes her tick. There's a lot to unpack there, a lot of past that goes into making a person act the way May acts.
edited 8th Nov '17 7:10:11 AM by Unsung

On the other hand, one can said(Am I will said) the writing is VERY manipulative when it come to tony stark mistakes:
First is asshole behivor in Iron man 2, sure he is dying but he dosent tell ANYONE about it and since he get better thanks to deus ex machina he get away with it, them is his battle against hulk in AOU which the movie totally move under the roof and of course the whole issue with sokovia...
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"