Ironheart

One of the more unfortunate aspects of our current society is that these days reviews are almost entirely useless, especially when the protagonist is anything other than a straight white male - everything else is met with a relentless barrage of review-bombs on one side, and a set of hagiographic "reviews" on the other intent on redressing the balance. Neither of which serves to answer the actual question: it is actually any good?

Which brings me to "Ironheart", a show starring a young woman of colour. So, inevitably, the reviews are mixed, to say the least: some people are slating it on every possible pretext but not stating their real objection; meanwhile, the professional reviews are glowing, ignoring the flaws of the thing.

We finished watching it last night, and actually "mixed" is about as fair a review as you can get.

The positives: the cast are great, the characters are well drawn, the effects are surprisingly excellent, and the story, while basic, is well told.

My first negative is that it could do with some more jokes. I do also find some of it extremely far fetched, even within the context of Marvel - the show rightly made the point that Tony Stark's billions were a massive part of why he was able to do what he did... and then has RiRi do exactly the same without those resources anyway. (And, yes, Stark put together his first suit in a cave with no help. But Stark's first suit was also a comparative piece of junk.)

But those are fairly small beans.

I also felt that the ending was underwhelming - once again, we have a finale where the main plot is suddenly resolved very quickly, and we spend a significant amount of time dealing with other stuff - "Discovery" has just done that, "Doctor Who" has just done that, and now this. (Of course, that's largely coincidence - some of these came out some time ago, and I just happen to be watching them all together.) I almost got the feeling that the first five hours of "Ironheart" were largely an excuse for them being able to introduce Mephisto in the final episode. Which is weird.

Lastly, though, there is something that makes me really uneasy. In the first couple of episodes, RiRi engages in serious criminal activity. It's not 'questionable' or 'borderline', or any other euphemism - she's working with a group of thugs and is party to violence, extortion, and almost certainly murder. Plus, there's one point where she's almost certainly on bodycam footage as a cop is shot and killed.

And the show never addresses this and there are no consequences - we're full-square behind RiRi as she breaks from the group, not out of any moral stance or principled objection, but because they find out she's killed one of their number. There's no question of going to the authorities, or facing due process for the crimes she has actually committed. It's all just handwaved and then ignored.

And that's a real problem.

(And, again, it's true that Marvel has a track record on this, where various Avengers have gone rogue at various times, and even when they haven't they do engage in all sorts of illegality. The key difference, though, is that they don't actively and knowingly go to work for the bad guys. At their very worst, they are duped into their actions, but that's not the case here - RiRi knows that Hood and his team are sketchy as hell, but is motivated by the money.)

The upshot: my feelings about "Ironheart" are deeply mixed. But I'll be more than happy to see RiRi Williams appearing in future Marvel projects, and I'll be happy to watch other things produced and directed by Ryan Coogler (incidentally, "Eyes of Wakanda", by the same producer, is really good). I find this flawed, but not the disaster the review-bombers would have you believe.