[TV] Marvel's Iron Fist

[Beazy]

I like Madame Gao, but I assume she's something more.

She has to be high up in the hand chain of command, meaning she is a demon in human form.

[Svifnymr]

The whole "if you point out racism you're racist" argument is really cliche.

It would be amusing if Luke Cage is sent to recruit to recruit the Kung Fu master in Defenders, walks in, sees Coleen and approaches her. The Danny steps forward "no, I'm the Kung Fu master"
LC: "Oh, I just thought she.."
Coleen: "What the fuck, I'm Japanese, why would I know kung fu!"
Iron Fist: "Dude, that's really racist man."

[ohiostate124]

I'm assuming Madame Gao is Crane Mother.

[Beazy]

I'm assuming Madame Gao is Crane Mother.

She has to be corrupted by the hand, otherwise she would still be in KL.

We know shes corrupted with something because "magic" only comes from off earth dimensions (think Dr.Strange) in Marvel. Remember when she pushed IF away with a the "force"?

We know the hand wants to break through KL (an off earth dimension) and go to hell and summon their master, "The Beast". It has to be connected.

[ohiostate124]

She has to be corrupted by the hand, otherwise she would still be in KL.

We know shes corrupted with something because "magic" only comes from off earth dimensions (think Dr.Strange) in Marvel. Remember when she pushed IF away with a the "force"?

We know the hand wants to break through KL (an off earth dimension) and go to hell and summon their master, "The Beast". It has to be connected.

I assumed her hand push move to Danny was an error since she didn't even touch him. SHe did the same thing to Daredevil but actually hit him.

[Svifnymr]

Well okay but that is what representation is about. It's about creating a variety of fleshed out characters from a range of backgrounds across the moral spectrum. The Meachums are no moral pillars, but they are some of the most complex characters in the series. they're sympathetic and their flaws are not related to race. Whereas the hand ninjas are pretty undeveloped, rarely if ever sympathetic and their role as evil ninjas has some heavy racial coding. If for example the Meachums had been asian, they would at least have been dynamic asian characters.

I think first off that you need to understand that there are two good characters, Night Nurse and Iron Fist. Everyone else is gray. The Hand, including Coleen and her students, were very racially diverse. The Meachums were white, with a vast array of black security, not sure if that's racist or not. Really though, almost everyone that wasn't Rand Corp, was Hand. There's also the thing where the Hand has traditionally Japanese feel, ninja's and such. Kun Lun is a Chinese mystical city, but located entirely in Tibet. It gets a bit tiresome to see "Asia" painted with one big brush. I found it amusing when Coleen mentions her sword shouldn't be used the Chinese way, it's Japanese.

Since kun lun is Tibetan and only appears infrequently on this Earth, would the monks all be Tibetan rather than Chinese anyway?

According to an article, the show runners decided to open it up racially and make Kun Lun more diverse, I guess explaining why Davos has a British-India accent?

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If you don't like Kingpin or the Purple Man, the two best villains in the MCU, I'd really like to know which villains you actually like.

In Netflix series? I haven't thought much of most of the villains, and while I enjoy the series mostly, I found them all to be dragged out over too many episodes. As with many series, netflix suffers from a "easy to solve with a rifle" problem... but I also think they spent too much time on Punisher. (And also they really seem to misunderstand actual guns/military in these things.)

[Jotaux]

I haven't thought much of most of the villains

I actually think the opposite, DD and JJ were carried by their villains and I think thats why LC was the weakest of their shows.

[Blur4stuff]

https://www.inverse.com/article/2937...lar-on-netflix

According to Parrot Analytics, IF is more popular than DD and JJ, but less than LC. Obviously they don't have Netflix's official numbers, though. They claim these numbers are accurate, but fuck if I know.

[Super Kami Dende]

Finished the season last night.

It was good but not as great as DD and LC. Though more enjoyable than JJ by far.

[Svifnymr]

I actually think the opposite, DD and JJ were carried by their villains and I think thats why LC was the weakest of their shows.

LC was okay, but I had pretty high hopes for the show since I really liked LC on JJ. Kingpins halting speech, complete lack of foundation, rage stuff, meh. I'll take Michael Clark Duncan anyday. :-p Kilgrave's unpurpleness wasn't a big deal, but again, all the show needed was a rifle. It had way too much wasted time and I probably would have liked it at 6 episodes or maybe 8, but 13 was just too much.

Iron Fist wasn't great, but I didn't really think any of the scenes were totally extraneous. If anything, I think the show needed MORE stuff to flesh out some details.

[Gallahadd]

I dunno, as I understand it he was portrayed very differently to the comics, I feel like the plan could have just been to give him a passing nod (which they did to the bride of nine spiders as well). I hope they use him again, but I think if it turns out in season two that the random drunk ninja was actually biologically created to kill Ironfists, that will be pretty jarring to anyone who doesn't know the comics.

Oh yeah, I honestly didn't recognise that character as Zhou Cheng till someone pointed it out to me later on...

But here's the thing: Zhou Cheng is only the host for Ch'i-Lin, who is the actual Iron Fist killing demon of epicness. Seeing as Iron Fist is still a little baby at this point, and when they meet Zhou Cheng (in the comics) hasn't been the host for long, it's totally possible to assume this first meeting was pre-possesion. Then, inbetween seasons he meets and is taken over by Ch'i-Lin and becomes the Zhou Cheng that we know and are kinda terrified of.

This sets him up to be a major antagonist in the second, or maybe third season.

Also, they really fucked up the Bride of Nine Spiders... She's a Living Weapon on the level with Iron Fist, I was kinda pissed they used her so badly.

[Ealyssa]

WHY are people to dumb to see and accept that he is NOT finished with training?

Why are people too dumb to understand that training is obviously over when you are deemed worthy to fight the dragon ? That's pretty much the definition of the Iron fist : the best warrior of K'un L'un.

[Endus]

Let's also bear in mind that a lot of what we're talking about is the Earth-616 versions of this stuff, and the Marvel cinematic universe isn't Earth-616. The cinematic universe, which the Netflix series are part of, is Earth-199999. We know K'un-lun exists. We know it's one of the "seven cities of heaven". We DON'T know that the other 6 are the same as in Earth-616, or that K'un-lun is the same between the two.

Heck, there's evidence it isn't. Danny says the monks who trained him were the "Order of the Crane Mother". In Earth-616, Crane Mother rules K'un-Zi, one of the OTHER cities, and she's an antagonist. K'un-zi specifically is known for being a city that uses "dark magic".

I suspect, if they're cobbling this stuff together and rebuilding it for the cinematic universe, Crane Mother doesn't have any ties to K'un-zi, here. And given that Madame Gao clearly A> has been to K'un-Lun and B> is just as clearly either in exile or deliberately abandoned it, while also being a powerful enough entity to, by her own admission, be centuries old (among the other stuff), I'm betting that, as someone else noted, she is Crane Mother. It would make a nice twist for a future reveal, and naming the monks who trained Danny by that name, and having Gao wax poetic about K'un-Lun, all points to something of that sort. There's no other reason for it to be the Order of the Crane Mother, and given that the Crane Mother is a very Gao-like character even in Earth-616, it's not a huge stretch.

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Why are people too dumb to understand that training is obviously over when you are deemed worthy to fight the dragon ? That's pretty much the definition of the Iron fist : the best warrior of K'un L'un.

Danny didn't know how to rebuild his chi, nor that the Iron Fist could channel it to heal. His training was sufficient, but clearly not over. In a sense, by becoming the Iron Fist, his real training had begun.

Worse, the implication is that the Order of the Crane Mother has been deliberately using their Iron Fists as mindless warriors, and deliberately focusing their training on that to the exclusion of all else. That's something I imagine we'll dig into in Season 2; why was the Order of the Crane Mother training Danny "wrong"? I seriously doubt they're honestly unaware of the potential they're overlooking.

[Sky High]

A pretty good article on the topic - http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...-a7643041.html

you know what could have actually saved the show? better writing.

[callipygoustp]

you know what could have actually saved the show? better writing.

Yeah, the writing at times was akin to nails on a chalkboard.

I think the following excerpt, found here - Netflix and Marvel’s Iron Fist is an ill-conceived, poorly written disaster, sums it up fairly well :

Here’s how a typical Iron Fist conversation goes:

CHARACTER 1: You did [insert something that the audience just saw happen].

CHARACTER 2: I did [the thing character 1 is talking about].

CHARACTER 1: That’s a bad idea that you [did that thing].

CHARACTER 2: I am this thing that did that thing. This is what I’m feeling right now.

Repeat that over and over, and you’ve basically got yourself one season of Iron Fist. On multiple occasions in any given episode, characters will just say plainly how they feel. Half of the first part of the season is Danny Rand saying, “I can explain,” over and over, to the point where it begins to feel like a threat.

[Protean]

Why are people too dumb to understand that training is obviously over when you are deemed worthy to fight the dragon ? That's pretty much the definition of the Iron fist : the best warrior of K'un L'un.

Obviously after becoming the Iron Fist there's a whole new level of skill required to use it. And that's what he isn't trained in, I assume it's because they use him as a glorified doorman.

Maybe they were going to teach him the rest after the doorway closes again?

[Endus]

Obviously after becoming the Iron Fist there's a whole new level of skill required to use it. And that's what he isn't trained in, I assume it's because they use him as a glorified doorman.

Maybe they were going to teach him the rest after the doorway closes again?

I mean, if you pay attention to what Davos says, the Iron Fist's one real job is to guard that passageway.

I'm assuming the writers have planned for that to be a stupid-ass waste of an Iron Fist, so there's some big reason. Like, maybe, the Crane Mothers aren't really enemies of the Hand; they pass on the myth, but they keep the Iron Fist in K'un-Lun, where the Hand isn't. A Hand that's destined to destroy the Hand but never LOOKS for the Hand isn't going to achieve that destiny. Would play into Madame Gao being Crane Mother herself. Also explains why they wouldn't teach them anything but "punch stuff real hard".

No clue if they're still doing the tournament between the seven cities of heaven stuff in the cinematic universe, but that's just every 88 years anyway, but that'd be the only other thing the Iron Fist is doing, currently.


The other possibility is that the Crane Mothers USED to send Iron Fists out to defeat the Hand. And they kept failing, because the Hand kept killing them. So now they just keep them safe.

Just need to wait for Season 2, I guess.

[Deleted]

Oh yeah, I honestly didn't recognise that character as Zhou Cheng till someone pointed it out to me later on...

But here's the thing: Zhou Cheng is only the host for Ch'i-Lin, who is the actual Iron Fist killing demon of epicness. Seeing as Iron Fist is still a little baby at this point, and when they meet Zhou Cheng (in the comics) hasn't been the host for long, it's totally possible to assume this first meeting was pre-possesion. Then, inbetween seasons he meets and is taken over by Ch'i-Lin and becomes the Zhou Cheng that we know and are kinda terrified of.

This sets him up to be a major antagonist in the second, or maybe third season.

Also, they really fucked up the Bride of Nine Spiders... She's a Living Weapon on the level with Iron Fist, I was kinda pissed they used her so badly.

This sounds like it would make a lot of sense.

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you know what could have actually saved the show? better writing.

Why are these things mutually exclusive? The writing was obviously the biggest issue, but the show would have at least been more compelling with a more charming lead, and a lead with expertise on martial arts would have allowed the series to you know...actually have good fight scenes.

[Gallahadd]

This sounds like it would make a lot of sense.

Indeed it would, fingers crossed that's what they go for!

Why are these things mutually exclusive? The writing was obviously the biggest issue, but the show would have at least been more compelling with a more charming lead, and a lead with expertise on martial arts would have allowed the series to you know...actually have good fight scenes.

To be fair, neither did Charlie Cox, or any of the other leads. The difference is they had MONTHS to prepare and improve their skills, whereas if the rumours are to be believed, Finn had DAYS to get ready, sometimes not even that long.

Sadly, as hyped as I was for IF and as much as I enjoyed it... I think it's best we just pretend this season never aired, then hope the can improve on the character in the Defenders and IF Season 2.

[Protean]

I mean, if you pay attention to what Davos says, the Iron Fist's one real job is to guard that passageway.

I'm assuming the writers have planned for that to be a stupid-ass waste of an Iron Fist, so there's some big reason. Like, maybe, the Crane Mothers aren't really enemies of the Hand; they pass on the myth, but they keep the Iron Fist in K'un-Lun, where the Hand isn't. A Hand that's destined to destroy the Hand but never LOOKS for the Hand isn't going to achieve that destiny. Would play into Madame Gao being Crane Mother herself. Also explains why they wouldn't teach them anything but "punch stuff real hard".

No clue if they're still doing the tournament between the seven cities of heaven stuff in the cinematic universe, but that's just every 88 years anyway, but that'd be the only other thing the Iron Fist is doing, currently.


The other possibility is that the Crane Mothers USED to send Iron Fists out to defeat the Hand. And they kept failing, because the Hand kept killing them. So now they just keep them safe.

Just need to wait for Season 2, I guess.

But the passageway is only open once every 15 years. And they said it was going to close soon. So what does he guard when it's closed?