Having seen Iron Man again tonight, I have a slightly different opinion of it. When I see movies a second time, I can go either way: the analysis drive can start working overtime, or I stop worrying about what’s happening because I already know what’s going to happen. Knowing the balance of the film, it no longer felt unbalanced, or like I needed something to happen, because I wasn’t waiting for Tony Stark to bust out anything.
The second viewing of Iron Man was therefore a freeing experience, and the post-credits sequence was even more exhilarating in the context of an audience who vocally expressed their excitement over the content suggested. While certainly not on the level of the (new) Batman franchise, I’d probably place Iron Man as my favourite Marvel movie. Not that it would be that hard.
I guess that Tony shouldn’t have peed on Obadiah’s rug.
How did they secure an IMAX release for Speed Racer? Why did they keep the damned monkey in? Whose decision was it to make it not even look vaguely realistic? Who thought to bank roll this travesty? Why was this a movie that needed to be made? Why do I get the feeling that it will be played deadly serious? How did they secure such a not-terrible cast? Speed Racer, what are you thinking?
… Why do I know that I’ll go and see it?
And tangentially, am I the only one not overly impressed by the new The Incredible Hulk?
But is it even possible to be worse than Ang Lee’s Hulk?
“That’s how dad did it, that’s how America does it, and it’s worked out pretty well so far.”
I had a physically positive reaction to Iron Man. It admittedly didn’t come until after the credits, but it was there. The rest of the movie was enjoyable but it really felt like an origin story, which brings to mind what is frequently off about the pacing in comic book movies. What this amounts to is essentially three action scenes where Iron Man is actively fighting someone, and a few more where he’s just flying around and testing his creation.
I’m going to do this a little differently to normal, and I’m just going to keep everything up top, put spoilers in the back seat.
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is a right bastard. He chairs Stark Industries and he sells weapons of war. On his way back from a demonstration of the new Jericho missile in Afghanistan, Stark is captured by an equal opportunities terrorist group called The Ten Rings (they speak every language except for English - they could be anyone and everyone!) and charged with building them their own missile. Instead, Stark builds an armoured suit replete with flame throwers and blasts his way to freedom! Back in America, he decides that weapons don’t really choose which side uses them - and that perhaps he could become the one man army to end all killing in his name. Unlike most vigilante justices, though, Iron Man doesn’t become a city hero and get enthused over by Lucy Lawless: this is just baby steps.
Being the first in a projected trilogy, and with the actors already signed on for the next one, it’s no real surprise that Iron Man seems to be just a heck of a lot of build up, peppered with a lot of good scenes and a compelling performance from Robert Downey Jr. While everyone can admit that Spider-Man 3 flat out sucked, the other two weren’t without their pacing faults. Iron Man doesn’t even try to build up a crazy arse Willem Defoe equivalent, it just goes for it. I predict that, with its “Big Weapon” targets, that it might not be very popular with conservative audiences. I mean, who doesn’t want war? Well, not Tony Stark anymore!
Given the intro structure, it’s hard to analyse how the movie is built. I couldn’t decide whether it was three acts or simply two and a half. I couldn’t decide whether instant translation of a video by a computer was clever or stupid. It was also difficult to see whether Terrence Howard’s Jimmy Rhodes had much purpose being there were it not for his projected outcome in future movies as “supporting character becoming a superhero in his own right”.
But that’s a quibble, and I’m good at that. While Tony Stark is no Bruce Wayne, I will profess a certain fondness for super heroes whose “powers” come from their own ingenuity and technological assistance than from any accident of birth, spider-bite or solar flares. Stark is a flawed character, and the time leading up to his imprisonment shows that: mercenary, unconcerned about other people, alcoholic and, if not misogynistic, then definitely sexist (I mean, come on, the flight attendants on his private jet get his drunk and dance around and then a pole emerges from the ground. I don’t think I’m wrong in reading that).
The time in captivity is a good showcase of Stark’s intelligence and his improbable developmental skills. It’s not until the end of the process that you realise he’s had a laptop to work with all along, but the suspension of disbelief is something that is absolutely needed to be able to swallow any of this movie at all. On the outside, Stark partakes in a spot of product placement and then essentially goes into hermitage to build a Mark II of the suit. While this is interesting enough, Stark almost has only himself to bounce off; Downey Jr. carries the movie not because his acting is better than everyone else’s, but because no one else is actually in it for the majority of the time. He has a dang sight of a good time doing it, though.
What it boils down to is this: Iron Man is good, but it needed a smidge more Iron Man. If the movie performs well, then I look forward to a sequel I can embrace with no qualms because they can just go “Hey! Iron Man! Whooooo!”, skip all exposition, and cut right to the picking things up, throwing them, and exploding them. The ending leaves you hungry for more, because it’s that second that it totally kicks into gear - and then, sadly, it’s over. Still, I strongly advise that you stay until the end of the credits.
Hey, what’s this? Spoilers after the cut? Well, guess I’d better steer clear then if’n I don’t want to be spoiled.
I’d just like you to know that I really tried. I got five hundred something pages into Quicksilver and the first three hundred went off like a shot! Good, fun stuff, cutting up dogs for horrid experiments and whatnot, then the King of the Vagabonds came in and my reading ground to a halt. I’ll have to tackle you on my own dime rather than the company dollar, Neal Stephenson, because I feel like I’m getting nowhere fast.
In other approved activities, be sure and see Forgetting Sarah Marshall this weekend. It’s pretty funny, even if you don’t want to see Jason Segel’s penis. (which you do get to see … several times.)
Yeah, a simultaneous release for a movie? I didn’t see it coming either!
It’s a three piece deal: books that did not make me feel good about them or myself! Hooray! In fact, the other books I’ve lined up after this one (I’ve read four since, but I decided not to make an entry run longer than three) aren’t all sunshine and lollipops either.
You may recall, if you’re one of my three regular readers, what I had to say about Cryptonomicon. In fact, if you’re one of my three regular readers, you’ve already responded to it, either internally or on your own site. Mark bit first, and now Shamus has had a crack at it.
It’s nice to see that not everyone thinks that Cryptonomicon is the greatest book ever, but I never set out to dispel that; what I particularly like about this is that everything I stated is actually in the text proper - and liking it is simply a matter of interpretation. What makes it the best ever to some people makes it unfathomable for others. It’s an interesting examination of opinion, because it ultimately proves that one man’s novel full of digressions is another man’s novel full of digressions - but that Man A might be allergic to that while Man B bathes in it, and Woman C thinks “Dangit, Snow Crash was so compact, what went wrong?”
Which brings me to my next point (wait, I’m making points here?). Twenty Sided Reader dishuiguanyin states the following:
Even Snow Crash, while it has a wonderful racy plot, great ideas, and ancient near-Eastern mythology … also contains terrible dialogue and huge great infodumps from the librarian. So, yeah, tis a pity, but still hugely enjoyable.
The Librarian is great because the internet is reduced to goggles, and Hiro Protagonist can be doing whatever - speeding through the vast blackness of cyberspace, because they didn’t bother putting addresses on those bastards; fighting Raven; raving with avatars that all look alike - and he can still be being fed exposition! Snow Crash is awesome not because it’s got equal opportunity rapist pirates in it, but because it’s the literary equivalent of this comic:
Sometimes all we require in life is goggles and fishnets, rather than eight page treatises on stockings and furniture. Goggles and fishnets delivered at HYPER SPEED while BYPASSING THE COMMON MAN to fight an ALEUT (like you’ve ever heard of them) with MAXIMUM HARDCORENESS. EXTREME!
Perhaps Snow Crash differs from Cryptonomicon in that it’s not afraid to be silly, whereas Cryptonomicon equates graphs with silliness. I think it hinges on Stephenson’s use of “badass”. You can see it in Snow Crash and say “fuck yeah!”, but you get a rather different, more selfconscious vibe from the later work.
Finally, as to XKCD:
I think that says it all! Wait, it doesn’t. I just thought it was funny if you know the original strip.
I have to have more tickets than this, because December was a great, great month indeed. Australia saves everything for Summer, which is why I had the October drought. It was almost worth it for what I witnessed in December ‘07.
Ensuing is a day of avoiding all news before the Australian broadcast of the awards - which had better not feature news breaks featuring the results.
Point is that December ‘07 should be ready in the hours leading up to the Australian broadcast, and Arbitrary Awards - honestly I can’t say if they’ll be ready. We’ll see. It will be a liveblog behind the times anyway, so it’s not that important in the scheme.
