There are many ways to start this blog. I could relate it to my experiences growing up mixed race, I could start it talking about the tweet storm that descended every time I watched a minute of Iron Fist, and a million other ways that begin academically/professionally but end up a mire of foaming-at-the-mouth rage. But honestly, Danny’s not worth that sort of time or energy.
Those of you who read this (all four!) will probably recognize these ideas from previous tweets, Facebook posts, and angry/exasperated text messages but I’ve probably spent more time thinking about Danny Rand than the writers did so I thought I should have all of those ideas organized in one place. I will also try to refer to much smarter minds than myself for some of these issues because I am only one person and can’t think of all the ways this was entirely mediocre.
You may be thinking “Paulina, if you hated it so much, why did you finish it?” Well, person who questions my life choices, it started with a podcast I did with the awesome Daniel Kwan at the SAAs in Vancouver. We chatted about everything under the sun regarding diversity and being of Asian heritage, and at one point we started ripping into Iron Fist, which had just come out. Between the two of us, we had seen maybe an episode or two, but we had seen enough to joke about forcing ourselves to watch the whole thing then do another Podcast. I thought, hey sure, I’ll give it a chance even though there are tons of articles coming out about how boring it was etc. [All the hyperlinks]. I also had a morbid interest in actually seeing what was going on because I enjoy the Marvel cinematic/Netflix Universe and Colleen Wing seemed like such a boss.
So, post SAA, but before returning to school the BF and I put the first two episodes on and realized very quickly that there was no way in hell we could get ourselves to finish this on its own. So we decided, let’s pair this with Into the Badlands which we had both heard great things about. I put the first five minutes on and was like “This dude riding on this motorcycle is more interesting than that whole episode of Iron Fist”. From then on, we had a formula, two episodes of Iron Fist to one episode of Into the Badlands.
(NOTE: I would instead recommend just watching Into the Badlands and, if you really need to know, Googling a synopsis of Iron Fist and watching the fight with Lewis Tan. Then maybe re-watch the Defenders trailer to see how many times Jessica Jones sasses Danny because he deserves it.)
So what was so bad about it? Well, almost everything. The casting was unimpressive, the acting was bad, the fight scenes were boring, the overall plot was unclear, the writing was atrocious, and the show did nothing to improve the problematic origins of the character. I’ll try to address my critiques in that order, otherwise I’ll die of an aneurysm. However, honestly, they bleed and crisscross one another so it’s hard to say where one of these critiques ends and the next begins.
Casting: Danny Rand is white in the comics but he’s also supposed to be interesting and capable. For training so much as a monk, he is not that physically impressive and isn’t that good at martial arts. Marvel cannot tell me they could not find a decent-looking blonde, white actor who knew at least some Kung-Fu. There are tons of Caucasian dudes who do Kung-Fu, so, it’s absurd that they went with someone who so minimally fit the visual profile of Danny Rand.
The acting: So the writing is atrocious, which I’ll get to in a second, but Finn Jones doesn’t do much to convince me of anything. He looks like a petulant child when he’s angry, which is about 75% of the time. And his uncontrollable anger/anxiety does not do justice to those who experience such emotions. I’ve seen people go through such episodes and Finn acts them so badly they are borderline comedic, which is not what we want when right now we do so little to support people with mental health problems. Especially coming after Jessica Jones, which did such a great job with that, the poor acting surrounding such issues is truly infuriating.
The fight scenes: So there were a couple good ones, I will give them that. HOWEVER, THE WHOLE POINT OF THE IRON FIST IS MARTIAL ARTS MASTERY. Literally, he was created alongside characters like Shang-Chi, Colleen Wing, and Misty Knight as part of a growing line of martial arts heroes. So, his martial arts should be impeccable. Instead, there is a stiffness whenever Finn Jones executes moves that makes the divide when he fights professionals, like the fight with Lewis Tan, even larger. This makes his entire purpose (master of kung fu) unbelievable and his whole character come off as mediocre. Also, as he’s told us, like five million times, he has been training for 15 years doing Kung-Fu in a place surrounded by Kung-Fu masters who only doing Kung-Fu. Did I mention Kung Fu? (Or that you’d get more students if you taught Kung-Fu even though it’s clearly a Japanese constellation martial arts studio?) HE ALSO DEFEATED A REAL DRAGON TO GET HIS POWERS WITH HIS KUNG FU. Overall, the scenes feel slow when you can actually see people move or they’re cutting between shots so quickly you have no time to actually admire the fighting that’s going on. They also do “cool” but tricksy cinematic shots like stage fights at night or in dimly light areas, meaning they can hide what’s not going well in the fight. This became even more obnoxious when pairing the show with Into the Badlands, whose bread and butter is epic long-cut fight scenes. And to top it off, multiple times in the show he is on the precipice of LOSING, badly, to people who should not be close to his equal.
The overall plot: How did Danny get to New York without a passport or identification? How does he know how to drive an actual car? Why does he still speak American English? Why does he still act white in his physicality? Why was David Wenham’s character even there? What was the point of Davos coming back? What was the point of this season? What did we learn about who Danny is? What did we actually learn about his origin? WHAT IS HE EVEN FIGHTING FOR? Because honestly, I’m not sure and the overall plot seemed to want to be half introduce the Hand, while actually giving us no real information about the Hand except maybe hinting at Bad Davos, and half “PLEASE LIKE DANNY”. But what does Danny fight for? So far as I could tell, he felt like Marvel’s mediocre Batman. His parents are killed, he gets trained in the ways of an Eastern martial arts, comes back and then RETAKES THE COMPANY and gets vengeance?! It’s Batman Begins but boring and, sidenote, Finn Jones is not as hot as Christian Bale. ANYWAYS what is he fighting for? He has no real ties to New York beyond the five people he’s met and honestly being away from 15 years and growing up with monks would probably make places like New York and the whole American system feel extremely cruel. So why stay? And honestly, the way he interacts with his company in New York feels like the most white-people-problems shit I’ve ever seen, it’s like he’s still a child even though clearly Davos, who also is from K’un L’un, can act like an adult and still have a little bit of fish-out-of-water too. Also Thor was a fish-out-of-water and didn’t come across as an annoyingly naïve child.
The writing: “Worst Iron Fist ever.” “This means I have to kill him for you” “But I’m Danny Rand” “I’m Danny Rand” “I’M DANNY RAND” These are the lines I remember from this show. Particularly, because I laughed at all of them. The plot, as mentioned above, was confusing but so often the individual lines were just absurd. They were written stiff, acted stiffly, and did not convey anything that they should have. It’s like, did no one edit the scripts for these episodes? Because they were trash and it’s like, we really know you are Danny Rand, seriously, you can stop saying your name. It’s like he was some sort of Pokemon that got stuck only saying their own name for 13 episodes.
And lastly, but not leastly, the Problematic Origins of the Iron Fist:
Like most superheroes, beyond ye olde white-straight-cis-het-male-American heroes, the origins of Danny Rand and his whole schtick are problematic. Why? Well like Luke Cage and Shang-Chi, he was created at a point in time where comics were written by white-cis-het-male-Americans who had no idea about cultural appropriation and had yet to take the time to examine how their culture was inherently racist. So, these characters, while great for bringing “diversity” into comics, contain horrible stereotypes that modern writers have spent a lot of time fixing. Essentially, if you pick up any Luke Cage comics before 2000, though some may also take issue with the Max CAGE series, you will see a horribly stereotyped essentially racist portrayal of an African American man. The Netflix series dispels most of that, and created a well-rounded solid representation of an African American man, and modern African American culture, and engaged with how his power was a symbol for the ongoing conflict we have in this country between structural violence and the African American body.
Iron Fist? Yeah…No. Full disclosure, I haven’t read much Iron Fist. However, there are tons of articles out there by people who have but I’m going to give my two cents on some of the excuses I have heard about Iron Fist:
“But Danny is white in the comics!”
Yes and so were Elektra and Psylocke originally and they were be played by Asian heritage actors.
“His race doesn’t really matter!”
If his race doesn’t really matter why did you pick a white person? White is not the global average for generic! It’s white and has just as much racial baggage as any other choice. Especially when he had no martial arts background anyways!
“He was supposed to feel like the other”
Where? We don’t see his training in K’un L’un where he is supposedly an “outsider” (like being picked on by all the mean Asian boys) and clearly he was less of an outsider than he claimed if he had the same rights as everyone else at the monastery. Is he an outsider in New York? He sort of is, but that could be done with anyone because that’s personality and not physical perception. Also if it’s about feeling like the "other" any Asian American will tell you that no matter how similar you might look to others in Asia, they know when you aren’t a local. Also we’ve had the white-guy in Asia outsider story told like a Kajillion times before, this isn’t unique (See the Last Samurai).
“There are other Asian superheroes that Marvel can use”
Yes all five of them. There actually is a paucity of well-developed Asian-American heroes in the Marvel universe and they get whitewashed anyways (see: The Ancient One)! Seriously, if you read Totally Awesome Hulk #15 you’ll see almost all of the Asian American superheroes Marvel has on offer (sans X-men). Also, the three most well-known ones were created in the last five years and are ALL spin-offs/new mantel takers (Ms. Marvel, Totally Awesome Hulk, and Silk) so doing this to Iron Fist would not have been out of step with what Marvel is doing already. Additionally, the Iron Fist is a mantel, not a person, and they change all the time. There have been many Iron Fists, the series The Immortal Iron Fist talks about them, and Marvel is not married to its cannon (Psylocke literally spontaneously changes ethnicities in the comics at one point). There is no reason to preserve his ethnicity when it serves no purpose to the story, it embodies a type of cultural appropriation, and forwards the stereotype that Caucasians are better at being Asians than Asian people. Even better, they could have done a swap, like they did with Patsy Walker for Carol Danvers in Jessica Jones! Shang-Chi could have been originally named Danny Rand but given a new name by the monks or become the Iron Fist and blam, you make a fine swap/merge and the world keeps turning.
There are probably lots of other “but actuallys” or “what ifs” but overall Iron Fist wasn’t good and while it wouldn’t have fixed the other problems casting an Asian-heritage actor as Danny would have lessened a lot of the sting. By choosing to cast a Caucasian actor, they don’t acknowledge the orientalist origin of his character or adapt his story to fit modern relationships with Asian nations, heritage, and culture and they didn't use his own backstory to make up for the those problems. For example, they don't take the idea of being raised in another culture to their logical end. He didn't act like a monk in his physicality, he speaks English like they only spoke English in K'un L'un, and overall nothing about his character besides his fighting skills and him telling us he's been to K'un L'un point him being brought up in a completely different culture.
They didn't follow any of their own plot points to their logical conclusion and while they may still have not done that with an Asian American actor like Lewis Tan they would have at least helped rectify the appropriative origins of the character. Assuming they had actually cast Lewis Tan this blog would be like “At least the fight scenes were awesome and they followed through with a commitment to diversity” instead of “Why didn’t we burn this before it began?”
