In Defense of the Last Defender
By: Jacob Shell
WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD!!
As a kid, comic books were life. Ghost Rider, Daredevil, the Avengers, the X-Men—their personalities and quirks were well known and familiar to me. My friends and I would spend weeks discussing the nuances of the various comic book universes that had captivated our imaginations—one recess period at a time. We would imagine what it would be like to see our favorite heroes get their feature films or TV series. It seemed inevitable for flagship characters- Captain America, The X-Men, Spider-man, the Fantastic Four. We were veracious, my friends and me, we would have been excited to see any comic character given some screen time and be taken as seriously as we had taken them. The part of me that is still a 10-year-old boy wanting to trade Marvel hero trading cards on the playground is overjoyed with how things have turned out. The MCU is killing it. This whole intro is here to tell you—I’m a comic fanboy. I’m a Marvel fanboy. I love superheroes, and I love seeing them on my TV screen at home.
There are going to be some spoilers ahead for the critically maligned Iron Fist, so if you want to go into the series completely fresh and with no bias stop here if you haven’t seen the show.
Danny Rand, after winning the title of Iron Fist, whose mission it is to defend the mythical city of K’un-Lun from a shadowy organization of ninjas and assassins known as The Hand, decides to leave his monastic life and return to New York to reclaim his identity and put together the pieces of his past. Danny was a child when his father’s plane went down in the Himalayas killing his parents and leaving him an orphan. He is still haunted by the tragedy and has always been unsettled about the mystery surrounding the crash. Upon his return to New York and the headquarters of his father’s company, situated in a heavily guarded Manhattan skyscraper, Danny is thought to be an imposter. He must convince childhood frenemies—the progeny of his father’s old business partner, siblings Joy and Ward Meachum, that he truly is who he claims. Eventually, Danny finds that The Hand has infested the ranks of Rand Corporation. Our hero must find a way to thwart The Hand while learning to adapt to his new surroundings and figure out who he can trust.
Coming on the heels of the outstanding Marvel Netflix series Luke Cage—a nod to Blaxploitation films, Iron Fist is another genre piece. This time we are treated to a Kung-fu movie from the 70’s played out in thirteen episodes with all of the genre tropes: loyalty, honor, betrayal, and revenge. This is martial arts fantasy melodrama with Finn Jones’ Danny Rand sporting a loose white-boy afro that Bruce Leroy himself would appreciate! Oops, that’s right. Danny Rand the titular character, Kung-fu master Iron Fist turns out to be a good looking blonde New Yorker from a wealthy industrialist family. One of the early criticisms of the series, voiced months before the show came out was that Marvel had missed their opportunity to cast an Asian American actor in the role of Danny Rand/Iron Fist. I can’t find a cogent, logical argument here. Are the proponents of this idea saying that the Kung-fu master must be Chinese? Because all martial arts experts should be Asian? What if a Japanese, Korean, or Filipino actor had been given the role? Would this still have been Chinese cultural appropriation by a non-Chinese actor? Would the Filipino Iron Fist only be allowed to use Kali sticks? Marvel clearly doesn’t have a diversity problem—many of the other characters in this show are non-white or female. A traditionally male character from the Iron Fist/Heroes for Hire comics, Jeryn Hogarth, is played brilliantly by Carrie-Anne Moss as no-nonsense attorney Jeri Hogarth—an openly gay character that we first meet in Marvel’s Jessica Jones, itself an ode to girl power wrapped up in a noir psychological thriller.
The truth is Finn Jones very closely resembles Danny Rand from the comics-- first penned in 1974, two years after David Carradine began his starring role in the popular “Kung-Fu” television series. That series tells the story of Kwai Chang Caine, a half-American warrior monk who flees his monastery in search of his family roots and ultimately his long lost brother, Danny Rand—I mean Cain. In search of his brother Danny Caine. Just like Carradine’s Caine, Danny Rand’s earnestness and sense of social responsibility draw him into conflict as he strives to protect the weak and maintain his warrior ethos. Iron Fist is very much a fish out of water story. Danny was an outsider both in K’un-Lun as well as in New York after his return. The need for a sense of belonging and family motivates Danny throughout the story.
I’ve read some criticisms about the pacing of this show, especially during the first act. I can defend the choices that were made because there is a significant amount of world building, mythology, and exposition to get out of the way for the later action to make sense and I believe the show excels in this! I couldn’t stop watching. One of the more excellent products of the series’ focus on developing the relationships between the characters is the chemistry between Danny and, Bushido expert, Colleen Wing, played by the alluring Jessica Henwick. I wanted things to work out between these two characters and was euphoric with the way that their individual character arcs intersected. Take note also, how the first act sets up some characters who will later be revealed to be agents of The Hand. Usually, a compound of ninjas would be the martial arts fantasy world’s equivalent of red-shirt henchmen. Quickly introduced, quickly dispatched, and quickly forgotten. Giving them just a taste of back story pays off for me in the third act of the series as it provides the emotional context for the actions of some of our main characters.
The last item that I would like to unpack is some folk’s disdain for the martial arts represented in the show. I’ve heard it derided as being both unrealistic and over the top. I have been involved in martial arts for most of my life. Like many kids growing up in the mid-west in the 90’s, I trotted off to Taekwondo class two or three nights a week. I later went on to study Sogo Ryu Bujitsu which was a mix of everything from joint locks to nunchucks and swords. In 2013, I fell in love with Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. My life experience is shaped by both the very fanciful and the very practical world of martial arts. I would like to re-iterate, Iron Fist is martial arts fantasy in the tradition of films made before the internet. Modeled after films made during an era in which one would contemplate a fight between Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee. An era in which you could be reasonably convinced that your friend’s cousin in the next town over, and who is a couple of years older than you, is a black belt in Shaolin Kung-fu learned from a blind monk who lives a solitary life atop a hill somewhere out of state-- likely in California. And that guy, the cousin, has his hands registered with the local police as lethal weapons and will sell you some throwing stars for weed money.
The fights in Iron Fist are very Tiger vs. Crane woo-woo combat steeped in Eastern mysticism, and I love it. When I want to watch a realistic fight between highly skilled masters of combat arts, I’ll watch the UFC. This is not that, and it shouldn’t be. There is, in fact, a cage fight in this show. The fighting methods are impractical, and the brief bit of jiu-jitsu used is pretty dodgy, but this is not intended to be a documentary. No one in this show, for example, uses a jab to open up an opponent—but one character uses Drunken Master style Kung-fu! We have already suspended our disbelief to the point where we believe in the mystical city, the dragon, resurrection, and ninjas— the fight scenes shouldn’t be a step too far.
Iron Fist may not be perfect, but it is a good addition to the world that Marvel has been building across multiple forms of interconnected media. I, for one, can’t wait to see Danny Rand return alongside Luke Cage, Daredevil, and Jessica Jones in The Defenders.
~Jacob Shell