Ironheart

Ironheart is a fun new Marvel series following Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), a brilliant young woman we first met in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. To fund her inventions – including a suit a lot like the one Iron Man used to wear – she falls in with a gang of criminals who rob from the rich led by The Hood (Anthony Ramos). But when her ambitions place the people she loves in danger, she's forced to reckon with her past and her grief. Ironheart is streaming now on Disney+. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus at plus.npr.org/happyhour https://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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  There's a fun new Marvel television show that follows a brilliant young woman whom we first met in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. To fund her inventions, including a suit a lot like the one Iron Man used to wear, she falls in with a gang of criminals who rob from the rich. But when her ambitions place the people she loves in danger, she's forced to reckon with her past and with, wait for it, her grief. Come on, it's Marvel. You knew that was coming. I'm Glen Weldon, and today we're talking about Ironheart on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

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• 2:08Speaker 01

  Joining me today is NPR TV critic Eric Deggans. Hey, Eric.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Hey, I'm gonna apologize in advance for all the comic geekitude that is coming your way because, dude.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Bring it. You have a home here, Eric.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  We are so gonna go there on this one.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Eric, you have a home. Let's get to it. In Ironheart, Dominique Thorne reprises her role as Riri Williams, who is introduced to the MCU in Wakanda Forever. She's been kicked out of MIT and returns home to Chicago to plot her next move. In the process, she inadvertently creates an AI that takes the form of her late friend Natalie, played by Lyric Ross. Natalie was killed by a stray bull a while back. Riri is still grieving that loss. To fund her very expensive hardware, Riri joins a gang of criminals led by Anthony Ramos's Parker, aka The Hood, so named for the mysterious mystical cloak he wears that affords him various magical abilities. But at what cost? She also befriends, well, exploits,

• 3:05Speaker 01

  really, the nerdy Joe who's got a lot of access to black market tech. He's played by Alden Aaron Rice. Ironheart is streaming on Disney Plus, though you might not know that, given how little marketing this show has gotten. We'll talk about that. Eric, you have called yourself a card-carrying blurred black nerd in the past. This is blurred representation. What'd you make of it?

• 3:28Speaker 03

  Man, I so wanted to like this show a lot more than I actually did.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:33Speaker 03

  You know, I don't know if I was expecting too much from it. That one thing that's been kind of interesting to watch in terms of the Black Panther of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that that first movie was so amazing that everything that's connected to it winds up getting compared to it, even when you don't necessarily want to do that. The sequel movie, Wakanda Forever, and this series, which, you know, in some way, I mean, I loved seeing a black and brown-centered, you know, show featuring characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And I think Riri is a really engaging character. I'm not all that thrilled with what they did with her and where they took the story. And a lot of things about the story

• 4:16Speaker 03

  just didn't quite make sense to my comic geek brain, which I'm sure we'll talk about as we go forward. But I hope. Other people like it more than me because I would love to see this set of characters continue and in particular Ri Ri Williams, I'd love to see her continue in the MCU.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Okay, well, I think you got your wish. I think I like this a little bit more than you did. Cause I enjoyed the lighter tone. It feels like the last few Marvel TV things we've been getting are in that Daredevil Echo corner of the Marvel Universe, the dark and gritty, it's not my jam. I like the fact that the jokes in this show, and there were plenty of them, were kind of based in um, character dynamics as opposed to just throwing out pop culture references. I think that is a heartening move for the Marvel Universe to take. I dug that. I came down, this is a solid B B plus effort for me. Because I like the characters and I like the world, but like you, as soon as the overarching plot kicked in, I felt like I had to start calibrating my expectations. It's no crime, but these characters are not particularly layered. They each get their one characterizing trait.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  They keep hitting that characterizing trait. But you know, that's fine for a hot summer afternoon, you know, but when I started getting frustrated was when the overarching plot with its very schematic and overdetermined structure kind of kicked in because you know, fiction, they say that plot is character. Wherever your character wants to go, there's your plot. That is not true for the show because again and again, I felt like the plot was fighting what I thought the characters wanted. Like for example, why does Ri Ri keep hanging out with the Hoods gang?

• 5:45Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  After she gets a bunch of money because isn't the whole point that she just needs money to fund her inventions and then and she doesn't like anybody in the gang. And then the Hoods whole gimmick, he threatens very rich people with signing very coercive contracts. I mean, even in the MCU, Eric, rich people are rich people. They have teams of lawyers, you know, who exist to get them out of contracts. That kept kicking me out.

• 6:10Speaker 03

  You know, if anything will get you out of a contract, it's having been forced to sign it by having someone point a gun at your head.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 6:18Speaker 03

  Which actually happens.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Or a mystical magical gun in the case is this particular thing is happening. So anyway,

• 6:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  I do think the show looks good, right? Do you agree to that much? I mean, like the flying stuff, the suit stuff, it looks good?

• 6:29Speaker 03

  The flying stuff and the suit stuff looks good. I mean, again, one of the central tensions. In a show like this is how much of the suit do you see?

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  How much of what we see is this person being a superhero? And how much of this is the person being an exceptional person outside of the suit? Uh, for example, you know, one of the reasons why people really criticize the third Iron Man movie is because so much of it was Tony Stark out of the suit.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  And at some point, you want to see the suit and you want to see

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  sort of spectacular adventures in the suit. And I do think that that was also a place where this show kind of fell short for me was I wanted to see more of her actually in the suit and doing, you know, amazing things. I mean, you know, we saw a lot of that in Wakanda forever. You know, so why are we not getting it in this TV show? But I think you hit on the thing that was my biggest problem, which is like, again, as a comic book geek, I often judge these stories by the quality of the villain.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  And frankly, I just felt like the hood and his gang were corny villains.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 03

  And I didn't really sort of buy their menace. And another thing you've heard me talk about is sort of the hierarchy of powers in a Marvel movie. So it's hard for me to believe that this is a gang of criminals that can attack a facility filled with security guards and take them all out and steal whatever it is they're going to steal. But when they decide to go after Riri, they have a problem with one person.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  But here's where I think the show works because even when I didn't like Riri's choices, which were often dumb, I still like Dominique Thorne.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Right? Because she is saddled with some pretty boring lone hero stuff where she keeps people out. She refuses help. She doesn't let anybody in. She uses people without their knowledge. These are all pretty familiar early parts of a classic hero's journey. And I was prepared to kind of nod at them as they pass. But the thing is, Eric, they didn't pass. I can't get into the details of how or why. We think that Riri's arc here is that she's going to learn to deal with a grief and not hang on to the past. That is not the lesson she learns in this show, Eric. And that is clearly setting something up for the future.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Which makes, I guess, the show interesting in a way in that it's a Brit's expectations, but it also feels like it's a placeholder, right?

• 8:54Speaker 03

  You and I have talked about sort of being frustrated when you feel like a series is mostly just setting up something that's gonna happen in another season or is gonna happen in the future that viewers don't see. That's my concern with this show. You know, I was worried about that. I am worried about that. And, you know, again, I'm gonna sound picky when I say this, but I think it's hard for these Marvel series to explain why some of the bigger structures in the MCU don't get involved with these heroes' lives.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  She is desperate for funding after she gets kicked out of MIT, and yet she doesn't appeal to the Wakandans. She doesn't go to Stark International. She doesn't approach these institutions, which you think would be, I mean, even the federal government might be interested in funding what she does. And we don't even get a perfunctory scene showing her considering this and why she doesn't do it.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:49Speaker 03

  One of her immediate choices is to break the law, which, you know, is a weird choice for somebody you're positioning as a superhero.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the feature and the bug of the MCU, classically, right? I mean, like, when you have seventeen different heroes all existing pretty much in the same six city blocks, you have to kind of figure out all kinds of ways why they don't get involved with each other as well as, you know, you allow them to occasionally.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  I will just say quickly, I'm not sure that's what's happening here because you don't have to have Robert Downey Jr. Or, you know, someone from the Black Panther movies show up to deal with the idea that there were places for her to get money that did not involve stealing from people.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  And having a situation here where that's the first thing she goes to, especially given that the story is moving to, you know, a black neighborhood in Chicago. She's hanging out with her family and black folks turn into crime?

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  I don't want to overly belabor that, but that was something that sort of bothered me, that they didn't come up with a better reason for why she decided to join this gang that is clearly ripping off people and could easily kill somebody if they were pushed into a corner. This is like a serious. Turn.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  I guess you could explain that she's so, you know, distorted by grief and disappointment that she's not thinking clearly. But we needed something to illustrate that, and I don't think we get it.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, they do try to hand wave some of that away with like, well, these are very rich people. Let's eat the rich ethos. But yeah, I get you. That also hit me. So the head writer of the show is Shannaka Hodge. She has previously written for shows like The Midnight Club and for the show Snowpiercer, which is based on the movie. Both of those shows, I think we'd agree, are basically straight down the middle genre pieces, right? I don't know, Eric. And maybe as I'm getting older, or maybe it's just the landscape of television is changing. But we live in a time now when good work can be informed by genre. It doesn't need to be defined by it, right? I'm thinking of shows like Andor and The Penguin and Last of Us. I'm going back, Justified, Breaking Bad, you know, even Sopranos.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Those shows hit their genre beats very dutifully. They satisfy those conventions, but they do more. They dig deeper. They find nuance and complexity. In the show, it comes out of the gate saying, this is not what we're doing. We're not going to be doing that. But and it's not fair to compare this little B plus show to the greatest shows on TV. I get that, but ultimately comes down to, do you want a full meal? Or do you want a bowl of Cheez-Its, right?

• 12:21Speaker 03

  And that's a great way to put it, man, which is why I love your writing, too. But I will say too, that we expect that because again, the Black Panther movies did that.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  And so. Exactly. I should have. That's one I should have mentioned.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  I mean, they may not be promoting this series as much as you would expect. But in the promotions, they are highly touting that Ryan Coogler, the director of those movies, is an executive producer on this show.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  So not only are we feeling those expectations because of the universe it comes from. We're feeling those expectations because of the promotion behind the show.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:55Speaker 03

  And to show up hoping to get that and to not really get that. I think is also one of the central issues I had with the show where I was sort of primed to think, you know, maybe this is going to interrogate issues of society and race and heroism in the way that the Black Panther movies did. And, you know, it doesn't quite get there.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Um, is there anything you wanted to shout out that you particularly liked? I'll, I'll start by saying I liked Alden Ehrenreich in this. Here is a guy with a leading actor jawline who does best in character actor parts. Like he's a lot more interesting in the Coen Brothers film Hail Caesar than he was in Solo, the Star Wars story. And here he gets to play into his character actor chops and you know, he gets to play emotionally wounded a lot in a very funny way. I really liked seeing him here.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  He's a great character. He's a great actor. I wish they had used him a little differently and even elevated him more in the story because he's so interesting. When we finally do get the suit, it's awesome.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  And there's a character that appears, we can't really talk about this character because it's in episodes that people won't have seen by the time this comes out, but, but there is a, a character that surfaces who's played by an actor who I think does a really good job with the role. And, uh, and I think people will enjoy seeing that.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:14Speaker 03

  Again, I do love seeing a show from the MCU, from Marvel Television that is centered in blackness. I do love that. And I love seeing the family dynamic and I love, you know, little touches in how the characters relate to each other that feel authentic. So all of that is cool. I just wish this story had been a little better.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we're both finding some tension in demanding more from genre stuff, but ultimately like, you know, this should be welcomed when it comes doing what it wants to do, checking its boxes the way it does. I, I had a good time with this.

• 14:52Speaker 03

  Well, you know, as somebody who's been sort of clocking superhero TV since the days of the first live action Spider-Man on TV in the seventies. The level of expectations we have for this stuff now is just off the charts. I mean, if I could have seen a series like this, you know, in 1980, I would have flipped my wig. I would have, you know, this is the kind of show I always dreamed would be on television. You know, I watched the old Batman series and it was funny, but I always thought to myself, why can't they do this more seriously?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  And now we're at a point where they are. And so I agree with you. I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth and I want to acknowledge how far we have come in this storytelling. But that also sort of builds my passion for wanting to push it further and say, this is good, not great. You guys can do better. The performers obviously can handle it.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  All the actors in major roles are wonderful. So give them more to work with. Give them better things to work with.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  And, you know, when the traditionalists come for this story, I really hope that Marvel doesn't let itself get intimidated by them.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  Because I think there have to be those of us speaking out to say, yeah, it's always great to keep an eye on what the fans want, but it's also good to challenge them and let them know when some of their objections are rooted in things that frankly don't make sense and aren't fair to the story and keep Marvel from progressing in the ways that it needs to progress.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think when people come through the show, if they do, they're going to be insisting on a lot of the classic genre tropes that frankly, a show like this is trying to move past. It's trying to take it in a new direction. So yeah, I agree with you there. But that's what we think, anyway. We want to know what you think about Iron Heart. That's what matters. Find us at facebook.com slash P C H H. That brings us to the end of our show. Eric Deggans, my friend, thank you so much for being here.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  Wow. And we didn't really geek out that much.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Well, I mean.

• 16:59Speaker 03

  Okay, I did reference the Spider-Man from the seventies. I can't help that.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, I'm gonna guess when we talk to the producers, as soon as we stop taping, they're gonna be a little lost.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio. And you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor free. So please find out more at plus.npr.org/happyhour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Hafsa Fatima and Mike Katso and edited by our showrunner Jessica Biddy. And Hal Locomin provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.

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