In short, the latest Netflix-Marvel mashup, Iron Fist, is terrible. I should elaborate a bit more I suppose.
Background to Iron Fist
Another step towards The Defenders series opens with our new hero Danny Rand walking barefoot through New York. Then it all goes wrong, Rand’s backstory is seemingly a crossover of Bruce Wayne meets Dr Strange. Rich boy’s parents die in a horrific tragedy, gets raised by warrior monks and trained to become something else. Oh, and with special powers of course. Anyway instead of being more zen warrior monk master, Rand AKA The Iron Fist just comes across as a pretentious prick who spent some time travelling the world, took a rake of drugs and is now so enlightened he feels the need to speak in random philosophical nonsense to the point you kind of want to slap him a good one. We all know that guy right? Has a drape hanging in his bedroom, maybe a little Buddha, enjoys himself some recreational and spews wellness lectures to anyone who will listen? Yeah, you know the likes.
Kung Fu fighting
So starting out Rand (Finn Jones) is trying to use his magic glowing hand and his Kung Fu skills to get into his old family business and confronts one of the two decent characters in the show, Ward Meachum who is essentially our poor hero’s childhood bully who now runs the family business. If you think this would break out into blue bloody murder and a series of karate based actions scenes of epic proportions, you will be sadly disappointed.
In recent times Marvel and Netflix have released some bangers, Daredevil and Luke Cage coming straight to mind. But both do the whole superhero thing just a bit differently to the norm, however with 13 one hour episodes to fill it just seems like Iron Fist moves painfully slow. Â To put this dreadfully slow storytelling in context, one whole episode the hero is strapped down to a bed in a mental institution and in another he spends the whole duration making friends with some homeless chap who has no bearing on the storyline what so ever.
The flashback, the god-forsaken endless flashbacks of his parent’s death are almost used as filler and just plain get annoying. Ok, we get it your family are dead, now more of the glowing hand and fighting, please. Rand is billed as a master of Kung Fu, but the flashes of this proficiency are few and far between. And while we wait for the brawling to commence, there isn’t much lightness to hold the interest. Maybe just the slow descent into madness of Ward Meachum is as good as character development gets.
Commence Iron Fist rant
To be honest, I expected far more from Iron Fist and maybe I am just a bit bitter it wasn’t up to scratch, but it really is as shallow as a puddle while being as subtle as a sledgehammer. In comparison to the earlier collaborations like Daredevil, Luke cage and Jessica Jones (all of which will be coming together in The Defenders this summer) Iron Fist is just boring drivel.
I mean Luke Cage at least really looked at the racial profiling and stereotyping in the US, Jessica Jones gave us a cynical bitch type female hero rather than your normal lycra clad boob monsters and Daredevil– well it was just nice to see that franchise come back to life. But the Iron Fist is nothing, it does nothing it just feels like filler content between now and the big summer release and our hero is a basically a chap who seems to have had one to many mushrooms.
In short, I feel I have finished a national service by watching this so you won’t have too. I’ll take the keys to the city as soon as they are ready please.
