Iron Man

Sunday, May 4, 2008

I'm a little mystified at how strong the reviews have been for Iron Man. It's entertaining, but a mild pleasure at best, and not the classic that the Rotten Tomatoes count or all the hyperbolic gushing at AICN suggested. A great superhero movie should give you a charge, get your heart racing with excitement and delight, and light a fire under your ass. Iron Man is, at it's best, just kinda fun. It doesn't really capture the imagination.

The movie works mostly because of Robert Downey Jr, and because it's funny. There are a few cool action moments, but no real classic or noteworthy action scenes. That's more or less what I expected when I first heard that Jon Favreau was hired to direct.

My main problem with the film is a problem common to many superhero-movie part 1's, which is that it's an origin story. It happened with X-Men and Spiderman and actually even the 1st Superman a bit: the origin ends up taking up so much of the story that there isn't any room for a real plot or conflict in the film. Or at least not one that isn't half-assed. Luckily, the origin in Iron Man provides for some real fun (especially all his failed experiments with the suit), but it burns up so much screen time that there's not really much going on in the finale. It basically comes down to one small-ish fight between Iron Man and an evil Iron Man. And the evil Iron Man suit is only introduced right before the end, so we never get a chance to see what it does before they fight. it's never established as a credible threat. And then, since it all boils down to a fight between Iron Man and another guy, and the other guy's master plan seems a little vague, there aren't really any stakes. They fight, we already know Iron Man will win, he wins and then things go back to normal and no one really gets saved or anything.

I never gave a shit about the Iron Man comics, so when I first heard the movie announced I could barely muster any enthusiasm. Jon Favreau is talented, but he makes light-weight charmers, not exciting action flicks. Then, when Downey signed on, I was a little more interested. And then all the reviews seemed to glow, I kinda got my hopes up. So although I liked it, Iron Man was a big disappointment. It's just another Favreau-style light-weight charmer disguised as a big budget superhero extravaganza.