Amph Marvel's Iron Fist

I've been reading all the comments in this thread and thing that stands out, or rather doesn't stand out is the martial performance of the title character Iron Fist. I don't recall anyone stating how amazing or awesome the kung fu fighting by Danny Rand is in this series, which is sad considering this character was born out of the 70s kung fu craze when even disco had a kung fu track, "Everyone was kung fu fighting. Those kids were fast as lightning."

The Hand in this series reminded me of the Foot Clan in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flick; just mostly kids wanting to be something more.
However, there have been alot of positive feedback for Colleen Wing. The actor that played her should have been Danny (aka Danielle) Rand. She's definitely more skilled at martial arts and has a more captivating screen presence. Finn Jones could have played Collin Wing.

 

I have 2 episodes left to go, and its all so confusing. I have no idea what Danny's motivations are to do anything. And he's so dumb. Hey let's go take on an entire organization. I just walk up to their door, knock, and kill them. Really? And then what? He knows he's the sworn enemy of The Hand but doesn't seem to know why and he doesn't care either. Its so stupid.

 

Yeah, they wrote Danny as annoyingly stupid. They deviated a lot from source and almost all of it was ill-advised. In the original comic Danny went through the Iron Fist trials to gain the power to take revenge on Harrold - he left K'un-Lun with the intention of killing the man who killed his parents, and he knew he was going into a fight. That all made sense. What we saw on the screen was a mess.

 

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

I think she's older than that. In this she said she spent most of the 17th century being tortured.

Also, in DD S1, didn't it imply she flew away, straight up in the air when everything went south?

 

Madame Gao is a such a tease. There was a memento where I thought she was going to lay the smack down and reveal herself in some epic way like this:



But, nope. Nothing. What a tease.

 

well I just got to the end of this . have to say it got awfully repetitive and dragged out , every episode he was complaining that someone was betraying him , what a whiner .

you know - after a while it reminded me of Dallas - all that shenanigans about whose running the company and backstabbing soap opera .

it seemed like they had enough story for maybe 6 eps and just had to drag it out .

also - couldn't these superheroes actually fight some crimes ? I mean I'm kinda wishing that they'd go back to the old format : set up your hero then each week he has to bring someone to justice , stop a bank robbery or something !

.

 

yeah I just finished this. I'm rewatching Daredevil S2 by comparison... and everything in Daredevil feels real and consistent. Well, if not real, truthful. Iron Fist is... not that. Lots of bad fake martial arts, but little from the supposed Iron Fist. Lots of bad, fake boardroom scenes. Bad dialogue.

There's a moment in the second episode of S2 of Daredevil where Matt assures Karen he's fine, and she says "you know that never works, right? It never assures anyone". And you think, fair call. It never does. Compared with Frowning Face #3 and discussions on his qi, yeah. This was not a great show.

However...

 

I finished with the show just the other week. I liked it, i'm surprised I actually place it third - Luke Cage going to fourth position. While the leads (Finn and Henwick) were ho-hum, I liked Pelphrey and Denham quite a lot (to such a point they were series highlights). But I felt the show started to make the hand less compelling.

 

I finished it yesterday. It was disappointing, and underwhelming at best. Discussing with a friend of mine at work, and he had the perfect analogy: it's the Star Wars Prequels. Poor direction, under-developed characters, burdened by the weight of expectations, really bad pacing, terrible villains who are villains "just because", the only characters I really care about are characters we already had in the universe (Claire and Gau) and a few really cool fight/action scenes that have you geek out, but are really inconsequential at the end of the day.

The poor writing never got better. Ward never got better. Danny never inspired me. There is very little I can find to give accolades to this show for, to be honest. If it wasn't leading into Defenders, I wouldn't have made myself watch it.

 

I'm hoping Danny suddenly becomes cool in The Defenders with the different group of writers.

 

Just finished it myself.

Danny goes from naive, all loving, fish out of water, Buddha hipster hero to just an idiot who flips the angst switch on and off every five seconds. He came off as a bit like Anakin Skywalker, and obviously that's a bad thing. Apparently the mean face is the extent of Finn Jones' acting ability.

The power of the Iron Fist itself is implemented very poorly; it's a plot device that works exactly as the plot demands. It's very frustrating. Too convenient at times, inconvenient at others. On, off, on, off. Like he'll have it just long enough to break his opponent's weapon, and then suddenly it's gone. There are lots of times you wonder why he doesn't just summon the Iron Fist and smash people. Too easy? Then up his opponents. Sad, because the first time it shows up, when he punches his way out of the hospital, it was a pretty awesome tease. It had been fairly and believably limited at that point by the drugs being forced on Danny. They should have been more consistent with it. Something like Avatar: TLA handled Aang's avatar state with far more skill., it's essentially the same thing.

I think the biggest problem with Ward is the actor, he overplays everything and always looks like he's trying to give himself a ruptured aneurysm.

I didn't enjoy Wenham's hamming at all.

Colleen is one of the show's few bright spots early on...unfortunately the romance felt almost completely out of nowhere to me, and her loyalty was made trivial when The Hand decides to kill her. It removes any choice. With the romance, it's like they realized the corporate plot was boring and just went in a completely new direction, without going back to set it up. Maybe they didn't have time to fix it. It was as if they were writing it on the fly. Jessica Henwick was great in the first few episodes, after the romance she just becomes a swooning love interest. She lost her edge.

Jessica Stroup gives a very natural, unaffected performance as Joy. Can't say I was pleased with where she was in the finale. I'm aware of what went down in the comics, but I hope the finale was misdirection, because her motivation should be the exact opposite.

It's kinda funny how Rosario Dawson acts as the audience surrogate throughout her appearances, she exists to point out how stupid the characters are.

There are a few cool moments. The Drunken Master guy. Bride of Nine Spiders. Though we never get the costume, which is a pet peeve of mine. It's just a weak show with too few moments worth watching. I gave it a thumbs down.

Maybe they should have just went with a tournament arc.

 

Finished the series yesterday. I don't have a giant mad-on for the series that some people have had but I do agree it is the weakest Marvel TV effort so far. The biggest bobble is each of the Netflix shows, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage have a distinct mash-up hook that makes them unique. Daredevil is law/crimefighting, Jessica is noir detective / superpowers, Luke Cage is urban crime drama / superpowers. Iron fist goes for Kung-Fu/Corporate intrigue and the last part is where it falters, quite a lot, where I just wish they had gone more kung fu / superhero instead.

But I do like a bunch of stuff in it, Danny Rand is written as a bit of an idiot but I think that' intentional and I like Finn Jones in the role, especially his fluidity of movement, you can see in the early episodes. He does seem like a kid who was trained to be a weapon and even in the way he moves he seems somewhat otherwordly. It does annoy me how much he says "but I'M Danny Rand!!" in those first 3 episodes. The dialogue is definitely on the basic side but the way I see it, it's a Kung Fu movie, they aren't exactly great dialogue exercises, and when the action does kick in (which is, annoyingly, only once per episode) I do think it works. I especially think episode 6 when Danny fights a bunch of randoms with wacky powers in a warehouse was awesome, the drunken fighter guy brawl was great, and even though the usage of the Iron Fist itself is inconsistent the final episode did have a big Iron Fist boom. I am disappointed we don't see Danny fight a dragon, though. You say he fought a Dragon to become the Iron Fist, I wanna see him fight a freakin' dragon.

Joy and Ward are pretty "yikes, this is bad" mostly, although Joy becomes better as the season goes on. I don't think Ward ever gets better although I did like him being all strung out. (and his kid flashback in episode 1 to him saying "Danny's being a problem" made you hate him off the jump, probably the most hissable thing he did) Harold goes a longgg way to saving the baddie / Meecham plot because I thought the actor was hilarious and hit the right note of crazy over the top kung-fu movie camp. Like him smashing in some Hand goons teeth with a jaunty "hi Ward!" when he walks in, or him post-resurrection not knowing what water and hot dogs are which he comes fully back over the course of about 30 minutes.

Henwick I think is great, I just love everything she does in the show and it really helped out when Danny got a bit mopey (which he did a lot) to just have Collen just around. Decent twist with her being the Hand as well. Hogarth's small role was great, especially when Danny mentioned that Harold came back to life and she snaps "Okay, that is something you never say out loud ever again"

So, yes, I do like quite a lot of stuff about this although there aren't many "wow moments" that pop like the other shows and the dialogue is somewhat rote, not exactly many scenes that had you tense because of simply acting and writing, which the other 3 series can do. But now Danny's got his Iron Fist on, here's hoping he's cooler, cuz he can be. Certainly don't have this white hot rage that some audiences had which I find befuddling, though.

Anyway I realllllyyy wanna see Heroes for Hire with Iron Fist and Power Man, dangiit! They're both right there!

 

Agree with everything you've said. I'd put Iron Fist and Luke Cage as the weakest ones so far. I'm enjoying The Defenders more than those two. Daredevil is still the best, Jessica Jones second. I'm yet to see The Punisher however.

 

Well, I suppose it can't be worse than season 1.

 

I am the immortal iron fist - hold my beer

 

My biggest problem is I really disliked Danny. I don't know if it was the character or the actual portrayal. He was just so much weaker than the other three Defenders. I don't know that it can be rectified.

 

That's the issue. We're not getting Heroes for Hire. We're not getting Daughters of the Dragon. We're getting Iron Fist Season 2.

 

Danny was one of the most likeable heroes in the comics. Stoic and upbeat, and usually seeing the best in others. The writers totally mauled the character, and he was one of my favourites.

As a kid I would never have foreseen that in the year that saw both Iron Fist and Legion getting tv adaptations, Legion would be awesome, whilst IF would be painful dreck. The series needs a reboot in the worst way.