Updated: So, I saw Iron Man [someone]

Update: [Liberrocky]
I also saw Iron Man this evening (thanks to the good people at Oracle who supplied me with the passes, your SQL has no equal) and I agree 100% with someone's review.
It is a very good super hero movie, not as good as Batman Begins or Superman II but in the super hero genre well above par.

The only beef I really have is with the casting of Stane, come on Jeff Bridges?! The Dude does not make a very menacing villain, good bowler bad villain.

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Short version: good movie, no moonbat content.

Seriously. That's what y'all wanted to know, right? Go see it Friday.

Mild but general spoilers below.

As you might have guessed from the trailer, the movie starts on a pretty unabashedly patriotic note. Like Ace and Allah, I kept expecting the other shoe to drop at some point -- some bit of Michael Moore-ism irrepressible in current Hollywood productions. It never does.

Now the movie uses the Stane/Iron Monger plotline (in this version, Stane is an executive inside Stark International), so there is a sort of "villainous arms dealing" thread, but it turns out what's bad is when you sell arms to the bad guys -- and though the specific bad guys hiding out in Middle Eastern caves are given a nondescript name and never shout "Allahu Akbar!", it's pretty clear (1) who they are, and (2) that they're bad guys who need killin'. And believe it or not, the movie never treats the US government -- and particularly the US military -- as anything but the good guys.

(In other words, when Favreau et al. went around saying "It's an anti-war movie", they meant "Don't let the war stuff keep you from buying tickets for your kids, honest!", not "Bushitlerhalliburtonoilchickenhawks!" I mean, they may think the latter, but it's not in the movie.)

The other thing in the trailer is some snappier-than-usual dialog, and I'll just say that you haven't already seen the best bits. In fact Downey does really well, and it's his comic delivery that makes the movie. Favreau has leavened the effects and action with humor that actually works, in classic popcorn-movie style. (Don't expect Batman-style pretentious angst.)

Comic geeks will delight in various little touches that I won't spoil here. This is the first movie from Marvel's new in-house studio (the Hulk remake is #2), and it shows in the general faithfulness to the lore and storylines.

It also means, of course, that there will be sequels. The problem with Iron Man is that he doesn't have the same gallery of memorable villains as, say, the X-Men or Spidey, much less DC's Batman. I'm sure they'll come up with something, though.

posted by xgenghisx at 12:05 AM

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