(spoilers for the Iron Fist show and comics follow)
Well Lord have mercy, everybody's got an opinion on Marvel's Iron Fist. If you saw it trending on Twitter yesterday, you would have seen tweet after tweet of fanboys everywhere viscously defending Iron Fist from the evil critics. However, others doubled down, saying that even DC's TV shows on the CW surpass this Marvel offering.
And then there's me, who disagrees with everyone and everything.
I got up at 4 AM yesterday to binge-watch the series. After the first 3 episodes, I was loving it so much that I got cocky. "Iron Fist is great and Inhumans is in good hands." I commented that on 2 different CBM articles. I forgot to knock on wood.
In my defense, critics were given the first 6 episodes to watch and base their reviews around, and I still don't know how they came to the conclusion that they did. In my opinion, the first 5 episodes were the best of the whole show, with the 6th being pretty good as well. Episode 7 and beyond is when things start to get messy.
The Good
I cannot stress enough how much I love this cast. Everybody loves Rosario Dawson's Claire Temple, so her inclusion is always welcome—but the two leads Finn Jones and Jessica Henwick absolutely kill it as Danny Rand and Colleen Wing, respectively. They bring two great characters to life. I've seen a lot of people express angst over Jones' portrayal of Iron Fist—a little too naive, a little too childlike—but I've read enough interviews to know this was part of the story arc; instead of just giving us B, they wanted to show how he went from A to B. I for one actually appreciate that, as it gives more story.
(& while I'm at it, I'll go ahead and say that I am 100% aboard the Danny/Colleen ship. Before I started the show, I really wanted to see Danny wind up with Misty Knight; that has been thrown out the window. Danny and Colleen are perfect together.)
I also loved the Meachums; some people said they were boring and shallow, but I feel the opposite. Ward and Joy were 2 very intriguing characters and I'm already ready to see them again in the future. David Wenham's Harold Meachum was... unique? Interesting? Wenham did a good job portraying him, but he was definitely overused here. I particularly did enjoy the ending that showed Davos telling Joy how they can go about killing Danny; after 13 hours, this moment was earned. It was heart-wrenching, and it also honored the original Iron Fist comics.
In some of the initial reviews I read, many critcized the show's direction in examining corporations, or as Jeph Loeb put it the "one percent of the one percent," implying that the mystical elements were what drew fans to the property, not analyzing the upper class. I respectfully reject this. For one thing, this show needed to have a focus on New York City as it has been described as "the fifth Defender,"—NYC being just as much of a character as anyone else. I really enjoy that concept, and in my opinion the Wall Street focus worked; it was one of my favorite things about the series. However, though I loved it in season one, K'un L'un needs to become more of a focus post-Defenders as the "fifth Defender" aspect will already have been explored and established.
The Bad
I don't want to say it, ugh please somebody stop me from saying it............ he didn't use his powers enough.
When I started reading up on the original Iron Fist comics, I learned that this was actually canon; Danny couldn't channel his chi too much because using it took a toll on him. And I'm glad they kept this from the comics, but I don't like the extent to which this was adapted. Maybe making his hand glow up costs too much, but hell, at some point it just turns into blonde Daredevil. (I know Matt does mixed martial arts and this is straight up kung-fu, but still.)
Another thing that rubbed me the wrong way was all the changing they did with
Wendell Rand, Danny's father. They took away his rivalry with Davos and, presumably, his time spent in K'un L'un altogether. As much as I loved that in the books,
I can accept this change. Having the Danny/Davos rivalry be more personal helps the story. However, it's hinted that Wendell was taking his family to
China to search out
Madame Gao's heroin stash rather than searching for K'un L'un. I hope this is rectified in the future. Wendell's desperate search for K'un L'un comes from his time spent with
Orson Randall, the previous Iron Fist, and is an important part of the whole damn mythology. It needs to be canon.
It was disappointing—and I mean
really disappointing—that we didn't get the comic book costume or see
Shou-Lao the Undying, but I want to go a step further from there and talk about this show's struggle with the mystical elements as a whole.
Realistic vs Magical
The Marvel-Netflix collaborations have been pretty grounded as a whole. Purple Man wasn't purple, Hand ninjas didn't go up in smoke at their deaths, and MCU references as a whole are kept to a minimum. However, with Iron Fist we're talking about a property that isn't "grounded and realistic" at all.
What showrunner Scott Buck did here is one of the most bizarre contradictions: They kept much of Iron Fist's mystical backstory but refused to embrace much of the other mythology. Danny can be the champion of an inter-dimensional Heaven-like city, but the Bride of Nine Spiders (an IMMORTAL WEAPON from another one of the other Seven Capitol Cities of Heaven) needs to be a sexy lab scientist. Danny's powers are still gained from punching a dragon in the heart, but Zhou Cheng (this guy with a monster living inside of him who is tasked with killing every Iron Fist) is reduced to an alcoholic that knows kung-fu.
UPDATE: Apparently one of the fighters in episode 6 was supposed to be Dog Brother—another Immortal Weapon. Now I'm re-pissed. Why would they shit on our favorite comics like this?
I think the people making this show were afraid these elements wouldn't work in the corporate Wall Street world, but I would argue that they most certainly can go hand-in-hand. If it can work with Danny Rand—and it did—it can work with the other characters as well.
What's good about this is that pretty much all of the problems I found in this show can be rectified in future seasons.
The In-Between
I have no idea how I feel about Iron Fist's depiction of Davos, the Steel Serpent. Sacha Dhawan definitely makes Davos a badass, but his inclusion in this season not only feels a bit rushed, but the fight in episode 12 does not feel earned. We know there's tension and jealousy between the two, but because we only spend a few episodes exploring the dynamic, it just comes off as another cliche.
Anyway, there's no changing any of this now, so we can only hope that they do him justice in the future. With Iron Fist being so poorly received, it's unclear if we'll be getting another season or not. If we do, they definitely need to get a better showrunner to craft the story (Steven DeKnight, anyone?). Another option would be to turn Luke Cage season 2 into a Heroes For Hire team-up, and put Cheo Hodari Coker in charge. I feel like that would be great, and there's a lot of themes and character dynamics they could explore there.
My conclusion? Iron Fist isn't quite 17% on Rotten Tomatoes bad, but it had so much potential to be better.