Ironheart, Season 1, Episode 3: We in Danger, Girl
Credit where credit's due, terrible episode title aside, I actually reasonably enjoyed this episode. And that's mostly because of the introduction of Ezekiel Stane.
But everything around Riri's interactions with the Hoodlums (the show doesn't call them that, but let me call them that) really is by far the worst part of the show. The show couldn't really decide whether they want to make the Hoodlums be explicitly evil to be a bad influence towards Riri, or to make them still look cool... and fail rather spectacularly at both. The Hood aside, all the other members of the Hoodlums don't come off as either likable, charismatic, or being a 'found family' that could so easily proverbially seduce a vulnerable lost soul like Riri Williams into turning a blind eye into their misdeeds.
That would've been a good storyline. Tombstone in Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man went through something similar, but the gang in that show were portrayed to be consistently emotionally manipulative and Tombstone's state of life and mental space were clearly shown to the audience to be vulnerable to manipulation.
Riri? The show wants to both have its cake and eat it, and fails spectacularly at both. Riri needs to find the Hoodlums likable because that's the crux of the show, but she also needs to be smart so she has to be suspicious, and so Riri just comes off as inept and selfish, hanging out with the Hoodlums for money. It would be one thing if she's sticking around with them to try and bring down the criminals from the inside, but the show never makes that obvious as Riri's motivations are murky.
It's also really hard to take Riri's super-intelligence seriously when the show praises her for noticing 'oh, the Hood might have superpowers' but also she gets so horrified that these Ocean's Eleven heists... result in good security guards being hurt and killed? Yeah, no, Riri just comes off as being dumb. The show does so little buildup at establishing the Hoodlums as 'a family', or the dynamics of why Riri is considering other members of the Hoodlums as her new BFFs. Just like Riri's credibility as a superhero or a 'super-genius', you can't just... tell us that without the buildup! And there's no excuse, this is episode 3 and each of these episodes are like an hour long.
So the Hoodlum gang stuff didn't work for me at all.
(Oh yeah, Rampage died, and Riri is horrified to find out about that... again, after multiple scenes of being suspicious about the Hood. Rampage also had near-zero interactions with Riri, so I'm not sure why she, or the audience, is supposed to care beyond the vague surprised-Pikachu-reaction of 'oh no, the criminals kill people, what a surprise).
There are some nice scenes; but they're just slow. The exploration of AI Natalie versus Real Natalie, leading to a trip down memory lane and a panic attack by Riri when she finds the garage where her stepdad and the real Natalie died long ago, is reasonably well done.
'Joe' (or Zeke, rather) from last episode returns and in probably the best and unintentionally hilarious scenes of the episode, starts using Riri's own asshole-assertive tactics against her. In a better show this might make Riri actually self-reflect or dissect this, but the show seems to equate 'being an assertive asshole' as being a positive character trait if it's being done by the designated protagonist. I just like that every single one of Zeke's criticisms towards Riri is actually quite true.
After some blackmail back-and-forth, Riri gets Zeke to create a bio-mesh skin gizmo that will allow her to sneak a weapon and steal a piece of Parker's Hood. Which... cool, Zeke's her science partner, but wasn't the whole crux of this show to showcase that Riri Williams is as good of a scrappy inventor as Tony Stark, and that she can do it without money? Yeah, not doing a good job of showing that, show...
Oh yeah, Joe is actually Ezekiel 'Zeke' Stane, son of Obadiah 'Iron Monger' Stane. This, by the way, was given to us in a horrible exposition shoehorned unnaturally into a conversation that actually took me out of the episode. Zeke's backstory and motivation are delivered much more competently -- it makes sense that he's so obsessed with technology, having a stain in his legacy and reputation that he has a feeling of responsibility towards. But that guilt seems to have also influenced his lack of a backbone. This could've been the nice start of an interesting backstory... certainly a much more palatable one than Riri's vaguely-defined "I want an Iron Suit because other people said I can't have it" rhetoric. Alas, it's her name on the show title.
Again, credit where credit's due, Ironheart does try to give a little bit of her motivations. Her dead stepdad is a fixer who is super-interested in Iron Man. Which makes it a bit less selfish... but still so utterly vapid and shallow. It's at least something that actually gives her a vaguely superhero-y motivation, coming in almost halfway through a show where she's been hanging out with criminals.
Anyway, the final part of this episode has the heist be against an organization called Heirloom that operates a greenhouse island facility. Which... again, the show doesn't do any job trying to justify Heirloom as being assholes beyond them being rich. Which, fair enough, Parker and his Hoodlums are asshole criminals, but at least justify it to Riri?
Anyway, Hood and John King have an argument about whether to go ahead with the heist. John King points out some good points, but the Hood is hyperfocused on getting his way and as predicted, the CEO refuses to back down. Riri lets NATALIE control the Ironheart suit while she sneaks around and tries to cut off a piece of the Hood's cloak. Riri is also as hyperfocused and impulsive as the Hood, and her laser knife ends up setting off alarms that puts the entire facility into lockdown.
The Hood goes on a rampage, using his superpowers to kill the CEO and a bunch of security guards. Riri gets away... but gets confronted by John King, who puts two and two together. The scuffle leads to Riri escaping in the Ironheart suit and does the very heroic thing of leaving John King behind to suffocate to death in the CO2-trapped room. Oh, and she leaves the bio-mesh behind. Again, there are many ways to frame the Riri/John King confrontation that could make Riri heroic. She just feels confused, and sure, while John was a criminal, her reaction to leaving him to die feels so blasé. I don't mind the idea necessarily that some heroes need to kill their enemies, or killing in self-defense can be justified, or whatnot, but I have zero confidence that this show could pull off any of the depth or nuance that any of these topics would bring.
Riri hides her involvement in John's death; the Hoodlums are fucked up; and Parker's demonic voices show him a vision of what happened later on which is a bit of a contrivance.
And... that really is the crux of what makes this show so frustrating. The characters' motivations are so confused and what the audience is meant to take away from the scenes just feels so arbitrary.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- Ezekiel Stane or Zeke Stane in the comics is the son of Obadiah Stane who was introduced as an Iron Man villain who was pulling the strings of other supervillains that he pitted against Tony Stark's allies to avenge his father's death, eventually becoming the second Iron Monger. He would eventually also upgrade his own biology, something that this MCU Zeke Stane is trying to do.
- This is the very first time that 'Iron Monger', Obadiah's supervillain sobriquet, is ever mentioned in the MCU -- he's not called that in Iron Man, and he doesn't really get referenced all that much outside of that movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment