So, for anyone interested, here finally is my full Iron Fist reviews, as I just finished up the series last night. If you look back, I have already posted a few ranting thoughts as I went through the first 6 episodes or so. Anyway, I'd call this a mildly spoilery review, so beware if you don't want to be spoiled.
Starting out, Iron Fist was ROUGH, and I mean REALLY ROUGH, especially through the first 5-6 episodes. Not only was the acting horrendous, but the directing was bad, the writing was bad, the fight choreography was terrible, Marvel seemingly spent $50 on all 5 episodes, and maybe worst of all, it was super boring. The series spent wwaaaayyy too much time in the boardroom and with having a whiny, stupid Danny try to convince everyone he is who he says he was, not to mention Danny went about everything in the stupidest way possible. Don't even get me started on the whole insane asylum episode. However, once we got past those episodes, while it was still up and down, episodes 7, and 9-12 I thought were actually pretty decent and even good at points. In those episodes, nearly all of the series misgivings seemed to actually improve. Well, that was until the final episode (episode 13), where I thought many things regressed a bit again, and some of the bad acting and bad characterization left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth again. Regardless, at least things seemed to improve overall.
Getting into the details, I'll go into the characters. Starting with Danny Rand, I can't say that I've seen a worse miscasting of a character in a while. Regardless of the whole white/Asian casting debate out there, I just found Finn Jones to be a terrible actor to the point where he makes himself look completely stupid and unlikable. While many say that the directors and writers didn't help him out at all, I agree, but only to an extent. Lets just face it, his overacting and fight skills are just bad, even though they got a bit better in the back half of the season (minus his ridiculous hissy fits). As for the other actors, after taking in the entire series as a whole and discounting the terrible writing and directing, I started to actually think they were mostly decent. I actually didn't mind Ward or Joy at all, especially once we got past those first 6 episodes. Many really liked Colleen Wing, while I found her mostly just decent. Looking to the villains, I still found them to be fairly solid and true to Netflix's strong history of villains. Harold Meachum was probably the worst, but that was mostly the director's and writers fault in my mind. He wasn't bad though. In the first half of the Season, Madame Gao was maybe the best part. She was great throughout too. I also found Bakuto and Davos really good. In fact, I'd say they are a lot of the reason why the series got better later on. All of these people were great actors, and Bakuto and Davos actually brought in some great fighting skills too, which were direly needed. I'd say nobody was as good as a Killgrave, Kingpin or even a Cottonmouth, but that doesn't mean they weren't good.
Next, a big knock on the series has been its poor fight scenes, which I totally agree to some extent. I do think the fight scenes were bad, and almost CW Arrowverse bad at times, but like many things, I do think they improved some as the series went on, minus the last episode. I think there is multiple things to blame here. Ultimately, I felt this entire series just seemed rushed in every way. Finn Jones admits himself that he only had like 3 weeks to train for this role, which is really bad. I also just don't think him as an actor is a super skilled or believable fighter. It didn't help either that a seemingly ridiculously low budget could never do the Iron Fist true justice in these fight scenes. One last point on the fight scenes is that not giving the Iron Fist a costume didn't help their cause at all either, as that makes things even harder to cut in and out of actor/stunt double like they do well in Daredevil.
The last thing I want to delve deeper into was that seemingly ridiculously low budget I mentioned above. Ultimately, if Marvel ever wants to do The Iron Fist justice, they really need to open their pocketbooks more. You simply can't do Iron Fist for the same price tag as you can do someone like Daredevil. I'm sorry. When you do limit things like they did, you get tons of talking, practically zero iron fist, poor fight scenes, nearly zero K'un Lun, and no dragons. I mean, come on, those are critical things people want to see when they watch the Iron Fist. Therefore, if Marvel TV wants to play with the big boys (their movie partner), they need to start paying more like them. The high viewership should justify it too.
Anyway, in conclusion, the Iron Fist series was bad, no doubt. However, I'm not sure it was as bad as either I originally thought, or necessarily as bad as people are portraying it to be. It did at least mostly improve as it went on. Therefore, I don't think it is completely irredeemable. Shoot, I'd maybe argue Iron Fist ended better than Luke Cage did. I guess my biggest fears moving forward into the Defenders and beyond is still being stuck with Finn Jones as Danny Rand as well as some of the weird footing we were left on in the final episode that just didn't seem to fit, particularly the Davos/Joy stuff, but whatever. Maybe they can make that into something that makes sense and I'm really hoping Finn Jones improves on his acting, if that is possible.. Lastly, I just hope a lot of this bad stuff like being rushed, bad directing, terrible writing, low-budgets, poor casting, and poor fight choreography aren't trends that carry forward into the other series. I hope it is maybe just a one-off mistake by Marvel. I guess we'll see. With all this said, feel free to critique or give me your thoughts.
Starting out, Iron Fist was ROUGH, and I mean REALLY ROUGH, especially through the first 5-6 episodes. Not only was the acting horrendous, but the directing was bad, the writing was bad, the fight choreography was terrible, Marvel seemingly spent $50 on all 5 episodes, and maybe worst of all, it was super boring. The series spent wwaaaayyy too much time in the boardroom and with having a whiny, stupid Danny try to convince everyone he is who he says he was, not to mention Danny went about everything in the stupidest way possible. Don't even get me started on the whole insane asylum episode. However, once we got past those episodes, while it was still up and down, episodes 7, and 9-12 I thought were actually pretty decent and even good at points. In those episodes, nearly all of the series misgivings seemed to actually improve. Well, that was until the final episode (episode 13), where I thought many things regressed a bit again, and some of the bad acting and bad characterization left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth again. Regardless, at least things seemed to improve overall.
Getting into the details, I'll go into the characters. Starting with Danny Rand, I can't say that I've seen a worse miscasting of a character in a while. Regardless of the whole white/Asian casting debate out there, I just found Finn Jones to be a terrible actor to the point where he makes himself look completely stupid and unlikable. While many say that the directors and writers didn't help him out at all, I agree, but only to an extent. Lets just face it, his overacting and fight skills are just bad, even though they got a bit better in the back half of the season (minus his ridiculous hissy fits). As for the other actors, after taking in the entire series as a whole and discounting the terrible writing and directing, I started to actually think they were mostly decent. I actually didn't mind Ward or Joy at all, especially once we got past those first 6 episodes. Many really liked Colleen Wing, while I found her mostly just decent. Looking to the villains, I still found them to be fairly solid and true to Netflix's strong history of villains. Harold Meachum was probably the worst, but that was mostly the director's and writers fault in my mind. He wasn't bad though. In the first half of the Season, Madame Gao was maybe the best part. She was great throughout too. I also found Bakuto and Davos really good. In fact, I'd say they are a lot of the reason why the series got better later on. All of these people were great actors, and Bakuto and Davos actually brought in some great fighting skills too, which were direly needed. I'd say nobody was as good as a Killgrave, Kingpin or even a Cottonmouth, but that doesn't mean they weren't good.
Next, a big knock on the series has been its poor fight scenes, which I totally agree to some extent. I do think the fight scenes were bad, and almost CW Arrowverse bad at times, but like many things, I do think they improved some as the series went on, minus the last episode. I think there is multiple things to blame here. Ultimately, I felt this entire series just seemed rushed in every way. Finn Jones admits himself that he only had like 3 weeks to train for this role, which is really bad. I also just don't think him as an actor is a super skilled or believable fighter. It didn't help either that a seemingly ridiculously low budget could never do the Iron Fist true justice in these fight scenes. One last point on the fight scenes is that not giving the Iron Fist a costume didn't help their cause at all either, as that makes things even harder to cut in and out of actor/stunt double like they do well in Daredevil.
The last thing I want to delve deeper into was that seemingly ridiculously low budget I mentioned above. Ultimately, if Marvel ever wants to do The Iron Fist justice, they really need to open their pocketbooks more. You simply can't do Iron Fist for the same price tag as you can do someone like Daredevil. I'm sorry. When you do limit things like they did, you get tons of talking, practically zero iron fist, poor fight scenes, nearly zero K'un Lun, and no dragons. I mean, come on, those are critical things people want to see when they watch the Iron Fist. Therefore, if Marvel TV wants to play with the big boys (their movie partner), they need to start paying more like them. The high viewership should justify it too.
Anyway, in conclusion, the Iron Fist series was bad, no doubt. However, I'm not sure it was as bad as either I originally thought, or necessarily as bad as people are portraying it to be. It did at least mostly improve as it went on. Therefore, I don't think it is completely irredeemable. Shoot, I'd maybe argue Iron Fist ended better than Luke Cage did. I guess my biggest fears moving forward into the Defenders and beyond is still being stuck with Finn Jones as Danny Rand as well as some of the weird footing we were left on in the final episode that just didn't seem to fit, particularly the Davos/Joy stuff, but whatever. Maybe they can make that into something that makes sense and I'm really hoping Finn Jones improves on his acting, if that is possible.. Lastly, I just hope a lot of this bad stuff like being rushed, bad directing, terrible writing, low-budgets, poor casting, and poor fight choreography aren't trends that carry forward into the other series. I hope it is maybe just a one-off mistake by Marvel. I guess we'll see. With all this said, feel free to critique or give me your thoughts.
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I do really hope I'm completely wrong and Thor: Ragnarok is awesome. I'm far from someone who ever roots for any of these things to fail.
