Of two Marvel comic book movies opening this summer, I heard about the Incredible Hulk much more than Iron Man, although I suppose that’s because Hulk was filmed in Toronto. I saw some links on the web to pictures of the Iron Man suit early this year, but truth be told I was not enthusiastic about the film. He’s not nearly as interesting a hero as say the Fantastic Four, which I think I am capable of saying since I followed (bought – wow) the Iron Man Heroes Reborn book back when I was kid.

So I was quite surprised a couple of weeks ago when Iron Man opened to not even good, but great reviews! Although, I was somewhat pessimistic about the reaction since I did not agree with the critics’ “great” review of Spider-man. After a great delay, I finally saw Iron Man last night and I have to agree that it was great. Four out of five stars great!

Some reviews I had read felt that the first half of the film, where Tony Stark Robert Downey Jr. is his playboy self was much better than the second half (where all the action is). I thought the movie was pretty even and great throughout. RDJ played, and the writers wrote Tony Stark as a comic geek would expect him to be, although I would expect him to be more of a business man and less of a tinkerer (I mean he’s the head of SHIELD now). Here’s a laundry list of other things I enjoyed:

• The Spider-man moment when he flew around California, cumulating in his brash stunt of blasting into space. The best part about this is that, in the Star Trek style of writing, this irrelevant moment was tied to the plot in the end. Another example of this was the gift that Pepper gave Tony. I love this type of writing.
• The scene after the credits with Nick Fury was of course great. You may not be aware but in the Ultimates revision of the Marvel universe, Nick Fury is now an African-American and portrayed in the style of Samuel L. Jackson. So it makes a comic book giddy to see this come full circle and have Samuel L. Jackson play him on the big screen. Second side note: There is an existing Avengers Initiative book in print right now, although it’s about War Machine training super heroes.
• Speaking of War Machine, he’s actually Rhodes who was the army weapons research guy in the film. Did you catch his remark when he saw the silver Iron Man suit?
• Gwenyth Paltrow was amazing as Pepper Potts, and what a comic geek would expect a red-headed supporting character (ahem Kirsten Dunst) to be like. Although I’m not too happy with the suggested romance since they deviated from canon (I think).
• I liked the SHIELD tie-in, although I didn’t recognize the acronym until they said it. It make even more sense with the Nick Fury scene.
• There was an really cute scene where Tony was talking to Pepper in the denouement where Tony talks about how Pepper couldn’t be his girlfriend because she would freak out — I think that was an allusion to the Spider-man/Mary Jane relationship!

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: comics, moviereview