Amph Marvel's Iron Fist

But... vow of chastity. Floor sleeping.

No credit for his honour there?

 

Well, the next season villains for each of the Netflix shows:

Spoiler

Defenders will deal with the Hand and whoever Sigourney Weaver really is.

Daredevil, I can see Fisk getting his revenge on Matt pretty cruelly. Those who read comics, know what I'm hinting at. But also, a third season will most likely see Bullseye arrive.

Luke Cage will have Shades and Mariah as the king and queen of Harlem's underworld. And now Diamonback can return as Luke's obvious shadow archetype: half brother with same power but evil.

Iron Fist season 2 villains, I already mentioned.


Jessica Jones is a lot harder to pin down. Nuke, Trish's ex, is still loose. But how much of a threat is he to Jessica. Though since Jessica Jones season 2, immediately follows Defenders, her series might deal with that series' aftermath.

 

Ok, just finished the fourth episode. While it hasn't destroyed the series, some of the dialogue showing its age and shoe size correlation with lines such as:

"The hand are like the illuminati...only real!" - shrewd 50 year old billionaire who was calculated enough to convincingly stage his own death...apparently.

 

So after much thought, here's where I think the mistakes were:

Spoiler

So Daredevil opens with Matt's accident. Jessica Jones shows us the flashback of her accident. We got the whole episode with Luke's origins. But Danny? That plane scene over and over again and some brief flashes of monks. And one shot of him getting beaten by a stick with his head shaved. And then another of him before confronting Shou Lou and one after.

But never do we see Danny TRAINING to be the Iron Fist. We have the moment when he's fighting Madame Gao's trainers and the Thunderer is lecturing him. But that's not the same as actually seeing Danny in K'un Lun. We never get any attachment to the place or the people. We don't see what Danny does. Why? Because all we see are reasons to leave. We don't really see any proof that Danny is better/worse than any monk there.

Compare that to the multiple scenes of Matt's childhood, losing his father, meeting Stick, training with Stick, and meeting Foggy. And with Jessica's trauma, how much more did we get about what Kilgrave did, we also saw Trish's abusive childhood and her friendship with Jessica develop after Jessica protects her. Luke gave us the Church scene and his time in prison. Again for Danny, we got the plane. Over and over again. How many times did Heather get sucked out of that plane? And what did we learn?

BUT, as bad as this is, nothing beats the awfulness of not developing Meachum. We were treated to wonderful flashbacks of Fisk (a rabbit in a snowstorm), Kilgrave had tons of time dedicated to what caused his powers, and then we got plenty of backstory for Cottonmouth and Maria and they did give us some info for Diamondback as well. But Meachum? We hear he looked the same as when he died (only healthier). And Gao doesn't really age. So then, why couldn't they SHOW us scenes of Harold and Gao meeting? Why couldn't they show us scenes of Wendell and Harold actually being business partners and butting heads? There's a part when Harold talks about being on the roof of the building and wanting to push Wendell to his death. Why not sure us that scene? One character is from that time period. The other allegedly didn't age since his death.

And why in the world do we see Meachum hit that punching bag, even to the point of rupturing it, only for Danny and Meachum to never trade blows and instead resort to a gun?

The issue with this season was the lack of show don't tell. We were given far too much exposition and shown very little. We could have even gotten some young Colleen and Hand Academy (or whatever they call it) to tie in with the rest. Instead, we watched Heather get sucked out of the plane a few more times.

 

I have finished 8 episodes and after the last one (China) the show is really testing my patience. Sad!

 

Fixed.

On a serious note, though, that was a thoughtful analysis.

 

Yeah, stuff like that really sticks out when you compare it to the other Netflix shows.

Lack of K'un Lun flashbacks, besides budget constraints, is no excuse.

 

I never read Iron Fist, so what angers me the most is, after watching 9 episodes you can tell this series probably had the most potential for awesomeness and they totally blew it.

 

The half boiled origin story and the repeated flashbacks and "I just want to talk" moments of the first couple episodes were my main complaints about this otherwise fun show. The fight scenes drastically improve, Finn Jones as Danny is pretty likeable in my opinion (what others see as privilege or entitlement, I sort of see as innocence and naivety), and I actually enjoyed the sort of Ayn Rand influenced corporate sub plot. Won't go into much analysis besides that, but the show was fun enough if not superhero masterpiece quality like The first few shows.

The show has potential. Cut down on episodes in season 2 to up the budget on remaining episodes and fully embrace the weirdness of the Iron Fist mythology.

 

Finally got around to watching the last episode. This was a lightweight series in a heavyweight contest - the other Netflix series made up for their lack of action sequences by solidly grounding their characters in their gritty, low-rent surroundings; Iron Fist and his mythology was ill-suited this approach. After having waited so many years to see him on-screen this really hurt. The Iron Fist property deserved better than this.

Finn Jones gave a very early-Keanu-Reeves-style performance. He was actually better than I thought he would be, but he still was not strong enough to compensate for bad creative decisions, and the minimal training time allowed did not help his fight-scenes. I don't see why they didn't give him a mask so they could sub in a stunt-man more easily? Then again, even when they were using a stunt-man the action scenes were still lacklustre, so perhaps this project was simply too much for this creative-team.

There were some things I liked about this - Jessica Henwick was good, Tom Pelphry's Ward Meachum was interesting, and David Wenham was kind of fun as Harrold, but not really threatening enough to be THE villain of the story; but overall this felt rushed and under-budgeted.

 

sam kriss

 

As much as I loved JJ, I honestly don't think she needs a second season. If they really want to do one (which it's clear they do) I'd say do a prequel season focusing on her superhero days and her early interactions with Kilgrave.

 

Too late. They just started filming Jessica Jones Season 2 today

 

Just finished episode seven and i'm a little confused over one thing:

Spoiler

Gao.

In Daredevil, it is clear that Gao represents her own interests while Nobu represents The Hand. Unless i've forgotten, when was Gao representing The Hand? Especially since she's Chinese and The Hand are a Japanese group of warriors.

 

This is something that's asked time and time again across the internet and probably in this very thread. I think they changed their minds about who she was between Daredevil and Iron First. It's awkward writing.

 

In that case...i'm starting to get on board with some of the criticism because that is both lazy and ignorant on the part of the writers. I still like the show, but I spent this entire episode trying to connect the dots thinking that i'd overlooked something or simply forgotten something from Daredevil. Perhaps it will be addressed in The Defenders.

 

Yeah. No doubt Ward ended up having the best overall arc, which is surprising.


Truthfully, I think that series showrunner Scott Buck could identify more with Ward than he ever could with Danny.

Unlike the other showrunners: DeKnight with Daredevil, Rosenberg with Jessica Jones and Coker with Luke Cage.

Hopefully we get a better showrunner for season 2.

 

Spoiler

I thought in Daredevil Gao said that she came from somewhere very far away, suggesting one of the off-Earth extra-dimensional cities of the IIF mythology. I can't remember the exact words but it definitely seemed that she was saying that she wasn't from anywhere you could get to using air-miles. I think the Iron Fist writers changed that with their Hand factions.

 

Nope, according to the actress, Madame Gao is from

Spoiler

K'un Lun but she's like 400 years old. And has been in the normal world for a while now.

If you're familIr with the comics, the rumors are she's either Crane Mother or a substitute for Master Khan.