Marvel resurrects Iron Fist on the back of martial arts boom

Kung fu was popular in the US during the early 1970s, due to the global success of Bruce Lee. That’s where the genesis of Iron Fist, a new Marvel superhero series screening on Netflix this month, lies.

Looking to cash in on the martial arts boom, Marvel created the comic-book character back in 1974, when interest in the genre was strong.

The new Marvel show features Finn Jones, best known for his role as Loras Tyrell in Game of Thrones, as Iron Fist, and is written to lead into The Defenders, another series featuring the character Iron Fist, due to air on Netflix in early 2018. Netflix are making the whole show available at once, to encourage binge watching.

Iron Fist, aka Danny Rand, is a young American business heir who becomes skilled at kung fu after an accident lands him in the mythical martial arts kingdom of Ku’n L’un. Although he has no superpowers, he learns to focus his qi (energy) to increase his fighting skills, and becomes a crime fighter when he returns home to New York.

Always a lesser Marvel hero, Iron Fist was killed off in the ’80s – literally – and resurrected briefly in the ’90s. A film version was mooted in the early 2000s, starring British martial arts expert and actor Ray Park, but the film never went into production.