I just saw Iron Man. So far all the reviews I’ve heard have been positive, with the lone negative review coming from the girlfriend (“kinda draggy”, “superhero movies all the same, he gets some machine, becomes a hero, the bad guy gets the same machine, becomes the bad guy, then they fight and the hero wins”).
I really liked the first act where he builds his suit and escapes the cave in Afghanistan. It contained the most important element of any story – change. The major shift in Stark’s character occurs in that Act, from the flamboyant billionaire playboy prodigious asshole to the compassionate captive who decides to reorient his moral compass and cast off the blinders that his success had fit over his eyes.
Some outrageous events then follow in the next couple of acts. Some things that I don’t think they covered adequately in the movie:
- Where is his super strength from? How does his suit enable him to catch a falling car (Found a sort of answer here. An exoskeleton being developed for the US Army. Looks amazing.)?
- How is it that he can survive all those crazy falls and even hit a flying jet, break off its wing, and not have a severely broken ribcage? Is there a suspension system in his suit?
- Why does he still use a crappy LG phone under Verizon, if he can build a freakin’ virtual butler with a sardonic sense of humour?
Watching these superheroes is really an exercise in the suspension of disbelief. Batman Begins made it so much easier by covering all the most apparent loopholes, e.g. how does Batman get all the cool gadgets? He doesn’t build them from scratch, you can’t get the materials without catching the attention of the military/government – A: he has a special purpose acquisition vehicle under Wayne Enterprises that buys arms. Beautiful!
Tags: Film
