Tom Cottingham
Features Editor
Last Friday, Marvel Television released their fourth Netflix series Iron Fist. So far, Marvel retains an impressive streak of distributing high quality superhero television series with in depth story lines and breathtaking action. That streak has to come to an end with the addition of Iron Fist.
There are still some things to like about this series. Finn Jones stars as Danny Rand, who later is known as The Iron Fist. He returns to New York City 15 years later after he and his family were presumed dead in the Himalayas and he is confused about where his family is. The core theme of the first season involves family, betrayal and how these two factors affect him as a character in the future.
Race controversy aside, Jones has a lukewarm performance as The Iron Fist. He gets the job done as the actor with not many surprises. The support cast, however, raises the bar higher. Jessica Henwick portrays Colleen Wing. Wing is a powerful, vicious and independent dojo artist. She is the sensei who trains and enhances The Iron Fist’s skills. Henwick’s character is impressively sharp and on point with dialogue.
Another impressive actor in the series is Tom Pelphrey as Ward Meachum. Ward is the childhood acquaintance of Rand. His character glows brighter as the season goes on. He is one of those characters viewers fall in love with as the season goes on and his character becoms more developed.
Although the show has some good acting and a few surprising plot twists, the lows heavily outweigh the high points. From start to finish, there have been too many errors in the episodes. From careless writing to not enough action, Iron Fist’s hype was extremely too high.
The biggest flaw that made this series uninteresting was the use of the actual Iron Fist. Danny Rand finds out that he is the next Iron Fist who holds mystical powers to defeat the evil ninja group known as the Hand. This show did not show that until the end of the season. It feels like the equivalent to when it took all 13 episodes for Daredevil to finally receive his costume, but ten times worse.
There was not much action for a Marvel production. This is evident during the first half of the series. The first six episodes are bland with no high dosage of character development. The audience doesn’t know much about Danny. There are repetitive mentions of a corporate problem with Rand’s company but it is not resolved until later on in the series. The pace was disastrous and dragged at many times.
The fight scenes, an element that many thought would be an essential piece to the series, were horribly drawn out. Excluding maybe two times, the fights tended to be the same smacks and punches over and over again. Besides Wing, the character’s dialogue was very choppy which made the show seem to be all over the place at some points. Without spoilers, the finale was not that good either. It just did not deliver.
Overall, Iron Fist did not satisfy the regular Marvel fan. It felt rushed, unnecessary at some points and a poor transition to the highly anticipated series The Defender that will include Iron Fist and the rest of the heroes.
cottintf14@bonaventure.edu
