Iron Fist

[@PLUGO]

Check out Jessica Henwick's cage fight -

[GeneChing]

back to the comic...

IRON FIST #1 Packs a Mean Punch This March – Your First Look!
By Roger Palmer - February 23, 2017 0

This March, prepare for a hard-hitting, fist-flying, high-octane epic as Danny Rand faces a gauntlet of deadly kung-fu masters in the all-new IRON FIST #1! Creators Ed Brisson (Bullseye) and Mike Perkins (Deathlok) put the titular hero through the wringer as he squares off against foe after foe – each more lethal than the last!



Danny has always straddled two worlds – Earth and the mystical realm of K’un-Lun. Now, with K’un-Lun in ruins, he’ll question his place in both more than ever. The chi fueling his fists is wavering, yet still he fights on. Fighting to prove his worth, he’ll push himself to his breaking point. But a bigger battle than he can handle may have found him first. Whisked away to the mysterious island of Liu-Shi, he’ll come face-to-face with the fight of his life! With nothing but his fists and his feet, the Immortal Iron Fist will step into the ring with the island’s deadly Seven Masters! Each possessing mystical power and each with their own vendetta against the Iron Fist, what hope does Danny stand against the Bull, the Bear, the Eel, the Rabbit, the Rat, the Snake and the Wolf?!

A trial of mythic proportions awaits, True Believer. Fists and feet will fly when IRON FIST #1 comes to comic shops and digital devices everywhere on March 22nd!

IRON FIST #1 (JAN170951)
Written by ED BRISSON
Art by MIKE PERKINS
Cover by JEFF DEKAL

Variant Covers by MIKE PERKINS (JAN170954) and ALEX ROSS (JAN170952)

Hip-Hop Variant by KAARE ANDREWS (JAN170955)
Alex Ross Black & White Variant Also Available (JAN170953)

FOC – 02/27/17, On-Sale – 03/22/17

[GeneChing]

Finn Jones Leaves Twitter After Discussing Iron Fist / Whitewashing Controversy
Posted by Dan Wickline March 6, 2017



On Sunday, actor Finn Jones engaged in a discussion with Asyiqin Haron about his casting as Danny Rand in the upcoming Marvel’s Iron Fist. The show is being accused of whitewashing, or casting white actors in non-white roles. One of the most classic examples is the casting of Mickey Rooney as Audrey Hepburn’s Japanese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, another being Lawrence Olivier as Othello. There are many, many more examples including Scarlett Johansson in the upcoming Ghost in the Shell. Though, in the case of Iron Fist, the character in the source material is white, but there had been a vocal presence pushing for an Asian-American to be cast.

Things started when Jones re-tweeted a post by Riz Ahmed with the message: “representation is important. and here’s why.

Follow
Riz Ahmed ✔ @rizmc
Here's speech I gave @HouseofCommons in full. Forget 'diversity' we need REPRESENTATION. Or things fall apart. https://www.facebook.com/rizmc/video...4393155118997/ … RT
6:01 AM - 3 Mar 2017
2,144 2,144 Retweets 3,382 3,382 likes

He was responded to by Haron, creative director for Geeks of Color. The response started with her asking Jones, “are you for real?” Though she didn’t expect him to, he actor responded, pointing out that while the main character stayed true to the source material, the show incorporates and celebrates actors from all different backgrounds. Now I would post the back and forth directly from twitter, but after the discussion was concluded, Jones deleted his twitter account. Haron made screen captures of the discussion and posted those images.

.@mercedesknights pic.twitter.com/MItyG8hWUz

— AsyiKinney �� (@AsyiqinHaron) March 6, 2017

This discussion, like the casting of Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One, is a bit tougher than the more blatant examples like Ghost in the Shell. Where casting Johansson does seem like whitewashing, if you listen to Scott Derrickson’s commentary on Doctor Strange, a lot of though went into the Swinton casting including trying to avoid playing to stereotypes. When it comes to Iron Fist, Marvel chose to stay with the source material and Jones took a roll that could make his career.

What we ended up with is a civil discussion between two people that disagreed on the topic. It didn’t turn into name calling or hate speak. How that ended up with Jones leaving twitter and Haron being harassed for her views is a problem unto itself.

We were talking about representation in the Iron Fist series but people are interpreting it as me harassing him. I was being respectful. https://t.co/dolG0gEcpH

— AsyiKinney �� (@AsyiqinHaron) March 6, 2017

Nothing will ever get addressed if we can’t at least talk about it.

I would be more impressed if Jones didn't run away. Who deletes their twitter accounts in the face of scrutiny nowadays? And over this? He's going to be Rand?

[sanjuro_ronin]

Ah, so much sand, so many vaginas.

[GeneChing]

THR's review just dropped...ouch.

'Marvel's Iron Fist': TV Review
12:01 AM PST 3/8/2017 by Daniel Fienberg

'Fist' full of doldrums. TWITTER
3/17/2017

After the successes of 'Daredevil,' 'Jessica Jones' and 'Luke Cage,' Marvel and Netflix have their first big misstep.
After three straight creative successes, three above-average character introductions, the partnership between Marvel and Netflix was due for a dud.

This isn't to say that Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage have been shows without flaws. Marvel or Netflix's insistence on doing 13-episode seasons in a format that demands no such rigidity has left each of the shows feeling strained at different points. Each show, though, has had virtues of tone and aspiration that made it feel like a complicated superhero TV code had been cracked.

Debuting on Netflix on Friday, March 17, Iron Fist feels like a step backward on every level, a major disappointment that already suffers from storytelling issues through the first six episodes made available to critics and would probably be mercifully skippable in its entirety if it weren't the bridge into the long-awaited Defenders crossover series.

Finn Jones stars as Danny Rand, heir to a multi-billion dollar business empire. Long thought dead after his family's plane crash in the Himalayas, Danny returns to New York City looking merely to reclaim his identity, but old pals Ward (Tom Pelphrey) and Joy (Jessica Stroup) Meachum have ascended to the top of Rand Enterprises and they aren't eager to accept that the unkempt, shoeless stranger is the Danny Rand they lost 15 years earlier.

It goes without saying that Danny isn't exactly the Danny who left. He's spent his time receiving training in stunt-doubled martial arts and also racially and culturally drained Asian mysticism, which makes him prepared to face down, with the help of poor lighting and fast editing, the nefarious forces that view him as both a business threat to the new Rand hierarchy and a general threat to the evils encroaching on the city. Despite a hand that glows with supernatural power at seemingly random intervals and with entirely random strength, Danny can't do this alone, and he finds support in dojo owner Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick), a gifted fighter who still needs Danny to condescendingly explain spirituality and kung fu to her.

So many of the things that its Netflix-Marvel predecessors did well are lacking in Iron Fist, attributes that include:

Street-level authenticity. From Daredevil's Hell's Kitchen to Luke Cage's Harlem, these shows have thrived on location shooting in New York City, inhabiting neighborhoods and building characters that felt like they were spawned by their environments. Even if they were fictionalized versions of real parts of the city, they felt organic. For his wealth, Danny Rand is already instantly the least sympathetic of these new characters. His biggest decision in the early episodes is whether to accept a $100 million settlement or hold out indignantly for the slice of the company he deserves. Despite the austerity of his monastic training, his is a New York City of expensive brownstones and luxury apartments and, sadly, of uninterestingly designed opulence, as well as fleeting flashbacks to the Himalayas that aspire to neither accuracy nor flights of visual fancy. We may get an episode with real flashbacks eventually, but so far the mystical city of K'un-L'un is just styrofoam snow drifts that characters talk about while sitting around.

Subtext. Matt Murdock is driven by his Catholic guilt, Jessica Jones by traumatic assault and consent issues, Luke Cage by America's multi-century history of imperiled black masculinity. Iron Fist arrives in a deep hole amid concerns about its curly-haired, blonde protagonist appropriating Asian culture, but the bigger problem ends up being that he's barely even appropriating. There's no specificity to Danny's experience other than the most generic of identity crises — like the world needed another billionaire vigilante — and Jones is far too placid a leading man to give any sense of Danny's internal torment. He's not placid in a Zen way, just tepid like room temperature. Rather than being a man who found enlightenment through tragedy and disassociation from his upbringing, Danny comes across like a spoiled frat boy who took a comparative religion class and spends a few months picking up coeds by telling them he's totally into meditation and tai chi now.

A worthy adversary to our hero. The first season of Daredevil was elevated by Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk and the second season felt his general absence. David Tennant's Kilgrave was so integral to Jessica Jones that his presence became suffocating at times. Luke Cage worked best when Mahershala Ali's Cottonmouth and Alfre Woodard's Mariah Dillard were prominent. Iron Fist counters with petulant, spoiled Ward Meacham and the occasional domineering paternal presence of Harold Meachum (David Wenham), but the season's real villain is, I guess, The Hand, the organization that was responsible for the Too Many Ninjas monotony that eventually ran the second Daredevil season into the ground. An interesting bad guy with objectives central to the individual show feels important to the crafting of the hero, and Iron Fist/Danny suffers from the absence of exactly that.

With no single, well-performed adversary standing against Danny, showrunner Scott Buck and the writers are putting way more pressure on Danny and on Finn Jones than the character or actor can sustain. Jones, best known as Loras from Game of Thrones, finds no darkness in Danny Rand's internal struggle; the actor is actually at his best in Danny's occasional bits of fish-out-of-water corporate bumbling, which definitely aren't supposed to be the heart of the show.

It's unclear if Jones' lack of physical authority is dampening Iron Fist's ability to be an action show or if Iron Fist's lack of interest in being an action show has negated Jones' ability to display physical authority. For five episodes, Danny's fights are weakly staged and all-too-brief, without any effort to even pretend that the show's leading man is doing any of his own stunts. Danny's strength and his enhanced abilities are barely explained and inconsistently depicted, and an inordinate percentage of the early episodes is spent on Danny Rand, Generic Corporate Regulator, rather than Danny Rand, The Iron Fist. The sixth episode is the first time Danny participates in any sustained action, but even with renowned kung fu cinema aficionado RZA behind the camera, little in the choreography or presentation is memorable.

With all of the initial concerns about appropriation and the whitewashing of Asian themes at the center of the story, it isn't surprising that Henwick is exactly good enough to make you wish that Colleen Wing were the focus of the series. At the very least, her fight scenes are more convincing, even as she's constantly having her autonomy and areas of expertise second-guessed by a protagonist who looks like, and exhibits the urgency of, the missing Masterson brother.

The number of basic character archetypes missing in Iron Fist is baffling. There's no villain, but there's also no comic relief or voice of wise authority and well-delivered exposition. There's nobody you like spending time watching. Ward is whiny, and his every decision is worse, and less motivated, than the one before. Joy's skepticism toward Danny is well-earned, but too all-encompassing. Harold's circumstances are strange, but not compelling, and Wenham is part of at least half the cast struggling to hold onto American accents. Rosario Dawson's Claire Temple pops up and, after five seasons of four Marvel-Netflix shows, nobody has yet figured out what her role in this universe is other than "continuity."

Through six episodes, in addition to failing to introduce a main character I care about at all, Iron Fist hasn't given me any season-long arc/objective that I could describe for you, much less one I'm curious to see resolved — and that's before it hits that wall between episodes seven and 12 that none of the Marvel shows has been immune to. For heaven's sake, Iron Fist has already wasted the "Is our hero actually crazy?" gaslighting episode, a structural conceit that doesn't work when you ask the audience to question everything we think we know about a character before we actually know anything about the character.

With a big four-hero mashup allegedly unfolding out of Iron Fist, this misstep couldn't have come at a worse time for Marvel and Netflix. It's a good thing I really like Daredevil, Jessica and Luke.

Network: Netflix
Cast: Finn Jones, Jessica Henwick, David Wenham, Jessica Stroup and Tom Pelphrey
Creator/Showrunner: Scott Buck

Premieres Friday, March 17 on Netflix

[mickey]

Greetings,

There is very poor understanding of the Marvel Universe. It is completely nonlinear and is multidimensional. There can always be other representations and other arcs of Iron Fist.

One of the better show that played on TV was Quantum Leap. This show was very nonlinear and that was one of it's charms. I think it fared very well because of that

Within the Marvel Universe, there is opportunity for everyone.

mickey

[sanjuro_ronin]

Seems like the reviewer has no idea about the IF mythos or that "white washing" comment would not be there ( in Kun Lun there are all nationalities and Daniel was not the first white guy of course).
Also seems the reviewer had issues with Season 2 of DD with The Hand plot line that, according to him, sunk season TWO BUT according to everyone else I have spoken too about DD is what made season 2 better than 1 ( that and the Punisher of course).

Reviewer are entitled to their views and some of his comments SEEM on the mark from what I have seen on the trailer and spots BUT what they are not entitled to be is wrong about the FACTS of the story line or character.
He should have reviewed the story line in the comics if he wanted to address the issue of villains and history and supposed "white washing".

[GeneChing]

For me, this Iron Fist whitewashing issue is akin to what happened with Doctor Strange and what is happening with Power Rangers. With Strange, the original Ancient One character was a racist caricature. Marvel dodged the same bullet with the Mandarin in Iron Man 3. With Power Rangers, the original series was the ultimate whitewashing when you think about it, except for the Yellow Ranger. So how do you update that? With Rand, well, I didn't read the comic, but y'all kind of batted that around in the Iron Fist vs. Shang Chi - Who'd win?. Rand is a little like Kwai Chang Caine in the comic world - again it's whitewashing in the original source, but you must take into consideration the time in which it was originally distributed. It's quite different than Ghost in the Shell (but I am looking forward to that because I'd spend my celebrity exception on ScaJo and the trailers look cool). But as to loyalty of the MCU to the original comics, well, I'm out on that discussion - take away my nerd card there if you want.

I was in Hollywood yesterday on business and L.A. is littered with Iron Fist billboards. I saw at least three of them between LAX and my meeting there.

[GeneChing]

Iron Fist isn't just racially uncomfortable, it's also a boring show
by Kwame Opam@kwameopam Mar 8, 2017, 3:01am EST


David Giesbrecht/Netflix

With the debut of Netflix’s Iron Fist now imminent, Marvel is on the defensive. The studio is in an uncomfortable position: its three earlier streaming series, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage, all received plenty of buzzy reception ahead of their respective launches. But Iron Fist was met with scrutiny and criticism before it even went into production. That criticism centers mainly on the optics of a white man starring in a series rooted in Orientalist stereotypes, which collides directly with the ongoing conversation about the diversity in Marvel’s superhero properties. Given the company’s self-appointed position as a champion for inclusion in comic book storytelling, Marvel has had no choice but to meet the backlash head-on.

“There needs to be more diversity in television and film, especially for Asian actors,” series star Finn Jones told BuzzFeed last month. “With this instance in particular, what I struggle with and what frustrates me is that people are commenting on the headline without understanding the full picture, without understanding the full story.”

‘IRON FIST’ HAD THE CHANCE TO BE CURRENT AND RELEVANT

Fair enough, Mr. Jones. With any property that touches on the politics of the day, there really is a rush to judge its merits before it comes out, when patience might better serve the would-be critics. After all, Marvel has earned enough goodwill since Daredevil premiered in 2015 to hope that wrestling with its inherently problematic source material might give its latest series a charge, and make it current and relevant. The sad truth, however, is that Iron Fist is the weakest of Marvel’s Netflix series to date. As far as diversity, representation, and appropriation go, the series fails in a number of ways. But, over the course of its first six episodes, it also manages to fall short on basic levels like storytelling. Its creative laziness bankrupts the entire show. Marvel’s new series is a disappointing case study in studios needing to try harder to tell difficult stories well.



Spoilers ahead.

Iron Fist, created by Dexter writer Scott Buck, follows Danny Rand (Finn Jones), a Buddhist monk and martial arts master who vanished in a plane crash when he was a boy. Fifteen years later, he returns to New York City to reclaim his family’s legacy and its billion-dollar enterprise. Soon, he must face the Hand, the shadowy ninja organization first introduced in Daredevil — and the same threat he trained his entire life to defeat. The series is Arrow redux: a wealthy superhero caught in a web of corporate intrigue and dark forces must take down enemies linked to his past and newfound purpose. However, the show is unique among Marvel properties thanks to its focus on Danny as the titular Iron Fist, a supernatural kung-fu warrior and the mystical protector of the ancient, Eastern society known as K’un-Lun.

DANNY RAND IS THE SERIES’S CHIEF FAILING

Comparisons to other comics-based TV series aside, the story sounds compelling on paper. But Danny Rand is the series’s chief failing. Much has already been written about Danny’s status as a white savior. The title of Iron Fist doesn’t just make him a superhero; he’s the latest in a long line of protector warriors for his stereotypical Orientalist culture. That’s true to the character’s comics origin, as told during comics’ so-called Kung-Fu Craze of the mid-1970s. But the story doesn’t fly in 2017, so the show took some steps to correct that past, by making K’un-Lun at least nominally diverse. (Or so we’ve been promised. The episodes Netflix released don’t include any expository sequences in K’un-Lun.) However, the show never interrogates Danny’s questionable position. He’s still a privileged white member of the 1 percent drawing power from a fictionalized Asian culture, destined to save his corner of New York from evil. Given that he’s still the one person capable of taking up the Iron Fist mantle, it’s hard to decouple his whiteness from his elevated position.

But the show’s race problems are intertwined with other nagging issues. Jones, whose blandness in the role might be read as Zen-like in another, better series, is miscast as Danny Rand. We learn over the course of the season that he’s wrestling with his identity and the fear that he’s unworthy of his title. But Jones’ performance is lacking, and he can’t believably project the character’s inner turmoil. He fails to make Danny’s reality resonate. Daredevil’s Charlie Cox, while never exactly one of Marvel’s finest leading men, conveys an almost palpable Catholic guilt in his turn as Matt Murdock. Jones, by comparison, seems flat, lacking that crucial gravitas.


Patrick Harbron/Netflix

Worse, he paints an unconvincing portrait of a martial arts expert, which is the basic draw for a superhero show about martial arts. Yet again, Marvel devotes a whole hallway fight scene to its new hero, but instead of the bruising chaos that came with past Netflix series, Iron Fist gets a stiff sequence, complete with hatchet-wielding Yakuza fighters, where it feels like no one is in any real danger. To be clear: Iron Fist is a hero whose main power is punching people really hard. Buck and company have done a decent job of making Jones’ hand glow in the dark and punch through walls. But more often than not, Danny comes across as a college student come home from studying abroad, perplexed as to why no one gets his newfound love of yoga.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

THE SHOW IS HAMPERED BY FAULTY LOGIC AND BAD STORYTELLING

Jones certainly can’t be blamed for the show’s faulty internal logic, though, which has Danny, a born-and-bred New Yorker, walking into the midtown Manhattan office building he ostensibly owns dressed like a vagrant, then wondering why he’s treated poorly. The flaws are foundational. Danny has devoted his life to training hard enough to become the Iron Fist, which involved plunging his fists into the molten heart of an immortal dragon. And yet somehow he still has room in his life for self-doubt? Multiple scenes show Danny grappling with the hardship and trauma that came with living in K’un-Lun, as the show is ultimately about how he forges his own path. But the show tries to portray him as exceptional, while also exploring the theme of unworthiness, and the concepts never mesh meaningfully.

The rest of the core cast isn’t immune to the incongruity. Danny’s childhood friends Ward and Joy Meachum (Tom Pelphrey and Jessica Stroup, respectively) are the current head executives at Rand Enterprises. They’re disturbed when their long-dead friend returns to life (understandable, even in a city filled with superheroes). But Ward has Danny followed and attacked in the street, and Joy has him drugged and institutionalized, which the show insists isn’t a poorly justified overreaction. The Hand, represented by Daredevil transplant Madame Gao (Wai Ching Ho), is a compelling story element, since it represents a larger-than-life power in New York. That much shows in its influence over the always over-the-top Harold Meachum (300’s David Wenham), the former Rand head who lurks in the background with his own agenda. But any viewer investment in the group is lifted mainly from Daredevil, instead of being rooted in Iron Fist’s narrative. That isn’t inherently bad — the shows in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are linked, giving Iron Fist a chance to build on the Hand’s established mythology and explore how it works. But since we already know the organization’s true endgame is being saved for The Defenders, its importance to Danny’s solo series feels stunted, especially since his bid to win back control of his family’s company makes for a boring throughline for the series as a whole.


David Giesbrecht/Netflix

And then there’s half-Chinese, half-Japanese badass Colleen Wing (Game of Thrones’ Jessica Henwick), fellow martial-arts expert and Danny’s would-be partner in his fight against the Hand. Colleen is tough and intelligent, and Henwick gives her a grit that makes Colleen more watchable than her bland counterpart. But the series repeatedly undermines her in the name of establishing Danny as special. In the first episode, Danny breaks into unsubtitled Mandarin upon learning she’s a martial artist, apparently assuming Asian women he casually meets on the street are happy to speak Mandarin with a white stranger. Two episodes later, he mansplains kung-fu to her, all to better illustrate how she needs his protection. At no point does Colleen call him out for this. Instead, she reacts with little more than gentle bemusement toward his better handle on language and his skills as a fighter, when she ought to be kicking him to the curb.

‘IRON FIST’ IS A BORING, CONFUSED, AND OFFENSIVE MESS OF A SERIES

Recently, Finn Jones quit Twitter after getting into a heated debate about representation in general, and Iron Fist specifically. He returned yesterday to release a statement: “We have gone to great lengths to represent a diverse cast with an intelligent, socially progressive storyline.” In truth, whatever he, Scott Buck, and Marvel attempted in getting this series right doesn’t go far enough. The end result is more often a boring, confused, and offensive mess of a series, one that’s as bad at diversity as it is telling a story that superhero fans will enjoy. It lacks the impact it so desperately needed after the successes of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. And that’s a shame. Fans feared the worst when the series was announced, and all their fears came true.

Iron Fist premieres on March 17th.

The initial buzz so far is bad. If Netflix blows this, I will be so disappointed.

[GeneChing]

I'm preparing for disappointment. Hopefully all the reviews are fake news and I'll be pleasantly surprised. That being said, I'm going to leave that first review to you all.

Iron Fist review round-up: what does everyone think of Marvel and Netflix's kung-fu tale?
By Sam Prell 2 days ago



It's almost time for Danny Rand to join the likes of Matt Murdock, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage as a critically-acclaimed Marvel hero with a home on Netflix. Or is he? Review embargo for the show's first six episodes have lifted, and critics are letting their thoughts be known. And so far, Netflix's newest venture is receiving a bit less love than its predecessors.

The Verge on Iron Fist's casting of Finn Jones

"Jones, whose blandness in the role might be read as Zen-like in another, better series, is miscast as Danny Rand. We learn over the course of the season that he’s wrestling with his identity and the fear that he’s unworthy of his title. But Jones’ performance is lacking, and he can’t believably project the character’s inner turmoil. He fails to make Danny’s reality resonate. Daredevil’s Charlie Cox, while never exactly one of Marvel’s finest leading men, conveys an almost palpable Catholic guilt in his turn as Matt Murdock. Jones, by comparison, seems flat, lacking that crucial gravitas."

Nerdist on Iron Fist's pacing

"Iron Fist‘s biggest issue sits with the aforementioned dragging plot, and unfortunately, the victim who suffers most from it is Danny himself. When the show doubles down on showing the same flashback three episodes in, you start to wonder if there’s anything new you could possibly learn at that juncture. Given that all the other supporting characters are driven forward in the story by their choices and underlying issues, it appears as if Danny Rand, by comparison, is the only one standing still."



The Hollywood Reporter on Iron Fist's (lack of a) villain

"Iron Fist counters with petulant, spoiled Ward Meacham and the occasional domineering paternal presence of Harold Meachum (David Wenham), but the season's real villain is, I guess, The Hand, the organization that was responsible for the Too Many Ninjas monotony that eventually ran the second Daredevil season into the ground. An interesting bad guy with objectives central to the individual show feels important to the crafting of the hero, and Iron Fist/Danny suffers from the absence of exactly that."

Polygon on Iron Fist's fight scenes

"The fight scenes in this martial arts hero show are, well, bland. Nothing in these episodes approaches what Luke Cage or either season of Daredevil did by combining choreography, cinematography and emotional stakes into scenes that riveted the viewer. An entire episode about Danny fighting Themed Assassins was barely worth sitting forward in your seat for."

ScreenRant on Iron Fist's messy focus

"The presumption that the audience would care about a company as vaguely defined as Rand Enterprises, to the degree that an outsider assuming control of it would be of immediate interest, speaks to the issue of uncertainty by the writers in what the story of Iron Fist is really about. … Rand Enterprises … is a vaguely sketched monolithic empire; it represents nothing more than a want for a pair of secondary characters, since Danny’s interest in the business, or even knowledge of it, is nebulous at best. What’s most frustrating about Iron Fist throughout the first few hours is how the lack of definition surrounding Rand Enterprises extends to nearly every other aspect of the show."

Iron Fist season 1 arrives on Netflix on March 17, 2017. Stay tuned for GamesRadar+'s full season review.

[Jimbo]

TBH, even way back in early-to-mid-'70s, I never cared much for Iron Fist. For some reason (or various reasons) I never could get into the character or the comic.

IMO, they ruined Luke Cage when they teamed him up with Iron Fist in the late '70s.

[MarathonTmatt]

It would be cool to see some of the Valiant Universe on the Big Screen or having their own TV shows: Bloodshot, Eternal Warrior, Solar Man of the Atom, X-O Manowar, Archer & Armstrong, Shadow-Man, Rai and the Future Force, etc. I am a fan of those comics from the early-mid 90's, but haven't bothered to get into any of the newer stuff they are now publishing.

[sanjuro_ronin]

The 2000's version of IF was better than the 70's, of that there is no issue.
They could have gone there, but didn't.
It irks me that the call him a Buddhist monk when he is from Kun Lun.
I didn't expect great writing to be honest but they SEEMS worse than I though.

That said, it also seems the the vast majority of the issue is the "whitewashing" and lack of "diversity" and that is basically tainting the reviews ( a youtube reviewer pointed that out).

Look, lets be honest here:
Marvel had a choice to be TRUE to the character or make **** up and they decide to be true and are getting penalized, much like they do when they stray from the original stories ( ****ed if they do, ****ed if they don't).
I think they could have casted better and from some of the clips i have seen, more training would also have been better.

The reality is that IF has the power to be the most powerful defender ( outside of Doc, Strange) as the Immortal Iron Fist storyline tells us but it seems that Marvel dropped the ball on this part and THAT to ME is the worse part.

[GeneChing]

It'll be St. Patrick's Day. So if it sucks, at least we can all drink. <-note the Irish green.

I literally laughed out loud reading the Rolling Stone review below. As a self-identified Kung Fu Hippie, this is exactly the kind of journalism that reaffirms my love of Rolling Stone reviews.

'Iron Fist': Why Netflix's New Marvel Show Is a Kick in the Head
Latest addition to rapidly evolving Superhero-TV landscape feels surprisingly old-fashioned – and more of a miss than a hit


'Iron Fist' rounds out Netflix's superhero roster with a kung-fu hippie – Rob Sheffield on why this latest Marvel show is more of a miss than a hit. David Giesbrecht/Netflix
By Rob Sheffield
3 hours ago

A stranger wanders the streets of New York. To everybody, he just looks like another hairy, barefoot slob who got lost in the parking lot between sets at a Spin Doctors gig in 1992. The man walks into the Rand Tower skyscraper and claims to be the long-lost heir to the family's corporate empire. But everybody knows Danny Rand got killed 15 years ago, at the age of 10, when his parents' private plane crashed in the Himalayas. So who is this hippie dude with the mysterious power to punch through walls, jump over speeding cars and kick ninja assassins in the face? Is it a miracle? Or a scam? Danny can't seem to give anyone a straight answer, declaring, "If you wish to see the truth, hold no opinions. That's a Zen saying."
That's the starting point of Iron Fist, the first misfire from the Netflix galaxy of the Marvel universe. It takes place in a New York City where superheros are spreading faster than Starbucks' shops, on a network where Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Daredevil are already in full effect, with The Defenders and The Punisher on the way. It comes at a time when superhero TV is innovating at warp speed, to the point where men-in-capes fantasies are as multifarious as the rest of TV, too complex to get lumped together as a genre anymore. The show follows in the Netflix Marvel house style, a world away from other adaptations like FX's excellent new Legion or ABC's durable Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., darker and more brooding than the CW's zesty pop-flash squad of DC crimefighters like Arrow. It's also, unfortunately, way too tedious to keep up the pace. This hippie tool wouldn't last five minutes in a cage match with the Young Pope.
The secret to Danny Rand is revealed in the tattoo on his chest: He's the inheritor of the fighting legacy of the Iron Fist. When that plane crashed in the Himalayas, Danny was rescued in the snow by kindly Buddhist monks who raised him in the mythical city of K'un-L'un, training him in ancient martial-arts secrets and turning him into a noble warrior. Now he's returned, another orphaned aristocrat ready to seek revenge. The Rand Corporation has gotten mixed up with a global criminal empire called the Hand, and Danny goes up against them with help from local fight-club master Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick), who hides him in her dojo. So many scowling henchmen whose faces need kicking, so little time. But only Danny has the chi for the job. He also enlists lawyer Carrie-Anne Moss, who asks him a sensible question: "Do you have any money for new clothes? Because this homeless hipster thing isn't working for you."
Finn Jones, a.k.a. Margaery Tyrell's brother Loras from Game of Thrones, plays Danny as a case of a secret identity that might be just too well disguised – because he's so totally devoid of charisma, more cub than lone wolf. With his scruffy beard and dazed "who, me?" eyes, Jones could be one of the twinkling boy-men who populated Hollywood comedies a decade ago, except now the party's over and he can't understand why bad hombres keep trying to kill him. It might have been shrewd to play the hippie hacky-sack man-child angle for laughs – a kung fu avenger trapped in the body of a schlub from The Hangover Part IV: Return To Vegas. But Iron Fist has no humor either, so it ends up just looking like a superhero drama where they forgot to invite the superhero.
There are connections between all the Netflix Marvel shows – like Rosario Dawson, who returns as nurse Clare Temple. But unlike its urban do-gooder brethren, the series has no personality. Where Jessica Jones digs into sexual trauma and Luke Cage plays off the historic agony and glory of Harlem, Iron Fist's hero can't seem to muster any inner turmoil beyond the occasional harshed vibe. There doesn't seem to be much of anything going on his skull. His mystic Zen quotes go over like a Wayne's World set-up minus the punch line. Jones' Danny has a unintentionally comic way of walking away from a Daredevil-style combat scene with a hurt expression that says "Whoooa, I hate when that happens." In a perfect TV world, he'd get a Broad City crossover episode where Danny and Abbi have a romantic date with some cosmic brownies and Phish bootlegs.