“Like unto a thing of iron!”

So a minor miracle has occurred at our house: we’ve actually finished a Netflix Marvel series before the next series dropped. Last night we got in the last three episodes of Iron Fist, before Defenders comes to Netflix on Friday.

I’m not quite sure why we’re so slow about these series, as everyone in the house enjoys them. In part I suspect it’s because we tend to look for something a scosh lighter as entertainment / escape, and Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage have all been pretty heavy dramas in their seasons.

I have to confess, I approached Iron Fist with a bit of trepidation. The majority of reviews I read early days were highly critical of the series for a variety of reasons, but pointing at problems with the story being slow (“Oh, boy! Boardroom discussions and office politics!”) and assertions that the fighting was not all that good (which, if you’re doing a kung-fu fighter, is kind of critical).

And, honestly, I will admit having finished it that Iron Fist is the least good of the four Netflix MCU titles (even the somewhat-less-compelling second season of Daredevil) to date. That does not translate into “bad,” however. It’s a hamburger when you’ve been eating steak; a well drink when you’ve been savoring single malt scotches; a “happy trees” landscape when you’ve been pondering Van Gogh.

But sometimes you want a hamburger. That well drink might hit the spot. And those “happy trees” — well, actually, there are some interesting techniques there.

Accompanying that distinctly lower quality (call it a B- to an A), there were controversies about the show coming in that I think hurt some of the reaction to it in some quarters, too.

The “White dude goes to Asia, and become the Master of Martial Arts over all the Oriental folk there” is a trope that might have been dodgy even when Iron Fist the comic book character was first introduced in the mid-1970s, but today, on the face of it, it’s generally not something one could reasonably do from scratch. But this is an adaptation, and retconning the Iron First story to make Danny Rand an Asian character would have been a bit more jarring than having Matt Murdock not be ginger. In fact, it would have colored the story in a very different way around race — the idea that it took the Mysterious Orient to allow an Asian-American to fulfill his destiny in the United States is a bit problematic, too.

Part of the “boredom” factor people talked about may also be (as Margie suggests) that the visual reveals about Danny’s past in K’un Lun come very late in the show, robbing them of both early dramatic wonderment (such as they are) and the chance to add some comic book some excitement to the story. I actually kind of like that particular pacing choice, though, as it kept us from seeing Danny’s past as too real, and helped us see him with one eye as the naive, possibly deluded, hippy that everyone in New York initially sees.

Regardless, Iron Fist still works pretty well in my opinion. Finn Jones does a good job as Danny Rand, even if the writers have problems with consistent tones in his personality (part of that is the actual story, though it’s not clear even when lampshaded by the dialog). Jones makes pretty good fight moves, and I’ve seen far more problematic cut-action / shadowed fights in my day. The vipers nest of the Meachum clan — psychopathic father Harold (David “Faramir” Wenham), psychological weakling Ward (Tom Pelphrey), and ostensible goody two-shoes Joy (Jessica Stroup) are a delight to watch as they go full metal night-time soap opera on each other; it’s goofier entertainment than it appears to be at first, but it keeps the viewer, as much as Danny, guessing as to who the “real” bad guys are.

And it’s a strength (through misdirection) and weakness (through confusion) that there isn’t some central bad guy figure, or even bad guys in concert. Pulling the strings of Harold Meachum, at least to begin with, we have Madam Gao (Wai Ching Ho), reprising her Hand leadership role from Daredevil. I could watch an entire series of just her calmly hobbling her way through the paths of power, screwing with the heads of everyone she meets. But Bakuto (Ramon Rodriguez) has his own secrets and claim to infamy, if only because he seems so charming (and, in fact, could still be exactly what he says he is, despite the rather negative spin that some folk put on it). And then there’s the mysterious Davos (Sacha Dhawan), a figure from Danny’s past, to complicate things for our hero still more.

I was less wowed by Jessica Henwick’s Colleen Wing, the romantic interest. Aside from finding the romantic subplot a bit forced, the writers and directors (and perhaps the actress) couldn’t quite figure out what to do with her, leaving her as a generally sullen Asian (which did work as an ethnicity change) martial arts teacher with a hidden past, a penchant for cage matches, and a grumpy attitude. On the other hand, Rosario Dawson’s Claire Temple — the glue to date in the Netflix series as the nurse that everyone confides in and depends upon to patch them up — remains a voice of both reason and compassion. Carrie-Anne Moss reprises Jeri Hogarth (from both Jessica Jones and Daredevil) in far fewer episodes than it seems, and helps stitch the whole future Defenders crew together.

The overall story of Iron Fist is complex — perhaps too complex. In some ways, it goes through more twists and turns than any of the other Netflix MCU shows, without necessarily being more sophisticated in its story-telling. The plethora of villains coming and going sometimes stretch credulity, and certainly keep the narrative from something quite as identifiable as “Daredevil takes on the Kingpin,” or “Jessica Jones tackles the Purple Man.” It’s not escalation — at times, it’s confusion. Meanwhile, the title character changes as the show progresses, but not in a consistent or organic way. He becomes too sophisticated too quickly, then reverts to naivete; he gains and loses and gains and loses his mental equilibrium, his calm, his chi, at the seeming drop of a plot twist.

But if the overall story weaves and veers in what’s meant to be a tricky fashion (but comes off more than “Hey, let’s roll the dice so we don’t have to resolve anything yet”), the individual parts are still enjoyable and entertaining. It’s not the first show I’d recommend in the world, but I wouldn’t dissuade anyone from watching it.

Moving forward to The Defenders, despite anger issues as Iron Fist progresses, Danny remains a lighter character than the obsessively guilty Matt, stolidly angry Luke, or violently frightened Jessica. It will be interesting to see how he fits with the others. I’m certainly looking forward to it.

(N.B. This review does a pretty decent job of fleshing out some of the points above, along with a few others I hadn’t thought of — though I disagree with it on a couple of points, including about the supporting cast and the violence level.)