I did the Netflix freebie month this summer and -almost- subscribed so I could watch all the stuff leading up to the Defenders, but, not gonna lie, there’s no way I’m gonna watch the same old tired narrative of “white guy shows up in a non-white culture and out-non-white-peoples the non-white people.” If I wanted that, I’d go watch Avatar or Forbidden Kingdom again.
And sure, the common defense is, “well if they’d have cast an Asian guy, it’d just support the Asian martial artist stereotype.” Yeah, that’s a different problem Hollywood has created, but back to Iron Fist. Why weren’t other races considered? It might not be in-line with the original, but I’d watch a Hispanic Iron Fist, or an African / African-American Iron Fist, or an Arabic Iron Fist (how cool would that be?), etc.
OR option 2 would be to change the Iron Fist story so that it doesn’t use Asian martial arts or qi, and if they could come up with a suitable backstory, I’d be ok with that too.
I’m all for staying true to the original story, but like you said, that original story shows its age through its cultural insensitivity.
