Iron Fist S01E01 Review: I Rant About Racism

Iron Fist, Season 1, Episode 1: Snow Gives Way

It's really, really hard for me to review this show in a bubble, and initially I decided against reviewing it at all, or simply making a review for all ten or so episodes. It's a show I'm going to watch, if only to get some context for when Defenders comes out... but it's not an easy show to get myself hyped to watch. Mostly because I loathe the idea of Iron Fist as a character. A white dude who comes into a predominantly Chinese culture and turns out to be suddenly better in everything that the Chinese people can do after minimal amount of training (yeah, 12 years, whatever -- the rest of the Chinese monks trained their entire lives, right?) feels very, very reminiscent of the Mighty Whitey/White Saviour trope. As an ethic Chinese myself, you can understand why I'm not very fond of the concept of Iron Fist. It really dances around being offensive, embodying a time with different values. I tend to avoid 'hot' topics like racism, feminism and all that jazz while doing reviews on this blog, but let's just talk a bit about Iron Fist. Not the show, not just yet, but the concept of the character himself.

And, yes, a very rich white man finding himself in the tutelage of an Asian mentor or an Asian environment after a near-death or soul-shattering experience is the premise of many other superheroes as well. On top of my head, Arrow (with the added bonus of Oliver returning after being thought dead for years), Batman Begins, Daredevil, Doctor Strange and arguably the Wolverine all feature white leads who learn from Chinese or Japanese mentors. But none of these four end up feeling anywhere as encompassing of being a 'white man adopting Chinese culture and being better at it than the rest' as Iron Fist does. Green Arrow's got a whole bunch of other teachers too and both him and Batman merely learned some skills instead of modelling themselves as China's-best-fighter. It's one thing to have Green Arrow learn kung fu and archery from the martial artist Yao Fei. It's another thing to suddenly, inexplicably be better than every single fighter in K'un Lun, inherit all their sacred skills and simply be better than all the ethnically Chinese fighters in the setting. I'm not asking for Batman, or Green Arrow, or Doctor Strange to be transformed into Asian people. Just Iron Fist, because the dude's a guy dressed in an stereotypical Chinese outfit with a fucking dragon tattoo doing Chinese martial arts and hails from a Chinese magical kung fu land thing. But he's not Chinese. And after its predecessors Daredevil dealt with disability, Jessica Jones dealt with women and victims of sexual/emotional abuse, and Luke Cage dealt with the African-American race, for Marvel and Netflix to jump a huge, huge step back and adopt the "white boy getting a dragon tattoo" storyline for Iron Fist wholesale just doesn't sit right with me.

But perhaps I need to give him a chance. I'm not the most well-versed in Marvel characters, after all, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit because I don't know my Marvel lore. Netflix has done wonders in making characters I don't know (Jessica Jones), I don't care (Luke Cage) or I find stupid (Daredevil) be awesome, so maybe they can do the same for Iron Fist? Unfortunately... they got a white guy to do it. Finn Jones is an actor whose performance in Game of Thrones as Ser Loras Tyrell was absolutely enjoyable, and it's no real fault of the actor, but keeping the character white instead of turning him Asian or half-Asian is very, very irritating especially since Chinese people are very, very unrepresented in superhero material. Agents of SHIELD gets massive support from me even in its worst because it's not afraid to cast a Chinese woman (Melinda May) and a half-Chinese woman (Quake) as main leads, and Jiaying as a Chinese main villain. Gotham is another rare example of a white character being race-lifted into Chinese with their take on Hugo Strange.

But compare it to other shows, and let's just limit it for superhero adaptations for simplicity's sake... the MCU changes Chinese characters villainous and heroic alike to white people. Two incarnations of Mandarin and the Ancient One (yes, s/he's supposed to be Tibetan, but still) are all played by white actors. Very good white actors, but still. Both the Nolan Batman movies and Arrow cast white actors as the Chinese-and-or-Arabic Ra's Al Ghul and Talia Al Ghul (Arrow's Nyssa is half-Chinese, which is fine by me). Wong, the only Asian character in Doctor Strange to have a line, was added last minute because of complaints over Ancient One's whitewashing. I tend to not care very much when a character's race is changed -- the movies and TV shows are made by Americans, after all, and yeah, it probably has to represent the largest ethnic group in America, and I generally don't complain much because, hey, if I wanted to watch a show with Chinese people, then I watch a Chinese-made show. And besides, the white actors they cast for roles like Mandarin, Ra's al Ghul and Ancient One are actually pretty great actors. But then again their character is not a dude in a Chinese suit using Chinese martial arts appropriating Chinese culture and getting a dragon tattoo. Coming off Luke Cage, which tackled racism pretty well, this is a huge leap backwards.

And the sheer amount of bad online press that Iron Fist has gotten in the week leading up to its debut hasn't made things any more conducive to making me want to watch the show. Again, I try to keep an open mind and try to be objective, but it's still pretty fucking annoying. So, for the purposes of the reviews of Iron Fist, let me just try and avoid all the racist overtones as best as I can, and just state it here, in the opening of my review for episode one:

I want Asian characters in the center of a story of their own culture. Here, here and here are articles about someone else who's far more verbose about this point of view than I am. I've gotten the rant out of my system, so I'll try to avoid mentioning this topic in my subsequent Iron Fist reviews. If I do them.

Whoo.

Okay, got that out of my system. No more racism rants, I promise, and I'll just talk about the episodes and review them as they stand. Let these episodes be judged over their writing and characters and plot.

Mind you, compared to the opening episodes of its Netflix brethren, Iron Fist... struggles to really find a tone. It doesn't really help that the first we see of our hero, Danny Rand, he's introduced as this crazy hobo who waltzes into a big company building claiming to be the long-dead son of the previous owner. We know it's true, of course, but the fact that the entire 45 to 50 minutes of the runtime mostly involves the uninteresting efforts of Danny trying to convince Ward and Joy Meachum, his childhood friends and now showrunners of the company, that, hey, it's really Danny Rand! Back from the dead!

Sure, there are references to zen philosphies, K'un Lun, and the pretty decent but not spectacular fight between Danny and the Rand Corporation's thugs, and when Danny's not being "hey I'm totally not crazy!" he's somewhat likable especially in his interactions with the hobo Big Al (who died at the end of the episode), but otherwise despite running for nearly 50 minutes the episode didn't do a good job in introducing to us who Danny Rand really is. In fact, all it does is to have Danny try to claim that he's totally this dude who died, and while we know he's telling the truth, he's doing all kinds of absolutely stupid things to try and get Ward and Joy to see that it's actually him -- and unless our her's supposed to be a little crazy, it doesn't paint a very flattering picture of our hero.

We've got the meeting with martial arts instructor Colleen Wing (who's ethnically Chinese but is teaching Japanese kendo) and gets turned away because she thinks he's a hobo, but she manages to see Danny pull off some kung fu moves. No doubt Wing's going to important later on. Oh, and the Meachum patriarch, Harold, is actually still alive and being a very jackass, controlling father to Ward.

Ultimately it's hard to really hate Ward. Yes, he was a dick to Danny as a kid, but between his condescending douche of a father and the fact that Danny's hounding him like a madman doesn't really help Danny's case. Ward is a bit extreme in telling his gunmen to murder Danny, yes, but at least his choices are steeped in logic. This is possibly a con artist from a different company that's trying to take over Rand corporation just when they're expanding into China. He makes no real secrets about breaking into his sister's house, and has already proven himself dangerous by beating up his guards, and taking his car on a joyride-slash-interrogation. No doubt Ward'll get more chances to be a villain in the future, but the episode's scripting doesn't really do Danny a lot of justice.

Also Harold (a.k.a. Faramir from Lord of the Rings) is totally the guy that crashed the plane, isn't he? Obadiah Stane vibes aside, the fact that he's faked his death and hiding in a creepy basement Bond-villain-esque lair really is ringing a lot more alarm bells than Ward's "send my hitmen to kill a crazy hobo" plan.

Again, we do know that Danny's telling the truth, but it's one thing to be unfamiliar with the outside world and be amazed at the pretty interactive monitor and be surprised that the company wants to kick him out or not knowing people died in the interim, but it's another thing to basically break into people's houses and cars and demand answers for no real reason. And honestly, he should've opened to Joy and Ward in the first place with personal information "okay, I know this sounds crazy, but I survived the plane crash, just got back to America. You know, we used to play monopoly and you didn't want to pay toll fees because you're a dick?" Things like that. But no, let's just insist you're Danny without really proving that.

The episode ends how you expect someone who does the things that Danny does would end. He gets drugged by Joy and Ward, and gets sent into an asylum. Whoops.

It's definitely not the strongest opening for our kung fu fighting superhero, and neither is it the most flattering, either. And the big appeal that I hoped would happen? The fighting scenes between Danny and the gunmen, while not bad by any stretch, was... disappointing. Yes, I get that Danny's probably holding back on his awesome kung fu skills, but for a superhero who's whole gimmick is that he does kung fu very well, there's very little art in this episode. Not to mention some rather... sub-par dialogue choices. Really hope this will change.

So yeah, not the strongest start, which might prove the bad reviews right after all. But we have twelve more episodes to go, and I'll at least attempt to not drop this series mid-way. Because, man, as much as I want to like this, I still can't really muster up any enthusiasm to watch this.