Netflix: Marvel's Iron Fist. Must watch.

[OutHouse]

just watched the first episode. it has my attention.

 

[Crono]

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/luke-cage-iron-fist.2487699/

 

[OutHouse]

this show needs its own thread.

 

[Kaido]

On the second episode right now. Pretty good so far! I like the slower pacing...it's slow, but strong, unlike say episodes 4 through 10 of Jessica Jones, which were just slow.

 

[zinfamous]

I never got past the first episode of Luke Cage, but for no real reason. Just never got around to it. That is on my list within then next ~2 weeks...then Iron Fist, I guess.

 

[BoomerD]

I watched all of Luke Cage. It was OK, but not great. Tried to watch Jessica Jones. VERY slow...made it through maybe 3-4 episodes before I quit. I just finished episode 2 of Iron Fist. It's not great, but I'll keep watching for now, just to see where it goes.

 

[Kaido]

I watched all of Luke Cage. It was OK, but not great. Tried to watch Jessica Jones. VERY slow...made it through maybe 3-4 episodes before I quit. I just finished episode 2 of Iron Fist. It's not great, but I'll keep watching for now, just to see where it goes.

JJ gets good after episode 10. The first episode or two is promising but then it just gets crazy slow. It took me months to get through it, haha. But then it goes into insane mode for like the like four episodes & makes up for the ridiculous pacing of the first ten.

I keep thinking about how great a Phantom Edit of Jessica Jones would be. I think it would be great as a Sherlock-esqe mini-series where it's like 4 episodes long & each episode is 1.5 hours long.

 

[Kaido]

I never got past the first episode of Luke Cage, but for no real reason. Just never got around to it. That is on my list within then next ~2 weeks...then Iron Fist, I guess.

It never really gets great. The final fight scene was kind of meh. I didn't like his final words either, they could have left it on a great cliffhanger, but didn't.

Daredevil season 2 left on an insanely awesome cliffhanger. THAT'S the kind of ending I want, where you're yelling "AHHHHH!!!" at the screen, haha.

 

[thebestMAX]

Have watched all of LC, DD and JJ. Rank DD #1, LC #2 and JJ #3.

After 2 episodes of Iron Hand Im going to rank it as 2 or 3 at this point. Slow but OK. My biggest problem with IF is the lead actor or maybe his direction. Need to watch more to be sure.

 

[Kaido]

"Where did you go?" on the window, NICE

The music when he punched out the mental ward door & after that reminds me a lot of the Portal 2 soundtrack.

 

[Kaido]

Wing's first kick in the cage fight was pretty awesome too haha

 

[Aikouka]

Eh, honestly... Iron Fist wasn't that good. The action felt so weak compared to what we've seen in the other Marvel Netflix shows. It didn't even feel like good Kung Fu. That awful AMC show Into the Badlands did a better job at that than this did. (I still don't know how that series has an 8.1 on IMDB....) To give you an idea, imagine if you took the part where Bruce Wayne comes back to Gotham in Batman Begins and elongated that to say about five 60-minute episodes, and that's the beginning of Iron Fist. Danny only ever really displays his powers about... four or five times, and the only good scene with that was in the final episode.

Oh, but step over Rosario Dawson, because Colleen's actress.... mmhmmm!

 

[NuclearNed]

I've watched the 1st 4 eps of IF and like it a lot so far. I would rank it after both seasons of DD but before both LC & JJ. Luke Cage started strong, but ended weak. So far I like the story of IF a lot, even though it may not be action packed.

 

[Sean Kyle]

Is it really that good? I didn't hear any good initial reviews though!

 

[Captante]

I would rank it after both seasons of DD but before both LC & JJ.

Agree completely.

Watched episode 1 & 2 ... not bad so far although the fighting is unconvincing.

 

[Yakk]

Liking Iron Fist a lot so far, halfway through the series. I'll confirm after the complete season, but so far I'm placing it above DD.

#1 IF
#2 DD
#3 LC
#4 JJ

LC was ok, JJ was not very interesting and I kept falling asleep, but I think I got most of it.

 

[Guurn]

I'm on episode 9. So far the fight scenes are power rangers bad and the dialogue feels like the writers mailed it in. In addition it stretches believably to the limits when he does the naive thing over and over and over. Eventually super heroes are supposed to just kick ass.

 

[nathanddrews]

After 10 episodes, I think a good title for this show would be "Schizophrenic Fist". We thought it would be more interesting as a premise if he was just crazy and only believed he was good at kung fu and that he and everyone around him had a split personality.

I knew next to nothing about the Hell's Kitchen crew going into these Netflix series. I really enjoyed DD (except the Elektra stuff), JJ, and the first half of LC (Cottonmouth FTW!), but IF has just been a slog. I thought this Justin Timberlake guy was supposed to be "the best of the best" when it comes to kung fu and I had high hopes for the choreography of this series, but it's just not there. Either the actors have zero real world skill or the director and editor don't know how to compose fight scenes. Granted, my bar is set pretty high by Wilson Yip and Donnie Yen.

Who is supposed to be the villain of this show anyway? What is he fighting for? Why does any of it matter? The way the show is written and edited, I'm also not sure what Danny's purpose actually is supposed to be? So he's the guardian of the path of Kun Lun, but he abandoned his post for reasons he won't share or be honest about. He has the power of the Iron Fist that he "earned through brutal dedication, training, and effort", yet his temperament is that of a toddler. He ragequits every conversation and we're given no reasons as to why. He lacks any and all wisdom in his actions and people he trusts with information, yet occasionally spouts off Buddhist monk teaching just to sound like he's some sort of warrior sage. He asks for trust having provided no evidence that his judgment is worth trusting. Nothing has been accomplished.

We'll watch it to the end and hope that something worthwhile actually happens. Maybe the Iron Fist from the WWII footage will actually show up.

 

[Kaido]

Eh, honestly... Iron Fist wasn't that good. The action felt so weak compared to what we've seen in the other Marvel Netflix shows. It didn't even feel like good Kung Fu. That awful AMC show Into the Badlands did a better job at that than this did. (I still don't know how that series has an 8.1 on IMDB....) To give you an idea, imagine if you took the part where Bruce Wayne comes back to Gotham in Batman Begins and elongated that to say about five 60-minute episodes, and that's the beginning of Iron Fist. Danny only ever really displays his powers about... four or five times, and the only good scene with that was in the final episode.

I'm about halfway through & while I do enjoy the slow pacing, especially from an exploratory POV (like with Ward thinking over the synthetic heroin vs. his medication), I do feel like it needs a lot more action. So far the action sequences have been super short...the Hachet Men, punching out the mental ward door, etc. I think that's partly why Daredevil worked so well...he was constantly getting into fights as well as keeping up with the politics of his day job.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

I finished it and thought it was by far the weakest of the bunch.

DD > DD2 > LC > JJ > IF

 

[dainthomas]

Watched the first couple episodes. Took me a minute to recognize Faramir as David Meachum. And Colleen.

I'd still say DD is the best. So far (unless it gets worse) this is second. JJ (third) is only decent because David Tennant is amazing. LC is barely behind that.

 

[Skel]

I wanted to like this show.. It's just so bad and pointless. I struggle to say anything positive about it.

Spoiler

When Rosario Dawson joined up it really started falling completely apart in terms of logic. Why she didn't call DD, who you know, just spent a season fighting the Hand, I'll never know. He has more experience than any of them fighting the Hand, not to mention the whole 'on the run' story that lasted two episodes.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

I wanted to like this show.. It's just so bad and pointless. I struggle to say anything positive about it.

Spoiler

When Rosario Dawson joined up it really started falling completely apart in terms of logic. Why she didn't call DD, who you know, just spent a season fighting the Hand, I'll never know. He has more experience than any of them fighting the Hand, not to mention the whole 'on the run' story that lasted two episodes.

Or that

Spoiler

China episode where it basically looked like they were on a Brooklyn dock.

 

[Aikouka]

I'm about halfway through & while I do enjoy the slow pacing, especially from an exploratory POV (like with Ward thinking over the synthetic heroin vs. his medication), I do feel like it needs a lot more action. So far the action sequences have been super short...the Hachet Men, punching out the mental ward door, etc. I think that's partly why Daredevil worked so well...he was constantly getting into fights as well as keeping up with the politics of his day job.

I think Daredevil's action was just a lot more interesting too. Remember how amazed people were at the long, one-shot fight in the hallway? Iron Fist just doesn't have anything interesting like that. The fights are all generic, cut in a standard way, and all around not interesting. I mentioned Into the Badlands earlier, which is an AMC show with heavy kung fu movie influences, it actually does kung fu action scenes a lot better. Albeit, I don't care for the wire fu, but it doesn't do that too much. (Unfortunately, I just think the writing isn't very good in that show.)

Also, some fights just seem to end in a rather awkward and abrupt manner. Like there's no reasoning provided as to how Danny gets past the fight's obstacle... it just happens. The two that stood out to me were...

Spoiler

the fight with the spider venom lady and the drunken fist user. With the venom lady, he's having a ton of trouble seeing and can't hit her because of the venom, but all of a sudden, he's able to fight just fine. With the drunken fist user, he's getting beat around for a while, but just starts winning all of a sudden.

I didn't care much about Ward and Joy, because they just weren't very interesting characters.

Oh, and Danny's kung fu form looked somewhat weak whenever he was practicing directly beside someone. It really stood out to me when he was practicing with Colleen's sensei.

 

[smackababy]

I can't get how some of you think this show is better than Luke Cage or Jessica Jones. I watched the entire thing, and a lot of the characters just seemed incredibly forced. Other than Ward, Gao, and Bakudo, nobody had a real motivation for doing anything. Danny was whiny, but I guess that is his character, and the rest were so one note or unnecessary. They even dropped the ball with how the handled the Hand.

Spoiler

Colleen was just naive and had no idea? There wasn't some "oh, yeah, we actually are kind of good and the Iron Fist just sees it as black and white." It was literally just "yep, we evil and Colleen is dumb and didn't see it."

Easily the worst Marvel have done since Agents of SHEILD.