Review: Iron Man
I had pretty high hopes going into this movie, originally I was skeptical of Robert Downey for the part but the trailers immediately reversed my opinion and I went from eh to pretty psyched about it. And it doesn’t disappoint. The executive summary is I give it a 9, maybe just under a 9 on the felix scale of 0-10. Totally entertaining. I don’t think any spoilers follow, but who knows…
I mean really, many, many minutes of screen time devoted to showing schematics and computer screens and welding somehow remained totally interesting. I mean, if this was the 80’s, probably about 1/3 of the movie would have been stripped out into a 3 minute music montage, but no, in this one it was shown in it’s full nerdy glory and it totally worked. RDJ played Tony Stark really well, while I wasn’t a huge Iron Man reader back in the day (I was too busy rocking the Sectaurs, Power Pack and Dazzler) I really had forgotten his playboy/alcoholic aspect - but fortunately Marvel didn’t.
The CG was quite good - I think they had a much easier time of it than most, since he’s mostly just flying and not really a lot of unusual motion, as opposed to say… Spiderman where he’s all wierd looking and the CG of him shows some wierd physics happening. And the suits all look good, from the Mark I to the Mark II and the bad guy suit. I mean, they look good and I’m so glad they started with that Mark I - so awesome.
Ultimiately it’s small story with a small cast of main characters and that’s why it works, it’s just about Tony Stark and, more or less, his personal growth from playboy to caped crusader (but just without the cape). Sure it doesn’t hurt that it features Stan Lee in his Hef persona, and it doesn’t hurt that Gwyneth or Leslie (of Skulls fame!) are in the movie, but RDJ’s 90% of the screen time. It isn’t overly preachy, not overly anything (except kick ass), just right. Oh and it’s worth staying through the credits to see the little clip at the end. Or if you already missed it and want to see a handycam version of the clip you can just check out io9.
You see it already? What’d you think?
May 5th, 2008 at 12:32 am
Thanks for linking to the after-credits clip. i wanted to wait for it in the theater but nature demanded a hasty departure. Is it true that Ben cried at the end?
Also, Welcome back.
May 5th, 2008 at 5:50 am
[...] Review: Iron Man older [...]
May 5th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
I liked the movie but a few things bothered me. One was the whole plot of him fighting another larger version of him. Lame, everyone is doing that, leave that to the Hulk which is obviously doomed. (better get another fight club in there someplace ed) If he had to fight other suits a better plot would have been him fighting a small army of more primitive suits built by the terrorists. I don’t know I just felt like it was a cop out.
Another beef is every time I saw JB I was waiting for him to order a white Russian and say “They peed on my rug man”. He was good too I am just a moron.
My final annoyance was the suits CGI went predictably overboard with WAY too many little flaps and magic parts that appear from nowhere. Technically amazing? yes, at all believable? no. And it would have been very easy to make it so. I will chalk that up to “cheese factor” along with the evil suits voice overs. A sad inevitability but it would not be very patriotic of me to not mention it.
Over all despite Felix kicking my seat the whole time it was a very enjoyable movie. I give it 8 out of 10 gigantic lollipops.
May 6th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Huh, I didn’t really think of fighting a larger version of himself and you’re right it is kinda lame. Still, it worked for me in the end. I knew JB was the bad guy as soon as they showed those magazine covers with him in the background, so I was kind of waiting for that to happen. Heh!
You love the cheese. You LOVE it.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:52 am
[...] See also my review of Iron Man. [...]
July 20th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
poker terminologi…
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