When reviews started to come in trashing Iron Fist, and star Finn Jones’s performance, he responded sharply: “We filmed the show way before Trump’s election, and I think it’s very interesting to see how that perception, now that Trump’s in power, how it makes it very difficult to root for someone coming from white privilege, when that archetype is public enemy number one.”

There was a lot to say in response to this, but two main points stand out.

Donald Trump is a millionaire at best. Fellow billionaire and beloved Marvel tentpole character Tony Stark is the only reason Jones has a show to star on in the first place.

While sometimes it seems like we’ve been mired in superhero films since the birth of the moving image, the Marvel cinematic universe (which the Netflix Marvel shows Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and their upcoming team-up The Defenders all spring from) is less than 10 years old. In 2008 we were introduced to Iron Man (Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr) in his own standalone film. The writers took zero pains to hide his billionaire status.

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Stark is not without his problems, but money and all, he remains a fan favourite. Danny Rand has been … less well received. But it has nothing to do with how rich he is.

Let’s set aside, for a moment, the fact that an Asian American Danny Rand would have been a far more interesting story to tell and given the writers (a different set of writers) more meat to chew. Let’s instead work with what we have in white, liberal-arts-college-crunchy-looking Finn Jones as Rand, Jessica Henwick as friend (and more) Colleen Wing, Jessica Stroup and Tom Pelphrey as Joy and Ward Meachum, and Rosario Dawson reprising her role as Claire Temple.

You can tell as you’re watching that the show wants to connect with the current reality of its New York setting. The Meachum siblings are portrayed as the broadest possible versions of Trump children Eric, Don Jr and Ivanka. They’re meant to represent the worst of wealthy CEOs to the viewers, while remaining redeemable through struggle – like being violently and psychologically manipulated by their near immortal father. It’s similar to the Iron Man story structure in that way; Stark begins as a relatively self-centered billionaire who, once injured by the weapons his company makes and sells to terrorists, starts to realise the error of his ways. He eventually wrests control back from the father figure who has turned his company into a thing of destruction.

The trauma Stark goes through in his first solo flick helps viewers sympathise with him, but it also helps that Downey is an incredibly charismatic actor, not to mention a good one. You want to like him and he draws you in. The same could be said for David Tennant’s Purple Man in Jessica Jones: a truly terrifying villain you can love to watch and hate because because of both superior writing and performance. Broad villainy can be fun, but it takes a script that eventually holds said villains accountable and the right actors to pull it off. Stroup and Pelphrey were not those people; or perhaps they were, and the writing simply didn’t serve their talents. The Meachum storylines – Joy’s on-again-off-again at the drop of a hat feelings for Rand, or Ward’s sudden deep dive as an opioid addict in episode six – slow Iron Fist down, often feeling unnecessary and added only to make that 13-episode order. Combined they’re more of a problem than Jones’s portrayal of Rand, but their characters’ wealth has nothing to do with it.

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No one in Iron Fist has earned anything – whether it’s their money, their powers or even our grudging respect. Danny works for Rand because it’s his birthright. Joy and Ward work for Rand because their father insisted upon it in his will. Danny’s powers, as pointed out to Claire by his friend Davos in the best scene in the entire 13-episode run, were essentially stolen from the city of K’un-Lun. Stark is an MIT graduate super-genius, but we’re not just told that – we’re shown it, first as he builds his Iron Man prototype in a desert cave, and then constantly throughout the rest of his films. He’s an ideas man with the ability to make those ideas a reality, and more often than not he does so alone. The Stark wealth is inherited, yes, and Tony’s white maleness means that he often feels that he can’t be checked or called out (Avengers: Age of Ultron was a movie entirely about why more white men should be told “No”), but at least he has something to contribute.

Iron Fist doesn’t allow us to see Rand or the Meachums work for anything, nor does it indicate that Joy or Ward have any skills that would add any value beyond those of a normal, everyday employee. Rand’s entire backstory coasts on the same five seconds of crash footage replayed at every possible moment throughout the season; as if that was the work. It was a trauma, certainly, but his character needed more than that.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest One of Danny Rand’s ‘sluggish’ fight scenes. Photograph: Patrick Harbron/AP

Those three stand in stark contrast to Claire and Colleen, two women who wield skills that they’ve had to perfect over the course of their lives. The idea that Colleen has had to work at her skill, martial arts, while Rand relies mostly on a given power is obvious throughout the series. White or not, wealthy or not, Iron Fist is about a character who is the martial arts expert of the Marvel universe. We needed to see that reflected on screen. Perhaps scenes of Rand working at that skill and honing it in K’un-Lun would have helped make up for the lackluster fights we do see. Rand’s sluggish takedown of the guards in the Rand building in the pilot is laughable, especially coming from the same universe where Black Widow puts a phone call on hold to take out three men while she’s tied to a chair. Each and every fight Rand participates in (and, to be fair, they’d improved slightly by the end of the series – usually due to the participation of better fighters such as Henwick and Lewis Tan) left me wondering how little time it would take for Scarlett Johansson (or her stunt double) to finish him off. Henwick’s Wing often looked far more polished next to Rand, a difference that was especially apparent in scenes where they trained together, mirroring moves in time to the show’s strange 90s hip-hop soundtrack that sounded wildly out of place.

For fans of the comics, these characters and good television in general, Iron Fist is a disappointment. With a different team of writers behind it, The Defenders is certainly salvageable. Still, it’s hard to imagine the Danny Rand presented here maintaining a strong friendship with Netflix’s version of Luke Cage or entering into a relationship with the Misty Knight we know now. But again, it’s not because of his wealth. I’ve watched about 13.5 hours of Tony Stark-centered media multiple times. That’s three Iron Man flicks, two Avengers romps and one soul-wrecking Captain America story. I’ve enjoyed every rich, white and privileged second of it, and continue to do so in the era of Trump.

But I get it. Failure is hard, especially when you fail in your first outing as the anchor of a major studio’s vehicle. Unfortunately for Jones, while Trump works as a scapegoat for most things in 2017, the spectacular badness of Iron Fist is not one of them.