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Mar. 27th, 2017 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI finished watching Iron Fist. Well, mostly. I was bored through good stretches of it and I definitely didn't have my whole attention on the last few episodes. Um... it's not very good? At all?
Colleen Wing is the only good part of the show. Why couldn't they give us the Colleen Wing show?
Danny Rand is terrible. And he's terrible in specific ways that I particularly hate. It reminded me of my frustration with Sarah Connor in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, where she makes tactical mistakes that a character like Sarah shouldn't make, and you're not clear if it's because of sloppy writing or if it's a deliberate character decision that you don't agree with. But for example:
Having been believed dead for fifteen years along with his billionaire parents, Danny Rand shows up back in New York. He enters the corporate headquarters of the company his father ran, and asks for a meeting with his father's business partner, which is denied. Whereupon any sane adult would, you know, ask to schedule an appointment later, but Danny instead beats up the security guard and sneaks up to the executive suite. He learns that his father's business partner is now dead and that the business partner's children now run the company, but they don't believe that he is really Danny, since Danny is dead, and they have security escort him from the building. Whereupon any sane adult would, you know, get a lawyer and start the process of belatedly probating their parents' estate. Or if they don't know that much about how corporations work, get advice from someone they trust... who would tell them to get a lawyer and start probating their parents' estate. What does Danny do? Danny spends the next several days stalking the company's new executives and harassing them. Yes, that is what Danny Rand does. It takes three episodes for Danny to accidentally get a lawyer- within a day in story time of doing so, he is restored to his shares of the company. Those three episodes without a lawyer are so fucking infuriatingly unnecessary. GET A FUCKING LAWYER, DANNY. IT'S WHAT GROWN-UPS DO.
The story logic behind Danny's stupidity seems to be that he was taken from his New York life at age 10 and raised in a mystical woo-woo orientalist comic book warrior monastery in the Himalayas. He doesn't know how corporations work, he doesn't know how New York society works, and he therefore just runs around and breaks things like a kid in a room full of breakable things. But this is a really dumb and uninteresting characterization- ostensibly he spent fifteen years being trained into a finely honed and disciplined weapon by experienced warriors- none of that discipline, none of the patience or combat intuition you'd expect from such training ever surfaces in his characterization. Why should I root for Danny Rand to triumph? Why should I even root for him to learn when he's apparently squandered fifteen years of teaching?
Colleen Wing is the only good part of the show. Why couldn't they give us the Colleen Wing show?
Danny Rand is terrible. And he's terrible in specific ways that I particularly hate. It reminded me of my frustration with Sarah Connor in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, where she makes tactical mistakes that a character like Sarah shouldn't make, and you're not clear if it's because of sloppy writing or if it's a deliberate character decision that you don't agree with. But for example:
Having been believed dead for fifteen years along with his billionaire parents, Danny Rand shows up back in New York. He enters the corporate headquarters of the company his father ran, and asks for a meeting with his father's business partner, which is denied. Whereupon any sane adult would, you know, ask to schedule an appointment later, but Danny instead beats up the security guard and sneaks up to the executive suite. He learns that his father's business partner is now dead and that the business partner's children now run the company, but they don't believe that he is really Danny, since Danny is dead, and they have security escort him from the building. Whereupon any sane adult would, you know, get a lawyer and start the process of belatedly probating their parents' estate. Or if they don't know that much about how corporations work, get advice from someone they trust... who would tell them to get a lawyer and start probating their parents' estate. What does Danny do? Danny spends the next several days stalking the company's new executives and harassing them. Yes, that is what Danny Rand does. It takes three episodes for Danny to accidentally get a lawyer- within a day in story time of doing so, he is restored to his shares of the company. Those three episodes without a lawyer are so fucking infuriatingly unnecessary. GET A FUCKING LAWYER, DANNY. IT'S WHAT GROWN-UPS DO.
The story logic behind Danny's stupidity seems to be that he was taken from his New York life at age 10 and raised in a mystical woo-woo orientalist comic book warrior monastery in the Himalayas. He doesn't know how corporations work, he doesn't know how New York society works, and he therefore just runs around and breaks things like a kid in a room full of breakable things. But this is a really dumb and uninteresting characterization- ostensibly he spent fifteen years being trained into a finely honed and disciplined weapon by experienced warriors- none of that discipline, none of the patience or combat intuition you'd expect from such training ever surfaces in his characterization. Why should I root for Danny Rand to triumph? Why should I even root for him to learn when he's apparently squandered fifteen years of teaching?
(no subject)
Date: 2017-03-29 11:03 pm (UTC)Are you watching Legion? My household has just added it to the Sunday night roster and I'm really enjoying it. Interesting and surprising without feeling like it's trying to trick you, great cinematography, and I like the characters so far.
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Date: 2017-03-30 05:59 pm (UTC)