Iron Fist: The Most Millennial Superhero So Far

I started by enjoying Netflix’ fourth entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) second-tier superhero franchise. I entered in with the knowledge that an awful lot of people had either beaten it to death critically or merely used the casting of a white actor to play a white comic book character to paint the show as cultural misappropriation.

By episode #4, the enjoyment began to wain. The writing is just bad. Not Transformers bad. Not Titanic bad. But clunky and almost as if the writers were using one of those writing apps that blocks out the sentences written prior to retain focus. So many moments where the characters said and did things incongruous to the moment before that it almost becomes a David Lynch experiment in superhero television.

I liked Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick) until she lost her mind in love with Danny Rand. Her snarky badass attitude suddenly seemed to evaporate as soon as there was sex involved. I continually like Rosario Dawson’s Claire Temple but her role in this chunk of MCU is confused—is she the perpetual nurse or a badass in training or merely the only adult in the room? The Meachums (Harold (David Wenham), Ward (Tom Pelphrey) and Joy (Jessica Stroup) are all complex and interesting, especially Ward, and yet go completely brain dead when the obvious is smacking them right in the face.