Having finally gotten round to finishing it, my previous estimate needs slight revision: it’s still not absolutely terribad, but actually a bit worse than I thought from the first few episodes, and mainly down to Finn Jones simply not being suited to the role - an uncharismatic actor with good looks, who tries hard but just doesn’t have “it”. Sort of a Jude Law 2.0.
The character is inconsistent the way he’s portraying him. The bemused hippy of the first few episodes seems to give way by halfway through the show, to a nervous wreck with violent tendencies who doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going, with the primary result that Iron Fist just doesn’t come across as a real person, and the secondary result that the Kun Lun background just feels like a meaningless gimmick (as opposed to somewhere you’d get some kind of weighty training from mysterious beings). And Iron Fist not seeming like a real person is a big problem; again, I’m comparing with DD, JJ and LC, who are all charismatic actors
It seems like they were trying to avoid flashbacks to Kun Lun a la the Kung Fu tv series (the original series is obviously where the comic book character drew some of its inspiration from), but that was probably a mistake, as without those, there’s no contrast to something else Rand should have been, so no sense of his current state of agitation being something with a contrasting background, so no sense of it being an inner struggle: it’s just a guy with a superpower acting erratically.
On the other hand, they could have played it like the Champions tv series, where the “ancient wise city of heaven” thing is played out as a one-shot, super-mysterious thing, but then Danny would have had to pretty much remain a bemused hippy with a superpower all the way through. That might have worked, but again, instead of relying on that they tried to give him conflict where there’s no real coherent reason for it as depicted.
As it is, the only really interesting character in the whole show is Ward Meachum, who’s well acted, has a sort of redemptive arc, and for whom one feels some sympathy as being the victim of his abusive father, and who feels like an actual human being from start to finish.
I have to say that the power fist slam in the final episode was very cool, and almost worth the episode. But it would have had more impact if the character had felt more real.
The other thing is that I’m getting mightily tired of milk-fed slips of girls beating up on 6 ft meaty bouncers in movies and tv shows. That there might be one or two of them around is a fun possibility (although they’d have to look pretty meaty themselves to do it); that you couldn’t turn a street corner without coming across such an eminently capable maiden, strains credulity even for comic books. At this point, the trope is ceasing to be just a fun thing with a feminist point, and becoming a tiresome cliche that’s being shoved down our throats as mindless propaganda.
