Iron Man

[cinemabon]

IRON MAN – a film by Jon Favreau

***************SPOILERS******************

First of all, let me express my warmest welcome back to Robert Downey, Jr. Sir, it is good to see you up on the screen again. You came through on several key scenes in this film. Again, nicely done, sir. Cudos also to director Jon Favreau, whose previous effort, Zathura, fell with a plop, but his “Elf” soared to Christmas heights. You, sir, have another “Elf” on your hands!

“Iron Man” hits the big screen today with all the popcorn-crunching special effects we’ve come to expect from a big budget superhero movie taken from the pages of Marvel Comics. The film also comes at a time when audiences might be getting tired of Batman, Superman, Spiderman, and the like. I’m certain that Producers Stan Lee and the other dozen on this picture held baited breath today to see if their baby has wings. I hope it does. I thoroughly enjoyed my two plus hours.

“Iron Man” is a departure from the past superhero genre in that it delves into contemporary controversy in the first five minutes of the movie. Tony Stark, a cocky multi-millionaire (aren’t they all) is sipping whiskey, riding in a hummer in a desert location, when his vehicle is hit and he is taken hostage. For nearly the next forty minutes, Tony lives in a cave as a POW in Afghanistan. We discover that Stark makes weapons of mass destruction, and his company is somehow selling them to our army yet also exporting them to our enemies at the same time. The company’s ‘board of directors’ do not care which side buys, only profit matters.
Prior to his capture, we learn Tony lives a secluded wealthy life with a house computer the envy of Bill Gates. His secretary, Pepper Potts (Gwenth Platrow) matches wits with the playboy in being his butler/secretary/assistant. They flirt but keep their friendship a business relationship.

Back in the cave, Tony manages to build a robot, not just any robot, one that can perform super maneuvers, such as creating a blowtorch and withstanding a barrage of bullets. He manages to escape his captures and flees into the desert. His military friend finds him wandering the dunes and brings Tony home. Naturally, he devotes his weapons technology to creating a refined version of the robot he built in the cave. The warmth and humor expressed when Tony builds his creation is the heart of this film and the best part of the movie.

That would be enough for any superhero. Once he has the suit, this one flies back to Afghanistan and intervenes with the slaughter of innocent women and children by an Arab terrorist group (stick in Alqueda). Downey, Jr. carries off several scenes well where directors and special effects must sit idly by and simply let cameras roll while the high paid actor must deliver. Downey, Jr. does just that, more so than Toby Maguire or Christian Bayle do in their beefy superhero suits. Robert brings a level of acting missing in these genre pictures that is welcome by this member of the audience.

Yes this is a comic book story, and yes this is not the serious stuff folks, this just the ‘easy-on-your-eye’ kind of film with no strings or promises attached. Still I found enough tension, plot twists to make it interesting, and worth watching when all you want is a cheeseburger and a coke.

[oscar jubis]

It's the performance and persona of Robert Downey Jr. that puts Iron Man over the bar for me. The little speech at the last press conference in the film applies not only to Stark but also to Mr. Downey Jr.'s career trajectory. The masters-of-war subtext is welcome, and both Paltrow and Bridges do the most with what they're given. A $100 million weekend at the B.O. means there will be a sequel.

[Chris Knipp]

JON FAVREAU: IRON MAN (2008)

The mechanical encrusted on the living, with a a vodka martini

Iron Man is the latest megabuck comic book movie, but though it may be noisy, it’s not crude. There’s a little of James Bond in Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), the brilliant playboy scion of a megabucks American weapons manufacturer . He likes to drink, he likes women, and frankly, up to now, he doesn’t give a damn. On top of that he has wavy hair, a sharp mustache, a nice tan, and a fearsome intellect. His repartee is rapid fire and offhand and only occasionally mimics the delivery of Kevin Spacey. Remember Bond’s blazing Astin Martin? This robotic suit thingy that is going to turn Tony into the "Iron Man" is ultimately some sort of grossly hypertrophied offshoot of the Ian Fleming 007 gadgetry. So are Tony’s fab Malibu pad, private plane, and other playboy accoutrements.

Being a nascent superhero, Tony, the hero of Iron Ma, is due for a reawakening. Visiting Afghanistan, he gets captured by bad guys--and finds out they’re already fully supplied with the very same Stark Technologies weaponry he thought was being reserved to keep America safe and free. Something wrong here.

To keep us guessing about who’s being demonized this time, these nasty dudes tormenting the Afghan populace speak Egyptian Arabic, Dari, Pushtu, Hungarian. . .and after that I lost track. You wonder how they carry out their operations changing languages every five minutes. Naturally their leader eventually turns out to speak perfect English so he can spar verbally with Tony as the need arises. Any resemblance to contemporary geopolitics is purely superficial--and however masked and jazzed up with special effects, still stereotyped.

While held prisoner with a friendly foreign scientist by these multilingual baddies, Tony’s supposed to develop a super-rocket so they can take over the whole region if not the world.

Miraculously (and of course completely implausibly), Tony manages to conceal that he’s not building that rocket at all but engineering a spectacular escape for himself by cobbling together a giant robotic weapons-fitted iron suit out of scraps to blast his way out.

Oh and by the way, Stark’s chest got filled with shrapnel when the baddies captured him, so he’s fitted first with a giant magnet to keep the lethal metal from going to his heart, and then some sort of artificial heart gadget. It’s supposed to be a wonder but we’re not to know how it works. All we know is it gives off a luminous glow. It’s the symbol that Tony himself, who has hitherto lived life only for the pleasure it can give him, has now acquired an ability to care. Eager to set his company straight, he rushes home, flying through the air being one of his suit’s abilities, and after declaring his Stark Weapons Technologies out of the weapons business, begins devising a much more high-tech and sleek version of the robotic suit thing, in red, not iron this time but made of all sorts of miraculous alloys.

With Jeff Bridges as the self-important, boorish, and gradually increasingly villainous Stark Technologies partner Obadiah Stone, and Gwyneth Paltrow as Tony’s faithful girl Friday, the excellent Mr. Downey has top level support--even if Terrence Howard is wasted and too mild as some kind of air force commander allied with the weapons company.

But, cool cast or not, this is still comic book stuff, and the plot is absurd. You might wonder, then, why Iron Man has done so well with adult film critics. Isn’t this just adolescent fare given a mild gloss of adulthood and a heavy extra coat of S/X? Yes; but then you think of how much better this is than the competition, and you understand.

There are two kinds of real fun in Iron Man for those who are patient enough to sit through all the wizard (but pretty generic) explosions and pointless political confusion. One is the dazzling special effects of the private robot suit factory Tony develops after he returns home (he shares his process only with tool-manipulating robots that he handles with witty condescension). This stuff becomes most entertaining when Tony learns how to fly, with some nasty bumps along the way; but for gadget geeks the elegant complexity of the artificial limbs and head and the way they click miraculously onto Tony are equally pleasurable. The other fun thing is to see Bridges and Downey Jr. and Paltrow play off each other. Yes, real people can be enjoyable in a movie too. In fact their presence is what saves this kind of fare from being utterly childish.

It ought to be inexorably comic, since the concept of the robot suit donned by a man is such a literal expression of Bergson’s definition of comedy--"the mechanical encrusted upon the living." Only it isn’t. Nor are obvious, perhaps much too obvious, implications about technology shielding man from his humanity, ever brought to light in this movie. It would be a mistake to condemn something that so clearly trounces the competition, however.

An earlier version on this thread. (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2277)

[Johann]

IRON MAN


This film is absolutely awesome.
Jon Favreau did it.
Damn near perfect.
ILM and Stan Winston are destroying all comers in the SFX department nowadays.
Holy dogshit awesome, that's what Iron Man is.


The sound design is just delicious to the ears- listen to those spent casings hitting the ground, listen to the symphony of weapons fire, the ominous THUDS of Iron Man walking, the righteous flames that he throws from his ingenious, Invincible War Machine. Just beautiful sound on this movie.

It's all guns and lots of thunder. Great summer blockbuster shit.

Robert Downey Jr. is amazing as Tony Stark, the weapons mogul executive who becomes a fighting man out of necessity.
He's smart, talented, self-conscious and self-made.
Who better than Downey to give us these traits?
Back in Black.
Yes indeed.

The main appeal of this one to me is the believability factor.
There's some techno/sfx geniuses working at ILM, Man.
Iron Mans' ergonomics are amazing. He's got his own little batcave with support services, he's got advanced circuitry with Tesla-like ingenuity at his fingertips, and he renders The Rocketeer an obsolete joke. Remember "The Rocketeer" from 1990? Ha Ha. THIS is the fucking Rocketeer folks.
Just awesome simulations of what it would be like in a Titanium Alloy suit that has stealth capabilities. Oh the Magic of Movies....


Not much else to say about this one.
It's just fuckin' BOSS. Period.
Everyone who worked on it can be very proud.
You've done the comic book (and Stan Lee & Jack Kirby) very very proud. Just a real treat to sit in front of.

Thank you Jon Favreau and crews.
Box office smash for a reason.
Keep cranking 'em out like this.
Fans will go everytime.

[Chris Knipp]

Great summer blockbuster shit is indeed what it is. It's a good thing Robert Downey Jr. is in it. The cast is good and not wasted. Even Ms. Paltrow in a self-effacing role has presence. Still there are limits to how much I respond to such things. They all come out of the same factory, it's just that some are high end and others low end. This is high end. The Fall doesn't come from a factory. It's more independently hand-crafted and personally conceived.

Now for a chaser after Iron Man maybe we need to see John Cusack's War, Inc. I could have seen it yesterday but didn't feel like it because it is too hot in NYC and I'm busy with the Italian film series. I don't think War, Inc. is currently showing in in Vancouver. Is it? Is that where you are?

[tabuno]

While Iron Man nudges the emotional and serious side of superhero theatrical endeavors, there's still more to come. The Hulk is a good example of that. Even Spiderman is more accesssible to the "everyman" with Tobey Maguire as an ordinary young man who must deal with a frighteningly special ability. Even the television series Heroes takes the special hero concept to more elevated and thought-provoking levels than Iron Man . So while I enjoyed Iron Man and its special effects and the talented persona of Robert Downey Jr., the movie itself didn't really set a new standard, at least one that really matters cinematically speaking.

[Chris Knipp]

It might amuse you to read the satire by George Saunders about superheroes and special powers in the recent New Yorker.


http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2008/06/23/080623sh_shouts_saunders