There is a scene in one of the later episodes where Wing's sensei shows Danny choppy footage of a previous Iron Fist, in costume, single-handedly dispatching a squad of Chinese commandos with sick kung-fu moves, fists glowing throughout. The sensei says something like, "This is what an Iron Fist should be." That scene is how one feels after watching the entire season. That's what Iron Fist the show should have been, but it's not the Iron Fist we got.
They gloss over his origin, training in K'un-Lun and facing down the dragon to earn his powers. Probably they didn't have the budget to do it right, but that would have been a more interesting story than the New York one. It also would have made Davos a key character from the start instead of just dropping him in suddenly and awkwardly for the last few episodes. Certainly would have been less boring that the first eight or so episodes. Instead of cool flashbacks, we just get Danny retelling his origin in the blandest possible way.
The Meachums are a mess. They shift from sinister to sympathetic and back so rapidly and frequently that they have no underlying sense of character or motivation, especially Joy. But Danny is even less interesting. He seems to have no core character. There's no underlying theme until maybe the last two episodes. Daredevil's stories are about the concept of necessary evils, the conflict and tension between ones intentions and ones actions to realize them, focused through the lens of a man of faith taking on the alter-ego of a devil. Jessica Jones was about a woman surviving sexual abuse and reclaiming her power and independence. Luke Cage was about the African American experience, and black lives mattering. What is Iron Fist about? I guess the tension of an outsider trapped between two worlds and not fitting into either, but we really don't get any of that for most of the series.
The worst part, though, are the fight scenes. Daredevil had some incredible fight choreography. Iron Fist has none. Lots of shaky cam and quick cuts, but the action itself is so slow paced and lazy. That's just inexcusable. It's the one thing the show should have gotten right, and they clearly had no idea what they were doing. Makes me really wonder why they ever cast Finn Jones if he can't actually fight worth a lick. It sure wasn't for his acting. Worst Marvel character on screen since Sansa Grey.
TL;DR: In sum, Iron Fist is a slightly better, tighter version of WB's Arrow. But Arrow is a total mess, so that's very faint praise. Ima go rewatch Legion and the other Netflix shows to get the taste of this one out of my mouth.
Disney already made the perfect Fantastic Four movie, but they called it 'Big Hero 6'. You want a good FF movie, stop trying to modernize something that is so intrinsically silver-age and just embrace the camp. Watch BH6 and Batman: Brave and the Bold, and play a ton of Fallout. Then try again.
If Alex Kurtzman is running things, this has about a .000000000000000000001% chance of being any good. Also sounds rushed. It's like ASM-2 all over again, and that movie was a full-on travesty.
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