Iron Fist

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Written by KTP

Iron Fist:  The Steven Seagal of Marvel’s TV series

You probably have seen the reviews rolling in and Iron Fist is getting slapped around pretty hard. They aren’t necessarily wrong. Iron Fist is easily the weakest of Marvel’s Netflix offerings. It’s not complete dogshit, but bad enough to wonder what the fuck producers were thinking. Enter Danny Rand. Plane crash survivor. Child abuse victim. Mental patient. Master of mediocre martial arts. The Fifth Defender. The Iron Fist.

Iron Fist centers around Danny Rand, whose plane crashed when he was a child, and got to live the adolescent dream of being trained by warrior monks at a monastery in the Himalayas. We don’t really see his training early on except in the form of a flashback where said monks are just beating his ass with sticks for a good 30 seconds. This is an unintentionally hilarious scene. This is also important to remember for later. After a length of time, he returns to New York where everyone thinks he’s just some crazy homeless person trying to cash in on his family’s corporation. Head of the Rand corporation are his childhood friends that reasonable assess that this white guy spouting Chinese philosophy is pretending to be someone that that’s dead. For the rest of the plot I will just say Corporate Family Dysfunction, Asian Love Interest, Ninja Bad Guys, Chinese Mysticism, and Dark Room Conversations, while you try accurately predict what happens in 13 episodes. Goddamn is it fucking boring. When the corporate family dynamic is more interesting than a dude that can punch through walls, it’s a fucking problem.

"They used to beat me with sticks like this. This style is called "The Broken Cub."

Remember when I said he was just getting his ass beat with sticks? That’s Iron Fist’s super power. The more you kick the shit out of him, the better chance he has of having a glowing fist and punching the fuck out of something. Sometimes he doesn’t need to get fucked up a kicks that shit on to advance the plot forward a bit. There are those moments when this “Champion of K’un-Lun” is struggling with two henchmen and you are sitting on the couch wondering why he doesn’t kick these fuckers out of a window when he pops the glowing fist and punches a wall. “Oh yeah. That’s why he has a show. I guess.” He’s like that shitty lawn mower that takes a half hour to startup while you are just a few frustrating curse filled moments from chucking the goddamn thing in the dump and calling in a pro. This guy had an army of monks teaching him how to fuck people up. Why is Danny flopping around like a double amputee in his action scenes? There’s a compounded problem here. The plot does nothing to show Danny being a badass, Danny’s acting and action scenes definitely don’t showcase any of this, and the chopped editing of the action just reinforces how bad it all really is.

It's a cameo from Marvel's favorite lawyer Matt Mur.....oh wait....

For a movie that revolves around stylized violence, there are only two problems I had with it. The first problem centers on the villains or people that can convince you they could give John Wick a bad day. The entire first movie just hypes up John Wick up as “the one you sent to kill the fucking boogeyman” and spends 96 murder filled minutes demonstrating why. Chapter 2 needed a threat to John so the studio decided that the most dangerous people to fill that role are a mute lesbian and Common. No. Whenever Common pops up in the movie, two things are known. The first is that he will probably live. The second is he won’t be the scariest person in the film. Ruby Rose who plays the mute just grabs Wick’s balls at one point and towards the end of the film in a panicked denial that she will get ceremoniously murdered by John’s bullets. Nothing against the two, but the film didn’t prop the two as anything other than bullet fodder.

I call this style "The Looks Cooler as a Still Flying Dragon Punch of Lotus Crane Style".

There is one nugget of gold in this whole shit show and comes from Tom Pelphrey playing Ward Meachum. The stupid plot manages to put him through the ringer making him a confident dickhead, to pussy, to addict, to unstrung, to psycho, back to getting his shit together, to hero, and ends with him ok in the end. Phelphrey manages to take the retarded plot and creates the most interesting character in the show. Thumbs up Tom.

All the things wrong with this show scream lazy and Marvel forgot what makes their previous shows great (good). Let’s be honest. They just farted out a show so they can round out their upcoming Defenders. “Don’t worry guys. We don’t need an interesting plot, any humor, competent martial arts, acting, solid dialogue, or character growth. People will eat this shit up when they see the Marvel logo.” No one would have batten an eye to most of the problems this show has if they only fixed the one thing that mattered. For a show about a superhero martial artist, IT MIGHT HELP TO HAVE GOOD MARTIAL ARTS IN THE FUCKING THE THING!!! Jesus, Marvel. This is DC level shit you are making.