Fan Film Fridays: Iron Fist: The Dragon Unleashed

  I don't know what to say about this really.  I'm not going to credit anybody because I didn't like it and I don't want to sully any ones name with my opinion.  If people want to Google search the people involved with this I don't want them stumbling across my negative review.  So no one is getting credited and they'll probably thank me for that later.

  Where to start.  Well, they made Elektra a scientist.  She's a scientist ninja.  A scientist ninja working with Iron Fist.  I don't recall Elektra every working with Iron Fist.  They're both sort of periphery characters of Daredevil, that's sort of the person they have in common.  Daredevil would hang out with both of these people but I don't know of any time they hung out together let alone one doing SCIENCE for the other.  Just generic SCIENCE, nothing specific, just vague, lab coat wearing SCIENCE.

  There is no plot.  Zero, none at all.  For all I know this is a home movie of shit just happening.  You could argue that there is also no acting.  There are flashes of acting by the mysterious appearing/disappearing antagonist and Dr. Elektra M.D. Doctor of SCIENCE.  But this is basically a vast desert of acting talent and with no plot to prop them up it falls completely flat.

  They sure as shit can kung-fu though.  Iron Fist definitely can kung fu.  The rest not so much.  The ninjas a little bit and Unbreakable Dragon can hold his own.  Elektra and White Lotus look like they've never even seen a punch in real life.  So they know kung fu but what about the fight scene?  Those must be good right?  Nope.  Not at all actually.  Filmed at half speed and no contact the fights have no impact what so ever.  There are some eye catching flourishes but nothing looks like it connects with any force.  This is the most embarrassingly apparent when Iron Fists uses The Fist on Unbreakable Dragon, the chi of the undying dragon looks to have the force of a "good game" slap on the chest that you'd see on a basketball court.

  This is longest 8 minutes I've had to endure in a long, long time.  It was painful for me.  Looking at the comments a lot of people loved it, there are a lot of positive comments.  The uploader responded to one of them saying that it was a zero budget movie but the credits seems to boast a full cast & most of a crew.  It has a producer for gods sake and a director who isn't the star.  A producer who isn't also the Director/Writer/Star/Editor.  Like a separate dude got a producer credit, like a real producer would get.  It essentially looks like 2 guys in Tai Kwon Do class got together a bunch of friends and filmed it in an empty warehouse for a weekend but some poor asshole got suckered into producing it.

  Alright, alright, the positives.  Clearly the main knows martial arts and doesn't flail too much in the making of the kung fu.  The costume is pretty good but the mask looks like it keeps losing the actors eyes in the opening scene but it's competently made.  The dragon tattoo looks good, it must be either magic marker or make up but it always looks crisp and clean.  Ummmm...the title screen is pretty okay.  The main is in shape... I think that's about all that's positive about this.  I think the short would have been best if they could have found a real fight coordinator, they can't be too hard to expensive to find.  Other zero budget short films have great fight scenes using if not a real fight or stunt coordinator at least by rehearsing it a couple of times.  It looks like they filmed the rehearsal with how stiff and slow everything is.  Also the music on this, while good songs individually, don't match anything going on as if they scored it using the shuffle option on their iPod.

  Anyway, I'm just going to rail on this so I'm going to wrap it up.  Take a look...I guess?  Maybe you'll find something I didn't or maybe you just want to subject yourself to the same pain I did.