Iron Fist (2017)

Iron Fist tells the story of Danny Rand, son of a billionaire founder of Rand Enterprises and sole survivor of an accident that took the lives of his family.

After being rescued and trained by Buddhist monks in mystical and martial arts, Danny returns to New York to reclaim his life, facing not only his arch-enemies in The Hand, but also those who run the business empire his father founded.

Without going into detail about the depiction of Eastern philosophy or the authenticity of the martial arts on display, I'll focus on evaluating the series as an action product meant for fans of Marvel comics.

Sadly, Iron Fist fails noticeably in this regard. While the characters are portrayed fairly well from the comics (with some logical changes when translated to the screen), the series is tedious and boring, and never manages to engage the viewer.

It's striking how few and poor the action scenes are, a key point for a product of this type, a far cry from the fantastic Daredevil.

If you were thrilled with the hallway fight in Daredevil's first season or the Punisher's prison fight in season two, forget about seeing anything like that here. It's just two people with little agility clashing fist and sword against armed (or conveniently unarmed) mercenaries who get out of any situation with flying colours, almost a tribute to the A-Team shootouts.

Nor is helped by a lousy, unoriginal script that takes two or three episodes to develop an idea, or by the poor performances, mainly by Finn Jones, who looks nothing like a great oriental warrior, but more like a capriciously tormented young man. Iron Fist, the famous super-powered fist who only appears three or four times in the entire series, deserves a special mention.