It appears that I lack the sage teachings of the monks of K’un-Lun, because I guess I’ve finally lost patience with Iron Fist and the fact that it has absolutely no idea how to present its title character in a way that isn’t infuriatingly boring. For seven episodes now I’ve been hoping that the showrunners would find a way to blend the 70s, Kung Fu inspiration that should have been the main theme, with the additional boost of running a company (I mean, if Bruce Wayne can do it…), and I’ve always maintained that if the show managed to find that balance, Iron Fist would finally find its feet. However, “The Blessing Of Many Fractures” proves me spectacularly wrong, because what’s the point of finally finding a good middle ground between the two genres if you don’t have the resources to actually do either of them justice? Yes, that Kung Fu vibe I’ve been campaigning for is back in effect, but it’s so badly fumbled that I’m beginning to suspect that those involved have never actually watched a Kung Fu movie before.
After deducing that Madame Gao and the Hand were the ones responsible for the plane crash that killed his parents (they poisoned the pilots), Danny now wants to cut the evil cult off at the source and plans to head to Anzhou, China. It was the location that the Rand family jet was heading to before it took that impromptu landing in the Himalayas, and so Danny figures his father was heading there to shut the Hand down; but it turns out he won’t be going alone. Colleen Wing has now fully embraced using her martial art skills to fight evil and Claire Temple has also decided to go because… actually, I’m not entirely sure why Claire has decided to take a busman’s holiday into certain death – maybe Netflix is trying to get the most out of Rosario Dawson’s contract. Anyway, while there, both Danny and Colleen aim to finally corner Gao once and for all, but to do so they’ll have to squeeze by the sozzled Zhou Cheng, a protector of the Hand who proves to be a master of the drunken style of fighting.
Meanwhile, back in New York, Ward seems good as new after repeatedly stabbing his controlling father to death and disposing of his body in a nearby river. In fact, he’s in such a good mood, the news that the board of Rand Industries has moved to removed him, his sister Joy and Danny from the head of the company doesn’t phase him one bit. It certainly helps that he’s due a $100 million severance payout – but his hopes to leave all this stress behind are scuppered when Joy plans to fight the decision and reveals that she has sufficient dirt on the board to leverage them pretty hard. Finding that he’s still stuck on the corporate carousel that’s causing him so much strain, Ward’s recent bout of patricide starts giving him blasts of PTSD fueled trauma. But while Ward is struggling with his mental state once more, Danny, Colleen and Claire finally manage to pin Gao down and capture her. But now that they’ve got her, what on earth are they going to do with her?
I feel that for the most part I’ve been going pretty easy on Iron Fist. While pointing out it’s many flaws, I also feel that every time it seems like it’s finally on the right track, I’ve overly praised it in the hope that the writers would continue in that vein and bring the show up to the level of Iron Fist’s future team mates. Well, not only does “The Blessing Of Many Fractures” fail at attempting to be what the show should have been all along, but I’ve finally lost the ability to tolerate the main plot lines too. A couple of episodes ago, I heaped praise on the installment called “Immortal Emerges From Cave”, that saw guest director RZA add some long overdue, Kung Fu tropes to a series that badly needed them. Well, this episode tries to do the same thing by throwing in a trip to China, a sword fight and even a bout of drunken boxing to boot. However, it’s all botched so badly, we’re now in a position where Iron Fist can’t seem to do anything right.
Trying to inject that Shaw Brothers ethos into the Netflix show was never going to be easy as it’s something you can’t really fake. Either your fight scenes are great or they’re not and while “The Blessing Of Many Fractures” has a lot of the correct components in place, the fact that it all fails so badly means that even when the show is finally trying to do right by the comic’s influences, it bungles it so completely that I found the whole enterprise incredibly frustrating. I think it’s time to fully accept that Netflix was willing to devote neither the time, money, or the care to ensure that the martial arts displayed in this show are worthy of a character whose body is supposed to be a living weapon, and while that Kung Fu vibe is certainly there on the surface, it’s obvious that it’s only skin deep.
Even the presence of Lewis Tan (who once was in contention for the role of Danny Rand himself) as a fighter who takes his fighting style from the eccentric martial art made famous by the Jackie Chan Drunken Master movies can’t improve matters. The angles, the edits, the lack of long takes, the obvious doubles; everything about the scene stinks of it being made by people who don’t know how to construct a proper fight sequence in the way it’s supposed to be done, and while a sword fight between Jessica Henwick and a blade waving guard is marginally better, it’s just the final proof that the Iron Fist show doesn’t have a clue about what it’s doing.
As a result, everything else seems even worse. The only person debating the presence of Claire Temple in China more than the audience seems to be the charscter herself even though it was her idea in the first place – and it’s weird that the deserted warehouses they visit in Anzhou look suspiciously like the warehouses you’d find in New York…
Even the non-martial arts stuff have lost what luster they had with the murder of Harold Meachum mostly brushed under the narrative carpet other than Ward having post traumatic freak outs at inopportune moments. Similarly, the whole thread of the board of Rand Industries booting Rand and the Meachums out of their own company was supposedly meant to create more drama between Ward and Joy; but without the promise of passable martial arts sequences to balance out the drama, I’m not entirely sure why I should care at all. If Netflix can spare the time to craft complex fight sequences for Daredevil that are covered by a single shot, why the hell couldn’t they offer a similar courtesy to Iron Fist? Sure he’s a lesser-known character, but surely gifting him worthy fight scenes would make people seek him out more and make the show worth watching, right?
With it’s eighth episode, we find the reserves of goodwill built up by the combined works of Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage wearing dangerously thin. With both it’s Kung Fu and corporate threads punching as weakly as a malnourished toddler, this is hardly the momentum Marvel and Netflix would want to set us up for the Defenders.
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Where to watch Iron Fist – Season 1, Episode 8: The Blessing Of Many Fractures: