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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
A good way to handle it would have been to tone down Danny's exceptionalness.
Instead of making him a master of Kun Lun's martial arts, have him be just an average student, though Kun Lun's training is so good that even an average student is an incredible badass to the rest of the world.
And while having the Iron Fist gives him a special power, he doesn't necessarily have to get it because he was the only one who proved himself worthy or anything like that. You could easily create a backstory where Danny, desperate to leave Kun Lun and return home, manages to grab the source of the Iron Fist's power while no one was looking, because only the Immortal Weapons are allowed to leave the city at will.
The core problem with the Mighty Whitey trope isn't that a white guy goes to a foreign culture and learns how to do some of the cool stuff they do there. It's that a white guy goes to a foreign culture and becomes better at doing all of their cool stuff than any of the natives, carrying the implication that his whiteness made him naturally better at it. If you had Danny just be a middling martial artist (again, by Kun Lun's exceptionally high standards), and had his Iron Fist powers and title be something he cheated his way into, rather than an honor bestowed on him, than a lot of that is averted.
That reminds me of what I heard about Immortal Iron Fist from Mighty Whitey trope list, apparently it did that. Like there are other "Immortal Weapons" than Iron Fist and most of them are apparently more talented than him.
No idea if they did it well though since YMMV still mentions series' concept being prolematic
edited 8th Feb '18 10:24:51 PM by SpookyMask
Perhaps, but a film about a foreigner coming to another country to learn a native skill is going to be about race inevitably. Both Iron Fist’s and Doctor Strange’s attempts to NOT make their films about race, despite centering around a Mighty Whitey, fell flat.
edited 9th Feb '18 12:02:43 AM by Tuckerscreator
Honestly if you just didn't make him the greatest ever Iron Fist - just a guy who turned up at a monastery trying to find himself, and then learning some martial arts and philosophy, and then trying to do some good with that - I don't think it would necessarily be Mighty Whitey.
You could even make that into a thing - maybe his powers are essentially jury-rigged because the philosophy they depend on is about detachment from the world, or something.
Quite frankly though, if I were Marvel I would have just skirted round the entire issue and instead of a filthy rich white guy make him a filthy rich black guy or filthy rich Hispanic guy. I mean, it's not like the Defenders had some sort of quota of white people to fulfill, and it still keeps the central theme of the material world/spiritual world dichotomy.
I would rather the Asian member of the defenders be someone not related to martial arts in a big way, since I think that's kind of stereotypical. Maybe they can pick up Amadeus Cho as the team brainbox or something.
edited 9th Feb '18 12:18:51 AM by Sigilbreaker26
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"I actually think that part of the reason why Danny kind of sucks as Iron Fist is exactly because they wanted to sidestep the Mighty White Trope and went overboard with it.
And they should have made him native american. But they didn't, and I feel it is kind of unfair towards the actor to pile that much hatedom on the character.
edited 9th Feb '18 1:56:43 AM by Swanpride
So, I just came across a really interesting article
talks about how MCU and DCEU movies perform at the box office comparatively. While mostly focus on how DCEU movies are underperforming compare to Marvel and the brand is tarnish, there is one interesting piece of information from the article:
"To put it simply, it appears the "floor" for MCU box office performance is rising, while the "ceiling" for performance is lowering. The degree of rising and falling isn't huge, but it's notable and suggests that, going forward, MCU releases will probably perform no lower than $600-700 million, and no higher than $1-1.3 billion."
So, the audience for MCU is starting to solidified and settled in the box office. Which mean that while the franchise won't have record-breaking number like The Avengers, it won't have dud like The Incredible Hulk and Captain America: The First Avenger.
Question: how did Iron Man 3 make more money than any MCU film not named "Avengers", even surpassing Civil War? Did it really have THAT much hype behind it? I like it fine, but it's far ahead of MCU films that I feel like had better hype and marketing, as well as much less controversy after-the-fact.
edited 9th Feb '18 7:28:26 AM by PushoverMediaCritic
Two reasons.
- As vocal as many fans are about hating Iron Man, being over Iron Man, or otherwise not caring about Iron Man anymore, he's still the MCU's rock-star character guaranteed to rake in big money for any film he appears in. People on the internet have a Broken Base about Tony, but casual movie-goers f*cking love him with a passion that cannot be quenched. RDJ's flawless performance has a lot to do with that.
- Iron Man 3 also had the advantage that it was riding high on the success of the first Avengers film, being the first MCU movie to come out in its wake.
edited 9th Feb '18 7:35:41 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Not gonna lie... I actually really like how they did the Mandarin in IM 3.
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"If we get into this argument again I'm hurling a Chinese broadsword at someone.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Does the average movie goer know that the Mandarin is supposedly Iron Man's greatest enemy?
Because I didn't know that initially and I'm not the average movie goer.
I've read at least three comics.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersI actually misremembered. Mandarin throws
a Jian
at Stark.
No matter. I will hurl a Dao and I will make it work so help me God.
edited 9th Feb '18 8:19:23 AM by Gaon
"All you Fascists bound to lose."The only reason I knew about the Mandarin was because of the old Iron Man cartoon.
This song needs more love.> Does the average movie goer know that the Mandarin is supposedly Iron Man's greatest enemy?
Averge Movie goer here,I thought Iron Man's greatest enemy was Tony Stark
have a listen and have a link to my discord server

It would've helped some, but yes - it would've still be problematic. Conceptually, he's a hard character to sell all around.
That fact that it was botched so immensely on top of that doesn't help matters.