Marvel's Iron Sucker Punch?

Well, that's unfortunate.....


So, after Marvel's nearly decade-long streak of winning fans and critics over, Marvel's latest Netflix original series, Iron Fist, got massively panned recently by critics. To be fair, though, it's not like the MCU has been dubbed as exceptionally perfect; some films, like The Incredible Hulk or Thor: The Dark World, received barely positive fresh marks on Rotten Tomatoes, and even the most well-acclaimed franchises have their fair share of haters (I, for one, stopped watching Agents of SHIELD

after seeing that monstrosity that was Ghost Rider in season 4). However, this isn't the case of certain people bashing a harmless comic book venture; this is a Batman and Robin level hatred of what should have been a well-constructed, well-written, and well-developed superhero franchise like the rest of the franchises in Marvel's line-up, and even though the trailer wasn't entirely well-received, I am quite surprised that the ratings turned out like they did.







Now, since the series isn't being released until this Friday, I have yet to watch a single episode (Nor have I read any Iron Fist comics to back up whether or not this could have been foreseen), but even if this is the blunder that critics are making it out to be, I do still hold faith in Marvel to deliver the goods with the rest of their franchises, especially set alongside the crap that third-party studios such
as Sony and Fox have released. Marvel understands their source material the same way that Tony Stark understands his suits, that is to say, like no one else does. They know what it is about the source material that brings audiences in, they know what elements to add in to bring in newcomers, and they know just what elements to change in order to transition from the wacky, strange experience of comic books to the wacky, strange experience of cinema.


This was just a simple misstep, something that's not uncommon for most filmmakers. Remember when Cars 2 came out? (Yeah, me neither; I don't blame ya.) Pixar was this unstoppable giant that never released a bad movie beforehand (maybe a few less-than-fantastic movies, but definitely no bad movies), and people were shocked that
they would put this much slick animation into something less than riveting. Within the following years, however, Pixar started winning fans back with Brave, Monsters University, and my personal favorite in their line-up, Inside Out. Hell, M. Night Shyamalan just got out of his long streak of awful, AWFUL movies by making two critically-acclaimed psychological thrillers back-to-back.




Now, none of this is to say that Iron Fist won't be as awful as critics say it is, or that this won't be the start of a collapse for their franchises. However, this simple misstep isn't going to prevent me from watching The Defenders, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man Homecoming, or Avengers: Infinity War. I guess my main point with writing this blog is that we shouldn't let it worry us. Marvel has spent nearly a decade maintaining our trust, and we shouldn't let it slip.... Not yet, anyway.