# Iron Fist (Netflix) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 17, 2017, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431 "2017-03-17T19:56:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![kiz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7feea3/32.png) [@kiz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kiz)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2017, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/61 "2017-03-20T13:14:55Z")
I think we’re on episode 7 or 8 (we did a binge watch yesterday so after awhile they all run into each other). It’s good, but not great. Like others have said, I appreciate Luke Cage’s slowly building tension, which Iron Fist IMO doesn’t have. I don’t see Danny as being stupid/idiotic as I see him being, in many ways, an innocent man-child. It does grate on my nerves every so often but considering his backstory it’s understandable. I keep thinking that I’ve seen the actors playing both Ward and Harold in other shows before, but damn if I can remember which ones. They both seem familiar to me. I like Colleen. She’s not a flashy supporting role but that’s OK. I like down they’re entwining Iron Fist with Luke, Daredevil, and Joy mentioning Jessica Jones (“really good PI when she’s not drinking”). Maybe somebody who’s more versed in the Marvel universe can enlighten me: I get the feeling that they’ll pulling out each and ever character they’ve ever created for Netflix. I’d imagine some were less developed than others? Was Iron Fist one of those? I’m asking because, prior to this series, I’d never heard of him. Ditto Daredevil and Jessica Jones. I’d already known about Luke Cage, LOL. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2017, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/62 "2017-03-20T13:19:28Z")
Ward was Bunker in Banshee, Harold was Faramir in the Lord of the Ring movies. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2017, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/63 "2017-03-20T13:29:47Z")
Iron Fist paired up with Luke Cage pretty early on since his solo comic wasn’t very popular. They operated a business called Heroes for Hire. The idea was that they were “street level” superheroes - not nearly as powerful as folks like the Avengers or X-men, but also not generally concerned with saving the world. I’m pretty sure that Luke Cage says “I’m no hero for hire” at one point in his series. Jessica Jones is a much newer character - I’d never really heard of her until this series either. Daredevil is, by far, the most popular of the four. The whole point of these four series is to set them all up to get the characters together for a series called The Defenders, where they’ll all be teamed up. What I’m wondering is whether Claire Temple is going to be the one to team up with Coleen Wing to form the Daughters of the Dragon, since we’ve already met Misty Knight in the Luke Cage series. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2017, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/64 "2017-03-20T16:09:51Z")
> [@kiz](#): > > I don’t see Danny as being stupid/idiotic as I see him being, in many ways, an innocent man-child. It does grate on my nerves every so often but considering his backstory it’s understandable. I’m now picturing the glowing fist of death being summoned by Kimmy Schmidt. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2017, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/65 "2017-03-20T16:35:14Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > I’m now picturing the glowing fist of death being summoned by Kimmy Schmidt. I would watch the hell out of that show. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2017, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/66 "2017-03-20T17:25:24Z")
> [@kiz](#): > > Maybe somebody who’s more versed in the Marvel universe can enlighten me: I get the feeling that they’ll pulling out each and ever character they’ve ever created for Netflix. I’d imagine some were less developed than others? Was Iron Fist one of those? I’m asking because, prior to this series, I’d never heard of him. Ditto Daredevil and Jessica Jones. I’d already known about Luke Cage, LOL. Luke Cage and Iron Fist were created in the '70s, to cash in on the trends of blaxploitation films and kung-fu films. Neither was terribly successful on their own, but did pretty well when they were put together in their own book. More recently, Luke Cage has gotten a big revival in the comics, and has led a couple different versions of the Avengers. Iron Fist has gotten some more attention lately, too, but not as much. Daredevil is one of Marvel’s major properties, but it already got the movie treatment with Ben Affleck, and was not well received, so he was pretty much off the table for the movies when they stared pulling together the MCU. If Affleck had never made his movie, I suspect Daredevil would have been a bigger part of the cinema side of the current Marvel movies. Jessica Jones is a pretty recent character, debuting back in 2001. She doesn’t have a particularly deep bench of stories, and is mostly favored by her creator, Brian Bendis (who’s also largely responsible for bringing back Luke Cage as a major character). None of these characters are exactly obscure, by comic character standards, except Jessica Jones. They’re most B-List, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, depending on what books they’re in. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2017, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/67 "2017-03-20T17:42:32Z")
> [@kiz](#): > > I don’t see Danny as being stupid/idiotic as I see him being, in many ways, an innocent man-child. It does grate on my nerves every so often but considering his backstory it’s understandable. That’s how I understand his character, too. 15 years ago, he understood that “when your parents die, you inherit their stuff”, in a sort of fairy-tale way, with none of the legal mechanics (proving your identity, for example) behind that. He thinks he’ll walk into the building and it will be like Arthur pulling the sword from the stone, and everyone will know and recognize his rightful heir-hood. Nothing he experienced in the interim would give him any inkling that “probating a will” is a thing. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2017, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/68 "2017-03-20T18:11:17Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > That’s how I understand his character, too. 15 years ago, he understood that “when your parents die, you inherit their stuff”, in a sort of fairy-tale way, with none of the legal mechanics (proving your identity, for example) behind that. He thinks he’ll walk into the building and it will be like Arthur pulling the sword from the stone, and everyone will know and recognize his rightful heir-hood. > > Nothing he experienced in the interim would give him any inkling that “probating a will” is a thing. Sorry but no, the guy wasn’t a toddler when his parents died. He should have a way better understanding of how the world works. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2017, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/69 "2017-03-20T18:24:35Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > I have to say that most of the fight scenes are pretty lame. Do any of these people actually know anything about martial arts? Perhaps related, Danny just doesn’t seem like much of a fighter—or perhaps, not like somebody who’s been trained to fight, to earn and value his strength; rather, he seems like somebody who’s just fallen into the cauldron of Kung Fu magic juice. Even more so, he doesn’t seem like somebody who’s gone through 15 years of grueling monastic discipline—he’s got poor self control, he lacks focus, he’s impulsive. The character just doesn’t seem to hang together, he’s like some sort of poorly stitched together, threadbare ragdoll of personality traits—naive man-child, smug, entitled billionaire, unbeatable Kung Fu warrior, and so on. Compare this to the characters of Daredevil, Luke Cage, and most of all, Jessica Jones, who were molded by their experiences, who you immediately believed had a past that influenced, and even dictated, their decisions, whereas Iron Fist keeps having to resort to hammy flashbacks to give the character some semblance of motivation. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2017, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/70 "2017-03-20T18:30:26Z")
Digital C: > [@](#): > > Sorry but no, the guy wasn’t a toddler when his parents died. He should have a way better understanding of how the world works. And if he was a teenager, is that so much better, as regards his knowledge of the legal mechanics of inheritance? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2017, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/71 "2017-03-20T18:36:53Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > Digital C: > > And if he was a teenager, is that so much better, as regards his knowledge of the legal mechanics of inheritance? Legal mechanics of inheritance, sure. Recognizing that a shoeless hobo doesn’t walk into Rand International and get a meeting with the CEO? That’s something a ten year old should understand. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2017, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/72 "2017-03-20T19:08:38Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Perhaps related, Danny just doesn’t seem like much of a fighter—or perhaps, not like somebody who’s been trained to fight, to earn and value his strength; rather, he seems like somebody who’s just fallen into the cauldron of Kung Fu magic juice. Even more so, he doesn’t seem like somebody who’s gone through 15 years of grueling monastic discipline—he’s got poor self control, he lacks focus, he’s impulsive. The character just doesn’t seem to hang together, he’s like some sort of poorly stitched together, threadbare ragdoll of personality traits—naive man-child, smug, entitled billionaire, unbeatable Kung Fu warrior, and so on. All the more reason to support my stoner-dishwasher-at-Olive-Garden origin story :). ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2017, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/73 "2017-03-20T19:29:42Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Legal mechanics of inheritance, sure. Recognizing that a shoeless hobo doesn’t walk into Rand International and get a meeting with the CEO? That’s something a ten year old should understand. He wasn’t just a ten-year-old, though. He was the ten-year-old child of a couple of billionaires. His entire life leading up to the crash was, except for Ward’s bullying, one of presumably extreme privilege. Then came the crash, and then came 15 years of extreme hardship and toil while training at the monastery. He probably built up his pre-crash memories into a sort of idyllic paradise. It probably _was_ an idyllic paradise. So it’s reasonable that he would expect to walk in and have cake and ice cream. Having said all that, I agree that this is the weakest of the four series. I think **Half Man Half Wit** has half hit the half nail on half a head. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2017, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/74 "2017-03-20T19:36:59Z")
> [@Johnny\_Bravo](#): > > He wasn’t just a ten-year-old, though. He was the ten-year-old child of a couple of billionaires. His entire life leading up to the crash was, except for Ward’s bullying, one of presumably extreme privilege. It’s not as simple as “extreme privilege”, he grew up watching his dad run the business. It just makes no sense that he would pick up how important the company was to his family but absolutely nothing at all about how things work in the real world. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2017, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/75 "2017-03-20T19:51:49Z")
> [@DigitalC](#): > > It’s not as simple as “extreme privilege”, he grew up watching his dad run the business. It just makes no sense that he would pick up how important the company was to his family but absolutely nothing at all about how things work in the real world. If he’d forgotten most of his English, so he had to stumble through conversations and had a strong accent, I’d have been a lot more forgiving of his ignorance around basic American culture. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2017, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/76 "2017-03-21T15:06:57Z")
Wow, Claire just has the worst look ever. It’s like no matter where she goes, people she needs to stitch up just throw themselves before her… Even when she tries to develop some fighting skills for this crazy world of both unbreakable and all-too-breakable people, she gets served a chemist with a collapsed lung. It’s like she can’t even take out the trash without stumbling across some half-dead guy in the dumpster… Anyway, I’m now up to episode 7, and what do you know, at least Ward’s character arc is starting to become interesting! ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2017, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/77 "2017-03-21T15:13:07Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Wow, Claire just has the worst look ever. That should’ve been ‘luck’. ---
**Author:** ![Paintcharge](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paintcharge/32/7946_2.png) [@Paintcharge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paintcharge)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2017, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/78 "2017-03-21T17:04:17Z")
Ward is the character that bothered me the most. In some scenes he’s a junky waste product who can’t do anything right, then he gets some pills and turns into a super smart, super fighter guy. He’s much too inconsistent. I’m up to ep 9. and now if Ward is in a suit, I expect useless Ward, otherwise he’s competent. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2017, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/79 "2017-03-21T17:43:15Z")
Was there any significance to the claws Claire was shown using and then taking with her at the end? ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2017, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431/80 "2017-03-21T17:51:02Z")
> [@Paintcharge](#): > > Ward is the character that bothered me the most. In some scenes he’s a junky waste product who can’t do anything right, then he gets some pills and turns into a super smart, super fighter guy. He’s much too inconsistent. I thought his initial descent into junkiedom was well done, and we really got a chance to see how much he just wants to be free of his father’s schemes and influence, how being unable to escape him takes Ward to the breaking point; but then, yeah, next scene, he got a shave and slicked his hair back again, and everything’s as before. Oh, and one would think that somewhere along the lines to getting the mantle of Iron Fist, his teachers might have at least hinted at the somewhat useful fact that Danny can heal people with his chi, and it only takes like half a minute of instruction to master the technique… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iron-fist-netflix/782431.md?page=5)