REVIEW: Iron Man

Marvel movies seem like a fad to me, another go-around of the same train we were riding after 1989 gave us Tim Burton’s Batman, just this time with a different company leading the helm. Sure, great stuff gets made (X-Men, Spider-Man, Daredevil) and some bad stuff gets made (Hulk), but to me it seems like Marvel is willing to let Hollywood borrow its characters, kinda like someone letting you borrow your car, with the distinct difference that when Hollywood totals a franchise (again, Hulk), Marvel can still fall back on the established market of the comic books.

My griping aside, the next stop on the Marvel Train is Iron Man, a second-tier character for the House of Ideas that over the years has grown into a fan favorite due to its flawed, alcoholic, bum-ticker lead character Tony Stark. I will admit to being not interested in the Iron Man franchise one tiny little bit, outside of Stark’s involvement with Marvel’s Civil War. So when I heard that they were adapting Iron Man to the screen, my reaction was a resounding “eh”. I fully agreed with the casting of Robert Downey, Jr. as Mr. Stark – to me it was like asking Christopher Lloyd to play crazy – and I went about my days not interested in the development of the movie. This all changed when I saw the promos.

The film looked beautiful, like a shiny new Lamborghini, and I enjoyed the comedic tone of the trailer. But anyone who knows cars knows that Lamborghinis, while being beautiful machines, are incredibly difficult to drive. I felt the same way about Iron Man during the preview stage. It seemed like they were trying to cram a lot into the film. You had to set up Tony Stark, have him be captured, build the first Iron Man suit, build the second Iron Man suit, build the third Iron Man suit, and fight a villain which needed his own setup all while seeming like its not marching to the tune of a drill sergeant’s command. As the weeks past, I waited to see how Jon Favareu was going to pull this off.

Friends and loyal readers, Iron Man is a lot of fun.

The great thing about Iron Man is that it knows exactly what it is, and performs up to those expectations. The film starts off with the kick-ass riff from AC/DC’s “Back in Black”, and it sets the tone for the rest of your two hours. Bigger than life, in-your-face, and a rockin’ good time. It’s not even five minutes into the film before we get our first huge explosion, and while Favareu choses not to take us down Schwartzenegger territory, there is more than enough pyro, gunfire, and mech-on-mech action to satisfy the average popcorn moviegoer. The special effects are amazing, and the pace rarely slows down. But if you want more than just a shiny coat of paint on your film, we may be getting onto thin-ice. However, unlike most balls-out action films, this one might have some substance to it.

Obviously, it’s Robert Downey, Jr.’s show. His Tony Stark doesn’t have a whole lot of demons, but is instantly identifiable as a character we’d like to be around. He’s the sort of guy who could capture an entire room with a smile and hold it until he was blue in the face. We open with Stark cracking jokes to the team of camouflage-wearing redshirts whose untimely snuffing on the battlefield sets the plot in motion, and sure enough, the first thing we see of Stark is his hand holding some sort of alcoholic beverage. I thought I had as I was leaving the theater was that if Liam Neeson in Schindler’s List was a superhero, it’d be Tony Stark. The man drinks like a fish and has more tail than a tree monkey. But beyond the obvious playboy characterization, Stark is the heir of a huge weapons corporation and gets his obsession with weaponry and power from his father, who worked on the Manhattan Project. After an incident with some Middle East radicals and seeing who exactly is buying his weapons, Stark has a change of heart and spends the rest of the film building what will become Iron Man.

I thought the character arc was a bit stock: a business man comes down out of his ivory tower to see life on the ground floor, and the screenplay missed out on a great opportunity for pathos and character motivation. If you’re wondering what that blue, glowing thingy on Tony’s chest is in all the previews, it’s essentially an electromagnet that is keeping shrapnel from burrowing into his body and killing him. Thus, technology is keeping him alive, and every moment is precious because he’s operating on an unsure timetable. But the script favors a more “external” source of Tony’s character development. It doesn’t detract from the film as a whole, which I will get into in a bit.

Leading the supporting cast is Terrance Howard as Jim Rhodes, a military man and the closest thing Tony has to a best friend. I have to say that Howard’s work is, in a word, brilliant. He does a great job breathing life into a character that is, for the most part, lifeless. He exists as Tony’s friend and a view of the outside world upon him. Period. But Howard gets into the character and makes him likeable, almost disappearing into the role. There comes a scene in the film where Iron Man is under attack by two F-16s, under command of the army. Rhodes is naturally there, and carries on a conversation with Tony Stark over the phone, while simultaneously working with people that are trying to shoot Tony out of the sky. It’s probably not the best scene in his career, but it’s a highlight of this film. Rounding out the supporting characters are Gwyneth Paltrow as “Pepper” Potts, Stark’s personal assistant and Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane, the connection between Stark Industries and Tony Stark himself. Bridges looks a hell of a lot different than he did in previous years, and no matter how seriously I tried to take him as a villain, I always flashed back to his work in The Fisher King or The Big Lebowski. That’s probably just me, though.

The best thing about this film is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. You can look at X-Men as a study of the outsider in contemporary culture and Spider-Man as the story of a teenager gaining courage, but Iron Man doesn’t have that kind of thematic depth. What it does have is a very good sense of humor about itself. I take, for instance, a scene where Stark tries out his hover technology for the first time. He says very clearly that he’s not sure what’s going to happen, and will start out at 10%. If you know comedy like I think I know it, there’s no question what’s going to happen next, yet the way it was executed still got a laugh from everyone in the theater. Gags are plentiful throughout the film, at times making light of the absurdity of the situation. Yet the film doesn’t become a parody of itself. In a way it becomes similar to Raiders of the Lost Ark: an action-adventure with a sense of humor. I enjoyed the sense of humor, because it felt like the film wasn’t trying to do something it wasn’t going to be good at anyways. And it distanced Iron Man from other superhero movies, which may have a joke or two to lighten the mood, but are ultimately straight-faced and dour.

The film is not without its flaws, though. As I mentioned before, if you’re not looking to be simply entertained at this film, I’d seriously re-think your weekend plans. But beyond that, there are some huge leaps of faith you have to accept in order to not burst out laughing at what’s going on. You can buy all the characters as being authentic, but there comes a point where with heroes like Batman or Iron Man who have an unlimited amount of resources, you begin to hit technological critical mass. In other words, there comes a point where it seems that someone has too much technology at their disposal. The credibility also takes a hit when it comes to some properties of physics. I can accept the Iron Man suit with no problems, but when Iron Man can collide with and rip off the wing of an F-16 and still walk around, I start to get epileptic seizures. Any other human being who did that would either be killed instantly or turned into Stephen Hawking but without the intellect. A side effect from this is what I call “Superman Syndrome.” It’s present among many costumed superheroes when they’re essentially invincible. The Iron Man suit is like Batman’s utility belt or a magician’s hat: it can hold or do anything at any time, depending on the context. Not only that, but it can take a 50 caliber machine gun round and shrug it off like a mosquito bite. As a result, some of the tension of the battles is lost because you can tell that Tony Stark with that suit could decimate an entire army easily. There was a point earlier on in the film where some rogue gunmen found weak spots in the armor and were able to momentarily incapacitate Iron Man. I love that kind of crap! It makes every battle a struggle because, as we all know, technology has a tendency to fail us when we need it the most. For the record, though, I didn’t hear anyone either in my party or the entire theater complain.

The rest of my critiques are nitpicky stuff. For example, I thought that Tony Stark’s transition from doubting war-monger to armed defender of the people felt quick. I also felt that the character of Obadiah Stane could’ve used some more development. He didn’t seem like a “Stan Lee villain”, or a bad guy who has a justifiable point of view that leads to his villainy, like Magneto or Harry Osborn. Finally, the ending seemed a bit rushed, but those are just my opinions. With the exception of the Obadiah remark, I can live with everything else in the film.

Final Verdict: 4 and a half Black Sabbath song references out of 5

Iron Man signals the official start of the Summer Movie Season, where Hollywood puts out its biggest hitters. This movie certainly isn’t The Godfather or something that film theorists are going to be analyzing and gabbing about until Armageddon collectively shuts them up, but for my money and for yours, too, this isn’t a bad way to spend an evening. And for Marvel, I’m not hopping off the train just yet. Next stop: Incredible Hulk!

UPDATE: Some may notice that the score (previously a three) has changed. Iron Man has been promoted into my pantheon of “favorite films.” It’s a film that knows no context; I could put it on at any time no matter what’s going on in my life or in the world and I’d still have fun watching it. The three I’d bestowed upon it right after coming home from the theater felt a tad bit harsh after spending months riding the Blu-ray like a toy horse.