Spoiler Free Review
Ouch (honestly the trailers felt this way):
Iron Fist is the fourth Netflix series based on a Marvel Comics character and the final solo series setting up The Defenders. As such, there is an obligatoriness permeating the show as it soldiers on through yet another origin tale before audiences can eventually get to see these street-level Avengers team up in a different series. I’ve screened the first six episodes of Marvel’s Iron Fist, but will avoid real spoilers in this advance review of the show’s premiere episode, ‘Snow Gives Way.”
A barefoot man in his twenties, who looks like he’s on his way to a music festival or yoga class, shows up in the lobby of Rand Enterprises claiming to be Danny Rand, the son of the conglomerate’s co-founder who apparently died in a plane crash with his parents in the Himalayas many years before. He has no ID, no real way to prove he is who he claims, but that doesn’t stop Danny (played as an adult by Game of Thrones’ vet Finn Jones) from pressing his case, going so far as to rough up Rand security personnel and make his way upstairs to the corporate offices.
There, he confronts his childhood friends Ward (Tom Pelphrey, who resembles a sinister Fred Armisen) and Joy Meachum (Jessica Stroup), the offspring of the company’s other co-founder, Harold Meachum (David Wenham). Danny announces he’s back and ready to resume his place in the company that his father helped build. Needless to say, the Meachums don’t believe this odd stranger. (Obviously, he really is Danny Rand.)
What ensues is basically a soap opera plot where bland, pretty, filthy rich people sneer and scheme over fortunes and family, complete with betrayals and characters seemingly back from the dead. The plight of an heir reclaiming his fortune and empire may be high enough stakes in a soap or a stodgy British costume drama, but in a show called Iron Fist this isn’t the most engaging way to spend time getting acquainted with the last Defender.
Iron Fist, exec produced by Dexter’s Scott Buck, is Marvel’s most generic Netflix series yet. So much of it feels familiar from many other recent superhero tales — Batman Begins, Doctor Strange, even a bit of Iron Man and Arrow — and the story the series has thus far offered in its first six episodes does little to shake up that well-worn formula.
The title character’s backstory — yet another example of the superhero trope of the rich, white guy finding enlightenment in the mysterious Far East — has been a much talked about source of controversy since before the first scenes were even shot. The premiere episode only hints at this origin story through flashes of memories so it remains to be seen just how much of Danny’s training in the inter-dimensional city of K’un-Lun will end up being depicted.
One high point of the series’ premiere (directed by ‘90s indie filmmaker-turned-prolific TV helmer John Dahl) is Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick), whose martial arts prowess seems superior to a title character supposedly trained by warrior monks. Indeed, while Finn Jones is perfectly serviceable as a corporate heir, he simply lacks the physical presence to make you believe Danny could kick anyone’s butt when his fist isn’t glowing. Jones seems too soft for a man who has supposedly endured the elements, combat training, and intense discipline since boyhood. What fights we do see all feel highly choreographed, more like dance sequences than superhero fisticuffs. You believe Daredevil could beat up a bunch of bad guys in a way that Danny Rand has yet to convince.
The Meachums are among the more mundane Marvel antagonists. Neither Ward nor Joy are out and out villains, mind you, although Ward is certainly the more corrupt of the two. Still, they’re basically boardroom baddies, with some redeemable qualities by virtue of them being siblings who seem to genuinely love each other and want to do right by their company. (Ward was Joy’s uncle in the original comics.) Danny’s return proves a big wrench in their machine.
While this high-rise approach does set Iron Fist apart from the other, grittier and more urban Marvel-Netflix series, it also lends the show a sterile look and feel. Again, it’s all very prime time soap opera-ish. The latter of these first six episodes eventually brings in more comic book-y and fun elements, but Iron Fist is thus far the weakest of the Marvel-Netflix series.
THE VERDICT
Marvel's Iron Fist starts off sluggishly, seeming far more like a soap opera than a superhero series, complete with bland, pretty, rich people sneering and scheming over family fortunes.
