Ain’t It Cool posted this earlier today describing what could be the first Marvel movie made by Disney. This has me really excited as Iron Fist is one of my favorite Marvel characters!
Hey folks, Mike Fleming over at DEADLINE – has a story on how XXX writer Rich Wilkes has been tapped to adapt Marvel’s glowy pink fisted IRON FIST to the feature screen. Now back in the day, when Avi Arad was running things, they were attempting to get IRON FIST off the ground with Ray Parks “Darth Maul” being Danny Rand – whose best adventures (in my opinion) were the Claremont/Byrne stand-alone issues… And it makes me wonder if MARVEL will do what they’re doing with THE AVENGERS with IRON FIST… meaning, will we get a MASTER OF THE MARTIAL ARTS – Shang-Chi film developed shortly… not to mention the LUKE CAGE film – so that we can eventually work towards a HEROES FOR HIRE film? I like to think that the Marvel folks have big “Step 1, Step 2, BIG STEP 3” style plans on the drawing board – simply because… well that’s how to adapt the Marvel Universe.
No matter though, the key importance is to nail IRON FIST. And this isn’t an easy thing. Glowy Fist Kung Fu films tend to be scoffable. Like THE LAST DRAGON, which admittedly has some “awesome” mixed with the “ohmygod cheesy” – but when Danny’s fist starts glowing, visually and audibly – it’s got to make our arm hairs stand up and cheer. It has to be so cool, that it feels like nothing we’ve ever see in Martial Arts cinema, because this is MARVEL MARTIAL ARTS CINEMA. I would highly recommend bringing in an all-star team led my Yuen Woo Ping – that the martial arts be LONG TAKE Martial Arts and not chop-phooey the editing to such a point that visually none of it makes sense.
I loved the Bronze Age exploits of Danny Rand – they should begin the process of finding their Danny Rand immediately and get him training for 6 months to a year for this role. Forge the right actor. And please make it awesome. And please keep the costume and make the visual world make sense with that costume. Fingers Crossed.