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Post by Roquefort Raider on Mar 16, 2017 5:39:20 GMT -5
I find the concept of not being able to root for a privileged white guy ridiculous. I mean, come on... Ninety percent of pop culture heroes must be privileged white guys. Usually privileged white guys cast as underdogs by circumstances, yes, but still lilly-white, handsome and healthy. Finn should really stick to lines like "see it and judge for yourself". Internet bullies are harassing the crap out of Finn Jones, and I think he's just grasping for any lifeline. Culture appropriation is a questionable concept, but folks are expanding it to a ridiculous degree. Culture itself is about exchange, so the idea that a white guy can't be a kung fu expert is pretty much antithetical to culture itself. Kung fu is a skill. It's not a genetic trait. If folks want to go after someone for the race of Danny Rand, it would be more just to go after showrunner Scott Buck, or Marvel TV's Jeph Loeb, or even Roy Thomas. But the witch hunt for a celebrity scalp means that Finn Jones is the one who wears the target. I'm going to watch and decide for myself, but I'm a little worried. On the one hand, I think all the public pressure could affect critics. On the other hand, Iron Fist is so low on the Tomato Meter right now that it probably goes beyond the casting controversy. I'll probably go in with more indulgence than for other series just because of the pre-release criticism! I'm still sore at the unfair and damning treatment John Carter got from dog-piling critics, a treatment that helped kill it at the box office. Go, Iron Fist! Kick ass, lad! And I completely agree with you about cultural appropriation, Spoon. Thank God for cultural appropriation!!! Without it we wouldn't have jazz, pizza, manga, tacos, reggae, martial arts, and would probably be stuck with one language each. The human experience is all about learning what others know, doing what others do, and build on it all to create something new. |
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Post by spoon on Mar 18, 2017 17:45:42 GMT -5
I'm four episodes into Iron Fist. I think the critics are way off base. It's really of comparable quality to the other Marvel shows. I think I actually like it more than Luke Cage so far. To me, Jessica Jones is the best of all the Netflix shows, in part because I think Krysten Ritter has the best acting chops of all the title characters.
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Post by BigPapaJoe on Mar 20, 2017 6:35:29 GMT -5
I finished it. I didn't think it was that bad.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Mar 20, 2017 20:41:10 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm two episodes in and I'm liking it. The action is good and I love the actors they've assembled.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2017 1:41:27 GMT -5
I'm 7 eps in and I'm really gripped, though there are a couple of things that I'm finding jarring - one is that the fight scenes are really poorly choreographed, with the kicks and punches being really obviously miles away from landing and two is that the writer patently has no idea at all how business works, resorting to cliche good monastery boy vs eeevil corporates, because (a) their "terrible" 300% markup on the leishmaniasis drug was far too low to be realistic, leaving aside the whole question of development & r&D costs and cross-payments for failed drugs; (b) the idea that Ward could only accumulate his personal bank account fortune by embezzlement was just ridiculous, given the insane levels of remuneration in large US corporations - for a many-years CEO and major shareholder of a corp that size, he would have been raking in 10s of millions a year, easily and (c) the idea that "the board" could just eject Rand and the Meachums from the company, when Rand owns 51% of the stock, is just nonsense |
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Post by Gene on Mar 24, 2017 9:27:40 GMT -5
I have three episodes left. I was onboard until episode 6, but it started turning real stupid, real fast after that. Finn Jones' Danny is a weiner who talks like a bad motivational poster. The script sounds like they used the rejected rough drafts from season 2 of Daredevil and just replaced "Nelson and Murdock" with "Rand Enterprises." The few times there is something interesting going on, the budget is so shoestring it undermines the whole thing. Colleen was great, up until she wasn't. This show is a total dud for me.
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Post by Warmonger on Mar 24, 2017 10:43:42 GMT -5
Watched the first 3 episodes last night...not as terrible as some reviews have stated, but I'm not feeling it so far.
Biggest thing that stands out is that Finn Jones is a colossal miscast.
Not buying him as some kind of badass, mystical martial artist at all.
I'm not sure what the show runners saw in this guy. Is it just the Game of Thrones appeal or something?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2017 13:53:30 GMT -5
Feel the same about Jones - he is supposed to be a Living Weapon, and he's just this whiney hippy who gets repeatedly beaten to crap.
And I cannot believe they seriously brought in Drunken Monkey style for an opponent - that was stupid the first time I saw it about 30 years ago
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2017 8:04:32 GMT -5
ep 9 - took an unexpected twist, but Jones really is a terrible actor - the more I see of him, the worse he is
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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2017 5:20:50 GMT -5
Finished it. Meh. A solid 5/10 - better than the pannings it got in advance, but overall could have been so much better. Far too many cliche storylines in there - Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, misled pawn of a macchiovellian teacher, etc etc. Finn Jones got more and more annoying as the series went on - and I realised right at the end that one of the things that really annoyed me all the way through, is that he never speaks properly - all the time he affects this kind of "I'm the Batman" husky whisper, which makes it seem like he's over-emoting every line - just terrible acting. And the Iron Fist character is a pitifully poor fighter as well, climaxing with the uber-ridiculous rooftop scene in the last episode where IF barely holds his own in a fight with a 60ish Howard Meachum, who knows a bit of boxing - ludicrous. |
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Post by Gene on Mar 26, 2017 18:15:18 GMT -5
I wish Danny had his mask so they could have used a stunt double who actually knows kung fu for the fights.
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Post by Ozymandias on Apr 5, 2017 5:50:52 GMT -5
I'm four episodes into Iron Fist. I think the critics are way off base. It's really of comparable quality to the other Marvel shows. I think I actually like it more than Luke Cage so far. To me, Jessica Jones is the best of all the Netflix shows, in part because I think Krysten Ritter has the best acting chops of all the title characters. Just her acting chops? Joking aside, I guess you changed your opinion on the show as it progressed. Agreed up to that point in the series. the fight scenes are really poorly choreographed (c) the idea that "the board" could just eject Rand and the Meachums from the company, when Rand owns 51% of the stock, is just nonsense Yeah, I was expecting something along the lines of Into the Badlands. Agreed too on points a) and b), but c) was just hilarious. he's just this whiney hippy who gets repeatedly beaten to crap. And I cannot believe they seriously brought in Drunken Monkey style for an opponent - that was stupid the first time I saw it about 30 years ago It was like every fight, he was given some sort of handicap, to level the playing field, but at some point they stopped caring. I took the drunken monkey bit as a parody, anything else boggles the mind. uber-ridiculous rooftop scene in the last episode where IF barely holds his own in a fight with a 60ish Howard Meachum, who knows a bit of boxing Harold also manages to shoot him exactly in the one place which doesn't matter, because we all knew it would heal with the next "power up". By the end of the season, that was how hard they were willing to look for excuses, so IF could have a long fight with Harold. Overall, the Meachums were the most erratic characters, and the baby Hand, the most annoying concept. |
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Post by Randle-El on Apr 5, 2017 22:11:42 GMT -5
I just finished the show. I don't really get the hate. While it wasn't the best thing to come out of the MCU/Netflix collaboration, it isn't the awful mess that I've been hearing. Sure there were some problems, but there were problems with the other shows too. Whatever the shortcomings may be, they weren't inordinate in comparison to the other shows. I was sufficiently entertained.
That said, there were pacing issues. The first three episodes could have been condensed. And there was something slightly aggravating about Danny trying and repeatedly failing to prove his identity to the Meachums. All he had to do was tell Joy and Ward something that only they would know and that would have been it. I also didn't buy the idea that Danny had been studying Kung Fu for 15 years. Don't get me wrong, he was good in a fight, and the fight scenes were decent fight scenes, but they just weren't very good *Kung Fu* fight scenes.
I think it also suffered from having too many villains -- Madame Gao, the Meachums, Bakuto. Gao was clearly included to help set up the Defenders, as the story could have mostly remained intact if they just merged Gao's role with Bakuto.
Which brings me to one thing I didn't quite get. When was it established that Gao was part of the Hand?? In Daredevil season 1, there were three "ethnic" crime organizations that were working with Fisk -- the Russians (led by the two brothers), the Yakuza (which we learn are really the Hand) led by Nobu, and the Triads led by Gao. Daredevil S1 made it appear that Gao and Nobu were in entirely separate organizations, and there was never any hint that Gao and Nobu were working together, except for their partnership with Fisk. It feels like a big retcon that Gao is now part of the Hand.
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Post by spoon on Apr 6, 2017 0:33:42 GMT -5
I'm four episodes into Iron Fist. I think the critics are way off base. It's really of comparable quality to the other Marvel shows. I think I actually like it more than Luke Cage so far. To me, Jessica Jones is the best of all the Netflix shows, in part because I think Krysten Ritter has the best acting chops of all the title characters. Just her acting chops? Joking aside, I guess you changed your opinion on the show as it progressed. Agreed up to that point in the series. Because Krysten Ritter is pretty, too? Yes. But looks aside, I think she's the strongest actor of the four Defenders by a solid margin. Yes, I did change my opinion as the show progressed. I agree with those who say that Iron Fist faded as the season went on. That's the ironic part of the negative reviews. Critics got to see the first 6 episodes and unfairly bashed them, but negative views are actually more justified about the season as a whole. I think Danny's naivete and odd behavior was justified in the beginning of the series, and critics that knocked that missed the point. On the other hand, Danny should've had a character arc that caused him to grow and improve in temperment as the series progressed. I was disappointed by what I saw as lack of internal/development change in the last few episodes. the fight scenes are really poorly choreographed (c) the idea that "the board" could just eject Rand and the Meachums from the company, when Rand owns 51% of the stock, is just nonsense Yeah, I was expecting something along the lines of Into the Badlands. Agreed too on points a) and b), but c) was just hilarious. Yes, the idea that the board could force out someone who has a controlling interest was ludicrous. The whole point is that the proportion of stock that you own equates to voting power. You could have the opposite scenario, with someone controlling majority of the shares forcing out an exec who doesn't have major holdings. But there is legal stuff in Daredevil that's comparably laughable, and Mariah's strategy to arm the police with super-weapons in Luke Cage is illogical, too. uber-ridiculous rooftop scene in the last episode where IF barely holds his own in a fight with a 60ish Howard Meachum, who knows a bit of boxing Harold also manages to shoot him exactly in the one place which doesn't matter, because we all knew it would heal with the next "power up". By the end of the season, that was how hard they were willing to look for excuses, so IF could have a long fight with Harold. Overall, the Meachums were the most erratic characters, and the baby Hand, the most annoying concept. Yes, the rooftop fight was a particular weak point. Couldn't the writers have found a way to put a plausible threat in the final fight? I found Harold Meachum to be an interesting character though. Ward was two-dimensional at first, but I thought his character became more interesting as the story progressed. I like Joy, but I don't think the situation she was in at the end made sense. And at the risk of being labeled a drooling dude, I loved Joy's wardrobe. |
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Post by Ozymandias on Apr 6, 2017 1:33:47 GMT -5
I was disappointed by what I saw as lack of internal/development change in the last few episodes. Mariah's strategy to arm the police with super-weapons in Luke Cage is illogical, too. Harold Meachum to be an interesting character though. Ward was two-dimensional at first, but I thought his character became more interesting as the story progressed. I like Joy, but I don't think the situation she was in at the end made sense. What? Going from a guilt-ridden character (over his parent's deaths) to a guilt-ridden character (over the destruction of K'un Lun) isn't development?  Cage, ugh. Harold was interesting, up to the point where he tells Danny that he had wanted to kill his best friend, from the beginning. The good thing he had going for him, was how he became gradually unhinged, as he kept resurrecting. If he was a loony to begin with, where's the fun? Ward went from wanting to kill Danny to frame his picture, to be hanged just alongside his. Last time he tried to explain his changing sides, he still sounded like his more usual self, looking out for his best interests, nothing more. But at the end, they suggest a change of heart that was motivated... by him killing his father? Are we still so Freudian? Joy was switching between merciless businesswoman and childhood friend of Danny's, and at the end, she makes a final twist by considering to have him killed because of what exactly? Compared to the Meachums, Danny's so well written  |
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