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Netflix Iron Fist


Zylek

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this show isn't any more awful than Luke Cage, but it's easily the most generic damn thing ever produced by the MCU. this feels like a product of the early 2000s where the producers are ashamed of/afraid to embrace the comic book elements of a magic Kung Fu dude who beat up a dragon. i get why the critics hate it. i hate it. 

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 Yeah, I'm 3 episodes in and so far it's... eh. They're way too afraid to embrace the magical aspects, so we're just left with the local Hipster from Uni who took a Yoga class once. The choreography is slow, the cinematography is bland, the writting is cliche, everything is just... mediocre, at best. If you want to do an iron Fist show, do an Iron Fist show. Not Daredevil 0.5 but with a few differences. Hogarth was the best part of the last three hours, and Harold is entertaining. Jones ain't bad, but the writting is just... ugh...

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6 hours ago, Kostisfire said:

 Yeah, I'm 3 episodes in and so far it's... eh. They're way too afraid to embrace the magical aspects, so we're just left with the local Hipster from Uni who took a Yoga class once. The choreography is slow, the cinematography is bland, the writting is cliche, everything is just... mediocre, at best. If you want to do an iron Fist show, do an Iron Fist show. Not Daredevil 0.5 but with a few differences. Hogarth was the best part of the last three hours, and Harold is entertaining. Jones ain't bad, but the writting is just... ugh...

But don't you just love all the thrilling corporate espionage?!?! 

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Did you think the first Iron First story was not going to include a lot of stuff about Rand Corporation? It's a major question that needs to be resolved so of course it's going to be a huge part of the season. This show has plenty to criticize but that one I don't get.

After downgrading my expectations I've found the show to be decent 4 episodes in. It's obvious they just don't have the budget to bring us K'un L'un so they keep it in short flashbacks. You can probably get away with that in this story, later on it could be a real problem. Fight choreography is definitely way below the level of Daredevil and it does make Danny look slow too often. The elevator fight in fourth episode was a little more interesting so I have hope there might be a few fights that stand out by the end.

The whole thing definitely feels like Marvel is just getting this show done instead of finding people that were really passionate about the project.

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Just finished season 1.  I enjoyed it, I'd say some of the fights scenes were good and some really lacked (3 part trials).  Kungfu is a totally different style than what DD uses so I expected it to not be the same but cadence was too slow for some of them.  I really liked Colleen Wing and hope we'll see her and Misty team up.

Again I don't know why they have to say "the incident" and the "the green guy" instead of battle of New York and the hulk, but those are just vocabulary differences.  Why oh why can they just throw in one dang skyline shot with Avengers tower in it?  You'd think they could just reuse something from one of the MCU movies or something.

I also didn't think the pacing was as bad in the second half like Luke Cage.  I was really expecting some sort of short snippet on Defenders after I finished the last episode but alas nothing.

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 So I'm at Ep.5 now, and it's getting better. Honestly, the main problem is that they don't the budget to do the mythos justice, and Iron Fist without the magical aspect just isn't anything special. It's why the Fraction/Brubaker run worked and is the most succesful one. It told a mature story with corporate intrigue, but it didn't erase all the mysticism, if anything, it expanded upon it. 

 My honest opinion is that they should've tackled a more grounded character first, and left Iron Fist for later. Seriously, there are tons of street-level characters, and they chose IF, the guy with undead ninjas, Dragons and Mystical Cities for the first wave? Granted, they went for a "lighter" first act, so I guess that's why folks like Punisher, Blade, Moon Knight and the like were left for the Second and Third phases, but IF just can't be done on a budget. They could've instead used Shang-Chi, who's in the same vein but without the tons of magical stuff. Iron Fist could've been alluded in Shang's series, gotten an appearance in the Second Season and then gotten his own spin-off, like Punisher. That way people become familiar with him, the Asian characters comes first so the controversy is non-existent, and the budget likely increases. This was just a poor decision.

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Legion on FX has shown what you can do with a limited tv budget if you pick an interesting creator to run your show. Iron Fist was screwed when Marvel television decided to hire Scott Buck, the guy famous for running Dexter into the ground in the later seasons. This show just feels so much like a product of a producer who was too afraid of the "comic book silliness" and tried to water it down as much as possible. 

Edited by suicidewatch
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Scott Buck is probably mediocre but I doubt anyone is going to be able to do both extensive location shooting in NY and a significant amount of action in K'un L'un with the budget they have available. I'd be surprised if that changed for any of these shows in later seasons. Daredevil got very positive reviews and they didn't change their approach in a second season so I don't know why it would be different with any of the others.

Kostis, did you actually write, on purpose, that Shang-Chi would have been a better choice? That seems a bit crazy. I can't see how that show would have been much better, plus we'd lose out on Danny and Luke teaming up.

After finishing I'm reasonably satisfied with the series. Sure, it could have been better, but it's nowhere near the trainwreck so many of those early reviews suggested. The back half is definitely stronger and it doesn't suffer from the lull around episodes 8-10 that some of the other series have had. Weaving the Hand into the Iron Fist mythos could have been done in a less heavy-handed way. Colleen Wing is much better than I expected. The fights improve a little though they're never anything all that special. There's just a bit more K'un L'un by the end so overall I don't think the more fantastic elements get underplayed much more than they did in Daredevil. I hope this gets another season because I'd like to see what they could now that the origin story is out of the way. And if they improved some of the talent behind the lines that would hurt either.

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12 minutes ago, stack32 said:

Kostis, did you actually write, on purpose, that Shang-Chi would have been a better choice? That seems a bit crazy. I can't see how that show would have been much better, plus we'd lose out on Danny and Luke teaming up.

 Iron Fist obviously has more material to draw from, but considering they didn't have the budget to do it properly, they should've just used Shang and got done with it. They would've gotten their Kung-Fu hero, the controversy wouldn't exist, and by keeping IF for a later phase, they'd probably be able to secure a bigger budget. Sure, we'd lose the PM/IF relationship, but I'd rather get that later, or not at all, rather than a botched IF show. I'm on Ep.6 right now, and I'm actually mad at what they did to the rest of the Immortal Weapons. It is improving the more I watch, but they're disregarding most mystical elements, which results in a 2000-esque CBM which is afraid to embrace its roots.

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Maybe it's because I'm not at all familiar with Iron Fist, but I thought the show had a fair amount of mysticism. K'un-Lun doesn't get a lot of attention, but what we did see of Danny's time there was interesting. The first half might have been too focused on Rand Enterprises, but the second half, in my opinion, does a very good job of including the mystical elements of the character's mythology.

I also don't really understand the issues people had with the pacing, it seems fine to me. The fighting doesn't seem as good as it was in Daredevil, but it's a different thing, so I'm not sure it's fair to compare them. At times, Danny was irritating and childlike, and the Meachum family drama dragged on a bit too long, but that's more of a flaw in the writing than the acting itself. However, the Hand was very good, as was most of the acting, particularly Colleen Wing and "Danny's friend" (I can't remember how to make spoiler boxes).

I can't say I see why this show was as panned as it was. It's far from perfect, but I'd say it's on par with, if not a bit better than, Luke Cage. I hope the negativity won't prevent it from getting a second season.

Edited by BuffaloDelorean
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13 minutes ago, BuffaloDelorean said:

I can't say I see why this show was as panned as it was. It's far from perfect, but I'd say it's on par with, if not a bit better than, Luke Cage. I hope the negativity won't prevent it from getting a second season.

Because some of the reviews didn't focus on the actual good points that Kostis is making, they focused on how Un-PC it was for a white guy to lecture an Asian on Chi and martial arts which kinda seems more racist than what they're calling the show -shrugs- but these are the times we live in. I too hope it doesn't keep it from getting a second season but honestly I think it could be tied into a LC season 2 for just a Power Man and Iron Fist Series. Then keep JJ on her own for her second season then in phase 3 do heroes for hire. 

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33 minutes ago, BuffaloDelorean said:

Maybe it's because I'm not at all familiar with Iron Fist, but I thought the show had a fair amount of mysticism. K'un-Lun doesn't get a lot of attention, but what we did see of Danny's time there was interesting. The first half might have been too focused on Rand Enterprises, but the second half, in my opinion, does a very good job of including the mystical elements of the character's mythology.

 I'm not the biggest IF fan around, but the show is mostly based on the Brubaker/Fraction run, which I've read two times (albeit a while back), and it's the one vol that really created a whole mythos around Iron Fist. I've finished Ep.6, and I'm just gonna comment on the mistakes I've found thus far:

Spoiler

-In the books, the Tournament is between the Seven Capital Cities of Heaven, one of which is K'un-Lun. Each City sends forth their champion, and they, well, fight. Brubaker used that and introduced the Immortal Weapons, spanning very memorable characters, most notably Fat Cobra & The Prince of Orphans. One of them is also the Bride of Nine Spiders, which got turned into a bloody chemist for the show. The guy with the sword was probably Dog Brother #1 and the other two... just nobodies. So they took a major part of the book, and turned it into a plot-point so minimal, that it's insulting.

-We get to see none of K'un-Lun, and from what I've heard, Shou-Lao is just a pair of eyes. Really?! A pair of glowing eyes?! Also, couldn't they at least build a small set, for the main square or something? All we see is Danny sitting on a bunch of mountains in front of a green screen, and IIRC, a faraway shot of the city. That's just bollocks.

-Claire is shoehorned and she becomes more unbearable by the second. Danny, the supposed Immortal Iron Fist doesn't know how to handle Hand ninjas, but Claire "I hanged around while Daredevil was beating them" is somehow the expert? I also read that she takes one of them out using some claws... Yes, I know they're fodder in the books, but Claire is a damn nurse with some training by Coleen. She shouldn't be handling Ninjas, period. Not to mention the whole "no killing" thing which becomes unbearabe, from what I've heard.

-The costume. Ugh, the costume... Yeah, he's still "finding" himself. Yeah, okay. So when he found himself, couldn't he pull out his ceromonial suit from a dusty chest or something and wear it? What, is he gonna go to Melvin in Defenders and say "yeah, I kinda want a costume... make it green & yellow. And add a bandana/mask... for some reason". Making it be a ceremonial robe would've been the perfect way to excuse the cheesiness, but now they've somehow got to explain why he'd wear such a silly mask, with strands of cloth flying around, which can prove lethal in a fight.

 It's just that it all feels like a bunch of scenes from a 2000s CBM. It's a type of "Oh yeah, Doctor Fate has a cameo. No, he's not a sorcerer, he reads tarot cards at the local fair" situation. Sure, they alluded to both Orson & Wendell's past, but considering how "faithful" they've been to the mystical stuff up until now, I'm not holding my breath. Comic-Book IF is knee-deep in mysticism, but the Netflix version is just a clone of Daredevil, mixed with an average episode of Suits and some "wink, wink" nods. 

 To be completely blunt, I'm more interested in Ward & Harold than anyone else...

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I think you're going way too far if you're assuming the Hand challenge is a complete replacement for the Tournament from the comics. Yes, there's a shared character, and that character is disappointing. The writers may have taken some inspiration from the comics although the basic idea seems awfully common in the martial arts genre. Anyway, I can't imagine that episode would stop them from using the idea later if they wanted to; the real problem is there's no way to do a satisfying tournament between the Immortal Weapons on anything less than a major movie budget.

Also, there is a bit more mythology before the end, so it might be a good idea to finish before going full flamethrower on the adaptation.

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49 minutes ago, Kostisfire said:

 I'm not the biggest IF fan around, but the show is mostly based on the Brubaker/Fraction run, which I've read two times (albeit a while back), and it's the one vol that really created a whole mythos around Iron Fist. I've finished Ep.6, and I'm just gonna comment on the mistakes I've found thus far:

  Reveal hidden contents

-In the books, the Tournament is between the Seven Capital Cities of Heaven, one of which is K'un-Lun. Each City sends forth their champion, and they, well, fight. Brubaker used that and introduced the Immortal Weapons, spanning very memorable characters, most notably Fat Cobra & The Prince of Orphans. One of them is also the Bride of Nine Spiders, which got turned into a bloody chemist for the show. The guy with the sword was probably Dog Brother #1 and the other two... just nobodies. So they took a major part of the book, and turned it into a plot-point so minimal, that it's insulting.

-We get to see none of K'un-Lun, and from what I've heard, Shou-Lao is just a pair of eyes. Really?! A pair of glowing eyes?! Also, couldn't they at least build a small set, for the main square or something? All we see is Danny sitting on a bunch of mountains in front of a green screen, and IIRC, a faraway shot of the city. That's just bollocks.

-Claire is shoehorned and she becomes more unbearable by the second. Danny, the supposed Immortal Iron Fist doesn't know how to handle Hand ninjas, but Claire "I hanged around while Daredevil was beating them" is somehow the expert? I also read that she takes one of them out using some claws... Yes, I know they're fodder in the books, but Claire is a damn nurse with some training by Coleen. She shouldn't be handling Ninjas, period. Not to mention the whole "no killing" thing which becomes unbearabe, from what I've heard.

-The costume. Ugh, the costume... Yeah, he's still "finding" himself. Yeah, okay. So when he found himself, couldn't he pull out his ceromonial suit from a dusty chest or something and wear it? What, is he gonna go to Melvin in Defenders and say "yeah, I kinda want a costume... make it green & yellow. And add a bandana/mask... for some reason". Making it be a ceremonial robe would've been the perfect way to excuse the cheesiness, but now they've somehow got to explain why he'd wear such a silly mask, with strands of cloth flying around, which can prove lethal in a fight.

 It's just that it all feels like a bunch of scenes from a 2000s CBM. It's a type of "Oh yeah, Doctor Fate has a cameo. No, he's not a sorcerer, he reads tarot cards at the local fair" situation. Sure, they alluded to both Orson & Wendell's past, but considering how "faithful" they've been to the mystical stuff up until now, I'm not holding my breath. Comic-Book IF is knee-deep in mysticism, but the Netflix version is just a clone of Daredevil, mixed with an average episode of Suits and some "wink, wink" nods. 

 To be completely blunt, I'm more interested in Ward & Harold than anyone else...

 

-For the first point, I can see how that would be disappointing if you liked the comic, but it isn't really a flaw in the show. I thought the "bloody chemist" was legitimately creepy.

-I don't think the fact that they didn't show K'un-Lun is really an issue. It's definitely because of the budget, but at no point in the show did I feel like K'un-Lun was missing. I like the way they kept the place mysterious, but obviously YMMV.

-Claire (is it really a spoiler that she's in this?) didn't seem shoehorned into the plot. Her actions make sense, and her presence is essentially explained in Luke Cage. I wouldn't say she was unbearable. There were a few grating scenes, but it wasn't too bad. I don't think Claire was saying that she knew how to handle the threat, more that she technically had more experience than Danny did to prove a point. I don't remember her doing something like that, but IIRC besides a few lucky hits she mostly hangs back and lets Danny and Colleen handle them. The "no killing" wasn't really bothersome, it's only really major in one scene (although that sentiment is somewhat frequently voiced by non-combatants). It's no more prominent than it was in Daredevil.

-This one I do agree with you on. I've seen all but the final episode so I was hoping he'd put on a robe again at the end, but I'm not surprised that he doesn't. Still, I don't think the costume will be too hard to justify. All he really needs is a reversed version of what he wore in K'un-Lun (which could tie into him accepting being Danny Rand and the Iron Fist instead of one or the other) along with a mask, which, a) would be in the same style as Matt's first costume (so there's precedent), and b), would be easily justifiable since Danny's a public figure, so he'd have a reason to hide his face.

I can't speak for the "2000s CBM" thing, but I didn't know Doctor Fate had had a cameo in a movie. What was it?

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6 hours ago, BuffaloDelorean said:

-For the first point, I can see how that would be disappointing if you liked the comic, but it isn't really a flaw in the show. I thought the "bloody chemist" was legitimately creepy.

-I don't think the fact that they didn't show K'un-Lun is really an issue. It's definitely because of the budget, but at no point in the show did I feel like K'un-Lun was missing. I like the way they kept the place mysterious, but obviously YMMV.

-Claire (is it really a spoiler that she's in this?) didn't seem shoehorned into the plot. Her actions make sense, and her presence is essentially explained in Luke Cage. I wouldn't say she was unbearable. There were a few grating scenes, but it wasn't too bad. I don't think Claire was saying that she knew how to handle the threat, more that she technically had more experience than Danny did to prove a point. I don't remember her doing something like that, but IIRC besides a few lucky hits she mostly hangs back and lets Danny and Colleen handle them. The "no killing" wasn't really bothersome, it's only really major in one scene (although that sentiment is somewhat frequently voiced by non-combatants). It's no more prominent than it was in Daredevil.

-This one I do agree with you on. I've seen all but the final episode so I was hoping he'd put on a robe again at the end, but I'm not surprised that he doesn't. Still, I don't think the costume will be too hard to justify. All he really needs is a reversed version of what he wore in K'un-Lun (which could tie into him accepting being Danny Rand and the Iron Fist instead of one or the other) along with a mask, which, a) would be in the same style as Matt's first costume (so there's precedent), and b), would be easily justifiable since Danny's a public figure, so he'd have a reason to hide his face.

I can't speak for the "2000s CBM" thing, but I didn't know Doctor Fate had had a cameo in a movie. What was it?

-Creepy or not, it's cheap. It's like using, say Nightcralwer, but instead of having him teleport, he's just such a dark shade of blue "that he can hide in the shadows". It's cheap, and it undermines a huge plot point of the series it's based on. The relationship between the Seven Capital Cities of Heaven was at the forefront of the book, and was used to really expand the mythos. But now, one very important aspect of the IF lore is just... gone. And for what? A 20 minute "mini-tournament"?

-Nah, she was shoehorned. In all of New York, she stumbles into yet another street-level hero with ties to the hand? It's a common complaint everywhere I've been, really. Be it the MCU or Defenders subreddit, comicvine, CBR, etc, etc. She was added to apparently "ease in IF into the world of the Defenders", but she really undermines the already underwhelming Iron Fist. This supposed living weapon, who had been training for 15 years non-stop with magical/alien monks, gets his butt handed to him by nameless mooks, and needs the help of an ordinary nurse and mental pep-talks, to really get talking. Still, it's not so much a fault of Claire, as much as it's a fault of the screenwriters not selling me on Danny being this absolute beast and harbinger of destruction. He's Daredevil 1/2 with some chi powers once every blue moon.

-The "no killing" thing is irritating because this isn't Daredevil. Iron Fist was trained to be a Living Weapon, he's not just some crime-fighter who wants to clean up his city like Daredevil. All Iron Fists have killed, and will kill, it's what they do. Past IFs fought entire armies, because that's their duty. I've not reached that part yet, but from what I'm told it gets really "in your face", so I'll reserve judgement.

-Most CBMs pre the MCU were afraid to embrace their roots, and instead gave us shitty excuses and small "nods" to the source material. Not to mention the black leather they all loved. See "Keanu Reeves as John Constantine", "Leather Fetish Bullseye", "Lex Luthor Von Doom", "Cloud Lak Tus" and so on and so forth. The Doctor Fate thing was just an analogy, it never happened.

Edited by Kostisfire
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