Movie review: Iron Man

[elfs]

If you're old enough to remember pinball or pachinko, you may have experienced a machine with clatter or clank. Pinball designers-- I dated one once, although she did back glass art not tabletop design-- and the modern maintanece afficiandos know what these terms mean, even though they're really hard to define precisely. Clatter is just something the ball does that makes a noise that annoys the player. Clank is the same, but it also brings the play to a brief, annoying pause. Clank stops, clatter keeps going.

Iron Man is almost a perfect superhero film for geeks. It would have been the perfect superhero film for us if it had been missing its clatter and clank.

The plot is nothing new: Tony Stark, industrial magnate and principal stockholder of a weapons manufacturer, international playboy, and addict to high-speed women, high-octane alcohol, and high-powered machinery, is captured by the current Enemies of Peace, Justice and the American Way somewhere in the Afghan desert. (The film takes extra, extra pains to emphasize that these are not Muslims, but a rag-tag bunch of land pirates who speak a polyglot of languages and have no official religious affiliation.) Using his extraordinary genius, he creates a high-powered suit of armor that allows him to escape.

Once he gets home, he comes to the conclusion that he and his weapons-making company is responsible for the great ills of the world. He also discovers that there may be some underhanded shenanigans going on and undertakes a project to improve on his armor design and create the most impressive piece of weapons-grade machinery ever seen: the Iron Man suit of armor, and takes off to conduct his own private investigation and wreak his own revenge against the terrorists who tried to kill him.

Things get messy, there are internal pressures within his own company, and a huge battle at the end.

It's the kind of superhero film I love. We all know there's no radioactive spider gonna bite and make us into superheros. There's no teleological bullshit nextstep evolution lurking in our genes. But with enough computing power and the right suit of clothes, man can fly. I strongly prefer anime where the premise is ordinary guy gets extraordinary tech and does something interesting with it to the magical girl phenom, my love for Mai Hime not withstanding.

But there is clatter and there is clank. The clank is a non-spoiler: there's a test scene where Tony is trying out his suit's flying system, mis-judges the power setting, and slams himself into his garage's concrete wall. Hard. Like, fatally hard. It's played for laughs, he gets up like the Coyote in a Bugs Bunny film, and keeps going. That's the clank. It would have been much better if he'd worn a riding jacket and helmet (he does own them, according to the comic), and afterward the funny was showing him in this hugely over-inflated coat saying, "Thank god for airbags, eh?" to the house's AI. But no, he does the test with absolutely no safety equipment. He's dead. Movie's over.

At the end of the film, the villain Obadiah Stane (played quite well by Jeff "Greetings, Program!" Bridges), a man who own only 25% of the stock (to Tony's 51% controlling share), and who has stolen the Iron Man 1.0 plans to create the Iron Monger suit, is about to be arrested by SHIELD, then a subsidiary of the US Government. He gets into the Iron Monger suit and there's a huge armor-on-armor battle.

The clatter is that Stane has been an industrialist and a corporate board member for nearly 25 years. He's followed every major corruption case ever. He knows how the game is played. If he'd just gone quietly, negotiated with the board on his left and the feds on his right, as the sole holder of the Iron Man technology willing to actually sell it to anyone (Tony isn't!), he could have walked out of there rich, powerful, and in charge. The "He's gone crazy!" storyline just didn't fit with the character. It was just necessary to support the final battle scene.

There were other plot devices that could have sustained a good end-of-movie fight scene. Stane could have been disgraced but left alive, a good villain for future episodes.

Robert Downey Jr. is perfectly cast as Tony Stark. I mean, perfecto. Gwyneth Paltrow makes a lovely Pepper. Jeff Bridges, now playing the David Warner role, plays it to the hilt and actually does a good job of emulating the comicbook Stane. (Oh, short moment of clank: Stan Lee appears twice in the film in two different roles. It's jarring when you figure that out.) Terrance Howard does a convincing Jim Rhodes. The cast really is wonderful and carries the non-fight scenes quite well. If only the director had had an extra ten seconds of restraint, it might have been the perfect powered-armor movie.

It's still the best powered-armor movie out there, and I'll be buying the DVD the moment it comes out.

Comments

[ben-raccoon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the coyote-and-roadrunner slam against the wall threw me as well. Still, the rest of the flick made up for it. I don't think there could've been a better Tony Stark.

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

Agreed, I honestly want to write that one up to 'over-enthusiastic CGI monkey and they ran out of time to make a more realistic-looking take and/or voice-over him saying something like 2½-percent power to USE a more realistic-looking take' just to wipe it out of my head faster.

[solarbird]

I loved that scene, in large part because I'd already had that same "clank" moment, as it were, when he powerdove into the ground after his escape from the caves. Delta-v is delta-v is delta-v, and I wasn't buying it. So after that, the second one was just hiiiii-larity!

(Seriously, he was standing there and said '10 percent' and I whimpered "oh god" because I knew exactly what was coming, and it still made me giggle uncontrollably.)

Also, I want to start a Larger Skutter Fan Club. Those guys had the best damn comic timing in the whole film.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I was somewhat willing to forgive the crash scene because it was established that Stark had access to a few of his repulsor devices, which can arbitrarily impart momentum in a given direction at a distance, in theory erasing the impact damage. In the comic, it's also shown that this takes a lot of computing power and is not always perfectly predictive; Tony's had a large number of concussions over the years. Where he got that computing power for the Mark I is left as an exercise for the reader.

But in the garage, he's not wearing any armor. That's why it bugged me.

[solarbird]

Ah, but in the garage, he also had access to alcohol, which, as we know he is a souse, could've had him nice and relaxed for the impact, thus reducing injury! One just has to assume that Tony has the hardest head in the history of humans, which, really, isn't that difficult to believe. ^_^

But seriously, while I can see rationalising that in the desert, it takes almost as much stuff you're not seeing actually there as it does in the garage, so didn't click for me.

[heofmanynames.livejournal.com]

Ordinarily, I'd be right there with you, as I'm extremely sensitive to any work of entertainment using my 'willing suspension' against me; I didn't have that reaction this time for I guess 3 reasons:

- it was *totally* played for laughs (and played well)
- I found the proto-suit manufacture *vastly* more challenging to my suspension of disbelief
- It *IS* a super-hero movie, and nothing happened that challenged any of the basic premises (and physics is a notoriously weak suit for the average American)
- Downey really is *perfect*, and it shows as much in that scene as in any other - it's simply a pleasure to watch him in this

[ben-raccoon.livejournal.com]

Oh, don't get me wrong, it was still hilarious. :) Though like Elf said, the first one was armored, so at least it wasn't quite as difficult to suspend disbelief.

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

I didn't catch the other Stan Lee cameo.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I got the 'Hef' one - what was the other one?

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

Ditto. I totally missed it, even seeing the film twice now.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

In the "Who is Tony Stark?" monologue in the beginning, Stan in a group photo as one of the people helping Stark's father on the Manhattan project.

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

Good description; I also had a problem with that scene and I thought the big fight scene was kind of a yawner. For me, I was totally into the design phase with the 3D Autocad. :)

*Loved* Downey. Love love love.

[pteryxx.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree completely with the engineering porn. Time spent poring over designs, long hours in the haven of the workshop, the long slow pan over the loaded workbench... I completely went to jelly when I saw the micrometer on there. I just took a tech course and spent hours learning how to use those things. Awesome.

[codeamazon.livejournal.com]

Re the clatter, I thought it was justified by the concept of a slow simmer of feeling entitled and having to play second fiddle. In particular the magazine-cover series set up the concept, IMO.

Oh, come now...

[graydancer.livejournal.com]

...he's not dead. You didn't see the body in the coffin, did you? He's "on vacation." which means he'll be back.

And did you see the Captain America shield on Tony's workbench?

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

And what did you think of the scene after the credits?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I expected Tony to take the red pill, of course!