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Have Iron Suit, Will Travel I watched Iron Man a few days ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Downey is excellent, as are the rest of the cast. And how can you not like a film that starts off with a bunch of US soldiers driving along in a truck listening to AC/DC?
One thing I noticed is that Audi must have wangled some kind of product placement thing: all the main cars that feature are Audis. One of two aspects do not quite work and the physics of the energy system that powers the suit is not something I am fit to judge, but it seems a bit far-fetched. But what the heck.
Jim Henley, a comics buff, has a good review of the film. Mind you, I still have not entirely forgiven Jim for sliming Mark Steyn over the recent Canadian free speech kerfuffle a few months ago. Not his finest hour.
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Synchronicity rules!
I was reading an article in my regular paper, “The Australian”, about Canada’s Human Rights’ Tribunals! It seems as if Herr Steyn is now being taken to court in British Columbia for quoting imams. Under Canadian hate-speech laws, that someone COULD be incited to hatred is enough. They are not disputing that the quotes are accurate.
Truth is no defence.
It sounds to me as if a better name for them is Human Reich’s Tribunal.
Don’t go to Canada!!!
I also liked the movie a lot. I could have done without the “evil weapons manufacturers” angle, though.
I have also immensely enjoyed the movie. To my surprise the American military was shown in a positive way as a bunch of extremely decent and highly professional guys. However, the concept that THE GENIUS opts out of the armement business because of some black shep, is absolutely ridiculous. The only fellas dancing with joy would be the TERRORISTS and TOTALITARIANS. Can anyone imagine Edward Teller stopping work on his thermo-nukes upon learning that the Rosenbergs have sold secrets of Fat Boy to the Soviets? It would be an act of ultimate stupidity. The only solution in such a case is to increase effort to provide the GOD GUY with the biggest and best GUN possible. The fact that Stark went back to Afganistan and kicked arse of a few terrorists and then returned home even faster ment nothing, as the chief terrorist still remained at large. In the end, Stark was reduced to fight not the TOTALITARIANS or TERRORISTS but our own INTERNAL ENEMY as it is now a constant or rather eternal feature of all HOLLYWOODIAN CRAP. Equally, and until recently I have systematicaly watched a TV serial “The Unit” which at the beginning I liked very much. One of its creators is a former “liberal” allegedly turned “conservative” screenwriter David Mamet. This serial has also changed from a decent picture cheering the bravery of our boys in uniforms into a complete and utter GARBAGE as they now have to struggle against some domestic “dark forces” acting on behalf of the evil administration of Bush-HItler. Hollywood has changed into HOLLYCRAP…
Who cares if the physics are accurate, the weapons manufacturers evil and the number of Audis improbable? Its fantasy and damn good fantasy at that.
Why do people insist on dissecting such mindless entertainment endlessly, bestowing upon it a set of meanings and values which weren’t there to begin with. Go see it, if you enjoy it then its done its job, if not then say why and don’t try and make it cleverer than it is.
Sheesh, its based on a comic book, how seriously are we meant to take it?
Alisa, someone had to be the bad guy, would you rather it were the bakers?
My remark “but what the heck” should have suggested to you that I did not think these things were very important, Mandrill, so calm your fevered brow. But sometimes it is nice to think that the tech. used in a movie, even a knock-off of a comic strip, might have some basis in fact, however tenuous. As I said, I thought the film was great.
Superheroes in general ignore the conservation of energy, despite handwaves such as Superman’s being “solar powered.” Julius Schwartz brought in the sci-fi sensibility of having scientific-sounding explanations for wonders and marvels, but not actually calculating the quantitative details, and Stan Lee picked it up and ran with it. That’s just a genre convention, and better accepted than questioned. Think of it as an analog of the Galt Motor, which seems to be a perpetual motion machine of the second kind.
Alisa: I leave mine at the door. 🙂
On Stark’s Damascus moment however; I’m sure that he realised that his company’s withdrawal from the arms trade would not affect the state of the world one jot, there is always someone willing to make a buck or two. If a niche is empty, someone will fill it. I see it as a personal decision which he made because what he made his money from began to sicken him. I’m sure you wouldn’t begrudge him that decision.
It wasn’t just that a bad guy from our side worked with a bad guy from the other side, but that a bad guy from our side used the bad guys and the good guys to make lots of money. What was depicted in the film was not an arms race, it was each side being given the same equipment and left to perpetuate their violence. If one side had the upper hand (the Jericho in the film) the war would have been over and no more money could have been made. Though again I didn’t have a problem with that being used as a plot device.
Alisa, I’m afraid I get terribly po-faced about the typical Hollywood TV or movie plot these days. If it’s a cop show like Law and Order the bad guy is always the rich white guy (or his son). If it’s a spy show the bad guys are always a secret cabal in the CIA or FBI or whatever. Even rubbish adventure movies like Congo have to have a greedy capitalist as the villain, and the number of movies where the hero is a plucky whistleblower is uncountable.
Even my favorite movie of all time, Independance Day, has one secret plotter in the Government.
Every second movie has to have it’s secret government cabal. No wonder the world is full of truthers.
I find it all gets dreary and predictable with all suspense lost through lazy, formulaic plotting.
Just once I’d like to see the rich white capitalist win in the end and finish the movie with him giving it the full Bwahahahaha, (while approaching the plucky whistleblower with obvious evil intent).
I think Tony’s second thoughts would be completely natural. As mandrill pointed out above, his revulsion wasn’t in manufacturing weapons, it was that his weapons were being sold to both sides…that they were being used on the very people he thought he was protecting.
As to making a bigger, better gun — that’s exactly what he did! Introducing Iron Man. He obviously didn’t become squishy and pacifist — however, I think as a character he was justified in wanting to keep that kind of power to himself, trusting his own moral instincts (and perhaps a few very close friends) to wield it. Furthermore, his questions for his (dead) father seem perfectly natural. From what I’ve read, many of the Manhattan Project people had severe doubts after the weapon was unleashed — understandably, no?
Overall, I thought it was an excellent flick. I went in with high expectations and I wasn’t disappointed. Robert Downey, Jr. was fantastic as was Paltrow.
Mandrill, I leave most of mine at the door as well, but there is a limit:-)
I don’t begrudge him, I begrudge the writers.
Nate, good point, but still, here is the problem: that bigger better weapon is he himself. What about the rest of the world that needs to protect itself? Am I supposed to sit and wait for IM to fly in and rescue me, because there is no one out there to supply me with the bigger better gun?
Nate, try watching “The Shield”.
Um, that last suggestion was directed at Kevin…
Alisa, in the Sheild, everyone is a bad guy. The ‘hero’ breaks the rules all the time but is generally on the side of the angels, but most of his bosses are corrupt in one way or another.
I may be totally out of date on this since I haven’t watched it for years. It was one of those (many) shows where I watched the first series avidly, the second series half-heartedly and gave up on the rest. Perhaps it’s because the original writers run out of ideas and the producers fall back on the old faithful plotlines.
Well no, not everyone is a bad guy. Everyone is human, though. That’s why I like it so much. But you are right, like every other TV series, it runs old after a while. The current (7th) season is the last one, so it’s not as if they don’t know when to quit.
My only complaint about the movie is that they didn’t do more with him being a crime-fighter! There could also have been more robbers stopped, and taking down a crime gang or two. And couldn’t he have introduced Iron Man as his new bodyguard, with the computer controlling the suite remotely? Voila- Tony Stark is NOT IronMan, as far as the public is concerned!
Aside from that, and the fact that Stark Enterprises could make billions by licencing Arc Technology and save the world if Stark really cared, it was a good movie!