Iron Man REVIEW

Iron Man: B+

At the time of viewing, I had not known that this movie was done by Marvel, not a studio. The results were surprisingly good, as it has made a superhero movie that doesn't compromise the tone, quality, and subject matter. Very bold in many ways, a great experiment of sorts, which was quite successful in terms of bringing the essence of Iron Man to the screen. What I saw was Iron Man brought to life, and I was greatly entertained.

One of the things that I really liked about the film was its highlighting of the various qualities of the Tony Stark character. Robert Downey, Jr. was fantastic in this role even if it felt hella meta meta meta at times. What happens when you have an irresponsible, drunken, brilliant tech head invent an amazing super suit? Amazing results, that can be sometimes comic. I respected that they didn't cut corners to make the process of super suit invention seem effortless and secondary, there were comic moments and serendipity involved. The power of the suit was amazing, watching the process to master it and control it was fun. It was amazing, not just some 80s styled montage of the process with HotTopic music which would not have done it justice. Having Stark be his own crash test dummy? Believably reckless and brilliant.

I loved the drop-in feel of the Iron Man universe. No elaborate origins, no wait until next movie for this guy or that. It was off and running, here are people in this universe, and here's how they fit with this story. Sometimes I think superhero movies can be too linear, formulaic and protective of sequels by doing slow reveals of this character or that. One of the things I liked was that finally you had a feel that the Iron Man universe was part of the overall Marvel universe, not some ship in a bottle. The various reveals of different groups and personalities give a wider feel of the universe, and for better or ill set up sequel potential up much better.

I liked that the purpose of Iron Man wasn't oversimplified in superhero movie terms to, he's saving the world, saving the town, etc. Here was this brilliant man who never realized the destructive potential of his own inventions, and now not only was he trying to apply himself to the overall good, he was seeking to save his own soul. He was forced to change his outlook because of the realization of what his creations were being used for. The purpose of the character feels more open-ended, and not one shot and done.

This is not to say that the movie is perfect, it does cut corners with some characters and goes against continuity for reasons of apparent economy. It all does come together in the end, but to nitpick, some relationships of key characters are shifted to other characters instead. One character is a consolidation of at least 2 different characters. And, at the end of it, I did feel the inexorable race of the movie toward the ultimate boss fight, which is a bit too videogamey for my taste.

That said, I enjoyed this movie a lot. It was a fun, superhero action film. A great summer, popcorn flick. I've felt some of the superhero movies of recent vintage had lost their way a bit, like Spidey3 and X3. Maybe with Marvel picking up the ball and running with its own properties, we can have more dynamic takes on their own source materials. I'm hopeful that that will be the case, anyway.