f13.net

Release Date: March 17, 2017.

Everyone catch the quick connection to this series in the final episode of Luke Cage? 

I am more excited about this than Luke Cage (which I have not managed to watch yet).

Yeah, this is the one I've been most excited for since watching the first season of Daredevil.  It's either going to be great or terrible.  The story will require more extra scenery than normal, so unless they give it a decent budget, could hurt things.  But it has the potential to be really fun.

I look forward to seeing how they try to mitigate his costume in the series.  Luke Cage has been revamped in the comic universe since his 70's bad self, and they just ran with that.  They got Daredevil his costume, and Jessica Jones just wears normal clothing like Luke Cage does now.  Unfortunately, Iron Fist still wears his original costume even in modern runs, so its going to be a bit tricky to make it work.

I was highly amused in some flash back scenes luke cage basically had his original costume on saw himself in a mirror and mutters I look like a damn fool I nearly died.

Like Daredevil, I don't expect to see the costume until the end of the first season.  Even then, I expect his to be less costume and more uniform.

Yeah, I'm just interested in how they are going to adapt it.  Because, uhh:

(http://i.annihil.us/u/prod/marvel//universe3zx/images/5/5a/Acotilletta2--Heroes_for_Hire442.jpg)

You're going to have to go pretty far away from the original to make it work.

Hell naw, get that 3 foot tall yellow lapel 2-collar popped y0.

Daredevil's outfit is armor.  Jessica has no outfit (for the most part).  Luke wears plain clothes most of the time and had the nice nod to the past costume.  Iron Fist's outfit being armor doesn't fit, but is iconic to the character.  I'm assuming the mask will be there to hide his identity and the outfit will be ceremonial garb of some sort - but very much toned down. 

Full trailer.

Doesn't have the same sense of thematic style as the other shows. Feels flat. Finn Jones doesn't seem to have a 'take' on the character, at least judging from this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7nfhrTlmIY

Yeah, looks very generic martial-artsy with no flair. I wasn't inspired to watch.

Yeah, it looks a bit generic, but given the successes they've had with the other 3 shows, I'm willing to forgive a trailer that doesn't immediately wow me.

To be fair, that's an old comic. This is a more modern version that they have to work from:

(https://www.covernk.com/Covers/L/I/Immortal%20Iron%20Fist/immortalironfist1.jpg)

Um, hello, they made this already, it was called 'Batman Begins'? Holy fuck that was unoriginal.

"My name is Oliver Queen Danny Rand. After five years in hell on a mountain, I returned home with only one goal: to save my city. But my old approach wasn't enough. I had to become someone else. I had to become something else. I had to become the Green Arrow Iron Fist."

I might still enjoy it because Netflix usually knows what they are doing with this stuff. But really, originality was never in the cards for this one.  :awesome_for_real:

The Brubaker soft-reboot showed that you can do some pretty interesting things if you're willing. Basically, Brubaker said, ok, if Danny Rand is the *current* Iron Fist, how many have there been? What did the past ones do? And he said, "Hey, if he's the champion of K'un L'un, what if there are other extra-dimensional cities with their own champions? And they have a classic Hong Kong-cinema wire-fu championship every once in a while, and they all have different kinds of crazy martial-arts powers." And then he said, "And what if I really take seriously the idea that Danny honestly shouldn't have become the Iron Fist and give his resentful enemy a more serious legitimate gripe with Danny as a result?" And so on.

They can do this, but the problem really is that he's the hardest character to do something sophisticated with in this set. Daredevil is easy: blind Catholic lawyer who grew up in a tough household and has big internal conflicts about vigilantism; Jessica Jones, PTSD alcoholic strong woman up against a character whose connections to rape we can actually take seriously and think through; Luke Cage, where we can think a lot about black cultural history and Harlem and the road from blaxploitation to here.

And Danny Rand, white guy made to cash in on 70s kung fu craze, whose backstory is pretty much a mashup of Tarzan/John Carter/Doctor Strange/the Shadow/Batman Begins: white man in mysterious Orient, white man who is better than the natives at their native things, white man who becomes the Chosen One, white man who returns to set things right and claim his fortune from an usurper. To fit the Netflix vibe, they have got to do something to deconstruct that, complicate that, rethink that, make that more grown-up in some way. Not sure if they can or have--the trailer certainly doesn't give you a sense of it.

Yeah, but the brand's built trust.  I'll shit on it if it deserves shat on, but the previous ventures have been top notch, so fuck it right ?

Yeah. They definitely have earned some trust.

Why are people saying this is a copy of Batman Begins when Iron Fist's origin story was published in 1974?

It's more like a copy of Doctor Strange where he punches things instead of magicking them.

Once you get right down to it, there were only about 4 fucking origin stories anyway.  They all just ripped each other.

Who cares.

The whole 'White Guy' stuff is more compelling an argument, but I could give a fuck.  If I didn't get my righteous fury on over The Karate Kid, I certainly don't get to pretend to do it at this stage in my life.

Fuck The Karate Kid tho.

Cause most of us don't read comic books from 1974?

We gotta reach peak fucking comic books soon right?? please? 

When Ultra the Multi-Alien is optioned for a six-film series you will know we have reached peak.

I'm still waiting on Nemesis the Warlock and/or ABC Warriors movies. Then we'll be at peak.

Never gonna happen.

Disney has signposted wanting to make all the netflix shows come together because of big bad ninjas doing big bad magic ninja shit in a hole under Manhattan. In that context Iron Fist seems a pretty good fit, and given the only compulsory elements of Iron Fist are kung fu, and having at least 1 item of yellow or green clothing, you can make the characters as complex or straight forward as you like. Not sure I understand the fuss.

My guess is they'll do the straightforward rich white guilt wanting to prove self thing. Works for everyone from Batman to Lorelei Gilmore.

Misty Knight is in it - they'll use that to define Rand in contrast to Luke Cage so the two of them can piss each other off in Defenders.

Isn't Madam Guo the Crane?  That's a link.

Yeah, I'm not sure about this series just because the trope is so played out in other shows/movies. On the other hand Netflix team have shown they deserve a chance and I do think Rand will work really well as part of the team dynamic in the Defenders. Most of these movies/shows (esp. thinking of Arrow) have this character as the main leader. I think it couldl be interesting throwing an overdone archetype into a new team role.

In my experience, a genre or trope being played out or overused doesn't mean that the next show/movie within it can't be amazing.  We get tired of the middling or poor stuff that comes over and over.... the pretenders that followed the leader.   

Yeah. All that "this trope is familiar" means is: you'd better bring your A game when you do it. That's all.

If there is a legitimate worry with this show, its that it is really episode 41-50 of a genre show that has only run for two years.

Ultimately this is why most promising network shows burn out so fast - they just make too many episodes too quickly.

Early reviews are pretty brutal.

Wow.  I just Googled them.  I'm surprised to see them apparently strike out so hard. 

 :sad:

Was looking forward to this more than the others.  Guess I'll wait and see....

Yeah...bummer.

Oh Dear.

Well, the reviews only cover the first 6 episodes. They can't all be that bad. I mean, it's not like the Netflix series tend to drag on and get worse as they progress and... yaaaah.

..

Maybe there's a miracle day one patch.

Hey, the original Star Wars had bad reviews... 

I'll watch it to be a completionist,  but this was the least interesting Marvel Character to get a project to date for me... and if they are not knocking it out of the part, it may end up feeling like Legends of Tomorrow instead of the Flash.

There's the analogy I was grappling for.

Except, I'd choose a DC WB that was actually good.  Like....., I dunno actually, does wanking to Benoist count ?

The Heroes for Hire thing could've been awesome. But as the core of the Defenders? Blah. I want Dr Strange, Valkyie and Gargoyle in my Defenders. But Heroes for Hire, sort of a 'case of the week' type show would've had legs.

And I thought Jessica Jones was complete garbage out of the Marvel shows so far. Hated the premise and casting. At least Agents is pulpy fun most of the time.

I think you have to do something to mix up Iron Fist somehow--he's just too cliched in multiple ways, including the white savior thing but not limited to that. Looks like they never came up with a "take" on him, but it also looks like the action is really subpar and that Finn Jones is just completely unconvincing as a martial artist. Plus it's even *more* talky and nothing-is-happening than the other Netflix shows, from what all the reviews are saying.

I'm going to have to go Arrhh Mateys on this just to keep my hatewatching from making the Netflix numbers look better.

--Dave

Yeah, it was seeing how awesome the first Daredevil series was that made me look forward to Iron First the most.  Character built around magical kung fu fighting and all sorts of over the top Chinese lore?  Sounds great!  But if it actually does go the way you mention above, then Christ, what a waste.

Ah well, the character can still be fun in the Defenders series, as long as the producers bring back their A game for it.

Yeah.

So many possible choices, but they have to make a choice--you cannot just stand pat on him. There's almost no superhero really who can just go page to screen, but especially not a white corporate heir who knows kung fu from a childhood in Shangri-la and is out to avenge his dad.

Did I miss something?  It still doesn't air for 5 days.  How are we at the point of rationalizing how it failed our dreams and expectations (and killed our dog) already?

Reviews are out and very unkind.

Although in fairness if this is Flash/Arrow levels of watchable it'll be fun but still justify getting terrible reviews in comparison to the other Netflix series.

The Flash gets good reviews though; 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and 73 on Metacritic.  Arrow has even better reviews.

So far this is 14% and 32 respectively.

Reviews aren't everything, obviously.  But when the reviews don't seem to contain any good news I probably just won't bother watching it.  There's already so much good media to consume that I just don't have time for it all.  I'm not going to make time for something that doesn't have any bright spots.

The Flash getting 94% would probably be a good indicator that the reviews are worthless.  Not that I dislilke Flash, but 94%? 

As far as I can tell, everyone seems to be bending over backwards to embrace tumblr tropes to show how culturally enlightened they are.  It's a fucking comic book show.

Yah, they're hammering a little too hard on the diversity/cultural appropriation front. It's a comic book, and certain reviewers trying too hard to make an old work of fiction conform to what they desire to see on that social front. Not saying that Marvel couldn't do that, but I don't see anything necessarily wrong with just going along with "Kung Fu Bruce Wayne".

Supposedly the acting, directing, and overall plot are still bile on toast levels of putrid, but it might be fun regardless. I'll probably give it at least a shot, but I do expect it to be all sorts of awful.

Literally all it had to be. Then mix that with the Luke Cage setup and cameo DD every now and again.

I have no idea what they're thinking for the Defenders, the chemistry is, like, the chick from Clerks 2 and that's it.

I think it's more super hero fatique than anything. I mean let's face it iron fist is hardly that interesting a character or even a power set really.  People can harp on cutural appropriation or bad storytelling but I'm betting at the heart of all the criticisms is a subconscious weariness of the genre.

You can't blame weariness when good products still do good.  There is no amount of super hero fatigue that is going to keep Guardians of the Galaxy or Deadpool 2 from making a metric fuckton of money.  You simply cannot put out a shit product and expect money hats because it has super heroes on it, this has been true from day 1 of the super hero fad.

I don't think it's weariness at all.

Jessica gave us hero female pov.  Cage, hero black pov.  Daredevil is a blind fucking lawyer, who wouldn't want to see that.

But Iron Fist really, really has to be special for me to be interested.  Frankly, I really wouldn't care if it was the super best Bruce Wayne Kung Fu ever because that's not terribly interesting.  (Indeed, you can't drag me to a Batman film now, since Nolan nailed it to the wall and nothing more needs said).

But by the sounds of all the reviews, not only did they not make it special, they didn't even make it good.  I'll watch it for Defenders completeness, probably, because the wife wants to, but I'll probably watch it in the same way I watch all the DC shows ;  with the laptop on reading in the background.


The heroes have to be interesting.  That's pretty much the golden rule.  You have to be excited for it and show me that for me to get excited for it.  That's why the DC Films are failing and the Marvel ones aren't.  But it sounds to me like no-one is hugely excited at Iron Fist and it shows.

Yeah, with reviews this bad I'm left with my wildly unrealistic hope that the other series were so good being watchably mediocre is getting it panned and more realistic hope that at least they get the character working as part of the Defenders. There's a few fun potentials there basically playing Rand as the presumptive leader no one listens to, who also really seems clueless about basically all the shit his team mates are dealing with. If the creators really aren't inspired by the character though there's every chance he ends up just being in the background a lot.

Well at least I can hope for a few Punisher cameos.

The super hero fatigue argument is more fatigued than super hero show / films are.

The only hope I hold out is that reviews all seem to be based on the first 6 episodes.  I will stick it out - perhaps this is a series where they saved the best for last.

Given Luke Cage, do you really think so ?

I've been thinking of Luke Cage as basically two short seasons released at once.  One was great.

Glancing quickly at the reviews for The Flash, pretty much all the reviews I see are for the first episode of the season. Unlike something like Iron Fist where critics got half the season to watch I don't see any indication that Flash reviewers got any sort of screeners for later episodes. If reviewers for Flash and Arrow had to review half or all of a season I'm guessing those numbers would end up a lot lower.

Fatigue is about a lack of goodwill, not about a blind dislike for a genre,  good westerns were still well liked even after the genre was over.  People just aren't willing to be as lenient with their time/money when it comes to this genre when it's just "ok"

I don't see any difference in tolerance of bad Superhero movies over time, though.  We panned Clooney and Kilmer.  The Ang Lee Hulk was ... not widely liked.  We disliked Routh as Supes.  The Amazing Spidey franchise, outside Spider-man himself, was disliked.  The new DC movies are being beat up.  Over the past 30 years we have been disliking the bad stuff while still liking the stuff that worked.  Nothing has really changed as far as I can tell.  What mediocre hero movie did we throw money at when it was a meh film?  The X-men stuff?

I'd argue X-Men was a pretty mediocre effort that was very well received because it was a mediocre entertaining effort in a genre that had almost always been very disappointing.

I bow to no one in my lifelong enthusiasm for superhero comics. But the fatigue is real. I'm at the point where the movie or TV show had better have a clear take on the genre, have some competency in executing the take, etc. and be a bit different from anything done so far. I'm sick of "hey, it's ok, it's a kind of ok movie about people with superpowers". Once upon a time, that was ok, because it was just kind of cool to see certain characters in a movie. It's not really enough now. That's what I would call fatigue. I don't want any more comic-book based films or TV shows if the showrunners don't have a clear idea about what they're doing with the character(s) and why.

Eh, I think that's how everybody has felt from the beginning though.  People have been enjoying or hating super hero films based on them being good or shitty movies.  The only films I can think of that kind of got a pass in the way you are thinking are X-men 1 and 2.  They didn't have a lot going for them other than showing characters we grew up with on screen and not being totally stupid, but since no good superhero movie had been made in living memory, we liked them.  They are worst now going back and re-watching.

The first Spider-man film (2002) was what everybody I knew considered to be the first actual 'good' superhero movie.  They were all shit or guilty pleasures before that.  It also basically set off the wave of superhero movies that still runs today.  So not really sure there is any fatigue.  Making a bland action movie with no plot or charm, like every Fantastic 4 movie, will result in it getting shit on (just like every Fantastic 4 movie).

Yes.  Unfortunately so.

Our recent Superhero attempts have not been kind to X-Men.  Now more than ever before it is showing as hugely lacking.  Jackman, Stewart and McKellen are the only things that are remotely interesting about it and then you watch Logan and DAMN.

First two episodes were decent. Some sets looked a little low budget at a couple points. I'm finding it easier to watch than Jessica Jones which seemed to have everyone miscast.

 :headscratch: :headscratch: :headscratch: :headscratch:

It's passable. Nothing great.  David Wenham obviously had the same accent coach as Hugo Weaving did in the Matrix. Sounds like Mr Smith

The most damning thing I can say about Iron Fist is I'm not binge watching it.

Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage? I sat my ass in front of the TV and watched the whole damn thing non-stop.


Iron Fist? I got half way through episode... 3? 4? and went 'eh I could do something else'.  :why_so_serious:

I'm two episodes in with the third starting now. It's terribly slow and it feels like Ive been watching for four hours already.

Then there's the terrible villain and plot...

Ed: also, they're trying too hard with the music.

I started watching last night, had to pass out at 3am. ep. 6.  I'll probably finish it this weekend.  I like the character driven stories.  I personally really like how they're portraying the monks who trained him as opposed to the traditional all-wise, benevolent, zen folk.

From the episodes I've watched so far this is easily the weakest of Netflix's Marvel shows. I'll finish it mostly due to the small off-chance that there's something like Daredevil's Punisher (sidestory)character to save the mess in the second half.  :oh_i_see:

edit: finished it and my final opinion is a weak meh (there was nothing interesting in the second half to save the season)

I finished Season 1. I've been home sick this weekend and didn't feel like getting off the couch, or else I'd likely have stopped somewhere along the line.

This is the weakest Netflix Marvel show.  Casting, direction, writing, cinematography... everything had flaws.  Jessica Henwick was enjoyable as Colleen Wing.  Some of the fight scenes were pleasant (although a lot of them were just blurs of motion).  There were moments here and there that worked... but in general this is a fail.

However,  it wasn't much worse than the bad parts of Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage.  I kind of think they'd be well served to have the show follow the comics: After Luke Cage and Iron First both had support drop off for their comics, Marvel put the two characters together in a series to sllow their tales to continue.  Netflix could do that same here.  It might be the best way to wrap up the threads of these series and then move on to other characters.

It's nice to see Job and Bunker from Banshee again.  Biggest problem with the show is no Kingpin, Kilgrave or Cottonmouth.

I don't know if this show needed to be paired with someone else so much as it needed to stop following what is now the netflix hero formula. 

Just one example is it's gotta be a certain number of hour long episodes, god forbid you cant streatch your story that far(all of them had bloat).  Honestly more patient men than men will write pages long dissertations on this but really, Iron Fist could have really mixed up the formula, gotten from schlocky Hong Kong action going. It could have at least tried to be different but we just got more of the same.

I'm struggling to get past the annoying portrayal of the main character.  He just grates on me, badly.  Not sure I can keep watching after making it halfway through.
Best parts of it are the Meachams channeling their inner Stilgar voices; especially Wenham.  Similar to Cottonmouth's hypnotic performance in Cage.

Marvel really needs to use more nuanced portrayals of their main characters, rather than giving the best casting and writing to the supporting cast and leaving the main characters to be your typically shiny, boring hipster blossoms (Jessica Jones was their best effort.  Then Cage).  Even Wing... she got outgunned by Dawson easily; but I expect that in everything Dawson is in.

Imagine this IronFist with Wenham as the lead, for instance.  Or even the guy who plays Wade.  If you analyze the script, I won't say it is horrible... it just requires a certain type of delivery (phrasing, inflection, etc.)  that they largely failed to do.  Shame.

The actors are badly cast.  All of them. On E2 and the villains are bad soap operas stars.  None of these people have any charisma or maybe talent.  Waiting on Dawson to pull thing up at the point.

On that note, why the fuck they don't give Dawson her own series is beyond me.  She is trapped in this shitty MCU role right now unfortunately.

I found it to be thoroughly enjoyable.  I particularly liked the portrayal of various psychosis Harold and Ward were suffering.  The Davos/Colleen symmetry was also a nice touch.

I find it enjoyable too, especially for the reasons you just stated... but gawd the Fist himself is annoying.

I think I would have liked it a lot more if it had been all about the Meachums with no Iron Fist at all (and replace all "magic" with "science fiction")

I've sort of been hate tinging it? Two episodes to go. I don't think all of the cast is terribad. I actually like the Jessica character. Danny is a whiny bitch and I keep wanting to see him get beat up. Writing is all over the place. One of the biggest issues though is that they didn't have a strong villain to focus part of the plot on. I suppose it was meant to be one more of the Meechams, but they don't stand up to Kingpin, Kilgrave or Cottonmouth.

It gets a little better as it goes and some thing start unraveling for Meecham, but its not great.

Also very glaring:

We are in New York (Vancouver), quick lets go to China!

 - five minute plane scene

Here we are in China! (Vancouver with a few extra Chinese signs)

Iron Fist, like all the other Netflix series in the MCU, was filmed in NY.

I do not get the Meacham love. They were boring villains to me. This whole series should have been 6 episodes and then 7 more focused on a battle with the Steel Serpent.

I don't think it's really about Meachums being villains but rather that their story is given so much time (and in my opinion all the actors playing them are far better than Finn Jones playing Danny). As for the Hand being the main villains it really suffers from the fact that they (both) are trying to recruit Danny rather than trying to kill him (for some obscure reason since Danny doesn't seem to pose them any real danger nor do his powers seem all that impressive)

Can't say I'm enjoying the show but since I've committed to watching this with my son (Dad-teen son bonding etc etc) I have no choice. #@%!!

After he busts out in e2, I was struck by how odd an origin story this is:  unlike every other starting superhero he already has his powers and a purpose.  He's not struggling towards building a persona like Daredevil or a purpose like Cage and Jones.  He knows what he is and what he's supposed to do.  But he doesn't seem to know why he went back to NY, and we don't either.  It's also counter I thought to the comic arc where he leaves Kun-Lun for revenge on his parents death.  The story is not making a lot of sense.

The story makes even less sense when you start to think about it at all. Everyone says he died 15 years previously and Kun Lun only shows every 15 years.. so where'd he pick up the modern life skills? How has he, with the skill set of a 10 year old rich kid, managed to get anyplace near NYC? There's all sorts of cultural lack of knowledge he'd never have picked up. Like, oh, a wide English vocabulary (since he was 10.) knowledge of navigating around the city, or even how to buy a goddamn plane ticket, obtain a visa or even get into the USA. Nevermind how he jumped into the car and drove it like a goddamn expert.

Even the throwaway line of, "I did some money fighting in <blah> makes no sense if he popped out of Kun and headed straight for the US. Our Bushido queen is barely scraping rent together doing it in the US. No way rich kid scrapes together the scratch in east Asia for the US ticket in a few fights.

This is the weakest by far, not only in terms of acting but by story choices as well.

The problem is the "big bad" for this season is Danny's past. The whole thing is basically him overcoming what happened to him to try to become what he needs to be. It follows a lot of the plot points of many old kung fu movies that I think is intentional. For what it appears they were aiming for it likely hit the target they were aiming for but I think the audience was expecting something else.

Just finished the second episode: It's not that bad. If it weren't stacking up directly against Daredevil and Luke Cage, I would probably go as far "Pretty Good".  But the material is not quite as strong, and the direction and cinematography are just not in the same league with the other Netflix Marvel shows. It isn't *bad*, but where the camerawork and the pauses were a language of their own in the other Netflix MCU titles, this one it is just 'meh'. So many places where framing and set dressing is just by the numbers, rather than saying anything in itself.

The 'cultural appropriation' crew can suck my left nut, of all the weaknesses in this, the 'white savior' trope is not even making the list. And the martial arts scenes are not nearly as good as, say, Into the Badlands.  But if you're watching TV to learn Kung Fu, you're doing it wrong (both the Kung Fu, and watching TV).

--Dave

I've only seen the first but it's already feeling more CW DC show than Netflix. Based on other comments here it feels like the overall quality of production won't be there and the fight cinematography is going to be nearer the former than the latter. Which is a shame because Daredevil had a few moments of utterly amazing fight scenes. For a series that is going to be reliant on its martial arts portrayal it's sad that they just didn't really pull it off.

The cultural appropriation thing is pretty whatevs to me. I'd have liked it if they'd done something to spice the character up a bit, reinvent him somewhat but the character is what it is. From the sound of things the two villain arc per series thing sounds like it's becoming a staple. It makes it easier to keep interest and tension but I'm worried it's going to become a predictable trope. Hopefully for the Defenders or other series they'll play around with that a bit.

I don't know about anything else but i thought the fights were top notch.  The problems with the series are an unlikable main character, lack of stand out villain and absolutely no humor or light hardheartedness at all.  I think i cracked a smile once in 13 episodes, and that was at someone stealing the catch phrase from a different series.

The show is basically "Billy the TrustFund Dreadlock is Emo."  They're not even shy about it really.  They didn't even bother to give him any kind of accent or K'ul L'un style speech pattern.  Is this the way the comic is? 

The Iron Fist comic is extremely variable depending on who is writing it. In the last stories I read with him (where he teamed up with Luke Cage again), he's pretty much an airhead. The Matt Fraction/David Aja stuff was much better.

3 episodes in and my biggest issue is the script.

Overuse of incompetence-as-plot. The Meechums simply do not work as business leaders and Danny's ridiculous and now boring naivety doesn't work for someone who apparently found his way from China to New York with no money and fake papers.

Only 5 characters yet after 3 episodes I know almost nothing about any of them. Hiding some of them would be fine but we're not seeing anyone's PoV.

Since he was 10 that part I can buy. Speech patterns in a language are pretty well set by then.

Yeah, part of the problem was that they wanted to treat him like Tarzan lost in New York when he lived 40% of his life there.  If anything he should have been a lot less confused.

Now I'm thinking that the problem with the martial arts scenes is that they are too authentic: Real martial arts moves, especially close quarters grappling and punching, does not look that great, combine that with the fact that they are doing them sparring-style (2/3 speed with no follow through), and an audience used to the choreographed dance scenes of usual screen fighting is not impressed.

--Dave

I thought that the fight scenes were pretty bad in this which is probably best shwon when you compare the hallway fights from IF, DD and LC. The sad thing is that this might have been somewhat fixed if they had gone with Lewis Tan (the drunken boxing villain from episode 8) instead of Finn Jones for the Danny Rand part (this was actually considered according to this article (http://www.vulture.com/2017/03/lewis-tan-marvel-iron-fist-interview.html))

Fuck, that drunken master was the best character on the show and he was on like five minutes.

It's a lot easier to find a martial artist and teach them how to act than find an actor and teach them martial arts.  Sadly, they went with the latter option.

Pretty much. What he was doing wasn't bad, but it wasn't done with the grace that an actual long time practitioner would have, and he couldn't modify it into the mugged-up flashy styles that look good on camera.

--Dave

I don't mind the action itself. It's ok.


The issue I do have is that there is no sense of threat. The superhero isn't going to die and he has no friends and no goals to put at risk. He has talked vaguely about the Hand but three hours in they aren't present. He's messing about trying to get control of Rand corp for no reason at all.

I have to be a stickler on this point.  The action can be "ok" in most super hero shows but when the main focus of the hero is his martial arts abilities, the action better be more than "ok".  You can have shitty villains in an Iron man movie but the suit itself has to be top notch. 

I'm 5 episodes in, and I'm not sure I'm going to bother finishing. It's entertaining, but it's just so poorly written, and the plot is absolute garbage. I can hardly even blame Finn Jones for being shitty, because nothing they're giving this main character makes sense.

Hell, I haven't even hit the usual "well, what the fuck do we do for these next 4 episodes" portion of the season. Maybe that's where they'll stick the actual character motivation, character development, and something that makes this plot actually interesting?

This effort (so far) just feels like a waste of everyone's time.

They're going to do 13 episodes a year they should probably do between two and four different storylines and just release a Storyline by itself and then wait a few months before releasing the next one.

I just got to the bit where they went to China. Holy shit this is bad.

I gave up after 4 episodes.  Now binging on Legion as an awesome alternative.

Oh my god, this 13th episode....

It is shit. It is slime from a maggot that has been burrowing in shit. It should never have been shot, and once they had, they should have decided 'Fuck, this is bad, let's pretend there were only 12 episodes and end it on a cliffhanger.'

--Dave

My son pointed out that Finn Jones is Loras Tyrell. Yep, Ive watched 6 seasons of GoT and 6 episodes of this and never made the connection.

Big old meh. Yeah the ending sucked both for resolutions and setting up any future series. I get that they wanted to go with a symbolic 'your past is the foe you must defeat' but the symbolism was clumsy, inconsistent and they never really settled on anything more than some vague desire for revenge that just flared up when they needed to move the plot along. I think maybe they were trying to balance between 'is he seeking revenge or a family?' but it came off poorly. Also the ending  :oh_i_see:

Episode 11. Right now I'm trying to decide which is worse. The scripting of the sudden but inevitable betrayal arc, or the bad cgi emo fist flashbacks.

I enjoyed this series. I had a good time.

I kept expecting it to suck, based on what I was seeing here (avoided the spoilered items until now), but it didn't get too bad.

Considering I didn't even finish Luke Cage, this is a step up! I'd rank it third after Daredevil and Jessica Jones, but I wasn't disappointed.

Since the time that I finished watching I have heard a lot more positive reviews than negative.  That surprises me as I was very disappointed, but it seems to indicate that causal watchers, as opposed to the hardcore folks that finished first, are more tolerant of the weaknesses.

Honestly, I'd put this on a similar level with Flash in that it had a plot which had a lot of actions that fall apart if you spend more than 5 seconds thinking about them (WTF? Why China, why? Also  The action is reasonable and the plot doesn't really drag. While it might not always make sense there's definitely character development. I see this being the weakest of the Netflix but I'm not surprised that it's been generally well received.

I'm starting to feel that the Netflix team are good but they are very limited by the source material. With Daredevil and Jessica Jones that was rich and edgy enough to work, with Ironfist it was corny and with Luke Cage I feel like they needed to get him an opponent that could actually physically match him, which led to a really unsatisfactory finale.

Basically, I think their problem is that they are just ever so slightly embarrassed by the comic-book roots of the characters and they are a bit hampered by budgets and they haven't found a way to match narratives to the size of the buy from Netflix.

Put that together and you get some consistent problems:

a) Pacing issues
b) Padding out character arcs in order to not have too much action
c) Uncertainty about what kind of challenges to throw at the characters that don't involve 'supervillains' in the simple sense
d) Thematic weaknesses in adapting the source material because they want to carve away the pulpy, adolescent elements

With Daredevil, they had the easiest job, because Miller, Bendis and Brubaker had successively made him a more adult, complex, crime-noir character, particularly with adding the Catholic element to the mix.

With Jessica Jones, they solved problems #c and #d effectively: they remade a 'supervillain' into a really interesting and chilling antagonist and the nature of his powers solved #d as well and gave them themes about rape and trauma and healing to work with (again, following Bendis' lead from Alias, which might be his best Marvel work)

With Luke Cage, they solved #d some by embracing the blackness and dropping the xploitation--that part worked really well. But they struggled with #c because what enemy do you give a character trying to protect Harlem that feels sophisticated and rooted in our own lives who is just enough of a thematic/action-based challenge to a strong guy with invulnerable skin? If you just make his enemies people of finance and politics and criminal conspiracy, then you have to figure out why how they pose a proportional threat to him that he can potentially resolve--it feels as if they either ought to overwhelm him entirely or the exact opposite, as if they shouldn't be able to touch him. They were also hampered by the fact that Cage's actual rogues' gallery is really terrible until quite recently. So they reached out to find another 'strong guy' but were uncertain or tentative about making him too pulpy and comic-booky.

With Iron Fist, I don't think they solved any of this in advance, and they didn't have *any* strong takes from the comics to draw upon. The most innovative thing ever done with Iron Fist is a) teaming him with Luke Cage and making them 'heroes for hire' and b) Brubaker's very-late-in-the-game reinterpretation of the character as a more wuxia-inspired one with a bit of flavor from early 20th C. pulps thrown in on the side. They needed to have a really great idea about a different take and they only ventured a few tentative stabs in that direction. I think if they'd pushed a lot harder on the "Danny is actually pretty shit at being the Iron Fist" concept, that would have had some really potent possibilities--if he's basically a mediocre white man who semi-accidentally ended up having power not meant for him and they want to run with that idea in a much edgier way. Another might have been, "Danny was cannon fodder who was supposed to die defending his magic Shangri-la", e.g., if they redid K'un L'un so it's a city full of sleazy scammers who sucker Westerner dummies in with all this talk about how they're going to be the Chosen One and learn martial arts so that they can send them in like suicide bombers to deal with an enemy (say, they can remotely blow up the mystical energy of the Iron Fist), only Danny got lucky and the remote signal didn't affect him. So now he has to really master the Iron Fist and really get good at martial arts in order to survive. I dunno. There's possibilities, but they really didn't decide on anything as a strong direction and the source material isn't strong enough to help them decide on that.

I think if they're going to keep going--and especially if they add characters--they need to:

a) budget up for some more action that will use the powers of the powered characters
b) be slightly less tentative about the comic-book elements
c) avoid any character that they can't find a distinctive thematic angle for

I think they could possibly do Brother Voodoo (maybe with a renaming) or Ghost Rider (though that would force them to finally decide whether Agents of SHIELD really is in this same universe). Brother Voodoo as rooted in an Afro-Caribbean neighborhood in NYC, maybe serving as a healer/spiritual investigator, a kind of street-level Dr. Strange?

Maybe White Tiger though I think he/she is basically an incredibly generic character and the thematic use of the Latino/Latina identity has always been terrible. There's almost nothing to work with.

Moon Knight is just so close to Batman, but there's some versions of the character that have a bit of possibility--the multiple-personalities one, the working-for-a-god one, maybe.

After that I think things really start to get barren. Maybe some anti-hero types like Taskmaster would work.

I'd stick with these characters as headliners unless you introduce a hero in a show and they jump off the screen. Wait for these characters to age out before you add a bunch of new faces.  We can only handle so many characters at a time.

I could see Moonknight as an interesting character in a 'is he insane or actually working for some quasi-divine entity?' type theme. Writers would have to be careful to not just straight up have Batman in a white outfit though.

I think Jg's right though in that they aren't going to be adding a big mix of other characters. I'm kind of hoping that some of the issues with these characters can be ironed out in a team setting. Having the Hand as the main bad guys means Jessica Jones and Luke Cage can be physically challenged (so problem C from Khaldun isn't such a worry). I'd be worried if the writers don't get much more in terms of character takes than they have though and just relied on some natural energy to emerge. I think they need to have some clear and simple relationships thought out that they can build on. Cage vs. Rand would probably work as an antagonistic beginning but they're going to need something convincing as to how they get past that that isn't simply Danny saves Luke's life in a couple of fights and suddenly they're best buddies. Jessica is a relatively easy fit as a natural loner who is going to have huge trust issues. Murdoch... I guess I can see him working as a 'team leader' who knows more than the others and hides certain aspects (like a prior relationship with now evil Elektra?) but again hopefully they put some effort into making it reasonable not just 'I have a secret because it creates dramatic tension!'

Yeah, me too. It was a solid entry in the Netflix MCU, with a lot of fun/cool moments to keep me interested. Much better treatment of Ninjas/The Hand than second season Daredevil even, good fight scenes with no shakycam, some genuinely surprising plot twists, and I even liked the development of the sibling/family relationships. Characters were seemingly acting in contradictory ways because that's what people do in close family relationships. The person you hate today is the person you love tomorrow. And you always make excuses for loved ones, until you just can't anymore.

I did have a problem with a few things, but most I suspect were budget related. There were some really cringeworthy set backdrops (greenscreens?) -- come to think of it, pretty much all of K'un L'ung needed to be sent back for re-rendering. I haven't seen faker rocks since the original Star Trek.

But overall, thumbs up, would watch again.

I think I'd rather see them do a first season of Moon Knight or another Street Hero, but...

http://www.blastr.com/2017-5-30/rumor-day-season-2-iron-fist-be-announced-soon (http://www.blastr.com/2017-5-30/rumor-day-season-2-iron-fist-be-announced-soon)

Season 2, September 7.  I missed the announcement.

Preview reel looks bland. 

At least the fight scenes look like they will be better.

I watched IF1 again recently and liked it even more the second time. It would have been vastly improved by being only seven episodes instead of 13. Looking forward to this one.

While not as bad as some make it out to be, it is one of the two worst Marvel efforts.  I expect Season 2 to be better, but I still think they'd be betterending it there and move Jones, Cage and Iron First into a single Heroes for Hire series.

That didn't go so well when they did Defenders. The last thing they need is more crossover. The cameos in each others shows is plenty, and tbh the films could learn a thing or two from how these shows have limited it (not defenders obv).

Also merging Jessica Jones into anything else is plainly mad.

They don't have enough story, even in Jones, for any of these folks to carry 13 episodes.  Keep Jones and Cage as the alpha characters and make Fist a second stringer.

They might actually need a Heroes for Hire that's 4 3-episodic arcs or something of that sort.

I'm completely happy with the speed these shows run at.

And even if I wasn't, it can't possibly be because there is insufficient story you could possibly get these guys involved in.

It is just a matter of how much they want to write. If anything most genre TV these days has way too much plot. I find it refreshing to watch these shows slow the fuck down.

But as I said I'm completely fine with the pace of these things. I'm glad they seem to have toned the amount of annoying flashback in the second seasons - they were the only sections that dragged for me.

All that said, I think Cage 2 was very much hinting that they'd like to do heroes for hire at some point.

Which is cool, so long as it is better than Defenders.

Truthfully, for Cage and Iron Fist, there IS insufficient story in their Marvel histories. Neither of them had anything like classic arcs or adversaries or anything for much of their history either solo or together. They were flavor characters who sometimes got stuff that was a cut above that. Claremont started giving them real supporting casts and beefing up their enemies, but then he was pulled into X-Men. Cage becomes way more interesting once he gets pulled into Avengers and Thunderbolts, but most of that is so so superhero that it doesn't work for Netflix. Iron Fist became interesting by playing more thoughtfully with wuxia narratives and visuals, very very recently.

Daredevil got interesting a long time ago after having been a pretty dull character for his first 10 years or so. Jessica Jones started interesting and stayed that way until she married Cage.

I saw that as a test run to take over Iron Fist and add him to Luke Cage if season two of Iron Fist is not popular.

Fair enough , but lack of content in the comics shouldn't make it impossible for professional writers to put together 13 episodes a year.

Plenty of shows do it without any comic books to base it on.

Yeah. But they did a good enough job in season 1 of everything BUT Iron Fist. Cage = play with black history and Harlem. JJ = work with Killgrave and sexual assault. DD = Catholic guilt, the violent desire to do justice, the complexity of coming from nothing into a professional life.

IF = a white martial arts guy? something?

Everyone forgets punisher.

But I agree. I just get grumpy at the suggestion that limitations of the comics prevent future versions growing beyond them, on TV or anywhere else.

Couple of hours in, this is plainly a different show and that is no bad thing.

But they're pushing the Chinatown angle hard - which makes the whiteness of Danny a bit more awkward.

Definitely different, but not good, either.  I think Danny, especially this incarnation, is just better off as a secondary character.  I'm four episodes in and I keep losing interest.  So far, they seem a bit lost.

In the end, they decided that Ser Loras was never going to look like a badass kung fu master, and
--Dave

Only 4 episodes in, and I like it just fine.  I also kinda liked season 1, relative to other random crap.  To be fair, however, I could probably watch 45 minutes of Colleen Wing looking back at the camera and doing nothing else.

Spoiler tags?

A big disappointment (and after watching the first season I have only myself to blame):

I'm about half way - this is pretty good. Not amazing but good.

This show really makes me wonder why marvel TV can do women well and villians pretty well but the movies suck at both. Especially as the movies do most other things so much better.

Well, Marvel does Black Widow okay, but that could be just because of, you know, Scarlett.  Hard to do that wrong.

But actually, you make a good point.  They do some really strong female characters.  And even better, they usually aren't white either.

Mostly focus and audience I think.  Also, the TV really, really takes the time to drag out characterisation and beat you to fucking death with it, so they don't really give themselves a lot of choice.  It's much easier to identify when you understand.

I would disagree that they do Black Widow okay.  I think she's pretty flat and uninteresting.  She only really came alive briefly in Iron Man and Winter Soldier.

If anything, Black Panther did women better, I think.  They were certainly more focused, defined and interesting.

Well, "okay" in that she is surrounded by gods basically, so I am not sure how much they can reasonably pull her out of that.

Agree with BP, though, they did it fairly well.  I think the trick is to do it without making it feel like blatant pandering, which is difficult as it is so often in the eye of the beholder.

ScarJo herself does a good job. But the script of both the first two avengers movies had her defined as 'love interest for male plot device', then she turned up in CA3 to give a performance of 'reasonable female unable to make boys behave'.

I don't think she has been more than a background trope in any film.

Overall its a competently produced 10 episodes. But its kinda bland in its own way despite having plenty of characters that I liked and very very few cringe moments. To compare this to season 1, I will have to say while season 1 had plenty of lows, it also has highs. This season kinda stays in one middling tempo that never builds or drops. You like Colleen, you like Mary Walker, hell you even like Ward and his fuck buddy/baby mama. There is no cringe worthy corporate scenes, no Dany standing around repeating "I am the Immortal Iron Fist" like a pokemon. But the trade off is that you also don't get anything too interesting like the conflict involving the Hand and also the fight scenes are not as interesting or as reminiscent of kung-fu movies of old. So while season 2 had better characters, acting, generally stayed away from being Cringe Fist. It also didn't give them a more interesting scenario to work with and Dany, while more mature, still struggling with the same fundamental problem with the Netflix iteration of him. I watched about 15% of this show while doing something else, so I guess Bore Fist or 7/10 Fist is a good description.

Going back to Dany's fundamental problem. For a character who is all about balance and purpose he kinda has none. He is perpetually on the verge of finding himself and who he is. Which is fine for an origin story, not so fine for a netflix series. Everyone else from Matt Murdock to Jessica Jones knows what their about, what their powers do, who they are as a person. That is not Dany. We are still trying to teach Dany how to not use the fist like a wack-o-mole mallet 22 episodes later and thats just his powers, the rest of his character is still under construction. No wonder the show double downed on the side cast this season because it would have only lasted 3 episodes otherwise.

Also Colleen Wing best girlfriend of 2018. Fucking A what a refreshing take on a healthy relationship. Who knew writing one would be so fucking hard.

All the movies since like Thor 2 have had amazing villains, they are like some of the best parts of the MCU.

We're going to have to disagree given that would include Ronan the Dull, Ultron, the guy in a suit from Ant Man, and the mean cloud in Dr Strange.

Great MCU villians : Loki, Michael Keaton, Kurt Russell. End of list.

And I'm being generous with Kurt Russell.

Thanos was great, Hela Ghost Killmonger and Mads Mikkelsen were good

You forgot Thanos.

EDIT: And Threash beat me to it. The point still stands. I don't think Hela was great because she wasn't in most of the movie, but you should include Grandmaster.

I will concede grandmaster.

For the record, and back on topic, I thoroughly enjoyed Season 2 of IF.  Interesting how people see the same material so differently.  I like Danny Rand just fine, I like Ward even more (even if that plot line seemed kinda unnecessary), and I want to have Colleen Wing's babies.  All good.

I also really like the slow simmering coolness of Luke Cage, including season 2.  We are living in a golden age when we are so spoiled that we can nitpick stuff like this, my whole childhood was spent dreaming about this kind of stuff.  Viva la difference, or something.

If you just ignore season 1 and Defenders, and take this by itself, it was a good season. Better written, better fight scenes (I think they finally started using a double for Ser Loras), and a Big Bad that was much more appropriate for the scale. If this had been the first season of IF, it would have been a good intro to building up to The Hand.

Of course, they already blew that, and are going to have a lot of spade work to build up to a decent alternative.

--Dave

Yes, this was a good season. The thing is there was no Iron Fist, not after like episode 2 or so.

I think Mahrin kind of nailed it that this was a much more Defenders scale plot and big bad. The first season of IF really didn't have the budget (or acting or writing or directing or...) to pull of an existential level threat like the Hand. It felt MAoS at times when they really couldn't manage the budget to show what they wanted. This time it felt like they had a clear idea of who people were at least, Danny's motivation and questioning of himself was consistent and they did a good job of actually keeping the addiction and redemption theme in. Joy/Davos also paid off far better than I had expected, seeing them at the end of Season 1 was massively jarring and kind of reinforced the weak characterisation from that season.

I do like the increasing cross over elements of the shows as well, it makes sense considering they're all in the same city.

As much as I usually hate overblown crossover - these guys know how to do it. They pick crossovers that serve this story and don't let it distract.

Show was good enough that I was able to overlook how ridiculous the Joy and Davos premise was, and the Ward/Danny epilogue did not in any way make me roll my eyes.

More like this please.

Canceled.  No season 3 at Netflix.  However, the character(s) will continue.  I expect they'll announce Heroes for Hire, Daughters of the Dragon or something similar soon.  I suppose there might be a small chance of the characters being moved to Disney Streaming... it could have been a part of the licensing contract.

This needed to be the fun one of the four Netflix and it needed to have action comparable to the best in DD Season 1 and 2 but in a very different idiom. Didn't happen.

It's been a bad idea done well. A shitty superhero made into two quite watchable series plus Defenders. Mileage achieved.

This was bad casting for the star, mediocre writing, and unfortunate timining in that casting a white man as a martial arts figure is not flying in the current arena. 

I'd have watched a Season 3, but I think we're all better off seeing him moved to a secondary character (or just lost) and see them put their efforts elsewhere.

What about the clearly Chinese-European woman playing a supposedly Japanese woman with a clearly Chinese name? That offensive Hollywood "Long Duc Dong" ignorance that mashes all Asian cultures into one thing.

To be fair, they were adapting material from the 70's, when that kind of thing was completely normal.

--Dave

Apparently Colleen's father is Chinese and her mom is Japanese.

I feel the opposite.  After watching Daredevil season 1, and it's great fighting, I thought Iron First would be the best of all the potential heroes.  Super martial artist who uses chi to enhance all his attacks?  Great setup for a street level show, even if writing was mediocre

Instead we had a terrible execution.  Terrible writing, terrible acting, terrible action.

It'll be interesting to see if they replace it with another Marvel show, or if the new Disney Streaming will limit the options for new Netflix shows.

I am fairly bummed.  I get the criticisms, but I still liked the series, and I would never vote for there to be less of this sort of thing (and it goes against my very biology to wish for less Colleen Wing).  I hope they continue some of this, even if it is meshed into the others.  Speaking of which, DD3 is out at the end of this week.

I doubt that canceling Iron Fist will result in less Mavel on TV.  It just means something else gets a chance.

If season 2 was stronger they would have made it to season 3. But they spent so much time "fixing" what was wrong with season 1 that they never bothered inserting anything exciting.

True enough.  And I discovered yesterday that Into The Badlands actually has both a season 2 and 3 now.  I assume most of you have seen some of it, but THAT is how you do some martial arts choreography.  I mean, it is ridiculous.  But amazingly well done.

Not really fair to put it on the choreographer when the 2 lead actors are in totally different category when it comes to martial arts (movies)

compare:
Daniel Wu (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0943079/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm) to Finn Jones (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3645691/)

Well, I agree, but it isn't just Daniel Wu.  Even all the secondary actors are managed pretty well in Badlands.  Kinda apples and oranges, though, Badlands is going for a completely different style.  For what it's worth, I like most of what they get out of Iron Fist.  Finn Jones isn't a physical genius, but it works well enough for me.  So I lament the loss of the series.

Its not the casting. One show is boring. The other isn't.

Luke Cage canceled also. (https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/luke-cage-canceled-1202987278/)

Some people are hoping this might lead to a Heroes for Hire series. Personally I think it's just as likely that either Netflix's deal with Marvel is winding down, or Netflix realized that 4-6 Marvel series don't get them any more subs than 2-3.

Personally, despite being a big Marvel fan I haven't watched any of the Netflix stuff since Punisher (which I generally liked). Season 1 of Daredevil was good because they got the Spartacus showrunner to do it. Everything else has been uneven and poorly paced but (up until Iron Fist anyway) elevated by good casting.

Disney have always been absolutely hard headed about ending these licencing deals when it suits them.

I'd be sad but in no way surprised if dd3, p2 and jj3 wrap up the Netflix marvel series.

That would leave us with 12 seasons and a longer running time than the abc shows.

Could also be that the Marvel TV division is continuing to fall out of favor. When they announced a while back that they'd be doing various miniseries for the eventual Disney streaming service, the interesting part was that they are being done by the film division and not Loeb and the Marvel TV folks.

Inhumans and the first season of Iron Fist were pretty high profile failures. Cloak & Dagger and Runaways have received fairly decent reviews, but the fact that they have to spread their content across Netflix, Hulu, ABC, and Freeform suggest that they don't have any cohesive overall strategy. Despite the pilot for New Warriors supposedly testing well with Disney Execs, they seem unable to find a home for it. There was a pilot order for a Damage Control series a few years back that it doesn't sound like anything ever came of. Agents of Shield will wind down next Summer although filming for it started in July. They finished filming season 2 of Punisher and season 2 of Runways, are either done with or are currently filming season 2 of Jessica Jones, and season 2 of Cloak and Dagger was scheduled to start sometime last month.

The Marvel TV people work on Legion and Gifted also in some capacity, but aside from that I'm not sure what, if anything they're tasked with currently. Maybe they will have some sort of Heroes for Hire announcement but right now I'm not really expecting it.

If I were Marvel, I'd worry that the lack of cohesiveness in the TV side is brand-damaging; it's pretty clear that people who aren't comics-nerds enjoy the interoperability of the universe.

Legion and Gifted were both Fox properties, so I don't know how much input the Disney people had or have on it currently. Don't forget that Marvel also had an Agents of SHIELD spinoff planned that never made it to pilot stage despite being talked about enough that the two stars of it were moved off the show mid-season to prepare. Marvel's TV properties have been way more uneven than the movie properties, both in critical terms and in commercial success. It wouldn't surprise me if someone at Disney has finally told Perlmutter to wind his shit down.

Realistically, I think Marvel TV's involvement in the X-men shows is having Loeb and one of the other Marvel TV guys listed as two of the 7 or 8 executive producers on the show but I figured I'd at least mention it.

Also I think it's telling that the premier of Agents of Shield back in 2013 had 17.01 million viewers (Live + DVR) on ABC, Cloak & Dagger launched with 1.75 million viewers (live + DVR) on Freeform. That's a pretty big drop-off when you're ostensibly supposed to be part of the same brand as the two highest grossing movies of 2018 so far. It's also a good indication of where the ceiling was and where the floor currently is.

I think yeah, the TV shows are the last surviving by-product of the era of internal corporate division within Marvel, and the movie people have been happy to see the TV shows founder and be relatively isolated from the MCU. Which is really too bad--the Netflix shows feel to me completely as if they might sit perfectly well within the cinematic universe and be a nice little footnote or Easter egg that can be referenced from time to time.

Agents of Shield is probably the closest of the TV shows to the MCU though; Cloak & Dagger is some shit no one has ever heard of.

Guardians of the Galaxy was also some shit nobody had heard of but when you've got a great track record and a clear long-term plan people are more willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Comparing a summer blockbuster movie to a TV show on ABC's second-tier network is really apples to oranges though. Also, I know I'm not the only one who skipped the first GotG in theaters precisely because I'd never heard of them; it got great word of mouth so I checked it out eventually. Cloak and Dagger hasn't had that benefit; the thread here is only a single page and a lot of that is "This is going to be a thing" with only a few mixed-feelings posts about the actual quality.

I don't really think it's apples to oranges saying that Marvel has proven they can make obscure characters successful. If anything it's more impressive that they were able to do it with a Summer blockbuster. That's a much bigger gamble.

And that you skipped over GotG at first despite the excellent trailers they released because you weren't familiar with the characters is baffling.

And interestingly C&D has done the best job of subtle organic ties across the spectrum with references to the Movies, MAoS, Agent Carter, and Luke Cage that fit in the story and open a door for crossovers.

cloak and dagger was also shit.

It was far from the worst of the Marvel shows, but it was one aimed at the Freeform audience - teens.  If you accept it, it was better than some of the Netflix seasons.

Iron fist is the weakest netflix show and i'd rather watch that on loop than give cloak and dagger any more of the time it already wasted.

Goodie for you.  I'll watch season 2 of C&D, enjoy it for what it is, cringe a few times, but probably enjoy it.