On Iron Man
Iron Man is the best comic book movie to come out since Spider-Man. I’ll admit my bias right up front; Iron Man was one-third of my holy trinity of favorite comic characters as a kid, so I’m naturally predisposed toward absolute cinematic adoration. Nonetheless, both of the folks I watched the movie with (including my wife Allyson, who thinks that “Tony Stark is a penis.”) were raving about the film just as much as I was when we left the theatre.
Tony Stark is not an insecure teenager. He’s not a haunted knight out to avenge the phantoms of his loved ones. He’s not an idealist out to recreate a new better world. Tony is a genius who gets caught up in the military industrial complex and then tries to climb back out of the rabbit hole. Unlike Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark doesn’t have to play at being a billionaire playboy because he actually is an over-the-top billionaire playboy. This film is the perfect gateway into an Ultimates-style take on the Avengers — a possibility strongly hinted at in the post-credit epilogue with Nick Fury.
Robert Downey, Jr. is the perfect Tony Stark. I have been saying this ever since the initial casting announcement, and the film fully bears out my faith. If you were one of the doubters, prepare to be proven wrong.
I don’t really like special effects as done in most Hollywood films. Too often, they seem like strange additions to the narrative of the film just to amaze the people who are fans of said special effects. The effects in this movie, however, seemed like natural and integral pieces of the plot. Every one of Stark’s gadgets and aerial feats as Iron Man served to help paint a picture of the character without getting bogged down with a drawn out origin the way that nearly every superhero movie of this decade seems intent on.
Iron Man is an excellent movie. It’s sci-fi enough that even non-superhero fans will find something to love. And if you don’t love it, then you will break my heart. Because this movie made me squeal with unmitigated delight like a nine-year-old girl.