May 15th, 2008
by Michael Swanberg
I saw “Iron Man” over the weekend and here’s what I thought.
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The Summer movie season is beginning and the first of the potential blockbusters I saw was “Iron Man.” Yet another in a long line of “borrowed” IP remade into a shameless attempt at scoring some fast cash.
But it’s really good! Honestly. I really liked this movie.
I admit, I never read the Iron Man comics when I was younger. I was more of a Superman kind of kid. But I was at least familiar with Iron Man. However, since I am not an expert, I really cannot comment on the accuracy of the movie or how well it upheld the original. But I can say what this movie means to non-experts.
As with most superhero comic movie remakes, this is an “origin story” inasmuch as it details where the hero came from. Robert Downey Jr. is showing that he is an incredible actor, very charming, with superb screen presence. I can’t wait to see him in “Tropic Thunder” later this year. And apparently, according to IMDB, he’s reprising the Tony Stark role in “The Incredible Hulk”. I just hope he can pull his personal life together because it would be a shame to lose his talent to a weakness for drugs and alcohol.
The premise of “Iron Man” is that a brilliant arms manufacturer has a huge crisis of conscience when he realizes that his weapons aren’t always ending up in the good guys’ hands. As such, he pledges that he will use his talents to rid the world of his former products to make the world a little safer and better. Sort of a do-violence-to-stop-violence milieu.
As an origin story, there is considerable time spent on the creation of the Iron Man suit, a suit of high-tech armor that allows Downey’s character to fly, shoot missiles out of his arms and energy blasts out of his palms. They almost spent too much time on the creation of the suit. In fact, he gets the suit working and then goes on his first “mission” to bring some bad guys to justice while destroying the weapons he created which the bad guys acquired. But that’s his only mission before he has to have the big mano-a-mano showdown against the nemesis bad-guy at the end. Personally, I would have loved it if he had gone on several of the originally-intended missions and used the results of each one to fine-tune the suit’s design. But sadly, a huge chunk of the movie was spent on the development and testing of the suit.
Not that that is so horrible. The technology he has is a treat for any true geek to watch. Gleeful giggles of “oh, I gotta’ get me one o’ those!” eeked out of me continuously. And his helper robots that have bits of their own personality (the one that’s on hand for putting out fires, but likes to douse Downey Jr. with a fire extinguisher whether or not there’s a fire, is priceless) are a treat.
In the end, there are basically 3 parts to the movie. The beginning, where he finds his conscience, the middle, where he builds the Iron Man suit, and then end, where he has the showdown with the bad guy. As I say, I would have liked to have seen more.
So, it’s a very good movie. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It wasn’t perfect, no, but it was a lot better than other movies in the same genre (first “Incredible Hulk” I’m looking at you!). I give it 4/5 stars. Definitely a must-see if you’re a geek and are into action films.
