Thoughts on Black Panther

As a white guy who only knows comic book stuff from the movies and from watching comic nerds discuss said movies and point out Easter eggs that I would never have noticed (“That’s a reference to Red Spandex.” “Okay, if you say so.”) I’ve been hesitant to discuss Black Panther.  Mostly because it seems like so many people are hypersensitive to those who don’t see it as the bestest, most influential movie ever made.  And I’m of the opinion that it was a solid movie, but I did have a few, minor issues with it.

One miniscule issue I had was I would have liked more debate over the issue “What should the powerful do?” What they had was good, but given the importance, and relevance, of the matter, I feel more would have been better.  I think it was a month or so ago I saw a post where someone said the first cut of the film was almost four hours.  That, may have been a bit much, but another twenty minutes or so further fleshing out the sides would have been great.

The bigger issue I had was the … cliché story structure.  I mean, bad guy jumps good guy and leaves him for dead.  But he’s not dead, thanks to someone saving something special from being destroyed.  Good guy fights bad guy, but needs to call his plucky female “sidekick” to tech something to help him finish the fight.  Oh wait, that’s the ending of Iron Man.  Obadiah jumps Tony and takes his second chest reactor.  Tony would have died, except Pepper had – instead of destroying it like he had asked – made the “Proof Tony Stark has a heart” thing with his first chest reactor.  During the final fight, Tony has Pepper overload the big arc reactor to finish off Obadiah.

Okay, it’s not point for point the same as what happens in Black Panther, but during the first T’Challa/Killmonger fight I got bored because the bad guy always wins the first fight, that way the good guy has an even greater comeback.  We’ve seen that … a million times.  I guess given all the hype, I was just expecting more than your basic, paint by numbers, comic book movie.

So, about Iron Fist

Two weeks ago I wrote up my initial thoughts on Iron Fist after watching the first six episodes.  My plan was to finish the series in a couple of days and write up the rest of my thoughts.  I finished the series a day or two later, but then things came up and I kind of forgot about Iron Fist.  And now, two weeks later, I only have a few dim memories of the show.  A lot has been written about problems with the series, but I’ll just point out two of my biggest issues, both of which deal with the writing of the show. 

Obligatory mention that there will be some spoilers below.

First off, I know that Claire and Matt had a disagreement when the Hand attacked the hospital in the second season of Daredevil, but is she holding a grudge or something?  I lost count of how many times I almost yelled at the screen for Claire to call Matt because someone else with talents would have been a help. 

What makes it worse is that this first season of Iron Fist kind of damages The Defenders.  I’m looking forward to the show because I love Daredevil and Jessica Jones and am curious how those two will interact.  But I’m going to be bugged because – I’m assuming that as the common thread to all the shows Claire will be the one to bring them all together – I’ll be yelling at the screen “Why didn’t you do this six months ago when you went to China?  You know, when you could really have used the extra muscle.” As it turned out, Claire, Danny and Colleen did just fine, but they didn’t know that going in.

But the bigger, second issue, is Danny.  In my initial thoughts post I wrote that “an easy way to really screw things up is to not give an insight to the motivations of the main character.” And after thirteen episodes, I really have no idea about Danny’s motivation.  Why did he leave K’un Lun?  He got bored?

To be fair, there’s a little more to it.  He lost his parents and ended up in a weird world.  He felt empty and thought being the Iron Fist would solve all of that.  But after achieving that and realizing that he’d just stand at a little mountain path for the rest of his life, he realized he was still empty and left to find something more.  There’s something there, but I think that all came out from three or four conversations and while I think a lot of people can relate to it, it’s in a rather vague way. 

Compare that to Matt’s motivation.  In the episode where Foggy finds him all cut up and Matt tries to explain everything to him he tells the story of hearing a guy down the block molesting his daughter.  Matt called child services, but the mother denied everything.  Matt says that the system failed the girl, so he beat the crap out of the father one night.  And Matt adds that he slept peacefully that night.  Now I hope nobody has any experience with someone molesting a child, but we can relate to Matt’s motivation in a far more visceral way.  With everything we had seen Matt do up to that point, and that one minute conversation, we completely understood his motivation.  You can’t say that about Danny.

So what are my final thoughts on the first season of Iron Fist?  In the weeks before Iron Fist came out, I rewatched both seasons of Daredevil as well as Jessica Jones because I enjoy those shows.  As to Luke Cage and Iron Fist, someday, maybe before Daredevil Season Five, I’ll do a complete rewatch of all the shows.  That will likely be the only time I rewatch the first seasons of Luke Cage and Iron Fist.  I’ll watch their second seasons, which I hope will be better, but the only reason I see to rewatch their first seasons is to be a completist in the Marvel Netflix SubUniverse.

Initial thoughts on Iron Fist

I know nothing about comic book Iron Fist.  But I was excited for the Iron Fist series because I'm a fan of Daredevil and Jessica Jones.  I guess I'm neutral towards Luke Cage.  Then I started seeing all the posts with titles like: Iron Fist is a mess, and Marvel flubs Iron Fist and stuff like that.  But I'm trying my best to keep an open mind.  I'm six episodes in, and hope to finish the series in the next day or two.

So what are my thoughts six episodes in?  I'm starting to get a bit worried.  On one hand I have a bunch of questions like why did Danny leave K'un Lun and did he really think he could just walk back into Rand and do ... whatever.  Normally, I'd think they would answer those in the second half, but with all the reports of the show being a mess, an easy way to really screw things up is to not give an insight to the motivations of the main character.

Also, did Claire lose Matt's phone number?  Okay, so Danny has to go fight the duel by himself, but when Claire and Colleen take the guy to the hospital, you'd think she'd go, "Hey, I know a guy that can help us." Of course if Matt came in, he'd tell them all that they are going to get themselves killed because they don't know what they're doing, and Danny would tell him that only he can fight the Hand, and then the two would fight until they realized they both had skills and would team up.  But if they did that, then Daredevil would probably overshadow Iron Fist in his own series, which is why I'm assuming that Claire lost Matt's number. 

But it makes me think that if I was plotting out this series, I'd show Claire training with Colleen and meeting Danny in passing.  She wouldn't learn about the Iron Fist until late in the series, so that she could figure out that some problems require more than one hero.  It's what I'd do because it makes sense, so it makes me worried about what the show is doing.  Of all the characters in the Marvel Netflix SubUniverse, Claire is easily in my top ten favorites, so seeing her being a bit thick is annoying.

After six episodes, I'd say I'm neutral, but worried about Iron Fist.  We'll have to see how things go in the next seven episodes.