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Invalid Validation posted:I'm not done but I got to the part where the revelation is he can open his fist to do other magic stuff and thought it was pretty funny. Like he never once loving tried to open his hand while Iron fisting. I just assumed he'd picked up his powers about 2 days before he left for NYC, so he just never really tried them out. I mean, sure, I'd have spent the next 3 weeks fisting everything in sight out of sheer novelty factor, but different strokes for different folks.
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Apr 10, 2017 21:49
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I feel like he was SUPPOSED to be an unlikable, self-centered douche we love to hate, and they just missed "love to". 15 years of semi-abusive life under a bunch of monks left him an emotionally stunted manbaby totally unprepared to return to the real world, because they probably didn't want him to, even before he wound up their indentured gate-guardian.
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Apr 10, 2017 21:55
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Thaddius the Large posted:I just assumed he'd picked up his powers about 2 days before he left for NYC, so he just never really tried them out. I mean, sure, I'd have spent the next 3 weeks fisting everything in sight out of sheer novelty factor, but different strokes for different folks. Yeah, the timeline seems to suggest that he beat the dragon, got put immediately on watch duty, and got bored and bailed all in a fairly short order (probably not 2 days, but a matter of weeks or so). Any teaching he was given was probably theoretical with Davos and the others before he actually acquired the fist. I imagine he might have gotten more training when the passageway closed and they could afford to take him off guard duty.
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Apr 10, 2017 21:59
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Until they show me otherwise, I'm going to assume he beat the dragon at, like, early aughts hip-hop trivia or something.
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Apr 10, 2017 22:21
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Javid posted:I feel like he was SUPPOSED to be an unlikable, self-centered douche we love to hate, and they just missed "love to". 15 years of semi-abusive life under a bunch of monks left him an emotionally stunted manbaby totally unprepared to return to the real world, because they probably didn't want him to, even before he wound up their indentured gate-guardian.
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Apr 10, 2017 22:46
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I don't think you were supposed to "love to hate" Danny. But he definitely was a socially maladjusted kid and much like the people in his life (Joy, Colleen, Claire) you're supposed to kind of be frustrated by the simplicity of his thinking while also inspired by the innocence and goodness of it. Danny eventually learns to grow up a little and compromise his simple black/white world view while he also encourages Colleen and Ward to question theirs. While Joy and Davos kind of steer off because they choose to double down on what they thought all along.
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Apr 10, 2017 22:50
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I still can't get over how much more interesting and compelling the brother/sister corporate story was compared to the super hero story that was supposed to be front and center
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Apr 10, 2017 23:01
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Well the corporate story WAS front and center for the most part. The super hero stuff all kind of ran in the background and sidelines to the point where Danny kept being surprised that it kept leading him back to the corporate drama. The only time the story really veers away from any of that stuff is the mid season Colleen digression where Danny disappears from the corporate scene and everything goes to hell for Ward and Joy.
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Apr 10, 2017 23:08
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Toast Museum posted:Until they show me otherwise, I'm going to assume he beat the dragon at, like, early aughts hip-hop trivia or something. Shou-Lau knew 2 less ODB akas and thus was honor bound to kill himself when he lost to a trust fund baby. Really surprising he didn't even get Big Baby Jesus.
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Apr 11, 2017 00:18
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Finished up Iron Fist. It did get better toward the end. In fact, the second to last episode was actually good. The ending was also funny "Oh no, a bloody attack on the K'un Lun gate. Who could have predicted this thing that everyone has been warning me about for forever?" I'll agree with all the people saying they should have explained why K'un Lun hosed Danny up so bad much earlier. I know everyone is like "God another origin story, shoot me" these days, but I don't think that applies for heroes no one knows anything about. No one wants to see Batman's parents get shot for the 50th time, but no one has read an Iron Fist comic in 40 years. Danny became a much more relatable character when the show started talking about how stunted and abused he is, but that didn't really happen until quite a few episodes in, and even then it was a "tell don't show" situation. I don't really care about the Joy heel turn at the end because every non-Danny character changes their allegiance about twice an episode. Why is Davos working with Gao now? Who cares? They'll both be against her in another episode and then back on her side an episode after that, and then try to kill for the season finale. The guy playing Ward didn't improve all that much. I guess he plays strung-out OK. Anyway, all that improvement came way too late. I'm sure they lost most of their viewers after episode 3 or 4 or so, and I can't blame anyone for quitting on it.
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Apr 11, 2017 01:12
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enraged_camel posted:also, lol at calling danny "skinny fat" lol yeah from the orphanage flashbacks maybe
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Apr 11, 2017 06:28
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Punisher is wrapped, y'all
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Apr 11, 2017 07:02
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bring back old gbs posted:I still can't get over how much more interesting and compelling the brother/sister corporate story was compared to the super hero story that was supposed to be front and center There wasn't a ton of super heroing to be seen, honestly. We went from homeless nobody Danny Rand shows up to trying to convince people of his identity to dojo, to mental asylum, to escaping asylum proving his identity and Harold Meachum revelation and so on and so on. Very little heroing happens besides the Hand showing up. DareDevil was all about that poo poo and Luke Cage got it right too when a couple of guys that were up to no good started making trouble in his neighborhood. And Jessica did her best for a while trying to take down that one guy. Really not sure how that went, I'm one of those people who didn't care for JJ. Also, you guys should take a look at these episode titles again. It really makes me wish Danny was basically just Hak Foo from Jackie Chan Adventures.
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Apr 11, 2017 13:21
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Far more time and effort was put into the episode titles than any other aspect of the show.
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Apr 11, 2017 20:18
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Danny's super hero journey is weird, because he doesn't start the series with any desire to become one. He doesn't call himself The Iron Fist. He's just a dude with a super power who wants to get his life back. Then somewhere in the middle he encounters the drugs coming out of Rand and he decides to do some random super heroing with Colleen. But that then directly leads him to the Hand and turns his personal world upside down again. And the conclusion doesn't have him putting on a costume like Daredevil or accepting a role as a neighborhood hero like Luke Cage or Jessica Jones. He's just still dealing with his personal poo poo on the roof of his building in the middle of the night. Cage, Jones, and DD all have their final battle with tons of eyes on them. Danny basically covers up a murder to avenge a murder no one knows about in the dead of the night. Its a totally different path/story than the rest of the Defenders.
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Apr 11, 2017 20:27
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Gyges posted:Far more time and effort was put into the episode titles than any other aspect of the show. And it ends in a kick rather than a punch. Shameful.
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Apr 11, 2017 20:28
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It would have been much more interesting if it turned out that the only way to kill a Hand zombie (Harold etc.) is with the Iron Fist. That would have made for a much more interesting dilemma for Danny, and you couldn't get into the whole "no problem, we'll just have Colleen cut his head off" workaround. It would also have given Bakuto a real reason for wanting to control him, i.e. to kill Gao (who is almost definitely a zombie herself - just like Bakuto).
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Apr 11, 2017 21:03
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Does Danny ever directly punch someone with the Iron Fist? I remember him blowing out that door, blocking a bullet, and doing that shockwave thing, but does he ever just straight-up wreck a dude with a punch? Weird omission if not.
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Apr 11, 2017 21:15
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Gao is probably just a regular Kun-Lun immortal, not a zombie.
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Apr 11, 2017 21:21
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Toast Museum posted:Does Danny ever directly punch someone with the Iron Fist? I remember him blowing out that door, blocking a bullet, and doing that shockwave thing, but does he ever just straight-up wreck a dude with a punch? Weird omission if not. Nah, I don't remember it, although I wasn't watching super closely either. It seemed to be implied that he would explodify a person if he punched them with it. Him not killing people is weird, because I assume that his entire job as the Iron Fist was going to be killing people who attacked the gate.
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Apr 11, 2017 21:25
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Toast Museum posted:Does Danny ever directly punch someone with the Iron Fist? I remember him blowing out that door, blocking a bullet, and doing that shockwave thing, but does he ever just straight-up wreck a dude with a punch? Weird omission if not. nope. They make the Iron Fist seem really lame and unimpressive. I think he activates it and then does nothing with it at least as often as he does anything with it. And most of the stuff he does with it is mundane poo poo like breaking handcuffs instead of any cool magic kung fu. The Iron Fist gives him the ability to briefly be almost as strong as Jessica Jones or Luke Cage, in one hand
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Apr 11, 2017 21:27
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Now that I think about it, I can play a little script doctor. Danny gets the Iron Fist power and the first week they capture a Hand scout and the guy that keeps showing up in visions is like "OK now use the Iron Fist to rip his head off" and Danny refuses and leaves K'un Lun because he doesn't want to be their executioner. Better motive for leaving than "I got bored and used an eagle as an excuse to walk off the job."
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Apr 11, 2017 21:32
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It would be odd if Danny just randomly put the Iron Fist through a guy since a big part of the last act or two was him weighing the morality of killing Gao and later Harold and he even has a dramatic thing where he winds up to hit Gao and kill her and instead spares her. Like, him not killing someone is a huge part of the story that comes up repeatedly and includes his allies constantly stepping in to spare him the act.
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Apr 11, 2017 21:47
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STAC Goat posted:Like, him not killing someone is a huge part of the story that comes up repeatedly and includes his allies constantly stepping in to spare him the act. Yeah, every time I'm reminded of the tedium of this plotline, the more excited I become for Punisher. I can't promise it'll be good, but at least the "don't kill" rhetoric will be relevant to the character.
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Apr 11, 2017 21:59
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STAC Goat posted:It would be odd if Danny just randomly put the Iron Fist through a guy since a big part of the last act or two was him weighing the morality of killing Gao and later Harold and he even has a dramatic thing where he winds up to hit Gao and kill her and instead spares her. Maybe they could've had Danny fight people who weren't just random goons? Like, if Danny's opponents had been other magical Kung Fu people. It would've been neat, imo, if the show had featured magical kung fu fights where a bad guy's different magical kung fu had been pitted against Danny's Crane Mother Iron Fist style.
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Apr 11, 2017 22:02
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But what would that have changed? They gave him 3 different magical villains to debate the merits of killing. That was the theme of the show. He wasn't gonna kill some random guy because that would have completely undermined that and led to people rightly saying "wait, you just killed a bunch of ninjas, go ahead and kill Gao." Its fine if you just want to watch the Punisher be a serial killer but like, Danny's just one of the guys who takes killing really seriously and as an extreme.
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Apr 11, 2017 22:10
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Or, if you are as morally opposed to the concept of magical kung fu battles as the producers of Iron Fist apparently were, why not just not have the Iron Fist kill people? Like, Danny punches a random goon with the Iron Fist, and it just sends the guy flying through a window into the street, knocking him unconscious without killing him? Because this is fiction, specifically fiction about a loving magical Kung Fu man who turns his fist into a salt lamp by concentrating his chi. The result of an interaction between the Iron Fist and the human body are entirely in the hands of the writers. It's literally loving magic. Jesus Christ, "Danny couldn't use the Iron Fist on someone because it would kill them" it's magic, you can just say that the Iron Fist isn't lethal when the wielder doesn't have lethal intent. loving done.
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Apr 11, 2017 22:13
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Guy Goodbody posted:It's literally loving magic. Jesus Christ, "Danny couldn't use the Iron Fist on someone because it would kill them" it's magic, you can just say that the Iron Fist isn't lethal when the wielder doesn't have lethal intent. loving done. I don't know that they ever outright say it would kill someone. They could still go in that direction.
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Apr 11, 2017 22:16
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Guy Goodbody posted:Or, if you are as morally opposed to the concept of magical kung fu battles as the producers of Iron Fist apparently were, why not just not have the Iron Fist kill people? Like, Danny punches a random goon with the Iron Fist, and it just sends the guy flying through a window into the street, knocking him unconscious without killing him? Because this is fiction, specifically fiction about a loving magical Kung Fu man who turns his fist into a salt lamp by concentrating his chi. The result of an interaction between the Iron Fist and the human body are entirely in the hands of the writers. It's literally loving magic. Jesus Christ, "Danny couldn't use the Iron Fist on someone because it would kill them" it's magic, you can just say that the Iron Fist isn't lethal when the wielder doesn't have lethal intent. loving done. I'm not morally opposed to magical kung fu battles. I don't have an opinion of them, really. But that wasn't this show so I don't judge it based on those standards. Its cool if you don't like that it wasn't this show or that you don't like Danny's moral motivations or the choice to write him as a broken kid who didn't understand his own power. But like the moral debates over killing people and Danny not having a "medium" setting for the Fist kind of play directly into the themes of the show. Good or bad. PostNouveau posted:I don't know that they ever outright say it would kill someone. They could still go in that direction. But yeah, they could certainly have Danny gain more control and understanding of it and have him capable of hitting dudes just like he learned to heal Colleen.
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Apr 11, 2017 22:23
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STAC Goat posted:I'm not morally opposed to magical kung fu battles. I don't have an opinion of them, really. But that wasn't this show so I don't judge it based on those standards. Its cool if you don't like that it wasn't this show or that you don't like Danny's moral motivations or the choice to write him as a broken kid who didn't understand his own power. But like the moral debates over killing people and Danny not having a "medium" setting for the Fist kind of play directly into the themes of the show. Good or bad. Or they could give him bona fide superpowered foes to fight, but apparently that wouldn't have fit the Gritty and Realistic world of Netflix Marvel.
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Apr 11, 2017 22:30
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I mean, it definitely wouldn't have fit the street level New York City tone of the Defenders they built this whole thing around. And I still don't get why anyone expected any different. My hope is that they find a way to split the middle with Iron First and like do his street stuff in Luke Cage S2 with a Heroes for Hire thing and do his magic kung fu stuff in Iron Fist S2 with him following the KunLun stuff.
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Apr 11, 2017 22:33
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STAC Goat posted:I mean, it definitely wouldn't have fit the street level New York City tone of the Defenders they built this whole thing around. And I still don't get why anyone expected any different.  Even setting that aside, the show Iron Fist is about a man who can magically make his hand into the Iron Fist. A villain who is magically capable of getting punched by the Iron Fist without dying is not in any way too unrealistic for the show Iron Fist.
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Apr 11, 2017 23:07
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Guy Goodbody posted:The Iron Fist gives him the ability to briefly be almost as strong as Jessica Jones or Luke Cage, in one hand I'm pretty sure Danny's Iron Fist would wreck the poo poo out of Luke. Luke has unbreakable skin, but that doesn't protect him from things like internal trauma. We saw what happened when he got shot in the head with a shotgun. Also, I really doubt either Jessica or Luke would be able to break a reinforced steel door like the one Danny punched through when breaking out of the asylum. I mean they are strong, but not that strong. Also also, both of them rely on brute force, which is explicitly shown as a weakness. I mean Jessica got her rear end whooped by a bunch of thugs with tasers, simply because she was outnumbered. Danny however is a formidable fighter even without his special ability.
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Apr 11, 2017 23:08
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STAC Goat posted:But yeah, they could certainly have Danny gain more control and understanding of it and have him capable of hitting dudes just like he learned to heal Colleen. A Greatest American Hero version of Iron Fist is yet another show that might have been better than the one we got.
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Apr 11, 2017 23:16
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I mean, you're literally referencing the thing that everyone agrees was poo poo and totally out of tone with its series to drag it down as evidence that going out of tone would have been fine. Otherwise I'm not sure we're going to get anywhere with this because I don't think you're wrong about wanting a more kung fu/supernatural/magic Iron Fist. That's just clearly not what they were going for because they set out to make four heroes at a basically same level and a common enough opponent to bring them all together in some way. The main thing I object to is the idea that Iron Fist is somehow "wrong" to be used as a street level hero because, he's absolutely that TOO. Which as I said, is why I hope they find a way to split the difference and do Heroes for Hire stuff in Luke Cage and magic dragon stuff in Iron Fist.
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Apr 11, 2017 23:16
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STAC Goat posted:I mean, you're literally referencing the thing that everyone agrees was poo poo and totally out of tone with its series to drag it down as evidence that going out of tone would have been fine. Nobody ever said it's wrong to use Iron Fist as a street level hero. Jessica Jones was a street level hero, and she fought a mind controller. Luke Cage is a street level hero, and he pulled a car door off a car and walked through a hail of bullets bashing people with the car door until he wrapped a dude in the car door and dropped it on the ground. Daredevil is a street level hero, and he got to have kung fu battles with ninjas. Iron Fist absolutely should be a street level hero, and he should absolutely have magical kung fu battles with other people who have different magical kung fu abilities. That would've fit fine with the tone of the other Netflix stuff. I mean, half of season 2 of Daredevil was about ninjas wanting to use a magic weapon to do... something. My problem with Iron Fist was that it was about a magical kung fu man who got magic kung fu powers from fighting a dragon in a cave in a magical city that can only be accessed every 15 years because of magic, and then he just had boring, sub-Arrow level fights with random goons, never a single magical kung fu battle. I mean, yeah, if you were completely satisfied with the show and would've been really annoyed by magical kung fu battles messing up the story of a magical kung fu man having completely non-magical, non-kung fu fights, then yeah, I don't think we're ever gonna see eye to eye on this. Or anything.
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Apr 11, 2017 23:24
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Guy Goodbody posted:I mean, yeah, if you were completely satisfied with the show and would've been really annoyed by magical kung fu battles messing up the story of a magical kung fu man having completely non-magical, non-kung fu fights, then yeah, I don't think we're ever gonna see eye to eye on this. Or anything. Yes, we all wish Danny had more "magical kung fu battles" like those between Daredevil and The Hand ninjas. 
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Apr 11, 2017 23:39
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Ooo, you know what would be better than Iron Fist as the fourth defender. Carrie Anne Moss' character gets splashed with toxic waste or gamma rays or whatever and then She-Hulk.
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Apr 11, 2017 23:44
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Guy Goodbody posted:Nobody ever said it's wrong to use Iron Fist as a street level hero. Jessica Jones was a street level hero, and she fought a mind controller. Luke Cage is a street level hero, and he pulled a car door off a car and walked through a hail of bullets bashing people with the car door until he wrapped a dude in the car door and dropped it on the ground. Daredevil is a street level hero, and he got to have kung fu battles with ninjas. Iron Fist absolutely should be a street level hero, and he should absolutely have magical kung fu battles with other people who have different magical kung fu abilities. That would've fit fine with the tone of the other Netflix stuff. I mean, half of season 2 of Daredevil was about ninjas wanting to use a magic weapon to do... something. I mean, on one hand I again say I don't really have a problem in principle with magic kung fu. Its not my thing but I tend not to disqualify something good because I don't love the genre. But I also fully admit that I thought the weakest part of any of these shows was the part of DD S2 that got all into magic ninjas (and I thought a lot of people agreed). I didn't hate it, but it felt out of tone and a little silly (so did the Cottonmouth stuff but in a bit of a lesser way because Cottonmouth was just this weird insert into the street story). So who knows? Maybe I don't like that. But I really feel like I'm just viewing all these shows as seasons of "The Defenders" so I never really expected a lot of "magic" in Iron Fist beyond the levels established by DD or JJ. And on a basic level I feel like The Defenders is about villains that the Avengers would destroy but who they'd never mess with because they're not threatening the world, they're just destroying neighborhoods and lives in a micro level that would escape the "gods'" notice. So keeping the Defenders villains from getting too big makes sense to me. So I wasn't COMPLETELY satisfied with the show. And i WOULD like to see that magic stuff expanded on. But I'm fine with the more restrained personal and street side of Iron Fist they focused on to fit the overall Defenders' tone. Recognizing that I think DD S2 really kind of overshot that tone clumsily.
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Apr 12, 2017 00:09
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STAC Goat posted:But what would that have changed? They gave him 3 different magical villains to debate the merits of killing. That was the theme of the show. He wasn't gonna kill some random guy because that would have completely undermined that and led to people rightly saying "wait, you just killed a bunch of ninjas, go ahead and kill Gao." It would have been nice to actually do something with the idea of not killing if that was an actual theme. Instead we have Claire talk about how violence isn't the answer in between committing acts of violence and the closest to a debate over killing wound up being resolved "Oh if you kill him it'll pollute your chi for reasons I'm not going into or explaining. So I'll kill him." Daredevil had an actual plot line about where to draw the line and whether or not killing was ok. Which was undermined by his totally killing Nobu, but at least tried to do something with it. Jessica Jones fought the whole season not to kill a guy for reasons having to do with her issues and the themes of the show. Luke Cage didn't kill people for also well explained reasons. Mostly. Depending on how you feel about Diamondback. I don't think anyone really has an issue with the concept of Iron Fist not killing people left and right. The problem is that the show presents Danny as someone trained to kill, but who never does for vague reasons. Like if they did the fights competently he could have avoided killing because he either was effortlessly better than his opponents or, in cases like the drunken boxer, he found their ability worthy of respect. I mean, I didn't even really ask why he hadn't killed anyone until Claire started talking about how wrong killing was and Davos also showed up to beat people in a highly non-lethal manner. Keeping in mind that our introduction to Davos is his knocking a guy out and then psychologically torturing him by folding tin foil into ninja stars and casually tossing them into the metal around his captive's head. enraged_camel posted:Danny however is a formidable fighter even without his special ability. Unless you're a Rand Inc security guard, you're definitely going to at least rough up the Iron Fist.
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Apr 12, 2017 00:13
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