How I’d Fix... Marvel’s ‘Iron Fist’

 (originally posted 13th October, 2018)

The news broke today that Netflix will not be making a third ‘Iron Fist’ series after the first two, and, to be honest, I’m not all that upset, or even surprised. Danny Rand is a difficult character to write - he’s a billionaire, but a Buddhist non-materialist; he’s a white guy, but their champion of a secret kung-fu temple. Writing a good version of that character is a tightrope act, with a strong risk of turning him into a living embodiment of all the worst elements of white privilege. It can be done, and has been done, but it needs a deft hand at the wheel, and showrunner Scott Buck, also responsible for the disastrous ‘Inhumans’ series, was not that guy. And with the hole dug for the character in season one of his show, it was always going to be an uphill climb to redeem it as a viable property. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. So, if you’ll forgive the indulgence (and oh gods, I am fully aware of just how indulgent this is!), let me put forth my thoughts on how the series could have been presented to better showcase the character and his story.

The most egregious problem with ‘Iron Fist’ is its lack of a strong, unifying theme. With the previous three Netflix shows, we’d seen a very powerful ‘through-note’ about which the whole narrative revolved, so that, no matter how far afield it got from its core concept, it would always make its way back. In ‘Daredevil’, the themes are very much related to ideas of morality, atonement and redemption. It’s about a character with a set of strong moral codes (spiritual and secular) who violates those codes in order to achieve what he sees as positive aims. The question is initially, once he’s achieved his goals, can he atone for his transgressions and return to the fold? But then mutates into, ‘What if he doesn’t want to stop doing what he’s doing? Is there another path to redemption which allows him to move past his old codes of behaviour and still be ‘good’?’ In ‘Jessica Jones’, the themes are very much related to abuse and the damage it causes, and how the changes wrought by that abuse can transform the victim, causing them to become abusive in turn. It raises questions about whether actions can be justified, how we see ourselves (as abuser or victim), how others see us, and how we can change those perceptions and behaviours in order to break a cycle and stop harming those around us. In ‘Luke Cage’, the themes are about where we live. How that shapes us, and how we shape it in turn. In Luke Cage, Harlem itself is a character, and its people, its history, its culture and its soul serve as both battleground and prize in a battle to shape its future. Many people find the conclusion of Luke Cage season 1 dissatisfying, like it belongs to a different show, and the reason for that is that they abandon this theme. With the death of Cottonmouth, the story stops being about Harlem, and becomes about Luke and his father. He even leaves the city. It’s this departure that people find disconcerting, as though the writers suddenly said, “Hey, you know what this series is about, well it’s not about that anymore. It’s about this.” It’s a jarring sensation, and I believe that’s the problem most people had with it.

In all three cases, we met a character, we were shown why we should care about them, and then shown an issue they had to overcome: Matt Murdoch is a person who wants to do the right thing, but doesn’t know - he literally can’t see - what it is. He struggles with indecision. Jessica Jones is a person who wants to do the right thing, but can’t move past the weight or her emotional damage. She struggles with self-destruction. Luke Cage is a person who wants to do the right thing, but needs to decide if he’s willing to take on the responsibilities that come with that role. He struggles with identity. In all three cases, those struggles mirror those of the people and the world around them. ‘Iron Fist’ never had that. By the end of Season 1 of Iron Fist, we have no idea whether Danny is a good person, what he’s struggling with, why he’s motivated to do things, and why any of this matters in the larger scheme of things.

So... how do we address these issues? Well, step 1 is to revisit the original stories. Iron Fist first appeared in ‘Marvel Premiere’ #15 in May, 1974, created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Gil Kane. In this and subsequent issues, we learn that Danny Rand, his parents, Wendell and Heather, and their business partner, Harold Meachum are on an expedition in the Himalayas, searching for the hidden city of K’un L’un, with which Wendell Rand is obsessed. After an accident, Meachum cuts a rope, leaving Wendell to die. Heather and Danny flee him into a snowstorm, only to stumble across the bridge to K’un L’un. Before they can cross, however, they are attacked by a pack of wolves. Heather sacrifices herself so that Danny can escape and enter the city. Once inside the city, he is raised by the monks and trained in kung fu over a decade. During that time, he burns for revenge against the man he sees as responsible for his parents’ death. Eventually, he undergoes a series of trials and gains the power of the Iron Fist after proving himself worthy, and leaves K’un L’un to return to New York where he can use his martial prowess to seek vengeance on Harold Meachum. For several issues, he seeks out this revenge, meeting Meachum’s children and heirs, Ward and Joy on the way. Ward is cold and hostile, seeking to gain his father’s approval by defending him against someone he sees as an interloper, but Joy is cautiously sympathetic to Danny’s cause, and believes that they should hear him out. Meanwhile, he is repeatedly accosted by a series of unusual martial artists and assassins using a variety of different styles and weapons, all of whom, he is led to believe, were hired by Harold Meachum. He is assisted in this by Professor of Asian Studies Lee Wing and his daughter, Colleen. He finally confronts Meachum after running a gauntlet of killers and deathtraps in Meachum’s office building but, when it comes time to get his revenge, he chooses not to. In his mind, he has built Meachum up to be a monster, but when he confronts him, he is a terrified old man, his legs amputated due to frostbite gained in the blizzard which killed Danny’s family. As he turns to leave, a mysterious assassin murders Meachum on behalf of an unknown master for whom Meachum was working. At this point, Joy bursts in and, seeing her father’s corpse, blames Danny. Enraged that she ever trusted a man who’d abuse that trust to murder her father, she swears revenge on Iron Fist.

First of all, it doesn’t take a genius to spot a pretty good theme running through this - similar to the way Jessica Jones deals with the self-propagating nature of abuse - Iron Fist could address the self-propagating nature of revenge. The vicious nature of the death of Danny’s parents provides an immediate sympathetic hook. We like Danny because, from our perspective, his rage against Harold Meachum seems entirely justified, and we empathise with his need to see Meachum punished for his crimes. Plus, it provides his character with a simple, easily-understood focus. Compare that to the series where Danny’s parents deaths are glossed over and bloodless, and Danny’s motivations are extremely vague and ill-defined. He seems driven by whims and his desires come across as unjustified and petulant.

Okay, having identified a motive and a reason for the audience to care about our protagonist, how about defining his struggle - and the nice thing again is that it’s the desire for revenge. And this one’s a “two-fer” because it also helps us deal with the issue of Danny’s ‘Magic Whitey’ status.

The idea of ‘Magic Whitey’ is a trope wherein a white person (almost inevitably a man) enters another culture and masters its ways to an extent where he becomes a superior exemplar of its ways than those native to the culture. It can be seen in movies like ‘Dances with Wolves’ and ‘The Last Samurai’ and can be traced back to characters like Tarzan and, yes, Iron Fist. In the original comics, Danny Rand beats all the other kung fu students in K’un L’un to become worthy to undergo the Trials of the Iron Fist. However, what if we translated this strength to a weakness? In the classic kung-fu movie, ‘The 36th Chamber of Shaolin’, the hero seeks refuge in the Shaolin Temple after his school and village are wiped out by soldiers. He seeks to train so that he may seek revenge against his enemies and, after achieving that level of training, is exiled by the monks because he cannot give up that goal. Why not do the same with Iron Fist? Danny’s training proceeds as normal, but the monks recognise that he cannot remain because he cannot transcend his anger and desire for violence. The only option open to him then is to become the Iron Fist. His task is to defend K’un L’un, but he may never again enter the city, lest his rage irreparably pollute its tranquility. Instead of the Iron Fist being a mark of his superiority, it becomes a mark of his weakness and inability to transcend his desires. Instead of an honour, it becomes a figurative fall from grace.

This lack of balance, then, becomes his goal. Danny Rand wants to do the right thing, to achieve the balance necessary to take control of his life, but he struggles with his need to seek revenge. And the symbol of this balance is Danny’s Iron Fist power. At the story’s beginning, Danny has limited control over his chi. He can focus it and use it to strike with superhuman force, but doing so leaves him drained and exhausted. By the end of the series, we can visible signifiers of Danny’s master of balance as he can summon the Iron Fist without draining his internal energies, and use its powers in ways other than to destroy.

Another aspect of the revenge theme which would be addressed would be that of perception. In the comics, Danny is a child when his parents are killed. He knows very little of life outside K’un L’un. To his mind, his quest is simple, an evil man did an evil thing to good people, and as a good person, Danny is within his rights to punish that evil. But as he investigates the Meachums further, he discovers that his father was not ‘the good man’ he took him for. One of the issues frequently levelled against Iron Fist and its like is that of exoticism or orientalism, where the trappings of other cultures are used as window dressing, and it’s through Wendell Vaughn that the series can deal with that issue. During the 1980s especially, there was this vein of orientalism running through corporate culture, with corporate executives reading Sun Tzu or The Hagakure, decorating their offices with zen gardens or ornamental daishos and decorating their homes and offices in pseudo-Asian style. Wendell Vaughn is a holdout of that style and, as the series opens, has blown countless millions of the company’s money on trips to Asia, Chinese Herbal medical treatments, priceless antiquities and fruitless searches for Shangri-La, Shamballa and K’un L’un. In the comics, Meachum kills Rand because he’s jealous of his beautiful wife and goes along on the expedition with the specific goal of murdering him, however, in this story, he’s along to try and curtail Rand’s excesses and, when an opportunity presents itself, he chooses, in a moment of weakness, to leave him to die in order to save the company. This transforms Meachum from a lust-crazed moustache-twirling villain into a desperate man backed into a corner and paying the price for it, as the sinister force behind Meachum uses evidence of his complicity in Rand’s death to blackmail him.

And once again, we’re back to revenge. Meachum felt he needed to kill Rand in order to save their company, but he’s paying for it. Danny feels he needs to kill Meachum in order to avenge his parents, but he pays for it by being exiled from paradise. Okay, so brass tacks. What does the series have to do? Introduce Danny as a character, establish his objectives and what is stopping him from achieving them. Introduce the Meachums. Harold, who is initially presented as the villain, though early on it’s established he’s under someone else’s thumb, Ward, a proxy villain who, while he’s no match for Danny, can come at him from vectors where he’s completely defenseless, and Joy, a potential ally who’s conflicted by loyalty to her father and compassion for Danny. Introduce Lee Wing, Asian scholar and his daughter Colleen, a martial artist instructor and kenjutsu practicioner. They’re his benefactors and guides to New York. Colleen’s role is as a mentor who is simultaneously more pragmatic and less dogmatic, and more disciplined and less impulsive than Danny. “I know you studied in K’un L’un, but did you learn anything there?” Introduce Misty Knight who, while she sympathises with Danny’s plight, sees him as a dangerous maniac who should probably be locked up for his own sake at least. She wants to help, but is bound by the law... and the law is on the Meachums’ side. And to tease the Daughters of the Dragon, of course. Introduce Davos, The Steel Serpent, an exile from K’un L’un who has found work with Madame Gao and Danny’s physical nemesis. Davos and Danny represent opposite sides of imbalance, with Danny’s flaw being how driven he is by passion and impulse, and Davos showing the perils of closing down all human warmth and compassion. Okay. This is getting long. I’ll need to let my brane percolate for a bit. Maybe tighten up the organisation and structure.