First trailer for Netflix’s Iron Fist series is oddly bland

Annalee Newitz

The first trailer for Marvel's Iron Fist, coming to Netflix on March 17.

Despite its length, there's not much substance to the first trailer for Iron Fist, the tale of a ninja whose charge shot is a chi-amped punch. Iron Fist, aka Danny Rand, is the final member of superhero team The Defenders to come to Netflix. The Defenders will join forces for an eponymous Netflix series later this year featuring Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage. While the shows devoted to the other members of this Netflix hero quartet are all groundbreaking and stylistically distinct, Iron Fist doesn't feel unique.

Danny Rand is the lone survivor of a plane crash that killed his parents. After being raised by the mystical martial artists of K'un L'un, Danny returns to take back his father's company from bad guys. In the comics, Iron Fist teamed up with Luke Cage and eventually fell in love with Harlem police officer Misty Knight. We probably won't see much of that in this show—Neflix is likely saving crossover stuff for The Defenders series—but we do get to meet Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick), Iron Fist's formidable fighting buddy. The bad guys running Rand Corporation seem to have ties to spiritual evil, so this isn't just about Danny making sure he can keep all of daddy's money for himself. The fighting is definitely fun.

What's odd is how generic the Iron Fist trailer feels. It's sort of like Arrow meets Batman Begins meets Doctor Strange meets "why am I watching this?" I kept waiting for some stylistic equivalent to the nihilistic intensity of Jessica Jones or the hip-hop philosophy of Luke Cage. But Danny Rand (Game of Thrones' Finn Jones) is a pretty bland hero, with his glowing fist power and unambiguous motivations. I don't get the feeling I'll be watching something that grabs me by the lapels and makes me want to binge.

And then there's the casting issue. Fans have been having intense debates since the series was announced because it seems weird to have an Asian martial arts master played by a white guy. Yes, he was white in the comics, but those were written in the 1970s. Times have changed since then.

Maybe the problem is that it's impossible to update Iron Fist for the 2010s, not just because of casting issues, but because the story feels stale. We've seen little lost boys gain superpowers and take charge of their family corporations on screen a lot recently. I'm hoping that Iron Fist unveils some as-yet-unseen kinks or surprising twists. But right now I'm not holding my breath.

The series will be available March 17 on Netflix.

Listing image by Netflix