New Iron Fist Trailer

A couple days ago Netflix released a new trailer for Iron Fist. It's pretty good. I mean on it's own, in a vacuum, it's fantastic but I have a few minor issues with it that probably aren't really it's fault.

The biggest one is the Might Whitey trope. I've talked about it a bit here before but in case you're unfamiliar the Mighty Whitey essentially refers to a type of story where some white guy is placed in a different culture and suddenly becomes better at everything that culture does, often he becomes an exalted hero or leader. It's a story telling trope that was big in the 18th and 19th century but is still plenty popular today. I mean when I think of famous Samurais, Tom Cruise is the first one to come to mind...

Anyway, the story of Iron Fist is a product of it's time and by that I mean it's kind of a rip off of the TV show Kung-Fu. White kid is stranded in a Mystical Asian city, learns super Karate, becomes the most powerful Karate guy on the planet. It's fine, I mean it's lazy but its fine. If you want to complain about Asian representation in Superhero movies and TV shows ask someone why there's no Kamala Kahn/Ms. Marvel movie, or an Amadeus Cho Netflix series. Iron Fist has a long history in the comics and they're sticking with the original origin. It's like a B- move for Marvel. They did hire RZA to direct an episode so it's not like it's all bad here. Also Iron Fist is far better know as being part of Heroes for Hire with Luke Cage and that book actually had real cultural significance in the 70s with it's portrayal of a pair of black and white superheroes who were best friends. If Marvel/Netflix decides to go that route and once those two characters are paired up, the Mighty Whitey/cultural appropriation stuff starts become less and less of an issue.

My one other knock here on this specific trailer is the whole, hey kids here's the last of the Defenders. I'm totally over the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe stuff. I think it worked fantastic in Captain America and Thor for the build up to the first Avengers movie but it kinda ruined the Iron Man movies. Also obviously Avengers two was a loosey goosey mess and Joss Whedon directly blamed the insistence from Marvel to add a bunch of cinematic universe nonsense into the story. I don't really think any of the Netflix shows have really suffered in the build up to the Defenders but that doesn't mean I'm still not wary of it.

Ok, this is way more that I had planned on writing about this trailer. I'm sure the show will still be good, if nothing else it's probably going to have a great soundtrack.