The “Iron Fist” crew has something to prove.
The Netflix/Marvel Studios show was the last of the street-level heroes to debut (after “Daredevil,” “Jessica Jones” and “Luke Cage”) and received mixed reviews especially considering how critically acclaimed those shows were. Those shows all received second seasons—the heroes even joining forces on “The Defenders”—and now “Iron Fist” returns.
This time, Finn Jones is ready.
Jones (the Brit actor known for playing Loras Tyrell on HBO’s “Game of Thrones”) gamely jumped into the lead of the show’s first season with very little time to prepare in 2017, particularly for the martial arts Iron Fist (the superhero alter ego of billionaire Danny Rand) was known for.
“I started training four months before the shoot date,” he told Super. “I trained every day, five days a week for four months in various disciplines. I meditated every day. I did yoga. I worked with an ex-Shaolin monk with traditional kung fu, traditional tai chi. I then did more modern forms of fighting, more modern kind of MMA stuff to get my stance correct. I also worked with a personal trainer on a gymnastic kind of training rather than just putting on muscle, and being like, ‘grrrr.’ It was like finding flexibility and toning my body so I would still be agile enough to do martial arts and look right.” Jones added this was true for all the fighters on the show, including Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick) and Davos (Sacha Dawan).
Stunt coordinator
This all had to do with the arrival of stunt coordinator Clayton J. Barber, who had previously choreographed fights for “Black Panther.”
Fighting reason
“Iron Fist” showrunner M. Raven Metzner (who had been brought in to replace season 1 showrunner Scott Buck) explained: “Clayton brought a specificity to everyone’s fighting styles. We had many conversations about how everyone fights and, even more importantly, what’s their reason for fighting. Why are they fighting? They’re not just action for action’s sake, which, as everyone knows, just makes you yawn and is really boring.” Jones noted that Barber wanted the actors fighting as much as possible on screen this season, with a lot of repetition.
Iron Fist was created by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane during the kung fu craze of the 1970s, with the character first appearing in “Marvel Premiere” # 15 in 1974. Danny Rand was the billionaire boy who had vanished in the Himalayas together with his parents. Rand found himself in the mystical realm of K’un-L’un, where he learned martial arts and earned the mantle of the Iron Fist, the fabled protector of K’un-L’un. Rand returned to New York a decade later and regained control of the Rand Corp. from the crooked businessman who had seized it. That was season 1.
This season, Iron Fist takes on the challenge of being the protector of New York (spoiler alert: something a dying Daredevil charged him with in the “Defenders” finale), with an emphasis on spectacular fight scenes in the streets as Iron Fist must face waves of attackers. There are surprise bad guys and good guys. The brain trust behind “Iron Fist” is clearly moving the character closer to its comic book origin. For one thing, Jones confirms that Iron Fist’s signature mask will be making its first appearance this season.
Typhoid Mary
This sets the character firmly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that the other street-level “Defenders” exist in; Metzner said Marvel Studios head Jeph Loeb firmly stated the show occurs before the “snap,” referring to the climax of the blockbuster film “Avengers: Infinity War.” Iron Fist will be interacting with another street-level Marvel character, Typhoid Mary (Alice Eve). The Ward siblings (Tom Pelphrey and Jessica Stroup) are back. Detective Misty Knight (Simone Messick) crosses over from “Luke Cage.”
But the most welcome interaction is that between Rand and Cage (Mike Colter) in the vein of the duo’s classic “Heroes for Hire” comic-book heyday. “They’re very opposite from the outside, but I’ve always thought it’s because, to begin with, they share a sense of being outsiders and there’s a vulnerability to them. They’re both quite lonely people because of their abilities. They’re a very good balance for each other. Personally, I love working with Mike.”
The charming, goofy Jones said he already benefited from the new workout regimen on a personal level. “I’m a much better dancer,” he said completely unironically. “I love to dance, like on the weekends, the way I go to restore my chi is to go dance, and I definitely noticed the more martial arts practice I did, the better I was on the dance floor. It’s a really funny thing, there was a moment I was on the dance floor and I was dancing, and I noticed this link between the martial arts and the dance. Once I made that click, it just made a enjoy the whole process so much more because I not only understood it but I felt it in my body a lot better.”
This good feeling apparently extends to the rest of the cast and crew of “Iron Fist.” Everyone is ready for redemption. “Everyone on this show this season wanted to come back and make the show the best possible season of television we could,” Jones said. “It was really inspiring to come back to that and just be surrounding by that positive energy.”
“Marvel’s Iron Fist” starts streaming on Netflix on Sept. 7.
