Let the Summer Games begin! Iron Man is an admittedly bombastic yet quick-witted, funny and thoughtful entry into the superhero arena — part throwback, part hi-tech wish fulfillment.
Iron Man opens with billionaire industrialist, brainiac inventor and hedonistic playboy Tony Stark showing off a new weapon system to Army brass in Afghanistan. Tony Stark is the military industrial complex. But when his convoy is attacked and his protectors cut down, a gravely wounded Stark finds himself the hostage of terrorists. Forced to construct a diabolical weapon for their malevolent ends, Stark instead uses his ingenuity and aptitude to fabricate an indestructible suit of armor and escape his captors.
Back home, Stark realizes that his entire life has been devoted to manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and pledges instead to help those on the receiving end of violence. When he stumbles upon a terrible conspiracy within his own organization to destabilize the balance of global power, Stark upgrades his crude creation, transforming it into an invulnerable robotic suit with which to combat the forces of evil.
Marvel took a big risk with Iron Man. A recent string of missteps ensured Iron Man was Marvel’s last, best chance for viability. So it came as a shock to many when largely inexperienced actor/director Jon Favreau (Elf) was announced to direct and Robert Downey Jr., a phenomenal actor by anyone’s standards but hardly the stuff of superheroes, was cast as the lead.
Let all dissent and naysaying cease. Iron Man is a solid piece of entertainment.
Iron Man looks great for a guy of 45. The metallic superhero first appeared in comics in 1963. Back then, the war in Vietnam was America’s Achilles Heel and the Vietcong were Stark’s captors. Favreau and his writers have updated the story, placing it firmly in the center of the War on Terror and making Stark’s kidnappers Taliban-like insurgents. The alteration is by no means the only change to the Iron Man backstory, but it, like the others, is organic and respectful of the overarching chronology and mythology. The film is saturated with the sorts of in-jokes and knowing winks for the fanboys guaranteed to bring the house down.
Origin stories are notoriously difficult, but Iron Man pulls it off admirably. The film takes its time in setting up its story, sidestepping what could have been a two-hour onslaught of non-stop, testosterone-laden bombast for a thoughtful story that instead earns its explosive, action-packed scenes. Only the end fails to live up to expectations. The finale feels somewhat rushed and ill conceived. I found myself wanting more, not less of the titanic showdown.
Iron Man is a special effects extravaganza. The suit looks magnificent. Iron Man moves with seamless fluidity and palpable heft. He is RoboCop for the new millennium. The film spends plenty of time with Stark as he literally and figuratively hammers out the technical details that go into its construction. Surprisingly, this oft-times haphazard R&D leads to some of the film’s funniest moments.
The cast is terrific. The recently off-the-grid Gwyneth Paltrow co-stars as Stark’s personal assistant, Virginia “Pepper” Potts; her charming presence calls attention to how much she’s been missed. Terrence Howard plays Stark’s Air Force colleague, Jim “Rhodey” Rhodes. Jeff Bridges shaves his head and sprouts a thick beard for his turn as Obadiah Stane, Stark’s business partner with a nefarious secret. And while Bridges obviously relishes his role, chewing through his scenes with a voracious appetite, it is pushing-middle-age hipster Downey who, like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean or Michael Keaton in Batman, takes control of a role he has no earthly right inhabiting and turns it into something intrinsically, quintessentially, elementally his.
Iron Man’s post 9/11 commentary is muddled — both celebratory and cautionary. Philosophically schizophrenic, Iron Man seems to play as a feature-length Air Force recruiting commercial on the one hand, reveling in good old American know-how that can create technology that enables soldiers to become superheroes, flying into barely disguised al-Qaeda enemy territory and wreaking havoc, while on the other hand bemoaning the rise of the sort of hi-tech militarism that arms the world’s nasties and decimates the innocent.
Iron Man, like Batman, is an engaging superhero precisely because he is an everyman. You and I may not have Tony’s Stark’s brains or bucks, but we can identify with a man who fights evil without the benefit of the supernatural powers indicative of most superheroes.
This is what summer popcorn fare should be — escapist filmmaking in the best possible way. Fun, entertaining and emboldened with broad appeal, this first foray into the summer blockbuster blitzkrieg will not disappoint.
© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.
