Marvel's IRON FIST (March 17, 2017)

[blaseblah]

Just watched the first episode. It wasn't bad, but definitely just okay. Extremely slow-paced and ended with a whimper. I just hope this dude does more in the second episode than stalk his childhood friends and recite proverbs.

By comparison, this is what happened in the first episode of Jessica Jones.

Spoiler

Jessica Jones: we learn she's an alcoholic, we learn about her abusive relationship with Kilgrave and how it has her fucked up, she meets her lawyer and completes a job for her, Meets Luke Cage, has sex with him, learns about his wife. Meet's Hope's parents and is contracted to find her. Learns Kilgrave is involved. Almost skips town out of fear but is talked into sticking around by her best friend. Finds and rescues Hope, who then in a shocking twist murders her own parents. Basically a lot more shit happened and it ended with a bang.

In comparison we didn't learn shit about Danny Rand except things we could already figure out from the first 5 minutes. His parents died in a plane crash and he survived, he ended up learning kung fu somewhere. We learn virtually nothing else about the character and the episode ends showing us the events leading up to the plane crash (basically showing us something we already knew).

I do have an issue with the main actor. He was fine as Loras, but Loras wasn't expected to carry a show. This guy just doesn't have the charisma to be the main character. He reminds me of the guy from Marco Polo. Just bland, forgettable, and outshone by virtually everyone else on the show. They would be better of making a show revolving around the martial arts instructor.

 

[ctrlaltdelete]

I'm halfway through and it's getting boring.

 

[Arrr Billy]

It's physically impossible to train for 15 years to become a living weapon, one of the most dangerous fighters alive in that kind of environment & still be a scrawny little barista pussy without an inch of muscle on your entire body. IF was never huge but you need a guy that's ripped and has some muscle on him.

He's also not a good actor which is a huge problem and the writing is terrible.

This show has a ton of problems, him being white is obviously not among them but the show is fucking rough. I still think it's alittle better than Jessica jones and the second half of LC but definitely a big miss from Marvel.

Never heard this combination of words before. I like it. lol. Could be like a strength level too. example "fighter A is being thrown around by fighter B in such a manner as one would believe fighter A only possess barista level strength" (In Joe Rogans voice)....lol.

 

[VitorReem]

Dude... Danny Rand was 5'11 175. He's basically the same size as cowboy cerrone precut. http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Daniel_Rand_(Earth-616) He's small on the comic book hero scale. Fin jones is almost the exact same height and weight but he's actually an inch taller and I read he's around 180 185 in this.

Anywho
I saw it's like
1. Daredevil
2. Iron Fist
3. Luke cage (it got pretty bad after cottonmouth let's be honest)
4. Jessica Jones. (too emo
Meaning compared to normal tv it's really good. I'll agree finn needs to get ripped up but not gain weight. Season 2 I bet will kick ass.

I literally just said IF was never huge. But he was ripped & muscular from fighting and training his whole life. No excuse for having some scrawny little bitch that doesn't have 1 single shred of anything resembling a muscle anywhere on his body. The acting & writing is the real problem however.

Observe what IF actually looks like.


There are many actors who are 1) actual actors & 2) in very good physical shape that should have been chosen. Loras is a BAD actor and a joke for the role. he cannot lead anything & has no acting ability or personality whatsoever. him combined with the piss poor writing absolutely ruined the show. All the supporting cast was 1000x better.

 

[ChillyPalmer]

Just watched the Into the Badlands season premier, and it is so much fucking better then any episode of Iron Fist.

 

[mushishi]

I literally just said IF was never huge. But he was ripped & muscular from fighting and training his whole life. No excuse for having some scrawny little bitch that doesn't have 1 single shred of anything resembling a muscle anywhere on his body. The acting & writing is the real problem however.

Observe what IF actually looks like.


There are many actors who are 1) actual actors & 2) in very good physical shape that should have been chosen. Loras is a BAD actor and a joke for the role. he cannot lead anything & has no acting ability or personality whatsoever. him combined with the piss poor writing absolutely ruined the show. All the supporting cast was 1000x better.

It depends who's penciling.

I prefer this look.

 

[fastone]

Weak.... couldn't get past the scene where the fake martial art, teacher chick "tests" her students with a public attack. So weak
I stood up and said "I'm out".

 

[Kneepocalypse]

Weak.... couldn't get past the scene where the fake martial art, teacher chick "tests" her students with a public attack. So weak
I stood up and said "I'm out".

Lol yeah that was pretty stupid. "We're a secret organization of ninjas... lets run an attack simulation in broad daylight in a crowded part of the city. The cops won't care."

 

[Loiosh]

"In film, the white savior is a cinematic trope portraying a white character rescuing people of color from their plight."

OK, this isn't what IF is about, so what's the relevance?

Thought you weren't interested? Or are you just looking to argue with someone?

No matter what I post you're just going to say "nuh uh" so I'm going to save myself the time here.

 

[Thai Otoshi]

Weak.... couldn't get past the scene where the fake martial art, teacher chick "tests" her students with a public attack. So weak
I stood up and said "I'm out".

There were far too many moments in the show that were hard to watch. This is one of them.

 

[Lovestorm]

Watched first two episodes. Unimpressed, but Cage didn't hook me to begin with and that turned out good.

I shall persevere.

 

[method115]

Weak.... couldn't get past the scene where the fake martial art, teacher chick "tests" her students with a public attack. So weak
I stood up and said "I'm out".

I'm actually having an easy time just ignoring this kind of stuff and the weak martial arts in general. I'm enjoying the story. Even my fiance who was kind of like "I'll try to watch it but no promises" is enjoying it and is glad she gave it a shot. Were on episode 5 I think so will see how it goes.

 

[JadeOwl]

I watched the show in three chunks over the weekend. I would put it squarely at a 5/10. It’s not the unmitigated disaster the reviews made it out to be, but I wouldn’t go as far as calling it good.

I can confidently say that this show’s problems begin and end with the casting of Finn Jones. And the reason is, in my opinion, that they went around looking for someone to play Danny Rand, but not the Iron Fist.

Jones does an OK job with all the scenes that don’t involve Rand’s Iron Fist aspect. The naïve newcomer, the emotionally stunted man-child, the easily manipulated idiot, the privileged asshole who doesn’t realize he is acting like a privileged asshole… Jones plays all these things as well as you could expect given the script.

But every time the martial arts aspect comes up he sucks. As has been repeated ad nauseam in this thread, it is pretty clear Finn Jones didn’t see the inside of a gym at all between his casting and filming. People have certain expectation when it comes to superheroes, and while I don’t think those expectations went as far as Chris-Evans-as-Captain-America, they were expecting some definition. One would imagine Jones would’ve learned his lesson after all the crap he took during the first season of Game of Thrones, when everyone was giving him shit because all the Northern characters were showing off six-packs while Ser Loras didn’t appear to have enough muscle to walk around in plate armor, let alone fight in it.

Another thing that played against him was that ridiculous beard. It made him look like a little kid playing dress up at being an adult. Jones is baby faced and making him grow out that beard only called out more attention to the fact.

Even if we look past his physique, the dude looked fake as shit every time he was in a fight scene. It was made even worse by the fact that Jessica Henwick so obviously took the training more seriously than him. She obviously didn’t do all her own stunts, but she sure as shit did a greater percentage of them than Finn. Look at both their fights, and pay attention to when you can see their faces in the frame, that’s how you can tell.

As for the other aspects of the show, I was pleasantly surprised by the dude playing Ward Meachum, whose name eludes me right now. That dude did a terrific job selling the fact that Ward was the universe’s punching bag. I mean, Ward is an asshole, but you still end up feeling sorry for the poor bastard.

Plot-wise, I wonder how they’ll proceed going forward into The Defenders…

Spoiler: The Defenders

Daredevil and Iron Fist share the Hand as adversaries, but they’ve had nothing to do with Jessica Jones and Luke Cage.

Does this mean that they’re going to have to waste precious episodes establishing a reason for Jessica and Luke to risk their necks getting involved? I mean, I could see Luke getting involved purely for Claire’s sake, but why would Jessica do it?

She is also the most reluctant to go in for the superhero shit. Picking a fight with an army of ninjas sounds like the last thing that would cross her mind.

 

[BassAckwards]

i binged watched it friday night and dont have any problems with it; its not a 10/10 but it's not as bad as these crusading SJWs make it out to be. the character has his flaws but him being a white male is not one of them. cringe moment was the drunken kung fu fight

 

[Dr Curtis Love]

At first I really disliked the actor who plays Ward. I thought his acting sucked. Very wooden, no emotion, barely moved his lips when he talked. However, as the season went on, he did so much better. Showing more range and almost like he opened up. I've warmed up to him now.

 

[Boost6]

Its a 7, fight scenes seem slow.

Slow burn story is ok, nothing wrong with that.

Main character is a bit annoying.

 

[electricfuneral]

I'm leaning towards there myself (5 stars). Still have to finish the last two episodes.

I really liked it. I think I came in with low expectations and expecting him to bang joy or a love triangle so I found it refreshing that he had a good love interest that was clear cut. I had issues with the show but I enjoyed how the season ended and thought it did well. I will rate it below daredevil but above jessica and luke. Above agents of shield too.

 

[Da_Rev_Ong]

Binged the show over the weekend. It's a 5-6 (7 at best, but that is a stretch).

The biggest problem with this show is that there are aspects of this show that have been done better not only in all of the other Netflix shows, but in other broadcast TV Shows in general. Whether it is the pacing, writing, acting and/or fighting, there isn't any one aspect of it that stands out more than being "adequate" for what it tried to do.

Let me sum this up like this: I can take a slow burn if writing is intriguing and the acting drives it home in a way that hooks me. This was the case with all of the other Netflix titles. Iron Fist doesn't hold its own in this regard. Which leaves the action to help bolster the rest of what the show offers.

Unfortunately the action is good... For a broadcast TV show.

Even in that regard, the action was neither the intensity or level of violence of either Daredevil or Luke Cage (Daredevil was skillful and brutal, Luke Cage was a stalking juggernaut and that hit everything a freight-train). It also did not help that the way that the action was directed was with a lot of quick-cuts and shakey-cam, with editing that made it obvious that it wasn't the main actor actually in there doing the fight stunts. Jessica Henwick was far and away a lot more believable than Finn Jones in the fight scenes (and a lot easier on the eyes by far - but I digress), and this was bolstered by the fact that you could actually see that it was her doing the fights.

This is where the real problem lies: There isn't a lot that they do to make me actually give a shit about Danny Rand. They were on track to making me care when he was trying to prove who he is, but after that it doesn't leave a lot to be desired. I could go on about that, but that wanders into spoiler territory and I'm actively trying to avoid that. In that regard, it's actually a grand trick that they make me care about the supporting characters at all. I absolutely hated Ward Meachum (Tom Pelphrey) at the beginning of the show, and while I left the end of the series still thinking he's a dick, they succeeded in making him a sympathetic dick. Same with his sister. But when it came to the titular Iron Fist himself, they were not anywhere near as succesful.

And that's where I'll leave it. Final thought, I'd give it a 6. It's not a train wreck, but there are too many consistently lackluster things that happen too often. It's not bad. But in many instances throughout the show it gets boring. In that regard, it's worst than being horrible because you can at least get entertainment out of spoofing a bad production MST3K style. If it's boring, then you have nothing to work with, hate or like.

 

[mushishi]

I really liked it. I think I came in with low expectations and expecting him to bang joy or a love triangle so I found it refreshing that he had a good love interest that was clear cut. I had issues with the show but I enjoyed how the season ended and thought it did well. I will rate it below daredevil but above jessica and luke. Above agents of shield too.

That Asian girl a hoe fa sho. She didn't like him when he was all scraggly bum dude but then wanted the d when he was a billionaire.

 

[TrueBias]

Sounds like this is a show worth skipping.