Friday, August 11, 2017

Frank's Rant on Iron Fist


We meant to post this with the notes, but here it is by itself instead. Frank has some pretty strong feelings about Iron Fist, but despite that he's still hopeful about Defenders.


This is supposed to be about a dude with magical fists of iron and we hardly get any of that. Daredevil is getting his ass kicked like every episode. Jessica Jones isn’t throwing cars around constantly, but at least when it isn’t showing her fighting or her powers her character and side characters were interesting and her series gave us plenty of time with the villain. Even Luke Cage has some brilliant moments early on showcasing bullets bouncing off of him. What the hell Marvel?

Madam Gao is one of the coolest villains in Daredevil season one and in this series, where she's a natural fit they barely spent any time with her. Upping the stakes in the series doesn’t mean adding more bad guys half way through: DD season 2 did it, Luke Cage did it, and now Iron Fist and it did it so poorly! You’ve already got two potentially fascinating villains in Gao and Harold, why the hell throw Bakuto in there? If it was for the twist, that’s fucking lame because it was goddamned obvious it was going to happen. You have all this potential and you fucking wasted it because for whatever reason the show runners thought it would be more entertaining to focus on running a business/hostile takeovers/ and corporate moralizing than the potentially kick ass characters and their depth.

The first three or four episodes should have been one. Bakuto should have been introduced sooner (or better left out completely). Madam Gao and her network should have had way more screen time than they did. There’s some good here. The series picks up decently by episodes 6/7, but fuck me running! That’s half way through the series! If your series isn't interesting to watch until halfway through, then maybe you should have started the plot and development closer to that point.

This is depressing. There was so much potential here, but there are many problems: too few fight scenes, uninteresting dialogue, characters whose arcs are barely speed bumps, and not enough focus on the truly interesting characters or worse yet waffling with them and then trying to do all the interesting shit with their characters right at the end. I hope this get’s one more season, not because it was good (it’s tolerable, I will probably watch it again before the Defenders) but because I want to give the creators one more chance to repent for what they gave us with this.

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