The Immortal Iron Fist

I have a Marvel Unlimited subscription. There was really no question that I was going to watch the Netflix/Marvel Iron Fist for reasons of completeness if nothing else.

Marvel's Defenders: Gotta catch 'em all.

You have questions. I have answers. Mild spoilers for this show (and Daredevil as it builds on that) below.

1) What's this show about?

It's the story of Danny Rand (Finn Jones), a billionaire orphan who ended up stranded at a trans-dimensional Tibetan monastery and learned how to turn his fist into a steel-door denting weapon. Now he's back in New York, and vigilantism will occur. 

No, it's really not more complicated than that. To reiterate: billionaire orphan rescued from fateful plane crash by monks, develops magic martial arts punching power, comes back to New York, fights ninja-themed crime. 

2) How ethnically insensitive is Iron Fist?

There's been a lot of controversy about this issue, so I thought I might get this one out of the way early. The portrayal of Asian ethnicity and culture in Iron Fist is, I feel, what would count as "really good for 1987." There's a notable lack of East Asian folks behind the camera (maybe one director, and I'm not including the RZA, who did direct an episode, but yes, I am aware the Wu-Tang Clan are not, in fact, from Asia) which comes out in the treatment of settings, characters, etc., even though there's a definite effort not to be completely stereotypical.

What I mean by the above is that the show is clearly "Asian through non-Asian people's eyes." That's not the worst crime against humanity, but with a big budget product with years of development, it's not a great look, and I hope Marvel tries harder in the future. 

One thing that tweaks me just a little, though, is that Iron Fist gets so much flak because the main character learns martial arts in a trans-dimensional Tibetan monastery but is not Asian, whereas Daredevil hits all of the same major plot points in a more insensitive manner, but we give it more of a pass, possibly because it's so much worse at cultural sensitivity we don't even see the appropriation. Here's a chart:

Plot point	Daredevil treatment	Iron Fist treatment
Young white boy who develops special powers is orphaned at an early age and gets martial arts training from an Asian-themed organization...	Of mostly white guys, run by an old white guy with a John Wayne-y accent	Of Buddhist monks, mostly played by Asian actors
The hero’s main antagonist is The Hand, a ninja death cult best described as...	A weird Asian magic ninja group straight out of a Sax Rohmer (author of The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu and many, many other racist pulps) novel.	An Asian-themed Hydra with magic, but clearly including a lot of normal people with normal-ish motivations and not just a weird death cult of zombie ninjas all the way down.
The hero’s martial-arty love interest played by an Asian actress is...	Elektra, a one-woman killing machine. One of three women with more than a couple speaking lines in the entire season;  An antagonist with severe impulse control issues, leading to Daredevil basically trying to "fix" her; and As the only notable Asian member of the Asian-themed martial-arty organization that trained Daredevil, clearly also a [mild spoiler] Macguffin for The Hand, because you know, that had to be the Asian character.	Colleen Wing, a down-on-her-luck martial arts instructor. A complex, but fundamentally good, character who is treated by the Iron Fist as an equal. For the record, not the only non-pushover woman on the show, unlike, say, Daredevil.
The character of Madame Gao, played by Wai Ching Ho, can be summarized as…	“Inscrutable” dragon lady combined with evil grandma.	A complicated and clever adversary to the Iron Fist, less rooted in an Asian-ness than from a wisdom that comes from being super-old.
Asian organized crime in the show is...	Run by Madame Gao in a weird magic way or by Hand ninja in an often weirder magic way.	Partly the Hand, but also some Chinese Goodfellas types who, while they do martial arts, aren’t treated as some sort of different type of criminal like “the Triads” or “the Yakuza” are in other shows; they’re an ethnically-homogenous organized crime group that happens to be Chinese.

This is not to absolve Iron Fist of its sins, but to say that, if we call out Iron Fist but just sort of let Daredevil slide, we're basically just reserving sensitivity to Asian culture for explicitly Asian-branded shows.

Now, on top of this, Iron Fist's treatment of women is a significant improvement over Daredevil. Most notable is that the Iron Fist for much of the show rolls in a team of three, that three usually being Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick) and Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson). Much of the time, the Iron Fist is planning to do something impulsive and stupid, and Claire and Colleen tell him, "no Danny, that's impulsive and stupid," and guess what? That's treated by the show as good advice, and half the time the Iron Fist actually listens. That's right, a superhero show where the white guy superhero doesn't just blow off or become emotionally unavailable to the women in his life when they tell him not to do something dumb! Also he doesn't lie to them all the time!

3) Does that mean Iron Fist passes the "Bechdel Test"?

Sort of! 

The problem is that, often, two women are talking about a man in a non-romantic way. For example, there's a long scene where Colleen and Claire are looking after an unconscious man with a sucking chest wound, and arguing over whether it's safe to bring him to the hospital. For the Bechdel Test, does that count as a conversation "about a man"? Other examples of where this is complicated:

• Claire and Colleen talking with Danny over whether or not to kill a particular man
• Colleen and Jeri discuss some legal trouble that Colleen and Danny have gotten themselves into
• Two members of the Hand, both women, where one is upbraiding the other for being disloyal to the organization due to not following the orders of a male superior.

So, yes, women are far more visible in Iron Fist than in Daredevil; they're clearly half of society and in a wide variety of roles. But, as we've established, being better than Daredevil is kind of a low bar.

Average number of actresses with lines in a scene with Joy Meachum (Jessica Stroup).

If neither Claire or Colleen are in the scene, the likelihood of two women having more than a line in a scene drops logarithmically. Joy Meachum (a childhood friend of Danny's and major corporate power player) operates in a world where the only other women, except very occasionally Jeri Hogarth, are assistants or less senior board members with few if any lines. If it's not to Claire or Colleen, I don't think Madame Gao ever speaks directly to a woman in this show. 

4) So, apart from that, how's the show?

Perfectly acceptable. If you are willing to watch Marvel's Agents of SHIELD for an entire 26-episode season without shutting it off mid-way through saying that it's "too comic-booky," then you'll find Iron Fist perfectly diverting. 

Shirtless Finn Jones. You're welcome.

The big problem with Iron Fist is that Jessica Jones and Luke Cage were bigger than just a comic book punchy-punchy story; they dealt with being a comic book character in a world with sexism or racism; a world where punching through doors and not worrying too much about being shot wasn't sufficient to protect someone from man's inhumanity to his fellow man. Iron Fist is not that deep, and doesn't mean to be. He's a guy who makes his fist glow and punches ninjas with it. I mean, if you want it to be a story about white privilege, he basically buys his way out of being arrested at least once on the show. But that's so not the point Iron Fist is trying to make. 

Pacing is decent, acting is pretty good (great performance from Carrie-Ann Moss reprising her Jessica Jones role as attorney Jeri Hogarth). 

Characterization is a little spotty. Danny Rand has some PTSD and anger issues, but they don't manifest consistently or always plausibly. The Meachum sibilings Joy and Ward (Tom Pelphry) -- the chief corporate officers of Rand Enterprises, the company that gives the Iron Fist his billionaire fortune -- keep switching sides between "good," "self-interested," and "evil" in ways that seem to fit the plot more than any sort of organic development. 

The martial arts scenes are some of the best I've seen. One of my complaints about a lot of shows (CW shows like Arrow especially) is that the fight choreography does not distinguish between when a superhero takes on a ninja master and when he/she takes on a guy who has no training at all except in the duration of the fight. Iron Fist does. When the Iron Fist takes on less-well-trained people, he moves like water through them. It's only on the better adversaries that it even looks like it's hard for him. 

The martial arts scenes are also entertaining when they're set up to pay homage to various Hong Kong action films. Keep an eye out!

Also, one of the better comic show depictions of a functional drug addict, surprisingly. 

5) Does there happen to be a minor plot point that depends on a legal controversy that makes you dumber about the law?

Why yes, there is! 

Midway through the season, there's a plot point about whether a Rand Enterprises plant on Staten Island is causing cancer. 15 people in a half-mile radius around the plant have gotten cancer. And there's a legal action by the cancer sufferers against Rand.

I won't tell you how the plot point is resolved, but the big problem with this plot point is that key facts as to whether this case is meritorious are left vague so the main characters can have a moral dilemma about it. The writers wanted some characters to say "no money for you!" without seeming totally heartless, but also didn't want to go so far as to actually show that the plaintiffs didn't have a case.

The problem is, it's really mostly one way or another depending on the science.

I used to do toxic torts, so I know these cases and the way they're litigated pretty well. In order for a plaintiff to actually have a chance of winning in court, the plaintiffs need more or less three things:

1. biological plausibility - science that shows that the Rand plant emissions could cause the cancer in question. For example, I worked with estrogenic chemicals alleged to cause breast and reproductive cancers. Those same chemicals weren't linked to, say, lung cancer or leukemia. Benzene is linked to blood cancers but not, say, prostate cancer.
2. science showing level of risk - If I increase your risk of cancer by .0001%, should I be liable if you get cancer? Courts in America basically have said that I have to at least double your risk of cancer before there's liability. So the Rand plant emissions would have to be scientifically shown to double or more the risk of whatever cancers they cause.
3. elimination of other causes - plaintiffs can't have been exposed to large amounts of other carcinogens, have bad family histories of cancer, etc. and expect to prove that the Rand plant caused their cancer. This is super-problematic for the linked Marvel universe as we know at least the following fictional environmental issues:
• New York suffered an attack by alien robots that probably were made of toxic metal and almost certainly released a crap-ton of ionizing radiation. 
• And do you know where NYC dumps debris from stuff like "the Incident"? The Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, probably somewhere near the Rand plant given zoning laws. That's where all the toxic metal shards and radioactive monster corpses went if they were too mangled for SHIELD, the U.S. government, or Tony Stark to grab for study.
• We know from Agents of SHIELD that a teratogenic substance -- Terrigen -- has been introduced into the American food supply through contaminated fish.  

Now, if we actually knew how close plaintiffs were to proving any of the above, the moral dilemma becomes less fuzzy, it's either, "they probably were poisoned by the plant, but we have better-paid and better-sounding experts so we can roll the dice and bury them with endless litigation" or "these plaintiffs have bad luck but they almost certainly didn't get cancer from the Rand plant any more than they got it from vaccines." 

I’m Back (Part II): Comics Are Coming

Hello again! Welcome back to Part II of my television comic book round up.  Last time, we went through all the comic book properties that aired on television during the 2014-2015 television season. This time, let’s take a look at the shows that are scheduled to air in 2015-2016. You’ll find some spin-offs of current shows, some new entries into larger universes, and one that’s just…weird.

As with before, this is only meant to encapsulate comic book properties that are based on the “superhero” idea, as opposed to the myriad of other comic book-based stories that occupy different worlds and tell different kinds of stories, such as The Walking Dead.

Superhero detective agency? Why not.

Jessica Jones

Remember Daredevil? You didn’t really think Marvel/Disney was going to let that be the only show they released through Netflix, did you? Jessica Jones is the next scheduled Marvel hero to get her own series and, like Daredevil, it will be part of the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. In fact, three of Marvel’s new television series will follow this format and are schedule to converge, along with Daredevil, into a fourth new series, The Defenders.  Jessica Jones is a former superhero who is recently retired after a brief career wearing the spandex tights and now runs her own detective agency that caters particularly to a superhero clientele. The show is already filming with Krystin Ritter as the title character and Mike Colter playing former “hero-for-hire” Luke Cage. Comic fans know there’s quite a bit of history between Jessica and Luke, so you can bet the hype for the two of them together on screen will be significant.

Airing: Scheduled for fall 2015, but possibly delayed until spring 2016 on Netflix

Well done, casting agents.

Luke Cage

Hey, he sounds familiar! Luke Cage will pick up directly where Jessica Jones leaves off (wherever that may be) to continue the story that Marvel has begun back in Daredevil. Similar to the two previous entries in this series, Luke Cage is expected to follow a grittier, more adult look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As a character, Luke Cage traces his roots to the 1970s Blaxploitation era that recall a grungier, dirtier New York City. The character himself has transitioned beyond those roots to become a member of the Avengers for a while. He’s super strong and highly resistant to injury. As in Jessica Jones, the character will be portrayed by Mike Colter. (Bonus fact: A young actor named Nicolas Coppola used the character’s name to avoid the appearance of nepotism with his more famous uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, when he was getting started in Hollywood. And that’s how we have Nicolas Cage, people.)

Airing: Likely 2016, following Jessica Jones on Netflix

No word on human casting yet, but I hear the dragon from Mulan is being considered for a role...

Iron Fist

And we’re not done yet! Following Jessica Jones and Luke Cage will be Iron Fist, which will focus on a character frequently portrayed in the books alongside the previous two characters. Iron Fist is the furthest from development of the three, so Marvel has thus far not released any information about casting or a confirmed release date. Nonetheless, he continues the trend established with Luke Cage of mining characters with 70s-era bent, this time for martial arts stories. Iron Fist is a hero who is a martial artist and the wielder of a mystical force that allows him to summon and control his chi.

Airing: Unknown, but after Luke Cage and Jessica Jones on Netflix

Hail, hail, the gang's...well, half-way here.

The Defenders

Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist will culminate in The Defenders, a miniseries that joins the four heroes into their own super team. In the Comics, the Defenders were a group of “non-team” outsiders, not ready for the Avengers, not family enough for The Fantastic Four, and not mutant-y enough for the X-Men. Various Marvel super heroes have been members of the Defenders, including Luke Cage. Details on this show are extremely lax, so it’s very possible this won’t even air until 2017, but I’m including it here for continuity’s sake.

Airing: Sometime this decade?

Action! Adventure! Splody things!

Legends of Tomorrow

Moving on the world of DC Comics, the big event is Legends of Tomorrow. Unlike most comic book properties that are based on a series, this is a new bird. It is a spin-off of Arrow and The Flash and came about once executives realized that they had populated this world with enough interesting super-powered characters that they could become their own super team. In other words, it’s a Justice League that’s not the Justice League. As such, Legends of Tomorrow isn’t based on any one comic book in particular, but will star the characters already introduced in Arrow and The Flash, including The Atom (Brandon Routh), Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller), Firestorm (Victor Garber), and fan-favorite Sara Lance, the White Canary (Caity Lotz). The heroes, brought together by Rip Hunter (Doctor Who’s Arthur Darvill), will be pitted against time-traveling baddie Vandal Savage. Exactly how all these characters come together, particularly the White Canary who is severely dead at this point on Arrow, has yet to be revealed but early teaser clips show a lot of big-budget action, something that the show creators have cut their teeth well on in their previous shows. The show is also designed to be something of an anthology where the cast of characters can rotate somewhat for each new season.

Airing: Scheduled for mid-season, 2016

This is literally the only production photo I can find for this show so far.

Krypton

Gotham seems to be working out okay for Batman, right? Let’s do the same for Superman! Of all the shows on the DC slate, this is the farthest out in terms of development, such that it may not appear until next year. Details are slim, but we know that it will be the story of Superman’s home world, Krypton, prior to its destruction. In the best care scenario, we could get a show like Rome, which effectively showed a decadent society that was about to fall apart. We could be in for some interesting alien politics and cool sci-fi. Of course, the alternate is also true and we could have to listen to uninteresting droning about the end of the world. Personally, I’m hoping for something more like the criminally under-appreciated Caprica series. (Seriously – check it out and leave your BSG doubts at the door when you do.)

Airing: Unknown

Girl's got that hero pose thing down...

Supergirl

Remember how I said the big event for DC this year is Legends of Tomorrow? I could be lying; it could be Supergirl. The show is from the same production team that runs Arrow and The Flash and while DC has said not to expect the three shows to overlap with each other, they haven’t put the kibosh on any future interaction just yet. The biggest barrier to interaction with the others will be how to explain away Superman. In Supergirl, he’s already a presence, something that would likely have come to a point of conversation among Barry or Ollie in their shows. Either way, Supergirl will follow Kara, Kal-El’s cousin who is also from Krypton and managed to escape before it was destroyed. The show will follow the modern take on Kara, which is to say that rather than follow Kal as a baby, Kara will have left Krypton as a young teenager tasked with caring for her baby cousin and keeping him safe. Unfortunately, Kara is separated from Kal and by the time she makes it to Earth, Kal is already on his way to becoming Superman, leaving Kara to play catch up. This might be the superhero show I’m most excited about this year – Melissa Benoist seems to “get” Kara and plays her strong and tough but also with an eagerness to prove herself and with an appreciation of how cool it is to fly around and have super-strength. To say nothing of the fact that it’s more than time that superhero show was based around a female character. Don’t let me down, Supergirl.

Airing: October, 2015

Avoiding all cat jokes from here on in.

Vixen

Speaking of female superheroes, Vixen is coming to the CW this fall. But this one has a twist – it’s coming as an animated series that will nonetheless take place in the same continuity as The Flash and Arrow making it the fourth official show to occupy that shared universe. Cast from the previous shows will make vocal appearances on Vixen, but for the time being it’s not clear if anyone from Vixen will appear on The Flash or Arrow. Some history: Vixen is Mari Jiwe McCabe (voiced by Megalyn Echikunwoke), a young woman from the fictional African country of Zambesi. Mari comes into possession of a totem that can give her the ability to take an attribute from any member of the animal kingdom and use it for her needs – flight from a hawk, the running speed of a cheetah, the ability to breathe under water from a fish, for example. Show creators have said that they reason the show is animated is due to the production values needed to accomplish the special effects being much easier in this format. And while I would love a live-action Vixen series, here’s why this is such a good idea: by debuting a relatively unknown character (Vixen is seriously great, but she’s hardly as well-known as Batman or even Green Lantern) as a low-cost series, DC can introduce a wide variety of characters to their shared universe and see what sticks before investing in bigger, more costly live action shows. As such, the success or failure of Vixen is going to be critical for DC going forward.

Airing: Fall, 2015 on the CW Seed

But wait, where are the giant naked man-eating monsters? 

Teen Titans

This is possibly the most nebulous of all the shows I’ve talked about here, but I’m listing it only because it seems to be chugging toward reality, if at a slightly slow pace. The Teen Titans are one of DC’s premier super hero groups, typically made up of all the sidekicks. Traditionally led by Robin/Nightwing, other regular teammates include Superboy, Wonder Girl, and Kid Flash. Something like a Junior Justice League, you can see an excellent interpretation of the same thing in the animated Young Justice series. Akiva Goldsman has written the pilot for this series, slated to be released on TNT and it features Nightwing, Starfire, Raven, Barbara Gordon, Hawk, and Dove. I’m an unabashed fan of the Teen Titans and would love to see a live-action take on the characters. Here’s hoping this one comes through.

Airing: Pilot is scheduled to be shot in 2015.

Handsome devil.

Lucifer

Finally, here’s the weird one. Lucifer is technically a DC property about the Devil (Marvel fans, make your jokes here). In DC Comics, the character Lucifer squared off against Morpheus in Neil Gaiman’s excellent Sandman series before decided to abandon Hell all together and move to, where else, Los Angeles to run a piano bar. The comic’s Lucifer is described as having rebelled against God three seconds after creation and spent the last 10 billion years causing mayhem, however he has grown bored of his existence and the various stereotypes applied to him and seeks a new life.  The television series will take this same approach, only because its Lucifer will now assist police in solving crimes. Because even the Devil can’t resist a good police procedural. I’m openly skeptical of this approach because the comic series was so good and the policy procedural idea is just so pedestrian. That said, Comic-Con fans watching the first episode came out raving about it, particularly star Tom Ellis’s portrayal of the character. Plus, since the announcement of the show, One Million Moms has thoroughly denounced it, claiming the series will “glorify Satan” and demanding that Fox cancel the show. Anything One Million Moms opposes is probably good in my book. My hope is slightly renewed, but I can’t help but feel like it’s a trap laid by a demon.

Airing: Early 2016, on Fox

So, what to be most excited about? Obviously, that’s in the eye of the beholder but the ones that have my Spidey-Sense tingling most are Jessica Jones, Supergirl, Vixen, and Lucifer. Jessica Jones has a lot of potential to merge the Daredevil and Agent Carter audiences if done well. Supergirl just looks like fun to me and, hopefully, done in a way that illustrates a good, strong female protagonist without underlining too much that she happens to be a girl. Vixen is fascinating to me because of the business behind how superhero stories will get made and told in the future. Lucifer has, unexpectedly, gotten my hopes up with its positive reception at Comic-Con. I’m holding back a few molecules of skepticism to keep myself safe with on this one, but I’d be lying if I said that my nerdy little heart didn’t beat a little faster at the idea of the show being well-done.

Bring it on, Fall Schedule!