REVIEW: Iron Fist
We’ve finally reached the fourth Marvel-Netflix series leading up to The Defenders in Iron Fist. With three other series under its belt, it would be safe to assume that Netflix knew what it was doing with regards to these characters. Unfortunately, the first season of Iron Fist proves that this method doesn’t work for everything and makes me more thankful that The Defenders is only eight episodes.
Iron Fist revolves around Danny Rand returning to New York after spending fifteen years in a monastery located in a mystical realm known as K’un-Lun following a plane crash that killed his parents. There, he was trained by monks in skills that allowed him to face the dragon Shou-Lao the Undying and successfully gain the skills and mantle of the Immortal Iron Fist, the guardian of the ancient city and the enemy of the Hand.
If you wish you could see that development, you’ll have to keep waiting like the rest of us. For an origin story, the show seems almost reluctant to touch on the more mystical elements beyond having Danny relay to us what happened. The problem with that is that the show also wants us to follow storylines involving harnessing chi for glowing fists and people coming back from the dead. You can’t have it both ways show. Either commit to showing us magic or stick purely to corporate litigation.
And from that comparison alone you can’t blame me for preferring even the smallest hint of action or something mystical over a fictional billion-dollar company. Yes, this is really half the plot as Danny’s childhood friends Ward and Joy struggle to handle the Rand corporation in the middle of Danny returning. Hell, their father ends up the final villain that Danny fights, so I guess this was supposed to be an important concept. But not even the show can pretend that this is anything more than a courtesy plot reminding people that Danny is indeed a billionaire. That’d be like thinking we watched Iron Man for Tony Stark defending his intellectual property rather than robot suits fighting other robot suits. The problem is Iron Fist is almost thirteen hours of anything but something interesting.
Actually, it’s hard to follow exactly what the plot is supposed to be. Danny returns to New York claiming to be the Iron Fist, but later the series says that he left K’un-Lun to just be Danny Rand. He wants to defeat the Hand, but he keeps moving through enemies from Madame Gao to Bakuto to Davos to Harold. Ward and Joy become allies and enemies of him at the drop of a hat, so it’s difficult to really consider any of these characters.
On top of that, Danny is just not as interesting to follow. He doesn’t have the moral temerity and conflict of Daredevil, the desire for redemption of Jessica Jones, or the community draw of Luke Cage. Danny is only a hero because the show tells us he is, making mistakes because that’s what a show is supposed to do not because they’re part of his beliefs. He’s supposed to be the protagonist, but I don’t know where he wants to go.
The only real redeeming factors of the show are Colleen Wing and (as always) Claire Temple. Colleen manages a stable character run of someone with a clear honor code who is forced to bend and even break what she believes when she comes across new challenges. Even though there is that weird twist of her being a part of the Hand, it still runs parallel to her conflict of honor as seen when she goes to fight clubs to raise money for her dojo. And Claire continues her apparent destiny of inconveniently running into New York superheroes which is always enjoyable and strangely deeper than our actual hero’s problems.
Where does this lead to The Defenders? Well, there certainly is an unanswered cliffhanger to the disappearance of K’un-Lun, but at least Danny will be in the city with The Hand being a reasonable opponent to all four heroes. Oh, you were probably wondering what it would mean for Danny. Well…at least we have three other protagonists and Colleen Wing showing up to pick up the slack.
I would hardly call Iron Fist the worst thing ever as implied by some reviews, but it is certainly on the lesser field for Marvel products on par with Thor: The Dark World. It’s hardly a cause for alarm since Marvel has proven itself with several other products, but it does make this show a disappointment. I’m sad to say I probably would not recommend it.
