What a way to
start the summer movie season!
No, Jon
Favreau’s Iron Man is not a masterpiece—nor is it even
one of the best comic-book adaptations ever made—but it
represents the first time I’ve had unadulterated, big-budget fun
at a cinema since… well, last summer. The movie represents
exactly what a summer release should: loud and spectacular
entertainment that makes a point of remaining cohesive and
involving despite its enormousness. With Iron Man, Favreu
has tackled a Herculean project and, in the process, has given
birth to the next big Marvel Franchise. Drawing from a script
penned by four incredibly talented screenwriters (Mark Fergus,
Hank Ostby, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway), the
up-until-now-underwhelming filmmaker manages to contemporize a
story that was created forty years ago beyond all expectations.
He turns a simple premise about a man who builds a powerful iron
suit out of desperation into a commentary on corporate honesty,
the beginning of an epic love-story that will develop in future
films, and an eye-popping showcase of modern CGI. I wasn’t the
only one sitting back in my seat during the screening and
repeatedly whispering the words holy crapoly to myself.
It is, of
course, a bit dismissive of me to direct all of my praise of the
film towards Favreau, who is hardly the sole auteur of
the project. Lead-actor Robert Downey Jr. deserves equal credit
for capturing the full sardonic glory of defense-contractor
protagonist Tony Stark. From the first scene in which his
character self-indulgently poses for a photo-op in a
military-tanker leaving the Middle-Eastern test-site of his
company’s latest cave-busting missile, Downey magnetically
becomes the darkly funny Stark. He flips his biting humor
into mad-vigorousness seamlessly, too, when Stark’s convoy is
hit minutes-later by one of his own weapons, leaving him
captured by insurgents who want him to construct the
tested-missile out of scrap-metal. There frankly isn’t a scene
in which the actor skips a beat; he continues to press for
brilliance in fresh and challenging ways when the plan
expectedly turns into an opportunity for Stark to fool his
captors and build the titular Iron Man suit, bursting out of
imprisonment in epic fashion. And when moral-dilemma hits when
Stark finally returns home and realizes what his weapons are
capable of, Downey tackles the unthinkable task of turning the
caricature into a real guy coming to terms with his
controversial achievements. This all goes without saying that
he’s also darn cool when he’s saving the world sporting the
suit, which he perfects in his lab upon return.
If my summary
of the film seems scattershot, that’s because it is. Iron Man
is not the kind of movie that is worth explaining in complete
detail because, after all, it’s full of all of the mythology and
geeky intricacies that the majority of comic-book-adaptations
are. Unlike Christopher Nolan’s polar-opposite DC-spawn,
Batman Begins, this is very much a film that embraces its
catoonish roots and runs with them. (However, that’s not to say
that it can’t be taken completely seriously in the process.)
Iron Man is all about the moments that the individual viewer
finds cool, and the hackneyed chain of events and
abstractions listed above represent exactly this for me.
The one
story-thread of note that I hinted at enjoying but haven’t
elaborated on yet, however, is the wonderful romance experienced
between Stark and his longtime personal assistant, Pepper Potts
(a gorgeous, illuminating Gwyneth Paltrow). The scenes that Tony
and Pepper share together ooze of sensuous longing—they some of
the best relationship-based passages I’ve seen in any
movie this year—despite the fact that the two are never granted
a glamorized kiss or scene of unfiltered passion. Their
interaction is much subtler than one might expect, with an
absolutely extraordinary scene arriving in the film’s second-act
that, in its seductive restraint, is as good (if not better)
than any of the action the film offers.
While I have
spent the bulk of this review praising Iron Man, there is
one area in which the movie suffers obligatory problems: its
trivial climax. Given the fact that the film basically functions
as a setup-piece for a grander series, one gets the feeling that
Favreau and the screenwriters didn’t even want to give the film
its own villain and traditional narrative arc. Unfortunately,
genre-conventions clearly prevailed and they surrendered to
triviality in this area. The aforementioned villain comes in the
form of Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), Stark’s company-partner
who may have been responsible for conducting one of many
underground deals responsible for the ownership of the weapon
that put Stark in his initial predicament. Because of his shady
dealings, Obadiah finds himself expectedly angry when Stark
announces his decision to halt the corporation’s
weapons-production after realizing the harm that it has done,
vying to take matters into his own hands. And when he gets wind
of Tony’s Iron creation, Obadiah commissions one of his own in
order to fight to keep his corrupt business-ventures afloat.
Iron Man reaches the aforementioned climax when the two men
battle—as Iron Man and Iron Monger, respectively—and the scene
predictably feels dry, manufactured, and all-too-convenient. As
necessary as they may have been in getting studio-approval on an
otherwise unique, chancy superhero movie, the scene and its
background break the tempo of the tone and themes that Favreau
works so hard to develop throughout the film’s duration.
Nonetheless, they represent small disappointments in a grandly
exciting motion picture. On the whole, Iron Man is the
rare comic-book movie deserving of all the accolades and
box-office-revenues that it musters up, certainly one that will
see a long string of anticipated sequels in the years to come.
-Danny Baldwin,
Bucket Reviews
Review Published
on: 5.3.2008
Screened on:
5.1.2008 at the ArcLight Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, CA.
Iron Man is rated PG-13 and runs 126
minutes.
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