Iron Man «««
PG-13, 126m. 2008
Cast & Credits: Robert Downey Jr (Tony Stark/Iron Man), Terrence Howard (Jim Rhodes), Jeff Bridges (Obadiah Stone/Iron Monger), Gwyneth Paltrow (Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts), Leslie Bibb (Christine Everhart), Shaun Toub (Yinsen), Faran Tahir (Raza). Screenplay by Mark Fergus, Matt Holloway, Art Marcum, and Hawk Ostby based on characters created by Stan Lee, Don Heck, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby. Directed by Jon Favreau.
A few minutes after the credits rolled at the conclusion of Iron Man was a brief scene that lasted about a minute. The much talked about final shot was discussed on various websites hours after the film’s premiere May 3, 2008. The websites, however, didn’t give away what happened. All that was said on a couple of the sites I visited was something to the extent of “be sure to stick around through the credits.”
I saw Iron Man on a Monday afternoon, three days after its successful $100 million box office debut, so I had known already about that “final shot.” More than a handful of people in the theater with me, however, it seems did not as they all filed out as the credits rolled. One of the ushers told several individuals to stick around through the credits. Not many did. Other than myself, it was only two other guys, possibly slightly younger than me who waited.
Then came that much talked about final scene. Unless the internet already gave away what happens, I won’t divulge the shot’s secrets except to say the scene predictably paves the way for another movie franchise in Marvel Comics library of superhero characters. The shot didn’t leave me salivating the way I am sure fans of the Iron Man comic books reacted opening weekend inside packed movie houses. I could just hear the ghostly sounds of “ooohs” and “ahhs” throughout the empty auditorium.
The other two individuals it seemed were not so impressed either. One of them commented the usher could have just told them what happens as though they just wasted two minutes of their precious time.
I open my review with that reaction because it not only explains the attitude of those two but how I not only feel about all these multi-million dollar superhero adaptations headed to the big screen the next few years, but about a majority of comic book movie franchises past.
Let’s be honest. The big screen adaptations of Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider and the Spider-Man and X-Men trilogies are made for fans of the classic characters created by Marvel Comics. They aren’t made for non-fans like myself who not once opened up a 30 page Iron Man comic book. The closest thing to comic books I ever read was if it was spawned from blockbuster movies and television shows like Indiana Jones, Star Trek and Star Wars.
It’s the fans, a great of majority of who likely attend comic book and science fiction conventions, who demand perfection when Hollywood decides to bring their favorite superhero to the big screen in hopes of creating a promising franchise. When the project fails, or perhaps stalls in a holding pattern, as has been the case with the Fantastic Four movies (2005 and 2007) and Hulk (2003), the critical reaction from fans, not to mention the box office figures is catastrophic.
I found what made the Spider-Man (2002-2007) and X-Men (2000-2006) franchises work was not the visual effects eye candy, which Iron Man, has plenty of, given its $180 million budget. I wasn’t surprised to see “Iron Man” outrun a couple air force fighter jets and damaging one by accident. The final battle sequence where the hero in all his red and yellow metallic glory is seen battling another iron clad villain reminded me of a similar climax in Robocop 2 (1990) between two mechanical metallic characters.
Iron Man's storyline is as formulaic and predictable as most every other origin story from Marvel Comics that’s been brought to the big screen to date. The life change Iron Man’s billionaire military industrialist playboy Tony Stark goes through, as played enjoyably by Robert Downey Jr. is not much different from the venomous spider bite that gave Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker the ability to spin webs, crawl alongside skyscrapers and fly through the air swinging from web to web like he is Tarzan.
“I should be dead already,” Stark says upon his near-death experience in Afghanistan after escaping from terrorists who want him to build a missile. “It must be for a reason. I just finally know what I have to do.”
That line reminded me of the one Uncle Ben told Peter Parker in Spider-Man (2002).
“With great power comes great responsibility,” he said.
As for making the villains into challenging adversaries for the hero and whether or not they prevail, I am reminded of the comment Peter Finch’s “Mad Prophet of the Airwaves” Howard Beale said in Network (1976).
“No matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry: just look at your watch -- at the end of the hour, he's going to win,” Beale said.
You can practically set your watch with these superhero movies, in particular the ones from Marvel Comics’ publications, and know that one, it’s a good bet the franchise’s creator Stan Lee will make a cameo appearance (no longer a surprise) and two, in the final ten minutes or so, the hero will emerge victorious. The same applies to Iron Man.
What makes the film work, much like the Spider-Man and X-Men movies before it is the lead character, thanks in part largely to Downey who looks as though he hasn’t had this much fun making a film in years. Of course, it helps when you are a fan of the character you are playing. Downey is and has openly admitted that if given the chance, he’d make 15 Iron Man movies. It also helps when the director, in this case Jon Favreau and the screenwriters are in favor of staying faithful to the original source material.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this series lasted beyond the possible planned installments of two or three. If the James Bond franchise can continue for forty years with no end in sight, then why not have ten or more Iron Man movies?
Downey’s Stark is like a 21st century James Bond who drives around in fast cars, is always seen at public events impeccably dressed and sleeps with several women he meets but can’t quite remember their names afterwards. When it comes to designing military fighting technology, in particular, his own suit of armor, he doesn’t need a weapons expert like the one Bond had named Q. Of course, not all the weapons Q and his department designed passed the test stage. By comparison, it takes Stark several tries to get his suit of armor working correctly, at times damaging some of his most expensive sports cars and taking out a few floors of his personal home and laboratory.
“Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk,” Stark says.
He is James Bond and Q rolled into one.
Whereas Bond had a secretary, Stark has his own Miss Moneypenny in the form of Gwyneth Paltrow’s leggy high heeled Virginia “Pepper” Potts, who does everything for her employer which includes in reference to the women Stark sleeps with, “taking out the trash.”
Iron Man is a good superhero movie, but not a great one. The best superhero films were the ones that didn’t feel like they were adaptations and made us believe they took place in real time like Superman: The Movie (1978) and Batman Begins (2005). What I want though from these adaptations is a psychotic villain who could almost successfully pull off defeating the hero the way Gene Hackman’s and Kevin Spacey’s Lex Luthor and the trio of super criminals in Superman II (1981) tried when they battled the Man of Steel.
Or have a psychological connection between the villain and the hero where something traumatic happens in both their lives that turns them into something else; one chooses to fight for good, the other evil. That notion was briefly explored in the first Batman film in 1989 between Michael Keaton’s Caped Crusader and Jack Nicholson’s Joker. I have a feeling that same relationship may even be further explored in The Dark Knight (2008) thanks to the late Heath Ledger’s final performance in his own twisted rendition of Nicholson’s classic character.
Iron Man at least takes that first step into making us realize the lead character is not as invulnerable as we’d like to think. After Paltrow’s Pepper pulls out a failing mechanical device from her employer’s chest that helps keep metallic shrapnel from entering his heart and replacing it with a new one, Stark says she is the only friend he has.
Downey’s Iron Man could go down as the first big screen superhero with a frail vulnerable side; a flying, walking, talking, weapons firing technological tin man with a heart.
©5/7/08
PG-13, 126m. 2008
Cast & Credits: Robert Downey Jr (Tony Stark/Iron Man), Terrence Howard (Jim Rhodes), Jeff Bridges (Obadiah Stone/Iron Monger), Gwyneth Paltrow (Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts), Leslie Bibb (Christine Everhart), Shaun Toub (Yinsen), Faran Tahir (Raza). Screenplay by Mark Fergus, Matt Holloway, Art Marcum, and Hawk Ostby based on characters created by Stan Lee, Don Heck, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby. Directed by Jon Favreau.
I saw Iron Man on a Monday afternoon, three days after its successful $100 million box office debut, so I had known already about that “final shot.” More than a handful of people in the theater with me, however, it seems did not as they all filed out as the credits rolled. One of the ushers told several individuals to stick around through the credits. Not many did. Other than myself, it was only two other guys, possibly slightly younger than me who waited.
Then came that much talked about final scene. Unless the internet already gave away what happens, I won’t divulge the shot’s secrets except to say the scene predictably paves the way for another movie franchise in Marvel Comics library of superhero characters. The shot didn’t leave me salivating the way I am sure fans of the Iron Man comic books reacted opening weekend inside packed movie houses. I could just hear the ghostly sounds of “ooohs” and “ahhs” throughout the empty auditorium.
The other two individuals it seemed were not so impressed either. One of them commented the usher could have just told them what happens as though they just wasted two minutes of their precious time.
I open my review with that reaction because it not only explains the attitude of those two but how I not only feel about all these multi-million dollar superhero adaptations headed to the big screen the next few years, but about a majority of comic book movie franchises past.
Let’s be honest. The big screen adaptations of Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider and the Spider-Man and X-Men trilogies are made for fans of the classic characters created by Marvel Comics. They aren’t made for non-fans like myself who not once opened up a 30 page Iron Man comic book. The closest thing to comic books I ever read was if it was spawned from blockbuster movies and television shows like Indiana Jones, Star Trek and Star Wars.
It’s the fans, a great of majority of who likely attend comic book and science fiction conventions, who demand perfection when Hollywood decides to bring their favorite superhero to the big screen in hopes of creating a promising franchise. When the project fails, or perhaps stalls in a holding pattern, as has been the case with the Fantastic Four movies (2005 and 2007) and Hulk (2003), the critical reaction from fans, not to mention the box office figures is catastrophic.
I found what made the Spider-Man (2002-2007) and X-Men (2000-2006) franchises work was not the visual effects eye candy, which Iron Man, has plenty of, given its $180 million budget. I wasn’t surprised to see “Iron Man” outrun a couple air force fighter jets and damaging one by accident. The final battle sequence where the hero in all his red and yellow metallic glory is seen battling another iron clad villain reminded me of a similar climax in Robocop 2 (1990) between two mechanical metallic characters.
Iron Man's storyline is as formulaic and predictable as most every other origin story from Marvel Comics that’s been brought to the big screen to date. The life change Iron Man’s billionaire military industrialist playboy Tony Stark goes through, as played enjoyably by Robert Downey Jr. is not much different from the venomous spider bite that gave Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker the ability to spin webs, crawl alongside skyscrapers and fly through the air swinging from web to web like he is Tarzan.
“I should be dead already,” Stark says upon his near-death experience in Afghanistan after escaping from terrorists who want him to build a missile. “It must be for a reason. I just finally know what I have to do.”
That line reminded me of the one Uncle Ben told Peter Parker in Spider-Man (2002).
“With great power comes great responsibility,” he said.
As for making the villains into challenging adversaries for the hero and whether or not they prevail, I am reminded of the comment Peter Finch’s “Mad Prophet of the Airwaves” Howard Beale said in Network (1976).
“No matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry: just look at your watch -- at the end of the hour, he's going to win,” Beale said.
You can practically set your watch with these superhero movies, in particular the ones from Marvel Comics’ publications, and know that one, it’s a good bet the franchise’s creator Stan Lee will make a cameo appearance (no longer a surprise) and two, in the final ten minutes or so, the hero will emerge victorious. The same applies to Iron Man.
What makes the film work, much like the Spider-Man and X-Men movies before it is the lead character, thanks in part largely to Downey who looks as though he hasn’t had this much fun making a film in years. Of course, it helps when you are a fan of the character you are playing. Downey is and has openly admitted that if given the chance, he’d make 15 Iron Man movies. It also helps when the director, in this case Jon Favreau and the screenwriters are in favor of staying faithful to the original source material.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this series lasted beyond the possible planned installments of two or three. If the James Bond franchise can continue for forty years with no end in sight, then why not have ten or more Iron Man movies?
Downey’s Stark is like a 21st century James Bond who drives around in fast cars, is always seen at public events impeccably dressed and sleeps with several women he meets but can’t quite remember their names afterwards. When it comes to designing military fighting technology, in particular, his own suit of armor, he doesn’t need a weapons expert like the one Bond had named Q. Of course, not all the weapons Q and his department designed passed the test stage. By comparison, it takes Stark several tries to get his suit of armor working correctly, at times damaging some of his most expensive sports cars and taking out a few floors of his personal home and laboratory.
“Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk,” Stark says.
He is James Bond and Q rolled into one.
Whereas Bond had a secretary, Stark has his own Miss Moneypenny in the form of Gwyneth Paltrow’s leggy high heeled Virginia “Pepper” Potts, who does everything for her employer which includes in reference to the women Stark sleeps with, “taking out the trash.”
Iron Man is a good superhero movie, but not a great one. The best superhero films were the ones that didn’t feel like they were adaptations and made us believe they took place in real time like Superman: The Movie (1978) and Batman Begins (2005). What I want though from these adaptations is a psychotic villain who could almost successfully pull off defeating the hero the way Gene Hackman’s and Kevin Spacey’s Lex Luthor and the trio of super criminals in Superman II (1981) tried when they battled the Man of Steel.
Or have a psychological connection between the villain and the hero where something traumatic happens in both their lives that turns them into something else; one chooses to fight for good, the other evil. That notion was briefly explored in the first Batman film in 1989 between Michael Keaton’s Caped Crusader and Jack Nicholson’s Joker. I have a feeling that same relationship may even be further explored in The Dark Knight (2008) thanks to the late Heath Ledger’s final performance in his own twisted rendition of Nicholson’s classic character.
Iron Man at least takes that first step into making us realize the lead character is not as invulnerable as we’d like to think. After Paltrow’s Pepper pulls out a failing mechanical device from her employer’s chest that helps keep metallic shrapnel from entering his heart and replacing it with a new one, Stark says she is the only friend he has.
Downey’s Iron Man could go down as the first big screen superhero with a frail vulnerable side; a flying, walking, talking, weapons firing technological tin man with a heart.
©5/7/08
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