Marvel's Iron Fist

One issue I had with season 2 is that they had Danny’s use of the Iron Fist being equated to an addiction. It is certainly a power-set that requires control (as the comics have shown), but the idea that having fun with it is somehow wrong is silly. Danny spent one-and-a-half seasons trying to reconcile his Iron Fist identity, feeling weak and ineffective and ashamed. And now, finally, he’s started using the Fist with confidence, and is enjoying it? Great! That’s positive character development! That is what we’ve been waiting for! That speech he makes about how he feels a connection to Shou-Lao is a great moment of character development, showing that he’s started connecting to the Iron Fist legacy in a deep, meaningful way. The fact that it’s presented as being a bad thing makes very little sense. Being the Iron Fist requires being comfortable using the Fist. And yes, it is possible to go overboard and misuse the power. 'Cause a key part of the philosophy of martial arts is learning when not to fight. And we do have an example of someone misusing the power this season: Davos. Davos is the one who is out of control, not Danny. The most we see out of Danny is the occasional combat high. He’s still new at this, and he’s still learning control, and that’s part of the journey, not a sign that he shouldn’t have the job. Danny doing more badass stuff with the Iron Fist is a positive development, and I hate that it wasn’t presented that way. Raven Metzner has implied that this concept was developed to justify Danny giving the chi to Colleen– but considering that Colleen has an actual combat addiction, as shown with her participation in illegal cage matches back in Season 1, the whole thing needed more work.

Speaking of narrative issues, the end of Season 1 didn’t do enough to set up Joy's motivations for her revenge quest, and Season 2 didn’t do much to fill that storytelling gap, which weakened her arc. Her motivations make perfect sense, but the sheer depth of emotion behind them needed more development. I mean, the way things go, the writers have Danny and Ward just leave Joy behind after she was hospitalized AGAIN for nearly dying and they don’t bother to call or check up on her. This is becoming an unsettling trend with Danny who didn’t bother to go see Joy or ask how she was after getting shot and bleeding to death. And she’s supposed to be “important to him” as Colleen proclaimed in 2x03, his childhood friend.

Which brings me onto a related issue: why was Danny only focused on saving, forgiving and obsessing over Davos? What about Joy? Y'know, Joy, who Davos had been conspiring with this whole time? Joy, whom Danny had more screentime and story build up with in season 1, compared to Davos? I was really looking forward to this emotional Danny vs Davos/Joy conflict. But thanks to Metzner it got cut down to an average hero/villain B plot between Danny and Davos. What a waste. It had all this potential to be something gut-wrenching and heartbreaking but instead it was just shoved aside for no reason.

Danny generally seems to just assume Joy is fine - he doesn't realize she's falling into the dark side, he doesn't internalize the warning flags Ward informs him about, and he doesn't understand how involved she is with the Davos situation.

Then when it becomes clear she's not fine, so many bad things are being thrown at him that involve Davos that he doesn't have much time to think of her specifically.

I'm not sure what they will do with Joy next season. I didn't really like her character or the acting all that much, just be done with her. Now I wouldn't mind seeing Davos come back, however he does I think he makes for a decent antagonist.

Most likely exploring the relationship between her and Mary (or Walker) more.

My issue is that Colleen proclaims to the audience in 2x03 that Joy is “so important to Danny”. Yet besides maybe the first couple episodes, the show needed to do more than just pay lipservice to that notion. The dinner episode was the perfect jumping point for these characters. It would've been nice to show more on Danny’s end; empathy, anger, pain over her betrayal or even forgiveness and determination to save her much like he wanted to save Davos. A little hate would’ve been fine too. Just any sort of thought process that indicated to me he was at least thinking about Joy like she was thinking about him all season. Instead, Danny basically takes off after Joy nearly dies and is hospitalized again and he doesn’t feel it necessary to confront or reconcile with her. He’s restrained from almost all emotions and feelings towards the bad situation going on with Joy and instead primarily serves as a cheerleader to his girlfriend and former K’un Lun brother. Not even Finn Jones could give this script more depth that it should’ve been, that’s how bad he was undermined in this.

Just imagine the writing potential that we could've gotten if the writers had properly adapted the Danny vs Joy & Davos plot for the season. Imagine how emotional, powerful, gut-wrenching and heartbreaking it could’ve been. This was supposed to be an EPIC showdown between Danny and two people he loves. A hero versus two of his best friends from different parts of his past. We could’ve had flashbacks that explored the foundation of these relationships, to be shown why these bonds were so important to him. That cliffhanger in Season 1 between Davos and Joy really got me excited for this storyline. Teased it to be a big angst ridden roller-coaster. Instead, it's reduced to an average hero/villain B-plot between Danny and Davos while Joy is just collateral damage.

Danny and Joy deserved the same respect and care they got in the first year. Joy deserved better than to just be there to elevate Davos, and Danny deserved better than being used as a prop for every other character. Scott Buck wasn't perfect in writing the first season. But at least he cared about the characters including Danny, and didn’t just focus his bias on one of Danny’s relationships during that whole year. Metzner could have done more. Perfecting the action does not create substance in storytelling or character development; it's just a distraction, and even seasons prior to Iron Fist season 2 have proven that people are willing to forgive subpar storytelling if there's action beats sprinkled throughout (like Daredevil season 2).

Something just occurred to me. Remember how the boss of the Hatchetmen told Ward that Hand zombies kill their loved ones first? Does that mean that Harold actually liked Kyle?

Yes. I mean, he spend his whole time with him and was his only human contact outside Ward for years.

I am martial arts movie nerd, so instead of talking about things I have no idea about, I comment on the fight choreography.

The second season is technically better, emphasis on technical, than the first. There are no confusing cuts and no shitty shaky cam, but it still has a glaring and obvious problem, a lack of direction and purpose.

When it comes to fight choreography, style is substance and vice versa. I think that is very important rule, if not the most important. A good fight has not only cool moves, it also has a narrative, it expresses the tension and conflicts of the story and characters, whether external or internal, through body movement (poetry in motion). There is a reason many think Chinese martial arts choreography looks like dancing, because (duh) it arose from Chinese operatic and theatric traditions.

The fights in Iron Fist may look like "real" fights, but they have no style, no flair, no personality. Every single bout merges into the same bland and try-hard "realistic" rumble of a mess. This personal observation can be better phrased through following simple questions:

1. What fighting style or school of martial arts are being used?

2. What is the personal signature move of each character? (besides punching harder with a glowing fist)

3. Has anyone a preference for a weapon? If so, what kind of weapon and what style?

No one sticks out of this sea of sameness with the exception of Colleen and that is by virtue of her having a sword, which is for me not enough.

For example, Colleen was raised and trained by her grandfather in Japan, which is one of the reasons why she has supposedly a better lid on her emotions than Danny, so why did the producer of this show not expressed this by letting Colleen fight in a traditional Japanese style like Jujitsu and Judo. By using throws, joint locks and grappling holds she could subdue her opponents without too much harm in the spirit of Aikido. If you want to add striking and kicking to the mix, why not use a hard hitting Karate style like Shotokan or Kyokushin to emphasis her rigid but disciplined upbringing. The show clearly liked emphasising Colleen's sword skills, why not give her a wooden stick to allow her to perform moves without cutting like modern Filipino martial arts.

They are so many missed opportunities in this show, but the biggest disappointment are the last sons of Kun Lun themselves. Why are Danny and Davos, who were trained as the best warriors of a hidden and isolated magic city, not utterly unique in their fighting styles (and if someone was really cheeky they could have named the style Sinanju)? They also could have gone the route of the Jet Li movie The One, where the bad guy used Xingyiquan (a linear aggressive style) and the protagonist used Baguazhang (a circular soft style) to characterise the two brothers.

Edited by FictionAddiction on Sep 24th 2018 at 3:13:20 PM

I've heard that Aikido is a rather impractical fighting style due to it focusing too much on not hurting your opponent while subduing them. This would be a pretty poor method of combat for a member of the Hand.

As for the fights not being as theatrical as Chinese martial arts films. We are talking about people who are trying to seriously hurt - and in some cases - kill each other. They aren't aware they're characters in a tv show so why would they care about putting on a show?

Because it is a show, whether they're aware of it or not. And if you'd hired people based on their martial arts skill on this martial arts show in the first place, then you could have started off building towards that, instead of just spending another season getting them to a base level of competence. It's not great, I can't really remember most of the fights other than the Sun Chamber and Mary shooting at people, but it's enough to make it an actual action series. They earned back enough of my goodwill that I hope they do go full pulp adventure series with Orson Randall.

Sadly I have heard of Sinanju, yes. The adventure begins.

Edited by Unsung on Sep 23rd 2018 at 11:22:54 AM

Honestly, I don't care either way. The realistic style fits more the setting and the other Netflix shows, but I think they could have gotten away with something more stylized in this case.

Finally finished the season. I liked season 1 but this is a pretty unilateral improvement in just about every way.

I'm really digging all the plot hooks at the end; Iron Fist Colleen, Danny's chi-powered pistols and road trip with Ward, the promises of seeing Orson Randall and Bloody Mary in the future... I really want to see where this is all going. Season 3 should be great, but I actually kinda want to see Typhoid Mary migrate to one of the other shows; she'd fit well in Daredevil (obviously), Punisher, or Jessica Jones.

One thing that's been bugging me; One-Eyed Sychophant dude with the little red notebook. I never actually caught his name, and can't find him on any casting lists. Is he a comics-canon character? I feel like he's gotta be, with his distinct look and relative importance, but my Iron Fist knowledge is too weak to recognize him the way I did Orson Randall's name.

Edited by Anomalocaris20 on Sep 23rd 2018 at 12:10:56 PM

Chen Wu. As far as I know, he was just one of the few named Golden Tigers from the comics, who were a gang from the early issues. The notebook thing feels like a reference to something I should recognize, a Heroic Bloodshed movie or something. Nothing's clicking, though.

I just call it his Little Red Book.

Heh.

Didn't find what I was looking for on Enemies List, but I did add Chen Wu to the list of examples.

I think they mostly made such a deal about the note book because it actually gave him a lot of power. He was the henchman, but in a lot of ways he was deciding who Davos should attack.

For some reason, I actually liked that guy. Sad that he got killed off.

He was entertaining. I like how he started off as a coward just trying to save his own ass and then gradually became a genuinely-indoctrinated psycho who enjoys ferrying Davos from place to place and genuinely wants to help.

Holding that list and threatening to add people's names to it really did give him a lot of power; he could basically just drop Davos off at any doorstep he wanted and let carnage unfold, no questions asked. He was like the pilot of a bomber plane carrying nuclear payloads.

Edited by Anomalocaris20 on Sep 24th 2018 at 2:43:43 PM

He also had some basic level of decency at first, with him objecting to Davos slaughtering a bunch of junkies.

Whether a fighting style is practical or even fictional has no impact on the matter of making a choreography enjoyable or not, what matters is the depiction of characters, the themes and conflicts through motion. In fact, I listed the other sibling styles like Judo and Jujitsu as alternatives and their names are literally translated as "soft way"/ "soft art", but there is nothing gentle about them in execution or application (being thrown on the street is not a pleasant experience nor being held in an armbar).

I mean no offence, but people these days are focusing too much on realism in any piece of fiction to the point of bringing the whole act of criticism in the first place ad absurdum. After all, we are talking about a TV show about superheroes punching bad guys with a glowing magic fist as hard as a car crash.

The reason I mentioned Chinese opera and theatre, besides 70s Kung-Fu movies being the obvious inspiration that led to the creation of Iron Fist, was to allude to the act of singing and dancing in modern western musical movies. The fight in martial arts cinema has the same status as the song/ dance in a musical, it is the emotional focal point of a narrative act or character arc in a genre that is defined by exaggerated, larger than life broad strokes. I mean, if a musical uses the same kind of sounds and moves for every occasion, it is kind of weird, right? The same applies to Kung-Fu cinema and its ancestor the Wuxia literature, who are just as exaggerated, larger than life as musicals.

The problem Iron Fist has, is a kind of martial arts version of "Show, Don't tell" ergo "Fight, Don't talk". And by fight, I mean move stylish, show off your personality, express your emotions through "poetry in motion". In other words, cinematic fight choreography is not separate from acting, it is a part of acting.

Here is an 7 minutes long video analysis of the fights of "The Grandmaster" to clarify my arguments: https://vimeo.com/204443343

To be honest, I am just disappointed by the mediocrity of the action in a show, where its selling point is the action. I mean, this personal favourite "amateur" choreography from 6 years ago delivers a better duel between rivals than the brief bouts between Danny and Davos.

I mean, it can also be argued that any attempt to bring realism into fiction these days is also met with a knee jerk "why are your ruining my fun" argument.

Netflix's Iron Fist, like all the other Netflix shows, is about taking fantastical situations and grounding them in a real world context. And I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a show where the martial arts is the focus to have characters using practical methods of fighting. Just because it has martial arts in it doesn't mean it has to utilize it the exact same way as Chinese martial arts films. The characters' personalities and emotions are expressed in different ways.

Bringing grit and realism into fight choreographies still does not excuse making a frenzied, mixed bag of punches and kicks without distinguishable flavours.

I have nothing against grounding various fighting styles in their "true" applicable form. In fact, I would love to see this more and one of my favourite martial arts movie is Kuro-Obi (Black Belt), a movie that did exactly that to Karate. Here is the first fight of the movie:

From the brief bout you already know the personality and character of the two main protagonists Taikan and Giryu. The very first words spoken in this clip even spells out the theme of the movie through Funakoshi's famous "golden rule": "Karate ni sente nashi", which means there is no first "attack" in karate ("sente" translates to "initiative" - in this case "aggressive initiative"). The fight then shows the central conflict through the clashing personalities of Taikan and Giryu.

You seem to have mistaken me for implying that the so-called "Chinese way" is the better one, no I do not think that way. I referred to Kung-Fu movies to illustrate a point, an universal one, with a example that most people are familiar with. My point of view is, that Iron Fist does not express their personalities or emotions in a different, "western way" of choreography, but they fail to express them at all in a fight.

For example, Danny is losing his grip on his temper in the second season due to the addictive nature of his power fist. Instead of punching steel doors for his personal happy fun time in the closet, why not foreshadow that plot point by having him behave increasingly aggressive, cruel and sadistic in combat, whenever the glow comes out. Of course, this works even better if you had something to contrast it with, like for example, a fight choreography style that depicted Danny as calm and collected person like the first 25 seconds during this fight in Matrix Reloaded.

They do that very thing in the first episode of this season. This is his first line of the season, after he stops the robbery: “You saw what this can do. So apologize, before I break your face.”

Edited by windleopard on Sep 25th 2018 at 1:21:33 AM

I know, I come off as a nitpicking prick, but Danny did not exhibit some increased aggression (or any personal change) during the fight (I did not see him breaking bones or doing other permanent scarring things). He uttered a threat verbally after the fighting was done. In other words, this scene actually supports my criticism (Fight, don't talk).

That's a start, but they could've gone further. They certainly showed that side of the character in the first season. The idea that you can show a person's character not just by the fact that they fight, but by how — I'm not sure why you're arguing so hard against it. It's called fight choreography for a reason — it is a kind of dance. It's body language, and it doesn't have to come at the cost of realism. Daredevil looks gritty and brutal, but it's very heightened in its own way. Good fight choreography can make things look realer than real, because Reality Is Unrealistic and naturalistic fighting doesn't necessarily translate all that well unless every performer is just that good, which... well, it would be nice, but come on.

Edited by Unsung on Sep 25th 2018 at 3:50:24 AM