After my experience watching Luke Cage last week, I was excited to see the next superhero series from Marvel. I started to watch this on Saturday and finished last night as it was only 13 episodes just like all the other Marvel cinematic universe series in Netflix such as Daredevil or Jessica Jones. Without further ado, here is more on the series.
Brief Story Line
Danny Rand (Finn Jones - Game of Thrones TV series) was a long lost heir to the large corporate Rand enterprises. He came back to New York after 15 years when he was presumed dead together with his parents on a plane accident. Ward Meachum (Tom Pelphrey - Guiding Light TV series etc) and Joy Meachum (Jessica Stroup - Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, 90210 TV series etc) who were now the leaders of the corporate were caught by surprise when Danny came to their office. They could not believe Danny's claim and threw him out of the office.
Since nobody believed him and no place to stay, Danny spent the night in a park and met with Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick - Game of Thrones TV series, Star Wars: The Force Awakens etc) on the following morning. She was leaving out pamphlets to promote her teaching martial arts in her dojo. Danny was trying to let him stay in her dojo by providing Kung Fu lesson which Colleen rejected.
Meanwhile Joy who was having a familiarity feeling was a bit doubtful and thought that it may be really Danny who "came back" from the dead. However, Ward was very skeptical and suspected Danny as a fraud who had financial motive. It would later revealed the surprising reason of Ward's skepticism. Ward even go to the extent of having his securities try to put Danny away, but he managed to escape.
Danny had to use all his wits and his amazing martial arts skill to try his best to return to his rightful place in Rand enterprises. In later episodes, there would be revealing of Danny's reason for 15 years of disappearance and his Kung Fu skills, plus the fact he was considered as the Iron Fist.
So could Danny return to Rand enterprise? To what length he would do to accomplish his goals? Or would he be choosing to fight and become the Iron Fist who had his own goals of fighting The Hand? Find them all in this series.
End of Brief Story Line
Well this series was very promising in the beginning. The pilot episode got me hooked. But then suddenly in the later episodes, I felt the pace decreased completely. I guess the first episode was too interesting and intriguing plus many surprises that when the next few episodes did not provide many surprises, it raised the flat sensation. The pace did picked up a bit in the middle (loved episode 7) then dropped again until the 10th episode and so on which made it become interesting again.
Iron Fist' background was told briefly in the flashback mode and there was no episode dedicated to show it. But I loved the way that more than 1 characters from previous series like Daredevil and Jessica Jones appeared in here, plus also the reference to Luke Cage, though all these 3 heroes did not appear at all. The storyline also felt a very big connection with especially Daredevil which made it more exciting.
With regards to the fighting scenes, they were done pretty good. The martial arts used by Danny/Iron Fist during his fights really had an aura of Kung Fu style. It is rather rare to see the dragon or tiger style in series nowadays. Just like in Luke Cage, the major villain here did not possess super strength/power, but the armies were totally a lot and would require Danny's ability to fight them off. I also liked the chemistry between Danny and Colleen, though I am not really interested in the Meachums characters.
The ending also had a surprising twist which would make it more interesting to see The Defenders when it would show in Netflix sometime in September 2017. Ooh 1 thing that I felt funny was the story felt a bit similar to Arrow TV series from DC Universe. Arrow was also telling the story of Oliver Queen who came back after 5 years of disappearance and happened to be a billionaire. He also learnt all his fighting skills during that 5 years and when he returned, he had to fight with various villains through his alternate identity Green Arrow.
Despite some of the flaws, I still felt that this series is more interesting than Luke Cage and I had more enjoyable time watching this one. And just as I thought, the series was not loved by critics who preferred Luke Cage (no surprises there). Though I also found out that viewers did enjoy the series.
So if you are looking for another Marvel superhero in their cinematic universe, and if you really are interested in watching The Defenders later, then you definitely cannot miss this one. However, if you only are interested in darker superhero tale with deeper story line, then you probably belong to the same group as the people in the famous movie critics website and would not enjoy this series. Well the choice is yours.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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