[TV] The General Marvel TV/Streaming Thread

Four episodes in so far. I like where they're going. They've had the other series to build up their universe, it's good that they haven't had Danny going full out. They needed that in DD to the pull folks in. I'm looking forward to/hoping to see Iron Fist get to unload. *also hopefully to see Shang Chi, or at least a mention*
 
Starting episode 5 now. It's very slow moving. I'd say the first two episodes at least could have been condensed into one. Danny isn't that likeable so far. Like, act 1 scene 1 he walks into his family business building with no ID, shoes or doing anything to announce his return and is like.... Suuuuper surprised that no one believes him or instantly recognizes him.

So far a good deal of questions are being asked but none are being answered. That would be fine though if we had more stuff to keep us busy in the mean time though. I'm interested enough to keep going, though I guess my expectations were different. The other series I think could get away with not doing an origin arch right away because the story was exciting enough to warrant a slower burn. This one it would have been nice to have a bit more to go off of early on.
 
Finished it.

It's for sure the weakest of these shows. It just doesn't explore the world enough for me. Everything is just kind of given to you at face value and you just have to go with it.

No one has any real motivations for what they do. The bad guys don't have any real master plan other than normal bad guy stuff. Danny wanted to...Make his company be less evil? But also destroy the hand. But also hang out with his childhood friends.

This series needed like 4 things to make it better.
1) More background on Kun'lun and iron fists in general. If kingpin can get an origin episode, the main character of this show can get one too.
2) more street level heroics. It would have been nice to see him just do some normal super hero shit.
3) Some more humor. Danny's been gone for 15 years and I would have loved to see him be amazed at things that have changed. Like someone hand him a cell phone and him ask if it has that snake game on it.
4) I'm going to fault S2 of DD also on this but the bad guys need a kind of clear master plan to stop. Even if it's on the smaller side like busting up a drug ring or something. It was too messy to really see what all was going on with all the players and organizations involved.

Overall I'm going to say that you can probably skip this one if you want to. Do look on YouTube or something for the Drunken Master fight around episode like 7 or 8 though. Best part by far.
 
Overall I'm going to say that you can probably skip this one if you want to. Do look on YouTube or something for the Drunken Master fight around episode like 7 or 8 though. Best part by far.
Does anything feel really plot significant, such as hinting at future stuff? Or minor characters from the other shows that have any significant character moments?
 
Does anything feel really plot significant, such as hinting at future stuff? Or minor characters from the other shows that have any significant character moments?
Clair is learning to fight and acquires a set of claw fist weapons she might use later. Lawyer lady showed up but was just her normal lawyer self. No mentions of any of the other defenders that I caught. It was actually weird that Clair never went to Matt once she found out that The Hand was behind this stuff, especially when Danny is clearly over his head and might need help. It's just like the movies though how Cap or Tony never ask the other avengers for help even before civil war when it would have made sense to.

The only big take away is that The Hand is more and more like HYDRA. They have inner factions that don't all get along I guess. Their big plan wasn't really touched on at all, so no progress on that since DD S2. I'm predicting them to be the big bad for Defenders though.
 
Their big plan wasn't really touched on at all, so no progress on that since DD S2.
Considering it's probably Shadowland, it's unlikely they'll say much about it until they're sure the audience will accept something that Frank Miller clearly came up while on drugs.

(hmm, so apparently that story didn't connect it with the Hand at the time, if the summary on the wiki id correct... i wonder who did)

EDIT: Heh, Agent Garret is from that mini... and that's what that cyborg scene was about... i knew it felt familiar...
 
We just finished it, and I agree a lot of what @phil said: it's the weakest so far, and there wasn't enough universe building. It would have been nice to get a little more depth out of the villains, especially since Faramir Harold was just the usual "my motivation is greed" bad guy. Claire continues to be the awesomeness of the Netflix 'verse, although it drove me crazy that at no point did she call any of the heroes she knows for back-up, especially considering DD fought The Hand already! I know they have to give each character time to shine, but if they can bring Luke into Jessica Jones, they can have someone show up in Iron Fist! They're all on the same island, for crying out loud!

I did watch the first 5 episodes with some friends, which made them pretty enjoyable because we were MST3K the shit out of it. By the way, fun fact: Rand is actually 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, the headquarters for Chase bank. All of us had worked there at some point and recognized it immediately. The elevator bank they filmed at is the only one that's not in use on a regular basis. And yes, the upper floors do look like that, but with less murder. That we know of.
 
I'm on episode three of Iron Fist. So far I think it is getting a bad rap. Don't get me wrong. It is worse than most of the other Netflix Marvel shows (except maybe Daredevil season 2...) It is definitely a slow boil, but I think in a good way. The show is trying to earn the animosities and the friendships instead of just creating them out of thin air. I also am not convinced that making Danny Rand asian would "undo" any racism. It kind of seems like a racist thing to do in itself. There is no winning on that front I think. If the Hand is going to be the bad guys, though, and a bunch of asian ninjas are taking on the white martial arts hero, that will be a problem they could have avoided. Making Danny Rand asian isn't the fix, though. That just makes all the asian characters martial artists in a stereotypical fashion.

tldr; So far the show is better than the gripes about it let on. There appear to be some missteps, though, that they could have avoided.
 
Kati doesn't have any interest in the series, but she's come across someone on Slate who says they'd like to see a series (probably starring Wenwen Han) about a Chinese girl who crash-lands in Texas and returns 15 years later to Chengdu after learning the mystical art of Gunslinging. She could have a bandolier and a couple of Colt SAs or something, and there would be no end of opportunity for fish-out-of-water humor regarding whiskey, spitting, horseback riding, and just a general lack of knowledge of what's been going on in the 15 years since she disappeared.

I might watch that.

So might @bhamv3.

--Patrick
 
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Kati doesn't have any interest in the series, but she's come across someone on Slate who says they'd like to see a series (probably starring Wenwen Han) about a Chinese girl who crash-lands in Texas and returns 15 years later to Chengdu after learning the mystical of Gunslinging. She could have a bandolier and a couple of Colt SAs or something, and there would be no end of opportunity for fish-out-of-water humor regarding whiskey, spitting, horseback riding, and just a general lack of knowledge of what's been going on in the 15 years since she disappeared.

I might watch that.

So might @bhamv3.

--Patrick
Don't China and Texas both have lots of spitting?
 
I'll have to see what Wenwen Han is wearing in this show before I decide whether I watch it.

As a minor side note, Wenwen Han looks a lot like this girl in the year below me in university.
 
I'll have to see what Wenwen Han is wearing in this show before I decide whether I watch it.
Because Western series are dark and gritty and all up in your face at the moment, there will be at least one episode where she is sneak attacked while sleeping in her bed and has to struggle her way to the chair where her holster is hanging all the while also fighting to keep the sheets strategically draped so as not to accidentally earn a TV-MA rating.

--Patrick
 
Because Western series are dark and gritty and all up in your face at the moment, there will be at least one episode where she is sneak attacked while sleeping in her bed and has to struggle her way to the chair where her holster is hanging all the while also fighting to keep the sheets strategically draped so as not to accidentally earn a TV-MA rating.

--Patrick
... go on.
 
I'll have to see what Wenwen Han is wearing in this show before I decide whether I watch it.

As a minor side note, Wenwen Han looks a lot like this girl in the year below me in university.
You think all Asian people look like another Asian person you know. Racist.
 
Kati doesn't have any interest in the series, but she's come across someone on Slate who says they'd like to see a series (probably starring Wenwen Han) about a Chinese girl who crash-lands in Texas and returns 15 years later to Chengdu after learning the mystical art of Gunslinging. She could have a bandolier and a couple of Colt SAs or something, and there would be no end of opportunity for fish-out-of-water humor regarding whiskey, spitting, horseback riding, and just a general lack of knowledge of what's been going on in the 15 years since she disappeared.

I might watch that.

So might @bhamv3.

--Patrick
Not going to lie, that sounds awesome.
 
We decided to throw on Iron Fist while on our comps as background stuff. Ended up going through three episodes.

The first episode was fine for a first episode.

The second episode draaaags. It is so damn repetitive. It felt like it was about to end, and I checked the time out of curiosity because it felt like it'd been an hour, but it had only been 38 minutes and the episode was like 77 minutes or more total.

Third episode was a little better, but also had a lot of drag. It feels like this corporate shit would've been taken care of in a single episode of another show. Like it had to cobble together a conflict because neither the hero nor villains seemed to have much of a plan going on at the start.

Still, it has its moments.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I actually liked the first 5 or 6 episodes for the most part, but the longer it went, the less I liked the main character. Not just the fact that Beardsly McRamenhair felt like a really shitty casting decision, but instead of pushing the fish-out-of-water angle (as others have said was a missed opportunity) they just turn Danny into more and more of an irrational, petulant child. By the last few episodes, he's basically just determined to do the opposite of whatever anybody tells him to do. "You must kill him and return to Kunlun!" "No, I won't!" "You can't kill him" "I can and I will!" and so on and so forth. The steady descent into madness of the former NSYNC member who fell off the grid and became a scruffy, psychotic hobo entertains less and less as the story progresses.

Madame Gao steals the show, and Claire lends a gratifyingly stabilizing influence, anchoring the story and preventing it from going into complete pants-on-head retardedness.

So yeah, final verdict, not as good as the others, but it's got enough good parts for someone who wants to watch all the defenders stuff to not feel like they totally wasted their time.

As for why Claire doesn't go get help when she finds out the baddies are the hand? Well, Luke is in prison, Jessica's a mess, and they're not in Hell's kitchen, so so much for DD :p
 
Finished episode 8 last night. Cool fight near the end, and at least I'm now invested in some of the story, but the pacing problems continue. I could've sworn we'd watched three episodes last night, but nope, episode 7 just dragged that damn much.
 
Mr. Z is working over at the "Rand" building today. I told him he needed to jump out at any young white dude in the lobby and shout, "I thought I'd find you here, Iron Fist! The Hand will have it's revenge!" in his most FOB accent.


He did not appreciate my suggestion. :(
 
Okay, finally finished Iron Fist.

Definitely the weakest of the Netflix outings. They spent way to much time on the Meachums and not enough time on Danny earning the Iron Fist. Also, for martial arts hero..... I didn't get to see much martial arts. I forgive them for having DD fight in the dark, it's always been part of the character. There's zero reason to do it here and I was really hoping for some great action scenes but I couldn't see what was going on half the time. Best fights were Colleen Wing scenes (she rocked).

They dropped the ball with this one though. Even Into the Badlands (a guilty pleasure but not a particularly good show), which is a martial arts show, manages to deliver on the simple promise of martial arts fighting. Iron Fist is one of Marvel's master martial artist and Netflix really didn't showcase him very well.
 
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