The debut of Marvel’s Iron Fist series on Netflix has been anything but smooth. In addition to overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics, the show has continued to be called out for not casting an Asian-American as the title character, even though Danny Rand was always a white man in the comics. The fan argument was that an actor of Asian descent could offset the apparent “white savior” trope and the cultural appropriation that was inherent in the original comic books.
However, Iron Fist co-creator Roy Thomas vehemently disagrees with that idea. While speaking with The Inverse, Thomas said “it’s very easy to second-guess anything. You can argue about Tarzan, you can argue about almost any character who came up then is bound to be not quite PC by some later standard or other,” he said. “Okay, so you can make some adjustments. If they wanted to kill off white Iron Fist and come up with one who wasn’t Caucasian, that wouldn’t have bothered me, but neither am I ashamed for having made up one who was. He wasn’t intended to stand for any race. He was just a man who was indoctrinated into a certain thing.”
Thomas also addressed the controversy head on, and arguably made things worse. “I try not to think about it too much,” said Thomas. “I have so little patience for some of the feelings that some people have. I mean, I understand where it’s coming from. You know, cultural appropriation, my god. It’s just an adventure story. Don’t these people have something better to do than to worry about the fact that Iron Fist isn’t Oriental, or whatever word? I know Oriental isn’t the right word now, either.”
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Yeah…Oriental definitely isn’t the right word. In that context, it’s got some uncomfortable racial connotations that essentially undercut the point that Thomas was trying to make. For some perspective, Thomas is a true living legend in comics and the first successor of Stan Lee as Marvel’s editor-in-chief. He’s arguably one of the greatest comic writers from the silver age, but he is ultimately a man of his time. That may be why he has so much trouble comprehending the problem that some fans still have with the character and the very concept of Iron Fist.
It’s not as if Marvel was ignorant of this issue when Finn Jones was cast in the title role. However, Marvel TV apparently didn’t feel strongly enough to take steps to address that within the series itself. Rumors that Marvel planned to add Shang-Chi as a co-lead for the series didn’t turn out to be true, but that could have gone a long way towards quelling the negative feelings towards this show. Unfortunately, Thomas’ poor choice of words isn’t likely to help him or the series. It’s probably just going to be more fuel for the fire.
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