Barbelith Underground > Film, TV & Theatre > Iron Man

IronMan 121 cover by Bob Layton

Well I saw Ironman today in the theaters in Korea and in the summer of the showdown of superhero movies this summer Ironman comes out a little timid for a superhero for the shellshocking and rocking Shellhead we know. I know there are some good story arcs about Iron man I heard about like Demon in a bottle and the War machine and I am fond of the Bob Layton comic stories I remember reading as I was a kid but I wonder if anyone will care about Ironman or anyone with little or no comic book knowledge will go see a character that is not known in the public eye as much as Spiderman Batman or Superman.

The script was pretty excellent I thought for a superhero movie. They give Ironman a reworking with a modern twist and spin that calls for a superhero in a time and age where there is war in the Middle East and the character of Ironman must contemplate if arms proliferation is a good idea or not. The dialogue I thought was pretty good and the actors all do a fine remarkable job. Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Terence Howard and Jeff Bridges all do a fine job of acting in a superhero movie but being an action sequence drug junkie and in need of new dope action sequences this one doesn't quite deliver anything new in way of memorable battles and action sequences.

This is an origin story and some of the the CGI Ironman sequences were pretty good but what happened? Where did all the money go for a 150 million movie? And you are left wondering if it is all up there on the screen and you are left wondering if they should have made an Ironman movie at all if their weren't any exhilerating scences to lift it from the normal superhero movie fare. Don't get me wrong the CGI in some of the movie is pretty good like the putting on the armor sequences or the goods and gadgets of the armor and even Tony Stark's new lit armor covering over his heart and I can't imagine if Marvel could have pulled this off if it was low budget or not but I think these days we rely too much on CGI where prosthetics and other special effects might have proved to be better. If you saw Invasion and saw the sick bodies that are CGIed you are left to wonder couldn't a fine low budget make up artist make it more believable than the fake CGI stuff?

At the begining of the movie when AC/DC's Back in Black started to play I was beginning to think this was going to rock from start to finish and in some parts it did but I was left craving for more. Stan now The Playboy Lee makes a cameo though! It's great to see the creators of their creations be captured forever in time so that in the future we can remember Stan the Man now The playboy Lee captured having fun and being revered as one of Comicdoms favorite creators ever. The opening was great but I felt there needed to be a more menacing villian that is up to par against Ironman from the very start and real life news with real life type villians at the begining was scary but they get sideswiped early on and you are left craving for more of a battle like for instance maybe Ironman tearing apart a enemy tank limb by limb.

In alot of places this movie respected the character but in someplaces you don't feel the director sometimes feel for the character as much as say Sam Raimi or as much as Mark Steven Johnson did for Ghost Rider but I thought Jon Favreau did a more than adequate job but I felt his heart like the main hero wasn't quite there sometimes.

Iron Man - the movie