Are we gonna be missing anything?
Season 1 was a sincere let down on so many levels. Casting, choreography, story, costume design, characterization, getting any single thing about the books correct at all.
Let's start with casting.
Casting:
Finn Jones and Jessica Hendwick are both not who I imagine when I think of their respective characters for a lot of reasons.
But mainly, they don't look the part.
Finn is just not Danny Rand. I don't mean his face...
Does this guy look like a martial artist in pique condition?
Marvel was also AWARE of this issue as they felt the need to get out in front of it by trying to get you to think of him as ripped as you can see with this tie-in book here.
This was the promo art they debuted at New York Comic Con before the launch of the show. We figured he would bulk up or train, or something. But apparently, he only had something like three months to get ready for the role. So, I could give them Leeway with that. Just cover him up all S1 and by S2 he would be trained up? But no.
{no idea why Luke cage and Matt Murdock's actors where selected pre jacked then?}
But when your casting someone to do brutal, big fights and a show like daredevil to live up to, you would think let's get someone who can do martial arts? Nope.
Finns big break out role was playing a very well acted but and non-physical character Ser Lorass Tyrellon on Game of Thrones who like most everyone on that show, gets killed. And at first that didn't seem like such a huge issue as Charlie Cox doesn't do the majority of his demanding stunts cause Daredevil has a mask. That lets his stunt double make Daredevil look amazing with no need for Charlie Cox learn to be an actual muay thai fighter. Then we learned there would be no mask...and the majority of the fights would involve Finn really needing to do his stunt work....and it didn't get better in season 2.
Jessica Hendwick has a similar lack of character similarity but, on this, I'm much more willing to be forgiving as Marvel had an issue up until recently drawing Asian people seemingly. Sooo her looking the part is not as pivitol to me.
That Aside, she gets a second pass but as she brought something to the role that Netflix left out when casting Mr. Jones. Ms. Hendwick can fight. Her last role was physically demanding and had her train in martial arts. Again, your most recent introduction to her before Iron Fist was probably her role as Nymeria Sand on Game of Thrones, where she played one of the Oberyn brats and we saw her mix it up. She took six months of training to play the part of the sand snake where she learned to properly use a bullwhip in fights so, at the very least, she is familiar with physicality and training and could play the part of a martial artist.
Since the show's announcement, it's faced backlash over not
Now there was a lot of heat about SJW's Demanding Danny be Asian cause a white guy using kung fu is cultural appropriation. Now in all fairness, Me personally, I didn't care if, for Netflix, they made Danny Rand Asian. I was fine if that happened. But i think this one decision, in particular, is a great example of why this whole show was so poorly run from start to finish. I'll be brief.
Towards the end of season one, Danny faces Hand henchmen Zhou Cheng a master of Zui Quan the Drunken Fist style. He is portrayed by Lewis Tan. Tan was considered to play Rand, in his short 8 minutes on screen he outclasses Finn Jones and Colleen Wing in every way. I personally thought this fight scene was hands down the best of the show up till the utterly stupid and nonsensical end.
Sadly this was Tan's only apperence in the whole series. He was never even brought him back? And there is foreshadowing in his first line that SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS IF HE DOESNT DRINK. We never see this. I was hoping we would see him again later in the series or season 2? I mean they fucking brought nuke back in Jessica Jones for Christ sake.
You might recognize Lewis Tan form his VERY SHORT recent appearance in Deadpool 2 as Shatterstar. His father was a Martial Artist and Fight choreographer, He has spent his life working on looking better than most of us AND being able to fight/preform violent ballet without hurting people. He's half Chinese and half British and could easily have been a ringer for Danny Rand that satisfied both Fanbois and Soybois.
Instead of shooting scenes around stunt doubles with their hoods up, Tan could have done all the work, he LOOKS like he could wield something called the Iron Fist. Fans would have been happy to have a Iron Fist who could preform martial arts and it would have satisfied the studio's guilt over SJW's screaming cultural appropriation. Well, probably not. They would have still lost their minds that he wasn't also an albino Eskimo who's pronouns where Blender/Blander and Xur but, the rest of us would have been fine.
Of course with the scripts we got it's prolly better for Tan that they passed. He has been doing well and is now gonna be appearing in Netflix's Wu Assasins.
The next part is the most head-scratching as it relates to the above and if done properly you could look past these surface level issues.
The Choreography:
actual trash.
Let's say you're doing a show about a martial artist. Not just any martial artist but, ONE OF THE BEST IN YOU'RE WORLD. You have a star who is, say, not the best at it? Wouldn't you want to choreograph scenes that hid that fact by having him fighting large groups with simple moves and lots of cuts? Distract from his lack of skill by making it look like fighting 20-30 guys takes nothing for him? Quick cuts to imply he is fast but really to cover up the lack of technique? Especially when we have ALREADY SEEN one guy fight 10-15 guys and it be VERY hard for him and do it all in one take?
You would think.
Instead the choreographer decided to have Mr. Jones take on bad guys one at a time like this is some Assassin’s Creed reboot? And to make it worse EVERYONE else on the show can actually fight, so when they did fight together, other actors had to go down to Mr. Jones skill level.
That being said, you didn't see much of that as per the choreographer, for reasons I'm still lost on, put very few fight scenes in. But worse still, The use of the iron fist, Danny's core power, mostly involved him doing a ground pound knocking everyone down for like 20 seconds. That's the Dreaded Iron Fist.
A very weak AOE with a 20-second stun.
A show like Daredevil was outclassing them in even their shortest fights.
Story:
The Netflix shows have done one thing right in their origins, Getting the story right. I don't mean being 100% accurate. I mean making the stories work. Daredevil Joins Matt Murdock as an established lawyer frustrated with the system and starting to consider doing the vigilante thing. We learn how Luke Cage got his powers in jail after being illegally experimented on and that he is debating how to use them for good or profit? Jessica Jones S1 debut deals with the Trauma her origin brought her. Not just in her guilt over what happened and surviving it but in how she chooses to handle her powers and the pain she goes through because of it. As well her surviving a horrific situation where she is held hostage for something like a year by the purple man in a physically and emotionally violent situation. Including being forced to kill against her will. Jesica Jones season one is right up there with Daredevil season one.
....Iron Fist be like "I'm Danny Rand, and I'm the iron fist"
We hear this endlessly, and we have Danny explaining it the whole series. But you're left wondering if Danny is insane or if its true? We never get the same kind of flashbacks or explanations of the origin we do in Daredevil or Jessica Jones. Or even just Danny Dialoging like Luke cage about the past, which Mike Colter does exceptionally well. When he talks about everything in K'un-lun even fighting a dragon the lines are delivered in an odd syncopated way that reminds me more of Don Quixote than a person trying to convince me they punched a dragon. Now you could say, well they are building up to S2 where we will visit K'un-Lun. So all this mystery is to build the lore up and they want you to question Danny's grasp on reality? But you would be wrong. As by the end of S1 we see that when Danny returns to K'un-Lun, it's gone and can never be returned to { Insert sad trombone}. How convent for the budget.
Instead the show is spent going over the corporate ownership aspect and plays more like "Rand Vs. The Mechums: civil case 14518" And what makes it worse is Danny is a total incompetent boob when it comes to business. I was really left siding with the Mechums. Danny is the best example of why wealth mostly stays in a family about one to two generations.
But it doesn't end at the business aspect. Danny seems like he's a dunce about EVERYTHING. They try to play it off as he was out of society so long and he is a country mouse. That he is Nieve. Or that the virtuous nature and values of K'un-Lun he was raised with are so simple and pure and different from our world that Dannys woke-ness makes him unable to stand by the evils we have become accustomed to accepting but his altruism also makes him vulnerable to being taken advantage of.
But it just comes off like Danny is stupid and thinks the answer to all questions is punching with really poor form. And by season two we see K'un-Lun as this screwed up backwords place where everything is about manipulation, child abuse and they don't care much about anything except K'un-Lun. Like Multicultural Wakanda. {cause although it's in Asia everyone there is not Asian. The dynamic would have been better if it was so awkward cause he was the only outsider}
This, in my mind, doesn't fall on Finn Jones totally. This is writing. The writers made Danny this way, and Mr. Jones just did what they asked of him and again, we really don't get much of Danny using the iron fist save ground slams once or twice even the Season 2 trailer is him fighting two guy...and instead of acting like Bruce Lee...He does a ground slam ...which is not really...that's not how it works.
Costumes:
This section will be really short as there weren't any. S2 we see a version of the traditional Iron Fist mask IN A FLASHBACK. That's it. That's your costumes. Moving on.
Characterization:
Where to start...
I'm gonna start with what I liked. The Mechums, (Joy portrayed by Jessica Stroup and Ward portrayed by Tom Pelphery) They were, for me, the most interesting part of the show. You got to see what was originally a powerful partnership devolve into mistrust and chaos. The performance by Tom Pelphery was amazing really the MVP of the season. Not to be outdone by Jessica Stroup. Seeing their alliance be slowly torn apart by Danny's reemergence and the meddling of the Mechums father was interesting and well portrayed. In fact, one reason I give Iron Fist such little praise is it didn't feel like the show was about the Iron Fist. I felt like it was about the Mechums. The show could have been better marketed if Netflix had just decided to make it Damage Control and have Iron fist be a pop in character. They were the standout performance in the season and THAT'S NOT GOOD.
I'm not saying this is like Daredevil Season one where Vincent D'onofrio's performance was on par with Charlie Cox's but more talked about cause villains usually aren't so complex and relatable. This is the Mechums were good and everything else sucked. And I'm sorry to the rest of the cast. As I said previously I put most of the onus on the writers. But the fact remains the same.
I pretty much covered Dannys flaws in the story aspect. so I'm not gonna restate them here.
Although I praised Ms. Hendwick for being physically capable to play Colleen Wing, her characterization seems flat on many levels. And it's not all on the actress. This is one of those prime examples of a writer saying " I need this Character to do X and I don't have a reason so I'll just make it vague and about emotions and call it complex"
The super-powered heir to a multi-billion corporation wants to work for Colleen Wing,{ why? I couldn't tell you} a non-super powered martial artist he just met. She rejects having a master of martial arts who's also a world-famous billion-heir teaching at her struggling Dojo? Why? I assume the show wanted me to think she was a strong woman who didn't need help but, it just makes her look either petty, stupid or jealous.
Next, we are shown that Colleen is chastising students for fighting outside of the dojo, but then She is involved in a fightclub? I assume to show you she is tough. Yet her reasoning is illogical. She says she needs money and is breaking her morality to keep the dojo going? But Dany has offered it to her. He has also offered to teach at her dojo which would bring in more students. A guy with a glowing fist teaching how to kick peoples asses would drive membership plus bring free publicity being he is a celebrity. The Mechums offer her money, but she has to do it " her way".
She has now been offered three separate ways to make money. One allowing her to say she didn't take a hand out in hiring Danny. She would have made a smart business decision, But no. She has to struggle on her own.
That's not how the world works. This isn't an 80's movie and she isn't some spunky protagonist. In reality, if Colleen was behind on her mortgage/rent she would sink into debt and within months the late fees and leans on her property would be too much. She would have to declare bankruptcy and be foreclosed on. Ruining her credit and chance of ever getting a business loan. When you are drowning and someone offers you a stick you don't swat it away and say you will drownd on your own power unless you have issues.
It would have been a better plot to have her struggle and either admit she needed help or lose the dojo and learn humility since her issue is trying to be strong enough on her own and being alone.
INSTEAD, they put this "you can't do it on your own" angle on Danny, you know, the guy who beat a ten-thousand-year-old dragon with his bare hands and has glowing fists as hard as iron?
And in all this Colleens poor life choices are never addressed I.E. Joining a cult bent on world domination and immortality at any cost. So having her need help would have made more sense. and that would have bookended nicely with Danny's country mouse wisdom that they tried but never successfully landed.
The characterizations, baring Ward and Joy Meachum, in summation are insane. They are actually counter-intuitive to the idea of the show. Colleen Wing is shown to be just as strong as Danny in skill and even teaches him. Well if she is just as strong why isn't she fighting all these baddies on her own before him? Why isn't SHE the hero of the show and him her sidekick?
If that's the case why is he the Iron Fist then? The better dynamic would have been Rand is super powerful but naive and Colleen has to teach him to live in this world with his values and be street smart lie her, well he teaches her about inner strength and that its ok to rely on others. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN A GREAT DYNAMIC. That would have had both of them being strong but needing each other. And that would have better facilitated the odd forced romance they failed to launch.
Why doesn't she just beat him and prove she is better? The show basically says that. How is this show about him?
Then we have whole reveal that she was working for the hand?
Just...if I had a low opinion of Colleen wing before it's got worse then.
She is shown thinking it's this great utopian, a super socialist society that's just misunderstood. I give them credit for making the leader of the hand in this series, Bakugo, not just evil for evil's sake. They really believe their organization is gonna make the world better. But if Colleen is such a strong, street-smart independent woman, how come she fell for such an obvious lie about an evil cult?
Pretty much EVERYONE who knows about the hand realizes they are a criminal organization? Low-end street thugs like Turk Barrett know the hand are legit bad ass's not to be fucked with. Oh and each finger of the hand {their high councle} also happen to moonlight as violent gang leaders. Is that normal in Colleen's view? I mean, her new found friend Danny keeps telling her about how HE, THE IRON FIST, HAS ONE SOLE PURPOSE. TO DESTROY THE HAND. CUASE IT'S EVIL!
BUT, they needed to show Colleen could be just as strong as the iron fist.
And in Season two they do actually realize that yeah, their show makes no sense so
Spoiler warning:
He gives the Iron Fist to her via some back ally sorcerers.
Why did K'un-Lun even have their selection process for the Iron Fist in the first place if it can just be passed to anyone via a nickel and dime witch? IS the Iron Fist like a copy of pokemon? you can lend it to your friends and just get it back in a month? It's such bad writing.
I imagine the decision to end the show was made well before Season 2 aired. They just said
"we're done here. This mess is too big to clean up."
Oh, and I almost forgot and to top it off Danny gets guns! That's right kids! Iron Fist has a new sidekick, Gun Kata cuck. Which is canon if he was Orson Randel, the Iron Fist of 1914.
If you watched this show and for some ungodly reason LIKED WHAT YOU SAW AND WANTED MORE, you would be so confused if you picked up an iron fist book.
Summation:
So with all this in perspective, Did we really lose anything? Iron Fist has been an abysmal disappointment. Be honest with yourself. Don't make excuses. The only people I have ever heard say Iron Fist was good where some YouTubers and Journalists who try to candy coat every failure.
"Comic book" sites who also seem to want to bring up the "Problematic nature of underrepresentation of marginalized communities". Cause that's the only thing that matters in comic books. Not like the writing matters. I know Dc is like an episode of friends but, Marvel has had Diversty'n'comics since before I was reading books. These same people lamenting that Iron fist was so promising when it ended in season 2 are the same who acted like all the leaks about Justice Leauge were "totally normal and nothing to worry about. Its gonna be fine" and reviewed it as a good movie.
I'm never sure if they are just afraid of being critical and the attacks that coe with not obeying or if they just have bad taste and truly like a lot of the garbage out there?
Defenders was so badly received they just pretended it didn't happen.
Iron Fist was the most insanely idiotic adaptation I have ever seen. At no point in its rambling, incoherent story did it come even close to being considered a rational interpretation.
Everyone who has seen it is now dumber for having watched it. I give it a 0/10 and my god have mercy on the showrunners soul.
It's time to start trimming the fat. As it is the fate of the Netflix/Marvel shows are up in the air with Disney preparing to launch its own Streaming service in the near future. And with the non-stop missteps Disney has been making with Starwars it's safe to say they will want their most popular and profitable properties back. With Iron fist wrapping up and Punisher S2 not seeming to be anywhere on the horizon, it's possible that we might see Daredevil S3 put a bow on Matt Murdock and everyone's stories or start to wind them down.
"But Automatauntaun, they tweeted out a trailer with a skull saying 2!" Defenders 2 was also greenlit as where many DC films like Cyborg, Batgirl, Swamp Thing, Justice Leauge 2, Justice Leauge Dark ALMOST EVERY OTHER FILM THEY EVER ANNOUNCED. If things are going poorly, studios will pull the plug. As we have seen. I saw a VERY PROMINENT Youtuber the other day saying "Realistically, Third season {of Iron Fist} is gonna be the best" just in time for his upload to correspond with Netflix announcing they canceled it. Everyone says they are gonna do another now. You plan to be successful and you change course after you know the trade winds.
whatever the case, Daredevil S3 Looks to be correcting this.
With the Return of the dynamic between Fisk and Murdoc and the introduction of Bullseye, Daredevils most fearsome foe. Too bad they already killed off Elektra...maybe they will just kill her again...cause she was horrible.
EDIT: Since the time of writing this article the, day of the cancelation, it has been announced that Luke Cage is also canceled. Leading to more proof the Marvel/Netflix verse is coming to an end. As well WB's The Flash film was delayed for what, the tenth time? And Ben Affleck and Henery Cavil have been officially released as Batman and Superman so get ready for my long-winded "the DCEU was always getting reboot" article. I have been saying since BVS that the DCEU is dead and all of these new facts point to that if you don't stick to the source material, you better be dam well be creative cause although journalists might be kind in reviewing it, journalists don't watch enough to make you money.
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