I thought it’d be interesting to use thee shows as a case study of why one show can be good when another sucks.
Now, full disclosure; I think Marvel movies and TV shows, for the most part, suck. Sometimes they’re good - “Iron Man” was awesome - but I am completely apart from most of the world in this regard; I think the majority of their output is forgettable crap. I may be wrong, of course. I thought “Captain America: Civil War” was a total piece of shit, but almost the entire population of Earth (except my wife) disagrees with me so maybe I’m stupid.
Anyway.
This past weekend we tried the first episode of “Iron Fist.” We will never watch Episode 2.
We then tried “Legion.” We promptly watched Episode 2, and will be watching Wpisode 3 as soon as we can arrange an hour in front of the TV.
I wonder why this is? It’s been too short a period of time for me to really think this through, but in this regard I seem to be in general agreement with the critics. “Iron Fist” just sucked. I am not sure why it sucked, except that one think I can point to is the apparent villains were just stupidly thin and boring. The acting was generally wooden. “Legion,” by comparison, has some interesting characters played by much more competent, or at the very least better directed, actors.
Anyway, more thoughts to come, but you’re welcome to explain to me why I hated “Iron First” but found “Legion” fascinating.
They are completely different genres first of all. Iron Fist is your standard super hero beat em up, done badly. Legion is a psychological thriller/horror that just happens to star people with super powers.
I haven’t seen Legion, am waiting until I can stream it legally on Amazon or Netflix or somewhere similar.
But Iron Fist’s first episode was terrible, and I too don’t plan to watch another. (FWIW, I though Captain America Civil War was fine but nothing special). I’ve elsewhere given my fanwank:
Danny wasn’t really kidnapped by kung fu monks and given secret powers. Instead, he ran away and has been living as a surfer-stoner for years. His best job was dishwasher at Olive Garden, until he had an accident cleaning the pasta machine during I dunno a thunderstorm or some shit, and it mangled his hand and gave him superpowers.
He knew that was a stupid backstory and didn’t want everyone to call him Noodlefist. So he Googled a few phrases about Buddhism (thus his reliance on terrible new-agey translations of the Boddhisatva–that’s his laziness, not that of the show writers) and made up the kung fu bullshit. He doesn’t smoke weed anymore, because one of his superpowers is that he’s perpetually in a cannabis haze.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever given Jessica Jones a try? If I were recommending a super-hero show for someone who normally dislikes super-hero shows, Legion and Jessica Jones are the two I’d mention in the same breath, though they are quite different from each other ( with JJ being the more conventional of the two ).
Yeah. Legion is comics horror (TV thriller) and Iron Fist is… Light action adventure? Also Legion is remarkably well made with a stellar cast and strong characterization while Iron Fist is pretty cliche.
You like one because it’s really good and does something pretty unique to TV and don’t like the other because it’s none of that.
Yeah, the Marvel movies doing something really well that you don’t care for. Iron Fist does the same thing poorly and Legion does something different. Frankly, there’s no mystery here.
I have seen a few Iron Fist episode, not because the story appealed to me but because my set dresser brother works on it and is in the credits.
I don’t hate it, but it’s not fun or interesting enough to keep me coming back. Very few shows in any genre are.
If I were to watch a superhero action show, I’d much rather watch a show with stand-alone episodes than yet another show requiring me to follow a story arc lasting months or years. I really don’t like having to follow any show for years in hopes of a payoff.
I’ve loved the Netflix Marvel output but the reviews, both in the media and here, of Iron Fist were so bad that I did not watch it at all.
So I cannot compare and contrast Iron Fist with Legion so well but Legion provoked some brain and emotional engagement along the way and did so with a creative visual and musical aesthetic. It was well acted, well written, and well produced. I may have been a bit disappointed with it by the end of the season but those first episodes in particular have us just disoriented enough to be not sure but very curious as to where it is going to go, and intrigued by several of the characters.
If Iron Fist was as I heard it was it did and was in contrast none of those things.
My new best friend. You are the only other person I have met that is in any way critical of Legion. Frankly I thought it started very strongly but then fell apart to be a televisual version of the worst kind of comics writing. Yes, it looked pretty but there wasn’t much depth. Well unless you think “shock horror that person isn’t who you thought they were” and unexplained concepts count for depth.
Iron Fist was what was frankly bound to happen sooner or later. It wasn’t dreadful, it was just bland. But the Marvel Netflix shows had always had their issues, especially with pacing. How many times have reviews said “good, yeah, but could have been eight episodes instead of thirteen”? They all seemed to dip badly in the middle, the only different with Iron Fist is that it started with the dip. It gets better, by the end it is possibly “good”, but the first few episodes. Yikes.
A point of view I very much understand. It used to be that you’d get stand alone shows with a few episodes a season being important for carrying on the main story (early seasons of the X-Files and the likes of Buffy are poster boys/girls for this) but now that idea has gone out of the window, meaning that viewers have to put in a multi-year investment. This works for only a handful of shows, most will never again have viewer figures like the first few episodes of season one as people viewers naturally drop off but the barrier to entry later on is way too high.
Seeing as so far only one has gone to a second season, we can’t be sure of how much things’ll depend on earlier season. Nor with Legion. But the likes of Agents of SHIELD definitely suffer from this problem.
Anyway, I was clearly making a general comment on television and how “monster of the week” shows tend to not happen anymore. And none of the Marvel Netflix shows are even close to “monster of the week”. They are, at least, a thirteen hour story.
Grimm was a “monster of the week” show with an overarching storyline, but it just ended. There’s still iZombie I guess, but it’s more of a case of the week.