Marvel Studios tries to give some order to its oozing lava flow of movies and television shows by dividing them into “phases.” These divisions seem to be determined simply by the calendar rather than by anything happening onscreen. We are currently in Phase 5 — six features, eight series — and it has been defined less by themes or story arcs than by the odor of desperation coming off dreary films like “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “The Marvels.”
Phase 5 ends with the release of “Ironheart,” a series about the young tech genius Riri Williams, who was introduced back in Phase 4 in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” (Three of six episodes premiere on Tuesday, on Disney+.) If you’re still hanging on with Marvel, this isn’t the one that will make you give up; it’s a respectable piece of work. But it’s not going to revive anyone’s flagging interest.
“Ironheart” opens with Riri (Dominique Thorne) back in school at M.I.T., her Wakanda adventures in the past. She is obsessed with building her own Iron Man-inspired armored suit, telling skeptical teachers that it will be a boon for first responders, but she’s forced to crowdsource funds by doing other students’ projects for them.
When M.I.T. loses patience and kicks her out, she heads home to the show’s setting, working-class Chicago. Her determination to find the money needed to perfect the suit brings her into contact with a criminal gang led by a man (played by Anthony Ramos of “Hamilton” and “In the Heights”) whose hooded cloak gives him supernatural powers.
As Riri at first abets the gang in its elaborate capers and then turns against it, the usual array of Marvel elements is on offer. Action is lower in the mix than you might expect for a show built around a battle suit, and the fights and chases are not very imaginative, though the imperfections of Riri’s nuclear-powered suit allow for Iron Man-style physical comedy.
Fan service is prominent — the back story of the hooded cloak’s powers involves the introduction of characters from various Marvel mythologies. Spoiler consciousness prevents revealing who some cast members, like Sacha Baron Cohen, are playing; one addition that has been made public is the magician and Doctor Strange associate Zelma Stanton (Regan Aliyah).
Setting the tone and underpinning much of the plot, though, are the moral choices Riri must face up to, and the contemporary political and cultural context in which those choices are set. The show, which was created by the screenwriter and poet Chinaka Hodge, is not very successful at elevating those ideas into appealing storytelling the way that Ryan Coogler (an executive producer of the series) was able to do in the first “Black Panther” film.
That might not matter in a short season if Riri herself held our attention, but unfortunately, she, too, is more a set of ideas — about race, gender, place, trauma — than a flesh and blood character. “Ironheart” is supposed to be her coming-of-age story, but we don’t get a clear enough sense of her to be involved in her progress.
And Thorne, in this instance, doesn’t show the kind of range or inventiveness that would invest us in the character independent of the script. She has charisma and expressiveness — she can do a lot with her eyes — but her performance in “Ironheart” feels too tightly wound, too bound by the show’s limited conception of Riri. Around her, Aliyah and Lyric Ross, as Riri’s friend Natalie, look as if they’re having a lot more fun.
Thorne, who is 27, has had only a handful of non-Marvel roles — a tiny part in “If Beale Street Could Talk,” a small part in “Judas and the Black Messiah” and a leading part in a 20-minute segment of the anthology film “Freaky Tales,” in which she gave the sort of relaxed and amusing performance you would like to see in “Ironheart.” Cast five years ago in “Wakanda Forever,” she has spent most of her career in the belly of the Marvel beast, and you can’t help wondering what effect that has had on her growth as an actress. You’d hate to see her get stuck in that iron suit.
Mike Hale is a television critic for The Times. He also writes about online video, film and media.
The post ‘Ironheart’ Review: Marvel Follows Suit appeared first on New York Times.
