Anyone else started? I'm one episode in so far. Brief thoughts: Not as compelling as the other shows (after one episode). The lead is not interesting. The guy and his dad are both pretty good as d-bags you kind of want to punch. The sister is kind of empty. The kung fu girl is the best part so far. The fight scenes have not been very interesting. We'll see if it gets better, but 12 more episodes like this feel like a chore I may not choose to complete soon. Some callbacks to the other shows (Claire Temple, Jeri Hogarth) may make it more interesting.
Second episode was better. The jerk dad and his little research sycophant are funny. Some of the other characters are fleshing out better. It's still moving very slowly. By the end of two episodes, Daredevil had some awesome fight scenes, Jessica Jones had some WTF holy crap moments, and Luke Cage had some great music and interesting characters - this one has less than those other shows did two episodes in - but it feels like less of a chore now. I don't know if I will watch any more today.
I'm finishing up episode 2. It seems pretty decent. Not a knockout beginning like Luke Cage or DD, but not as horrid as the reviews made it out to be.
I'm four episodes in and really digging it. Was the soundtrack (and theme music) pulled from a discarded Daft Punk/Tron Legacy song? Not complaining, it just has that vibe. Not as good as DD, but better than LC and much better than JJ, IMO. J-MONEY!!
I've only watched the first episode, but I didn't hate it. Didn't love it like I did with Daredevil, but I think it has potential. So far for me, the weakest actor is Finn Jones, which is a shame considering that he's the titular character.
Lewis Tan was turned down for the lead role in #IronFist but shows up in Ep. 8 & steals the show https://t.co/OfDwBHF9bQ via @RachaelKrishna— BuzzFeed Arts & Entertainment (@BuzzFeedEnt) March 20, 2017 Though I guess just his casting in the lead role would not have solved all of the problems with this show? I haven't seen it yet but I have seen people talk about the occasionally cringe-worthy dialogue.
OK, finished the show today. It was ... meh. It exceeded expectations in that my expectations were low due to the poor reviews, but it wasn't that great overall. I think a lot of the poor reviews were because they only got to see the first six episodes - the show got better starting in episode six, the one that was directed by long time kung fu fan RZA. There was a lot to like. Just about all of the secondary characters (i.e. everyone except for Danny Rand) were pretty good. Gao is a good bad guy, and I hope we get to see more of her. Bakuto was an OK bad guy and he may be back. Harold Meachum was a great bad guy, but it's fine that he's gone. Ward Meachum was a great tweener - you wanted to punch him pretty much the whole time, but you were also rooting for him at the end. Joy Meachum was not as good as the others, but at least she was interesting. Davos was a good frenemy - we know from the comics that he's the Steel Serpent and a bad guy, but he got across the betrayal that he felt very well. Colleen Wing was better early on when she was kicking ass in the arena, and less good when she was Danny's sidekick. Claire Temple was OK but another sidekick. The problem with these two women as sidekicks is that Danny was such a jackass, but instead of telling him "no", they went along with his stupid half-baked plans anyways. They had no agency of their own. Still, the actors did the best they could with that material. The biggest problem was Danny - he just wasn't believable as a protagonist. I'm not sure if it's the writing or the acting - probably some of both. OK, we get that he has daddy issues, that he's an emotionally stunted man child, etc. Early on when he was the happy hobo he was kind of entertaining, but the last several episodes when he started to get all serious -- look, he's making his serious face so you can tell he's serious -- it just wasn't believable. He was about as serious as Lego Batman -- not the competent one from the Lego Batman games, but the idiot one from the Lego Movie and the Lego Batman movie. He's all, do what I say because I'm the Iron Fist and I miss my dad, and the ladies were all meekly "yes, sir" and they go storm the building in whatever dumb half-ass plan Danny cooked up. We'll see what they do with him in the Defenders. As long as Danny isn't in charge, it should be OK - he makes a good weapon to break stuff with, but, you know, let Daredevil or Luke Cage make the plans.
I'm two episodes in and I've been pleasantly surprised after all the bad press. I think part of the problem with Rand's character isn't necessarily Jones, but the way they chose to present the character in general, a guy with a sort of spiritual hippie dude vibe that likely isn't what people envisioned from a martial arts master (and I wonder if they took a page from the silly little Marvel Super Heroes cartoon from several years back, where Iron Fist talked like a fortune cookie surferdude, or maybe a ninja turtle). I went to college with guys like this, so I'm getting a kick out of seeing one as a kickass fighting guy rather than somebody who just smokes pot and plays acoustic guitar for the hippie chicks. Anyway, maybe it's my interpretation, but I also think the show knows it's running kind of a silly concept and has a little bit of tongue in cheek lurking beneath the surface for that reason. It's so far the most comic book-y of the Marvel shows, which I could really see turning people off, but I'm enjoying it so far. Yeah, like all the Netflix shows it's already seeming stretched out more than it needs to be, but I'm used to that by now.
Alright, finished the series. And my overall take is that its awfulness has been severely exaggerated. But that said, I do think that this is top to bottom the lowest quality of the 5 Marvel Netflix series. But THAT said, I also think that it's right in the middle as far as enjoyability of the 5 Marvel Netflix series. Cage has been my favorite, followed by the first season of Daredevil. And Jessica Jones was very well done but very hard to watch at times, and the second season of Daredevil had a great first half, but silly second half (didn't get into DD and Elektra battling armies of ninjas, oh well). Iron Fist was often silly, sometimes poorly acted, had some clunky fight scenes, and had some plot lines that were difficult to care about at times (mostly regarding the Meachum kids). But it was generally a lot of fun to watch despite these faults, and like I said in my previous post, I don't think the show took itself nearly as seriously as its critics thought it did. It was very comic booky, and I was fine with that. And Harold Meachum was a fantastic villain, very Tywin Lannister-like, if Tywin had been brought back to life by a red priest or something. Madame Gao has been great in each show she's appeared in, and Bakuto made a nice creepy New Age cult leader villain. Danny Rand himself was kind of a douche at times, but I'm pretty sure he was supposed to be. And I now have a bit of a crush on the actress who plays Colleen Wing, so there's that too.
I've been thinking about this a bit, and in a show where mystical powers are at play, people come back from the dead, throwing stars can be made from aluminum foil, there's a certain level of disbelief that needs to be suspended ... a guy like Danny Rand looking like he can beat up Lewis Tan should be the least of anyone's worries. Plus, Tan's character was drunk.
Let alone that's it's far less ridiculous than Colleen Wing taking on two huge guys at once in an enclosed space and winning.
I felt like this was the weakest Marvel TV season. Iron Fist/Danny Rand wasn't a compelling lead, and I didn't really like him or want to root for him. Ward was a solid character, as was Harold, but Joy was a weaker element with a fairly reactionary arc. Madame Gao and her messing with the protagonists was great, I loved that dynamic. Bakuto was not an intimidating villain, but that probably wasn't supposed to be in his bag and he was decent. Coleen was typecast as a pretty standard love interest that can fight. Overall it was meh, something to watch. Daredevil, Cage, and Jones were all superior shows.