Iron Man
May 4th 2008 22:49
Category: Movies
Director: John Favreau.
Producers: Avi Arad & Kevin Feige.
Screenplay by: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcom & Matt Holloway.
Starring: Robert Downey Jnr (Tony Stark/Iron Man), Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Potts), Terrence Howard (Colonel Tony Rhodes) & Jeff Bridges (Obadiah Stane).
Produced by: Marvel Studios in association with Fairview Entertainment.
Released by: 2008 Paramount Pictures.
Running Time: 130 minutes. Rating: M.
When I casually wandered out from the hurly burly of my home town’s main street and into the stygian gloom of the local cinema to watch this particular feature I had no idea what to expect, well mostly. An aficionado of various comics and comic heroes from an early age the story of Iron Man was one that was familiar to me, so I did have a vague idea of what was going to occur in certain areas of plot development. What I didn’t know was how Marvel and the film makers were going to cast this concept. The thing that has to be remembered with a great many of these superhero characters is that they are not creations of our era; they are creations of the sixties and seventies and in the case of iconic characters like Batman and Superman the thirties and forties. So fast forwarding to the first decade of the new millennium and this means that whenever one of these characters ends up on the big screen the story is retold from scratch and set in a contemporaneous setting.
The big question is why? Why place a completely fictitious character with fictitious abilities in a real world setting?
It is interesting to note that when Iron Man first made his appearance on the printed page he was a character whose origins were shrouded in real life events that occurred at the time of printing, namely the Vietnam War. Somehow Tony Stark ended up being captured by Vietcong soldiers under the leadership of a North Vietnamese general and this said general demanded that Stark build a super weapon that the VC/NVA could use to defeat the Americans. It comes as no surprise that rather than building said weapon he instead constructs a suit of powered armour that he then proceeds to use to trash his captors’ base and then aid his escape back the continental US.
Now on the silver screen the germ of this plot has effectively been retained except as it’s a contemporary film the focus is not on Indochina and the Vietnam War, instead it’s on the War on Terrorism and the forbidding wilderness regions of Afghanistan, one of two key battlegrounds in this seemingly endless campaign. Tony Stark has flown over to the lands of the Khyber Pass and the birthplace of the poetic and mathematical genius Omar Khayyan to demonstrate his corporation’s latest weapon system, the Jericho. On the way back from his demonstration and sales pitch things go horribly horribly wrong, his convoy is ambushed and he is taken prisoner. This time rather than VC and NVA soldiers it’s a group of insurgents known as the Ten Rings, their leader seems to be keen on taking over Asia and the current crisis in Afghanistan seems to be his ticket to doing just that.
As you can expect the leader of the Ten Rings want’s Stark to…you guessed it build him a weapon in particular an example of the Jericho that the insurgents can use in their regional domination scheme. Certainly for a group that are out in one of the remotest regions of the world the Ten Rings are very well equipped, they have all the latest products that make up Stark Industries Spring 08 catalogue and our intrepid protagonist seems puzzled by this. Still not letting this faze him, but keeping it in the back of his mind, Stark agrees to do full well what his captors want knowing that they have no intention of letting him live once he has finished the job.
Ever wondered why Iron Man has that glowing circle on the front of his armour? I have to admit I did way back when and even as I took my seat in the cinema to watch this. All was explained – it’s the battery that keeps his heart ticking. You see in the chaos of his kidnapping Stark got some fragments in his heart, fragments that are slowly working their way closer. A bit of rough surgery managed to save him and as a result he found himself hooked up to a car battery, not being one to let something pin him down and realising that he needed a better system Stark in his spare time designs a new power unit to keep his heart from getting punctured. This is the glowing circle that is on his armour, it’s his power system and also the suits power system.
Of course building a better pacemaker isn’t the only thing that Stark is engaged enjoying the sartorial hospitality of the Ten Rings. Naturally he is building the suit of armour that he will use to make his getaway, as occurred in the original print incarnation. Once ready he not only attempts to get back to the States but he causes as much carnage as possible, purely to destroy all the Stark Industries weaponry that these insurgents have somehow obtained. His job done he manages to make it to relative safety and is soon rescued by members of the US military stationed in Afghanistan.
Naturally this experience has had a profound effect on Stark, he returns stateside not only a physically altered person but one whose attitudes and world view has taken something of a pounding. Upon his repatriation he decides to take the corporation that his father founded and of which he is the CEO in a new direction. At a press conference he announces that he intends, effective immediately, to shut down Stark Industries weapons division. There are those who are not to happy with this, in particular his partner Obadiah Stane along with the US military industrial complex and various stock holders. Also the incident in Afghanistan seems to have brought Stark to the attention of an Agent Carson who works for a group called SHIELD, Agent Carson is keen to speak to Stark but never seems to get the multi billionaire executives attention.
It this moment in the film where the story really gets into gear, where Stark is confronted by the realisation of what his corporation does and the fact that he is a merchant of death and destruction, that his potential legacy to the world is not one of positive creations but carnage, chaos and misery. It’s an interesting concept and one that has a lot of potential for character and story development, unfortunately my feeling was that this whole angle didn’t ring as true as it could have done. It was almost as if the makers needed a way to get the plot rolling after Stark returns home and went with the whole “Hey lets have someone in his company doing illegal arms deals with the people who kidnapped him.” High intrigue it was not, and if you’re smart (and generally I think that you are) then you can probably work out where this whole angel is leading and how things will develop.
At the end of the day Iron Man’s plot doesn’t bare too much scrutiny and the actual antagonist who is behind it all leaves a lot to be desired. Frankly I would have preferred it if the Ten Rings had been something a bit more than just a bunch of Genghis Khan wannabes and that the whole underhand dealing was left as an open ender for a potential second movie. Oh and I’d say their will be a second Iron Man – there was one big hint in this one that such was going to be the case. My recommendation is to see this on a cheap day, a day when the prices at your local cinema are at bargain basement level it’s definitely not a full price film. If anything this film looks as it caught a serious does of FFS (Fantastic Four syndrome – where the first film isn’t crash hot but things pick up with the sequel).
Producers: Avi Arad & Kevin Feige.
Screenplay by: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcom & Matt Holloway.
Starring: Robert Downey Jnr (Tony Stark/Iron Man), Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Potts), Terrence Howard (Colonel Tony Rhodes) & Jeff Bridges (Obadiah Stane).
Produced by: Marvel Studios in association with Fairview Entertainment.
Released by: 2008 Paramount Pictures.
Running Time: 130 minutes. Rating: M.
When I casually wandered out from the hurly burly of my home town’s main street and into the stygian gloom of the local cinema to watch this particular feature I had no idea what to expect, well mostly. An aficionado of various comics and comic heroes from an early age the story of Iron Man was one that was familiar to me, so I did have a vague idea of what was going to occur in certain areas of plot development. What I didn’t know was how Marvel and the film makers were going to cast this concept. The thing that has to be remembered with a great many of these superhero characters is that they are not creations of our era; they are creations of the sixties and seventies and in the case of iconic characters like Batman and Superman the thirties and forties. So fast forwarding to the first decade of the new millennium and this means that whenever one of these characters ends up on the big screen the story is retold from scratch and set in a contemporaneous setting.
It is interesting to note that when Iron Man first made his appearance on the printed page he was a character whose origins were shrouded in real life events that occurred at the time of printing, namely the Vietnam War. Somehow Tony Stark ended up being captured by Vietcong soldiers under the leadership of a North Vietnamese general and this said general demanded that Stark build a super weapon that the VC/NVA could use to defeat the Americans. It comes as no surprise that rather than building said weapon he instead constructs a suit of powered armour that he then proceeds to use to trash his captors’ base and then aid his escape back the continental US.
As you can expect the leader of the Ten Rings want’s Stark to…you guessed it build him a weapon in particular an example of the Jericho that the insurgents can use in their regional domination scheme. Certainly for a group that are out in one of the remotest regions of the world the Ten Rings are very well equipped, they have all the latest products that make up Stark Industries Spring 08 catalogue and our intrepid protagonist seems puzzled by this. Still not letting this faze him, but keeping it in the back of his mind, Stark agrees to do full well what his captors want knowing that they have no intention of letting him live once he has finished the job.
Ever wondered why Iron Man has that glowing circle on the front of his armour? I have to admit I did way back when and even as I took my seat in the cinema to watch this. All was explained – it’s the battery that keeps his heart ticking. You see in the chaos of his kidnapping Stark got some fragments in his heart, fragments that are slowly working their way closer. A bit of rough surgery managed to save him and as a result he found himself hooked up to a car battery, not being one to let something pin him down and realising that he needed a better system Stark in his spare time designs a new power unit to keep his heart from getting punctured. This is the glowing circle that is on his armour, it’s his power system and also the suits power system.
Of course building a better pacemaker isn’t the only thing that Stark is engaged enjoying the sartorial hospitality of the Ten Rings. Naturally he is building the suit of armour that he will use to make his getaway, as occurred in the original print incarnation. Once ready he not only attempts to get back to the States but he causes as much carnage as possible, purely to destroy all the Stark Industries weaponry that these insurgents have somehow obtained. His job done he manages to make it to relative safety and is soon rescued by members of the US military stationed in Afghanistan.
Naturally this experience has had a profound effect on Stark, he returns stateside not only a physically altered person but one whose attitudes and world view has taken something of a pounding. Upon his repatriation he decides to take the corporation that his father founded and of which he is the CEO in a new direction. At a press conference he announces that he intends, effective immediately, to shut down Stark Industries weapons division. There are those who are not to happy with this, in particular his partner Obadiah Stane along with the US military industrial complex and various stock holders. Also the incident in Afghanistan seems to have brought Stark to the attention of an Agent Carson who works for a group called SHIELD, Agent Carson is keen to speak to Stark but never seems to get the multi billionaire executives attention.
It this moment in the film where the story really gets into gear, where Stark is confronted by the realisation of what his corporation does and the fact that he is a merchant of death and destruction, that his potential legacy to the world is not one of positive creations but carnage, chaos and misery. It’s an interesting concept and one that has a lot of potential for character and story development, unfortunately my feeling was that this whole angle didn’t ring as true as it could have done. It was almost as if the makers needed a way to get the plot rolling after Stark returns home and went with the whole “Hey lets have someone in his company doing illegal arms deals with the people who kidnapped him.” High intrigue it was not, and if you’re smart (and generally I think that you are) then you can probably work out where this whole angel is leading and how things will develop.
At the end of the day Iron Man’s plot doesn’t bare too much scrutiny and the actual antagonist who is behind it all leaves a lot to be desired. Frankly I would have preferred it if the Ten Rings had been something a bit more than just a bunch of Genghis Khan wannabes and that the whole underhand dealing was left as an open ender for a potential second movie. Oh and I’d say their will be a second Iron Man – there was one big hint in this one that such was going to be the case. My recommendation is to see this on a cheap day, a day when the prices at your local cinema are at bargain basement level it’s definitely not a full price film. If anything this film looks as it caught a serious does of FFS (Fantastic Four syndrome – where the first film isn’t crash hot but things pick up with the sequel).
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