Iron Man thoughts

[thormagni]

I am a big Iron Man fan. He was my absolutely favorite comic book character through most of my childhood and young adulthood and I followed his exploits through some really good and REALLY bad writers and artists. I even have quite a little collection of Iron Man action figures and memorabilia.

At some point, the twists and turns in the character just got too absurd and I have drifted away from him as my favorite. In fact, many of his actions in the recent Civil War mega-Marvel event are best viewed as him being the VILLAIN of that whole story arc. But the Iron Man of my early years still holds up, I think.

So you might consider me biased, but I actually really enjoyed seeing Iron Man last night. I thought it was a reasonable interpretation of the Tony Stark character and his mindset, the acting was all top notch, it had a fairly faithful take on the origin story and the special effects? Pretty amazing tin suit, I thought. I liked that they didn't try to cram in too many supervillains (like Spidey 3? Yeesh!) And concentrated on a fairly concise story.

I'm not even sure it is necessarily a superhero movie. I think most of it holds up just fine viewed as a sci-fi or a straight action film. Nobody has superpowers, or capes or skintight costumes. Nobody is out fighting crime or rescuing cats from trees or what have you. Someone who wanted to see if with no knowledge of the comic book hero would be able to do so with no problem.

It also has a nice nod to the current world situation and integrates the Iron Man mythology into the "real world" very well.

Any nits I had to pick would be relatively minor. For example, why or why do they always have the hero and/or villain unmask in the big fight scene? I understand the fear that we might become disconnected from the CGI and maybe they think we need to see the actors' faces to see the stress, but yeesh. If I am encased in impregnable armor, the last thing I am going to want to do is open it up at the critical final moment?!?

But otherwise top notch.

(The inevitable question I guess, is it appropriate for children? I took my kid and thought he did just fine. Stark is a playboy and there is a fair amount of drinking, womanizing and partying early in the film.)

[Fyrestryke]

Abso-freekin-lutely AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Go see this movie...

NOW!

[BobProbst]

I've been largely ignoring this movie since it's been a very long time since I enjoyed a movie based on a comic (X Men 2, First hour of Spiderman) but I saw that Rotten Tomatoes has this rated at 94% which is not just good for a superhero movie but for any movie!

So -- now I'm interested but will probably still wait for DVD unless I can A) get Martie to go or B) get a babysitter.

On a side note, why would drinking, partying and womanizing make a movie questionable for kids but a constant stream of violence go unnoticed? The former makes life enjoyable and the later . . . not so much.

[thormagni]

Originally Posted by BobProbst

On a side note, why would drinking, partying and womanizing make a movie questionable for kids but a constant stream of violence go unnoticed? The former makes life enjoyable and the later . . . not so much.

You are absolutely correct. I withdraw my previous parental warning. Please substitute:

The movie contains many scenes of people getting tortured, punched, thrown, blasted, blown up and burned.

Of course the torture scenes were fine because the interrogators really, really needed to get the truth from the victim. Dick Cheney assures us that all of this is A-OK.

Apparently, I just failed a Will save of some sort.

(Seriously, I didn't see anything in the movie that I thought was inappropriate for my kid. However, my kid is pretty advanced for his age.)

[Odovacar's Ghost]

I'll see it on Blu-ray, in a few months.

I hate going to the theater watch movies.

[BobProbst]

Martie and I actually got to see this yesterday (we're trading babysitting time with friends so that they can go see Narnia).

One of the best "Superhero Movies" I've ever seen. It actually played more like a good sci-fi movie than superhero as there was nothing particularly heroic about Tony Stark. RD, Jr was fantastic and completely held the movie together. I'm certain that the sequels will be horrible but will hope against all hope to be surprised.