Iron Man

Wow.

I went to see this movie without any real high expectations — boy, was I surprised.

Yes, there was an undercurrent of “Weapons Are Evil/Merchant Of Death” going on, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Jeff Bridges shocked the hell out of me. I didn’t even realize it was him until about half-way through the movie; and he apparently had a great deal of fun chewing the scenery.

Robert Downey, jr was born to play the role of a boozing, womanising, ne-er-do-well arrogant playboy — not much of a stretch, come to think. He did a spot-on portrayal of Tony Stark.

Gwyneth Paltrow actually pulled off the part of the loyal Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts, and Terrence Howard — although a bit rocky at first — managed a decent Jim Rhodes.

The CGI isn’t as obvious as in some other movies recently, the humour is rather well done, and the cast and director were obviously familiar with the comic book and stayed true.

This one gets the LawDog Paw Of Approval.

LawDog

Oh. My. Gawd.
New tacklebox gun, I think

16 thoughts on “Iron Man”

  1. I saw Iron Man today, and I agree it’s pretty darn good. Unlike most comic book films it relies quite a lot on good acting (particularly by Downey and Paltrow) and some very witty dialog, rather than throwing special effects at us (cough Transformers cough). This is shaping up to be a good summer for comic book fans. I have really high hopes for The Dark Knight. The Incredible Hulk seems to be flying under the radar a bit, but I’m hoping it will be better than the PoS Ang Lee churned out a couple of years ago.

  2. Went to see it Saturday. I agree completely LawDawg. The usual PC BS was there but it definitely could have been worse. I think I got my money’s worth just seeing that darned SUIT! I have not seen anything as cool as that CGI wonder in a very long time!

    And Downey proved he really can act, though as you pointed out, it wasn’t much of a stretch for him.

    All I could think about every time I saw Jeff Bridges was Preston Tucker!! BWahahahah!!

  3. Sure, sure, but the important thing is: did you get to see the new Indiana Jones trailer in the theater?

  4. I went, I saw, I enjoyed!

    Worth the $12.50 and the best of the marvel adaptions to date in my mind.

  5. Any one notice that Iron Man is technically the first Hollywood movie that addresses the war on terrorism that made money. In this case it made a lot of money, $100million opening weekend.

    It also broke the trend of the failed Hollywood war movies by portraying the troops in a positive light, and by showing the terrorist as bad guys. By doing this, I can forgive the movie some of its more liberal views.

  6. I’m going, I’m going! I read Iron Man way back when I was in grade school and I even remember when he wore gray armor. I didn’t go to one movie last year, but this year is shaping up to be movie heaven.

    Ky Person

  7. Tell me you stuck around past the credits? I hope so. Not gonna give a spoiler (you can google if ya like) but of you’re a fan of the comic books, you need to see what’s past the credits.

  8. I didn’t get a “weapons are evil” vibe from the movie at all. It never struck me that they had Stark have an issue with weapons. His issue was that he couldn’t figure out how to keep his own weapons from being used against American troops. From what my slightly more geeky co-workers have told me, that’s actually consistent with a story line they had in the comic for a while.

    It definitely struck me that Tony Stark had decided that he couldn’t keep Stark Industry weapons in American hands, so he was simply going to keep the weapons in his own hands until he could fix the problem of terrorists getting his weapons.

  9. so he was simply going to keep the weapons in his own hands until he could fix the problem of terrorists getting his weapons.
    That was the sense I got too. We saw it over the weekend, and even my husband, who is very scant with praise thought it was fun. I know I enjoyed it thoroughly.

  10. The film was exquisite. Truly.

    I read in the credits that there was a poster from the Tucker movie somewhere in the film. Now I’ll have to buy the DVD.

    I was glad to see Iron Man transition from fighting VC to bashing muj.

    The final line in the film was a perfect intro to the credits remix.

    The absoluye best line of dialogue had to be, “I got caught up doing a piece from Newsweek.” Classic.

    Defintely stay for the end of the credits. Without spoiling anything, you’ll see Tony get Maced.

  11. This one needs to be seen, and seen in the best theater you can find. It’s funny, intelligent and looks good. The effects are excellent, truly incredible visuals – and they use actual models a lot, not just CGI. RDJ is actually wearing the suit for a lot of his scenes, and he did the motion capture work.

    For a mix of politics and superheroes, try the new Justice League animated movie. It’s pretty darn good in it’s own right, at least for a superhero movie. About 5 or 10 minutes in there’s a scene between Superman and Wonder Woman.

    [spoilers start here]

    It’s 1954 and he finds her in a bar somewhere in Indochina; and they’ve just shut down the insurgency. By themselves. WW is celebrating with the surviving women of a village. The VC had taken over the village, killed the men and enslaved the women – tiger cages and all. WW takes the guns away and gives them to the captives, who slaughter the now-defenseless guerrillas. Superman Doesn’t Get It, he thinks killing a defenseless person is Always Wrong. They argue, he leaves. Perfectly in character for Mr Mom & Apple Pie.

  12. Great movie! Iron Man and Wolverine, two of my fave characters from Marvel, glad IM didn’t get the Daredevil treatment.

    Very, very worth seeing in the theatre, the big screen provides the necessary scale for the film to come alive.

    Robert Downey was amazing, Paltrow was spectacular (and she can act pretty good too), Bridges looked to be having more fun than he did in the Big Lebowski.

    They told a good story supported by solid acting performances and Favreau refused to let special effects and CGI be more than a supporting character in telling the tale.

  13. Haven’t had time to see Iron Man, yet. but the previews sure are tempting. Wish to hell I could say the same for the trailer I just saw for a Frank Miller adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Sprit.

    Foo!

    If the trailer is a fair representation, Mr. Miller needs a good half-hour kicking for insulting the memory of Mr. Eisner, excessive Noir, and general bad taste.

    Too bad.

  14. As an Iron Man fan since the middle ’60s, I like it too.

    I thought the story and special effects didn’t get in each other’s way, I liked the story line (simple but reasonable) and the writing and acting was very good.

    Hopefully, Robert Downey Jr may be inspired to get his head out of – where ever – and become as much of a person as he is an actor.

    Far and away, Gwyneth Paltrow had the best one-liner in the movie when she responds to the reporter who did the sleep over.

    I didn’t see the ‘Weapons are Evil’ so much; the point was brought up and Tony Stark rightfully pointed out weapons are tools and have no inherent ‘good or evil’ in them. And he was upset, obviously, this HIS tools were going to the insurgents.

  15. So long as he can stay on the wagon, he appears to be on his way judging by this quote from a NY Times interview:

    “I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics every since.”

    from the article here:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/movies/20carr.html?pagewanted=2&ref=movies

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