Iron Fist: Pilot

So you may be wondering, why am I doing a review for a Marvel TV show when in the past I have just watched the entire show and didn't do this whole Pilot episode first? Well this is for a couple of reasons. As you probably have noticed, I haven't really been able to do a whole lot of reviews very recently. My reviews have been pretty sporadic and that is cause I am working. When I'm working I don't have a lot of time or energy to watch full movies and instead watch TV shows. Lots of times I watch short mindless TV like The Big Bang Theory (btw I'm hoping that review is coming soon) and the serious shows that I do watch I watch so sporadically that I haven't been able to finish even the 8 episodes in the first season of Penny Dreadful. All of that considered, while I do want to watch all of Iron Fist, I don't see myself finishing it in a timely manner but I do want to put a fresh review up.

But on top of that... this show has not received very great reviews from the very little I have been paying attention to the reception of this show. Put aside the fact that I don't really know too many people that were really excited for this show, myself included, I don't see myself blazing through this show the way I did Daredevil or Luke Cage. And that speculation is only supported by my thoughts on the pilot episode...

Iron Fist starts around the character of Danny Rand (played by Finn Jones). Danny is the young heir to a huge corporation that his father built with his friend Harold Meachum (played by David Wenham). However, Danny and his parents were involved in a horrific plane crash that took the lives of his parents in the middle of the Himalayas fifteen years before the show begins.

The pilot is Danny finally returning to New York after being presumed dead and trying to tell the people he knows and cares about that he is alive. On top of all of that he knows kung fu.

Danny is played by Finn Jones and you may recognize him from his role as Loras Tyrell in Game of Thrones. If you follow me on Twitter and read my live tweets from watching the show, I refer to Danny Rand as Hipster Tyrell because Danny has really no character whatsoever and all I see is Loras Tyrell trying to be a homeless person in New York.

I guess that they're trying to make it seem like Hipster Tyrell is a little bit stunted in his development since he never really had a childhood and he was forced to do whatever he did in the Himalayas and whatever gave him his kung fu abilities and therefore he's a fish out of water in this story. But what it really looks like is that he's just a crazy homeless person.

He goes and talks to Ward and Joy Meachum (played by Tom Pelphrey and Jessica Stroup) the children of his father's business partner, who I call Donald Jr and Ivanka Trump... cause they really look like them. When he gets to their building, he walks in looking like a homeless person, spouting off that he is a family friend who died in a horrible plane crash and they're reaction is to throw him out and treat him like a crazy person or worse, a corporate spy trying to bring down their business.

I know that there's supposed to be a message here about corporate greed and elitism and Ward and Joy are supposed to kind of be the bad guys in this pilot episode, but I don't blame them at all for wanting to get rid of this crazy guy. Now there is a deleted scene out there probably of Donald Trump Jr (Ward) telling his personal security to go and kill what they only assume is a homeless person, but to be honest, if I was a wealthy business man and my sister told me that a homeless guy broke into her house, I would probably do the same thing.

But here's the worse thing, this was an incredibly horrible first episode just on the basis that the story sucked. I could talk about the acting (which was bad), or I could talk about the character (which were bad, but you know I still will). But on a fundamental level, this was an awful way to start the story.

Now perhaps I'm looking at this from biased perspective as I have seen all of Jessica Jones, Daredevil and Luke Cage. But the way those shows started, got you hooked from the beginning.

From the beginning, you knew that Daredevil was a story of a kid going blind, developing super senses and fighting crime. From the beginning, you knew that Jessica Jones was about a renegade PI fighting a mind controller which was analogous for women's issues including abusive relationships. From the beginning you knew that that Luke Cage was about an indestructible man who is going to fight a corrupt crime boss.

From the first episode, could you tell me what Iron Fist is about?

All the first episode was was a clearly insane man running around bothering people including the Trump family and sometimes he pulled out some Kung fu. Which is weird because the premise is not that different from the premise of CW's Arrow.

 I'm not saying they're totally the same, but you can see the similarities. And while Arrow definitely has it's problems, at least the premise seemed interesting and got you hooked in the first episode.

Iron Fist is like what Arrow would be if Oliver Queen got back to New York and continued to look like a homeless person in Starling City. Along with that, can you imagine the Queen's not believing that Oliver was their son and having them worry about the financial future of the Queen corporation? Cause that's all this first episode was. Same silly drama with some kung fu thrown into the mix.

Now, does this mean there was nothing good in this pilot? Well... not exactly?

She was cool.

Jessica Henwick plays the master of a dojo. She doesn't get to do too much in the pilot and really the only thing that happens with her is when Hipster Tyrell decides to stop bothering the Trumps and instead bother her.

Honestly, I was more interested in her story than Hipster Tyrells. Why couldn't this show be about her? Especially since a lot of the inspiration from Iron Fist comes from Asian martial arts and Budhist philosophy. I do realize that the origin story of Iron Fist does follow an Oliver Queen type format, but they've made changes to origin stories before, why not try something new? Especially since the Oliver Queen story has been done so many times already.

It's also good to see David Wenham getting work. You really only see him in one scene in the pilot and they're probably setting him up to be the villain. I had to roll my eyes a little bit that he does resemble a little bit of Donald Trump in a more James Bond villain sort of way... really subtle there Iron Fist.

I don't know what the show has in store for the character David Wenham plays but it's not a bad thing to see Faramir on the screen again. I hope he's one of the better parts of the show and he turns out to be a menacing villain instead of the poor man's Donald Trump impersonator.

I honestly do want to continue watching Iron Fist. Is it because there's much good in the show? No, the pilot is actually kind of awful. However, I have come this far with the Marvel TV shows, I can only assume there is stuff within the season of Iron Fist that I will need later this year when I watch The Defenders. At least I can hope so.

So when I say that it's better to do this pilot review because I don't see myself blazing through this season, there's a reason for that. This show is not off to a great start.

But those are my thoughts on the pilot of Ironfist. What did you think of the first episode? Have you watched the full season yet? Does it get better? Without spoilers let me know in by commenting and discussing below! You can also hit me up on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me requests for films and TV shows I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. So have you seen the new Thor Ragnorak trailer? I have mixed feelings about it but I do think it looks pretty cool and I do think it will probably be the best of the Thor movies. I'm putting a link to that and I'll put up one of the funny teasers they did. Enjoy!