|
aidan -> Iron Man kicks off the summer movie season (5/5/2008 12:40:54 PM)
|
No love for Tony Stark on CM? Tsk-tsk, people. Falls to me, I s'pose....
Saw Iron Man this weekend. Pretty damn awesome. It was an origin pic, with all the kind of faults that comes with that, but you can't really fault it for that seeing as it has to introduce this character to a lot of folks for the first time. Stark's cape persona just doesn't have the same cultural share as Spider-Man or Batman (I know those two are origin stories as well, but Spider-Man needs that arc and Batman had to be rebooted *shrugs*). Anyway, can't really fault it for that.
And frankly, Stark's growth into the heroic role was always a lot more dramatic than most. I think the only suit who comes close is Spider-Man. With Iron Man, This is a guy who is responsible for the suffering and death of countless people, most of them innocent bystanders, and the realization of that carries a huge weight for him. He fucked up, big time, and he's trying to set things right.
Setting things right, by the way, involves blowing a lot of stuff up. Stuff very close to people. This is where the movie takes a dramatic turn from most superhero stories. Iron Man kills motherfuckers. A lot. The guy decides he's gonna fight a war, and it shows. This raises some pretty interesting questions, ones that I hope the rest of the movies deal with. There's some scenes where Stark will be all big-bad hero, and then you think "Okay...but what happens after he leaves?" Much like the Batman movies, there's a great potential here for exploring the ramifications of superheroic acts. Since Favreau and his crew have already proven they're not afraid to talk about uncomfortable subjects here, it'll be interesting to see what they do about that.
Robert Downey, pitch-perfect Tony Stark. There wasn't a better man for the role. Paltrow makes a good Pepper Potts, Terrance Howard as Jim Rhodes is another great choice (can't wait to see him as War Machine, guy's gonna wear the suit well). The problem with a lot of superhero pics is that the supporting cast can kind of get lost in the sun-like shine of the title character (with exceptions like Alfred Molina's Doc Ock and the cast of the first two X-Men, which are ensemble pieces anyway). That kinda happened here. The only good guy other than Stark who gets really good development was Pepper Potts, who you end up liking and caring about quite a bit by the end. And on the villain side of things, we've got mostly glowering terrorists and Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane, who like Venom in last year's prize belly-flop Spider-Man 3 exists only to provide Iron Man with a punching bag at the end.
A lot of people are saying "best super hero movie ever"...I don't know about that. It's good, certainly up there in the Triple-A echelon of things, but I really don't think any origin story can reach the best level, simply because so much of it involves explanation and exposition. You can't explore characters and relations as much because you need to build that storytelling capital. Still, this is one of the best superhero movies of the decade.
P.S. Stick around for the post-credits if you dig comic books. Trust me.
|
|
|
|
