So I finally watched Iron Fist Season 1....
...and I liked it!
Or, more specifically, I liked it much better than Arrow, which I have also been watching now and then.
Granted, my expectations for Iron Fist were probably rather low to begin with - what with everybody slagging the series and knowing it was canceled mid-season during S2 - but I thought it was actually pretty good. I enjoyed watching it and found I was always looking forward to the next episode. Especially after Danny takes Gao's challenge, that's when the series started to get really intense. I liked the gritty overall tone of the series, with Danny Rand thrown into unforeseen new difficulties all the time. I liked the overall pacing of the series. And I liked the villains, especially Gao, who was the perfect villain - far more dangerous than her frail frame suggested. She is the Queen of Thorns on steroids, more cunning and devious. Even when she is held captive, you start wondering who really is the captor and who is the captive. She totally controls the scene and calls the shots, even when tied up and helpless.
But yeah, there were two things that didn't quite convince me. One, Joy's sudden and unexplained turning against Danny Rand at the end of the season. If there was an in-story reason given for this, I totally missed it.
Two, a slightly more serious gaffe IMO. So the board Rand Enterprises decide to...vote out the majority owner? WTF? Working in a publicly listed company, I can tell you that...is...not...how it goes! If the owners and the board are at odds with each other, the board goes. Each and every time. The owners fire the board. Not the other way around. What kind of a bizarre tail-wags-the-dog world does the story take place in?
OK, one more. Davos (who is supposed to be Steel Serpent, I take) was too meek and not even nearly bulky and muscular enough. That guy really would really need to bulk up (and man up!) for the next season.
Which I will probably never watch, so I don't know if he even shows up there. I am not interested in incomplete seasons.
So why did I like this better than Arrow? Or why do I even compare the two?
Aside from the obvious, both having a corporate owner misfit main character who has been missing for years, believed dead, and then comes back and starts moonlighting as a martial arts hero who fights ninjas...and yes, faces an opponent who is resurrected and comes back more or less insane, plus other thematic similarities...beyond that, the simple fact that I have also been catching up on Arrow in the interim (finished Season 4, next up Season 5), so I simply can't help comparing the two.
Arrow got pretty favorable feedback and went on to Season 8. Iron Fist seems almost universally hated, and was cancelled before Season 2 was completed. So after watching a couple seasons of Arrow, yes, I was expecting something noticeably inferior.
But ended up liking Iron Fist a lot more.
One of the reasons I've been less impressed with Arrow is its more flippant, comical style. Comedy villains like Damien Darhk make me think I'm watching Buffy (not a compliment in this context). But that's not the main reason.
My main annoyance with Arrow is that the episodes are split between the actual story and a flashback narrative. In season 1, this felt somehow justified and made sense...we learned what had happened to Oliver Queen before his return. But then it went on and on and on, season after season, even when there was nothing particularly interesting or relevant happening in the flashback sequences. You got nothing from them. They just disrupted the main story.
I personally thinks that ruins the series.
There is only so much you can tell in a 40-minute episode. If you split that time between a main story and a side story, your main story will suffer. This was one of the key flaws of the CSI franchise (well, that, and the lack of nonrepetitive nonformulaic plots). They seemed to realize that their stories were far too weak to carry a 40-minute episode. So what do they do? Stuff two weak repetitive formulaic plots into a single episode! Sometimes even more! Whee!
Also, the flashback stories do a great job of distracting you from the main story. Honestly, those invaluable minutes would have been much better served by giving the main story more room to develop. I always groan when an Arrow episode enters the flashback mode. Maybe I should just skip the flashbacks, don't know.
But take away the flashbacks, I still enjoyed Iron Fist far better. Maybe because they had concentrated on developing the main story instead.
...and I liked it!
Or, more specifically, I liked it much better than Arrow, which I have also been watching now and then.
Granted, my expectations for Iron Fist were probably rather low to begin with - what with everybody slagging the series and knowing it was canceled mid-season during S2 - but I thought it was actually pretty good. I enjoyed watching it and found I was always looking forward to the next episode. Especially after Danny takes Gao's challenge, that's when the series started to get really intense. I liked the gritty overall tone of the series, with Danny Rand thrown into unforeseen new difficulties all the time. I liked the overall pacing of the series. And I liked the villains, especially Gao, who was the perfect villain - far more dangerous than her frail frame suggested. She is the Queen of Thorns on steroids, more cunning and devious. Even when she is held captive, you start wondering who really is the captor and who is the captive. She totally controls the scene and calls the shots, even when tied up and helpless.
But yeah, there were two things that didn't quite convince me. One, Joy's sudden and unexplained turning against Danny Rand at the end of the season. If there was an in-story reason given for this, I totally missed it.
Two, a slightly more serious gaffe IMO. So the board Rand Enterprises decide to...vote out the majority owner? WTF? Working in a publicly listed company, I can tell you that...is...not...how it goes! If the owners and the board are at odds with each other, the board goes. Each and every time. The owners fire the board. Not the other way around. What kind of a bizarre tail-wags-the-dog world does the story take place in?
OK, one more. Davos (who is supposed to be Steel Serpent, I take) was too meek and not even nearly bulky and muscular enough. That guy really would really need to bulk up (and man up!) for the next season.
Which I will probably never watch, so I don't know if he even shows up there. I am not interested in incomplete seasons.
So why did I like this better than Arrow? Or why do I even compare the two?
Aside from the obvious, both having a corporate owner misfit main character who has been missing for years, believed dead, and then comes back and starts moonlighting as a martial arts hero who fights ninjas...and yes, faces an opponent who is resurrected and comes back more or less insane, plus other thematic similarities...beyond that, the simple fact that I have also been catching up on Arrow in the interim (finished Season 4, next up Season 5), so I simply can't help comparing the two.
Arrow got pretty favorable feedback and went on to Season 8. Iron Fist seems almost universally hated, and was cancelled before Season 2 was completed. So after watching a couple seasons of Arrow, yes, I was expecting something noticeably inferior.
But ended up liking Iron Fist a lot more.
One of the reasons I've been less impressed with Arrow is its more flippant, comical style. Comedy villains like Damien Darhk make me think I'm watching Buffy (not a compliment in this context). But that's not the main reason.
My main annoyance with Arrow is that the episodes are split between the actual story and a flashback narrative. In season 1, this felt somehow justified and made sense...we learned what had happened to Oliver Queen before his return. But then it went on and on and on, season after season, even when there was nothing particularly interesting or relevant happening in the flashback sequences. You got nothing from them. They just disrupted the main story.
I personally thinks that ruins the series.
There is only so much you can tell in a 40-minute episode. If you split that time between a main story and a side story, your main story will suffer. This was one of the key flaws of the CSI franchise (well, that, and the lack of nonrepetitive nonformulaic plots). They seemed to realize that their stories were far too weak to carry a 40-minute episode. So what do they do? Stuff two weak repetitive formulaic plots into a single episode! Sometimes even more! Whee!
Also, the flashback stories do a great job of distracting you from the main story. Honestly, those invaluable minutes would have been much better served by giving the main story more room to develop. I always groan when an Arrow episode enters the flashback mode. Maybe I should just skip the flashbacks, don't know.
But take away the flashbacks, I still enjoyed Iron Fist far better. Maybe because they had concentrated on developing the main story instead.
statistics: Posted by Fyrcyning — 9:40 AM - Today — Replies 1 — Views 46