I was looking forward to three movies this spring. Jumper managed to make unwatchable a thoroughly readable series of books (well two thirds of the Jumper series is, the movie-inspired third one is bad). 10,000 BC managed to screw up Mastadons and Sabre-toothed Tigers fer gawdsakes! Which left me worried immensely about Iron Man, the third of my anticipated movies.
Some early reviews were so-so. The NON-comic book geek reviewers were predicting big opening week box office, without much multiple viewing or appeal to the general public, which is what drives these mega-hits these days.
Well, (the raspberry sound) to them! Iron Man is a certified hit.
It's a good movie with very little to complain about. Yet, you know I will, so bear with me.
What's right about this movie is its ability to swipe the better parts out of action movies from the past and meld them into a delightful melange of pretty cliches. Let's start with the obvious, it's The Transformers movie without the mistakes of Michael Bay's directorial effort from last year. Big robots clanging off each other in a fight to the rust-bucket, tend to look alike. So, don't spend a lot of time doing it. And the Iron Man-Big Baddie fight IS mercifully short in duration. There's no problem telling the good guy and bad guy apart and that's something to be thankful for too. (Yes, I KNOW they're not ROBOTS in Iron Man).
The shot from the commercial for the movie where Iron Man takes out a tank, walking into the camera while the world explodes behind him is standard footage. Still brought a murmur of contentment from the crowd I saw the movie with.
But the real secret to Iron Man's success is moving away from the source material and suffusing the workaholic/alcoholic Tony Stark with a healthy dose of Spider-Man humour and humanity. To check my recollections, I went back and read the first three years' worth of Iron Man comics from Tales of Suspense, published 1963-1965. Not so many jokes. Stan Lee, the originator of both characters, wrote them differently (SHOCK!!!!). Tony Stark, back then, was just plain driven to invent. He didn't interact all that well, although he did pine for Pepper Potts. All super-heroes had to pine for SOMEONE afterall! He just never did anything more than do the poor-me thing for a panel and then get back to inventing.
Nope, giving Tony Stark a sourpuss rich playboy demeanour would have killed this movie. Instead, Robert Downey Jr. turned Tony Stark into Peter Parker without the radioactive spider acquaintance and money problems. It's an entertaining fit. Between visits to the clink and rehab clinic, Downey Jr. continues to produce entertaining performance after performance. He's money in the bank.
So, we have action and humour, good supporting turns by Jeff Bridges as scene-munching Obidiah Stane (a baaaaad man) and Terrence Howard (James Rhodes) and okay work from Gwyneth Paltrow and director Jon Favreau, who play future couple Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan.
I understand the latter three all had scenes left on the cutting room floor, in order to get down to the roughly two-hour running time and to focus in on Downey Jr.
There's apparently a three-movie deal out there, so one of the two remaining movies will focus in on Howard's Rhodes, who gets to tug on the armour and become War Machine. I'm all right with that. The third movie allegedly deals with The Mandarin. I hope I'm wrong about that. The better movement would be to have Rhodes/War Machine do something with Stark against either the Crimson Dynamo or Titanium Man, both power-suited adversaries from Cold War Communist countries. My guess, it will be Titanium Man with an Arab at the controls. The seeds are certainly there from the first movie. If they do a take-off on the third-year story from the comic book, then Rhodes can arrive in time to save an Iron Man, who's down and out, after battling Titanium Man before a world-wide audience. The third movie would then be a rehash of the Armour Wars, wherein Stark tries to get back all the various armour suits that are out there and based on his technology. I could live with that.
Sooooo, what are the nits? Stane dunkirks Stark at home, obviously hours after Potts found out Stane is a REAAAAAL BAAAAAD guy. She did go off with a SHIELD agent upon leaving Stane, but she couldn't make ONE phone call to alert Stark to be on the lookout for Stane? Then, there's Stane's expertise in handling a power suit first time out. Just not believable. And the explosion going straight up, rather than up AND out, beggars physics. I think replacing Jeeves with a mechanical robot was a mistake. After you see the movie, imagine a stoic Jeeves with a fire extinguisher at the ready and being told no. No. NO! Then doing it. 'Sorry, sir!" he would add.
And lastly, the added scene after the credits was nice. BUT torturing us with TEN minutes of credits to get to it was just cruel and unusual. Surely, there had to be a better compromise. I think about ten of the people who watched it with me, knew to stay, even when every nerve and fibre in my being was yelling, ENOUGH! LET ME OUT OF HERE!
Hoped you liked it as much as me.
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