Iron Man

[rowyn]

Miscellaneous thoughts on the "Iron Man" film. One sentence review: Good movie, plenty of plot holes, fun anyway, worth seeing in the theatre.



* I never read the Iron Man comics, but all the Marvel titles have some cross-pollination. The only thing I remembered about Tony Stark was that he turned into an alcoholic. The movie remembered this too, which surprised me.
* Obadiah radiated villainy, didn't he? I never heard of him before but I had him pegged as "Bad Guy" from the moment he's shown in the presentation as having run the company for a few years and then handed the reins to Stark. If he'd been a good guy I would've been surprised.
* ZOMG Stark is a jerk. First movie I've seen in a long time where I was rooting for the protagonist not to get the girl. Yes, he's much less of a jerk by the end of the film but I still wouldn't trust him with his own heart, never mind anyone else's.
* The moral of "building weapons to use yourself as a vigilante = good" but "building weapons for your county = bad" struck me as pretty dubious. Still, okay, it's a comic book. Also, no one else tells Stark "You're right, you're doing the right thing."
* This movie needed quite a bit of "okay, it's a comic book". I kept expecting the terminal velocity falls to hurt. I mean, what in that suit was going to do that kind of shock absorbtion? I have no idea why this bothered me and not the 203 other technical impossibilities.
* The humor was good. "You've caught me in way more embarrassing situations than this." The robot with the fire extinguisher. Heh. "I'm being responsible. That's a new direction for me. The company, I mean. The company is being responsible."
* I liked Stark less for being a jerk, and the movie more because he was. The film doesn't make excuses for him being an ass. It's not like a Bond film, where he's a cretin and no one notices. The scene where Rhodes takes him to task for it -- "so when you need your diaper changed, you call me" -- was good. Robert Downey Jr. did a great job with the character, giving him that touch of humor that made him tolerable. You can also tell that most people put up with Stark because he's rich and a genius. It sort of makes me glad not to be a rich genius.
* The cast is too small. This is always a problem in films because they don't have time to develop more than a few characters. But someday I'd like to see a superhero who comes from a big family and has several close friends, instead of an orphan with no friends apart from one or two co-workers. You know, I understand why Stark has no friends but not really why Pepper doesn't. Maybe because all her friends got sick of seeing her give up her life for Stark.
* I liked the agent from SHIELD. No, not Nick Fury: Carl. The small, unobtrusive professional. I want to see Pepper date him in the sequel. I don't know why, I just think that would be funny.
* I enjoyed the fights against the terrorists, especially the second one. I know fights where the protagonist has a clear advantage aren't properly 'gripping' but it was cool to see him mow down the bad guys. Yay hero!
* The showdown against Obi was pretty meh by contrast. I dunno why, exactly.
* Would it have killed the writers to put a little thought into fooling Stark's captors about what he was building? I mean, c'mon, a set of fake plans, a bit of fast-talking about how this piece of armor was really part of the missile, a loop in the videotape so the camera couldn't monitor them live -- something. I know you're not going to make this plausible but it'd've been nice if you'd made some token effort.

Comments

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

I didn't remember anything about the Iron Man comics, beyond Tony Stark's name. Agreed, re: Obadiah, and the "stealing the company" plot has been seen a couple times, most often with Bruce Wayne. He reminded a bit of Dr. Doom from the Fantastic Four as well. I was... more than a little annoyed... that Stark was such a jerk and so successful with women. Guess they were all gold-diggers or something. It would have been nice if the reporter hadn't. It did give him some good lines. It got me wondering if his super power was that he could survive incredible impacts; flipping over a car and face first into a concrete wall should have required at least a bandaid across his nose. I liked the same SHIELD agent, I loved Pepper's "Walk with me, right now" scene near the end. The final fight was a bit 'meh', the anti-terrorist battle was great. I didn't quite understand the point of his heart, and I was hoping for a loop in the video tape as well. I did like the progress bar and building tension.

[rowyn]

Yeah, I could've lived without the gratuitous "gets lots of sex" bit. OTOH, he's only successful in a shallow "scores" sense. Pepper has more sense than to sleep with him and he has no relationships outside of the professional ones. It's a pretty hollow life. Which is the intent, I'm sure.

Agreed re: the test accidents.

Although the suit falling through the roof, the living room, and crashing on top of one of his cars was funny.

Loved the powered armor suit. Gorgeous effects on it, looked great, very snazzy.

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

I did like her conflicted response to him on the balcony, when she was wearing the low-backed dress.

The suit was awesome. The eyes, the flight control surfaces, just how it screwed on. I really liked the HUD-display, and the AI was very cool. The robots were fun, very fun, I had the sense he had a better relationship with them than any person in his life.

I don't know if it showed the paint bubbling and peeling as he flew over his line of cars, I wanted to see that happen.

Obadiah's suit was pretty neat as well, though I felt it shouldn't have had as good an AI. Also: "he's only had it powered up for an hour, how could he possibly have tested all the systems!" I decided later perhaps he'd plugged it into the immense, immovable reactor for them to do the I/O checkout. I had wished there'd been a few scenes like that, a-la Evangelion, where the big suit was tethered via a power cable. It wouldn't have been a very serious threat, and it would have ruined the surprise of its appearance. I absolutely loved "I'm sorry sir, I'm not Tony Stark." (If I _was_ I'd have my own billion dollar weapons company and someone like you I could yell).

[rowyn]

The robots were great, filled the cute-animal role in the film. I d'awww'd when the one servo handed him the case with his old arc reactor in it. :)

Having Obi's suit tethered to the power supply would've been funny.

I liked her reminding him of the evening and the fact that he never came back after he went to get her a drink. Aka: "you're still a jerk, you know?"

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I knew Obadiah was evil, but he was more evil than I expected actually, with the whole 'actually murdering Tony' bit. WTF?

It wasn't weird that Tony got lots of sex from groupies... I mean, that happens for famous people, right? The hostile reporter being one of them was weird though.

I liked all the failed tests. That was really the best part of the movie. >:P

"I don't take damage from falling because my armor has 100 DR." Heeheehee. Well, he didn't actually say that, but that's how I looked at it. Total RPG physics.

[rowyn]

Yeah, since the hostile reporter was the only one showed on-camera it seemed like she was supposed to be "typical" of his conquests. And his line of patter with her would totally not have worked on me. >:P

True, I hadn't expected Obadiah to have hired the terrorists to kill Tony.

I loved him talking to the bot with fire extinguisher. "If you hose me with that thing again and I'm not actually in flames, you're fired. And quit following me around like that, you're making me nervous."

After the second attempt to get the rocket boots to work, I leaned over to Lut and said, "Maybe he should've built the helmet first."

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Actually... didn't he threaten to give it to community college? Teh Horror!

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I should grab Boingdragon and go see this, I guess. };)

[rowyn]

It's a fun movie. :)

[octantis.livejournal.com]

I don't know a lot about Iron Man, so when I saw the movie I actually went back and forth on Obadiah being a villain. When I first saw him, I was like, "He's got to be a bad guy, they're totally setting him up for this," and then he turned out to be really personable, complete with the pizza thing and going, "Okay, well, if you want to go with the arc technology, I'm with you." It made his turn all the more... stark.

Speaking of Stark, I thought the way they handled him was incredible. Yeah, he was a total jerk, but he also oozed charisma. I could see how he got away with so much, and also you could kind of see how he had developed in a socially lopsided way... able to get along with people so well, but only on a superficial level... you saw more of what he was like when he got wrapped up in his tinkering. I thought it was a fascinating contrast with, for example, Bruce Wayne. Both were billed as "billionaire playboys", but while Bruce was good at keeping his cover, he was never comfortable in those shoes, while Tony was the real deal at first. I'm glad he didn't turn completely unjerky at the end, because that's the kind of personality shift that takes time. I appreciate that it was something he's sort of identified and has to wrestle with.

[rowyn]

Yeah, Bruce Wayne/Batman is very different. Where, say, "Spiderman" is an identity formed to protect Peter Parker, "Bruce Wayne" is an identify made to protect Batman.

In general, agreed on the way they handled Stark. Very well done, without making him either totally unlikable or too easy to forgive/quick to reform. The character felt believable, even if the plot often didn't. :)

[octantis.livejournal.com]

See, what should have happened is that Obadiah should have won using the suit that Stark created trying to get rid of all his old weapons. Then he could have been Irony Man.

[foxcutter.livejournal.com]

If memory servers Pepper ends up marring Stark's driver (who was played by the director, maybe looking to get a good kissing scene in a future movie ;)