Rated PG -13 for some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and brief suggestive content

Directed by Jon Favreau

Written by Karey Kirkpatrick, David Berenbaum, and John Sayles

Created by Stan lee, Jack Kirby, Don Heck, and Larry Lieber

Starring Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow, Shaun Toub, and the best Stan Lee Cameo yet.

Wow…

Holy shit…

The first movie Marvel puts out & they totally fail to pussy it up.

/cries

I’m so proud of them. After the tsunami of mediocrity that SONY shoved down our throats last year, Spider-man 3, I was scared this one would be equally as forgettable.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me compose myself & start writing this one right. It deserves a well written review.

First of all, hi, I’m back, I’ve had to take a leave of absence from the movies to deal with some family emergencies, hopefully I’ll be able to watch more movies now & review them. Okay, onto Shell head’s cinematic debut.

This officially movie kicked ass. As did the soundtrack. In fact, I think the movie was enhanced by not having an orchestral theme for the main character. Unlike every other Superhero in a movie, Iron man has no theme, well not exactly. Better said he has no theme song, he does have a musical theme running throughout the movie. They chose Heavy metal for Iron Man. Yes, there was some original music by Ramin Djawadi, but for Iron man’s appearances they chose some classic metal songs (Classic to me anyway.) So all y’all that know me as metal head must’ve figured out that this made me happy. Not just because I’m a head banger, but because it fit. Iron man & an orchestral theme would just not have fit together. Iron man is cutting edge, state of the art top of the line. I don’t care if you would’ve had John Williams write the theme, it would have felt wrong. The character requires something newer than the tried & true theme music everyone else has. I’m not just saying that because it’s metal, electronica would have worked with the character too.

Those were my thoughts within the first ten minutes of the movie. It’s one hell of a ride. I hope y’all can put down GTA 4 & go see it this weekend, trust me, it’s worth it & your console could use the break, you been playing since Tuesday dammit!!

Seriously though Director Jon Favreau did a great job, he makes the origin exciting & presents it in such a way that he doesn’t bore us with backstory (Ang Lee, take notes, yeah there are a few other names on the list, but he’s the one I’m most pissed at. You know what you did!!) The origin did change a bit, for example the bad guys were no longer working for a Vietnamese warlord, they were now working for a middle eastern warlord. It makes some sense, the original story was written during the Viet Nam war, this is a different age with a different war. To the middle easterners that are tired of seeing your people portrayed as villains on the screen all I can say is at least they aren’t terrorists, and they aren’t the Big Bads of the story, they are just the guys that are there for the origin. The real bad guy is Obediah Stane (think Lex Luthor with a beard) more on him later.

Robert Downey Jr. hit this one out of the park. Masterful performance, his Tony Stark is like Bruce Wayne WITHOUT the stick up his ass. Now, understand that I am not a big Robert Downey fan (That doesn’t mean I think he sucks, it just means that putting him in a movie won’t guarantee that I will go see it) But I am glad they cast him as Tony Stark, he managed to bring a level warmth & humanity to the character that the guys at Marvel have been unable to hit since the Layton/Michelinie era (that’s the 1980’s for the geek-lore impaired) Seriously though, it’s been a long time since a superhero has been portrayed with this much humanity. Maybe it’s because he is still human, it’s the suit that has all the powers ( I’ll admit that being a multi-trillionaire counts as a super power, I mean super powers as in a cosmic accident gave him the powers to spit out burning puppies at his enemies or some such silliness) I’m so happy that Tom Cruise walked off the film, he would have made it suck. Tom Cruise can’t even make Tom Cruise seem human these days. Not saying that because he’s a scientologist, I know a few scientologists & they seem pretty normal. (BTW, is it true that he stormed off because he insisted on putting a nose on the armor? Can anyone verify this?) And as to the Alcoholism question, although they didn’t bring it into the forefront of the story, they didn’t have to, given Mr Downey’s past, just seeing him with a drink in his hand makes you want to take it away, or at the very least question the judgment of whoever the fuck gave it to him. So yeah he was perfectly cast as Tony Stark. Kudos to you dude, you brought the role to life. I seriously hope this gets you an Oscar nomination, I doubt it, but I sincerely hope you do.

Moving right along to Gwyneth Paltrow. Holy shit, I haven’t seen her on the big screen since Sky Captain (2004) I had forgotten how much screen presence she has. They had her turned up to a nine or a ten when they really only needed her at about a seven. I felt bad for Leslie Bibb, in their scene together Paltrow swoops in & takes total command of the scene, so much so that afterwards you don’t even remember if there was anyone in the scene with her. It was like watching a game of Mortal Combat and the winner getting a flawless victory. I can see why they hired her for the job, not many actresses could pull off the role. Virginia “Pepper” Potts is a triple threat role in the superhero genre. The character is Tony Stark’s “Alfred” (That’s a Batman reference, if you didn’t get it, WTF are you doing on this page?) She’s also Stark’s best friend, & finally she’s the romantic interest of the film. Those are some big shoes to cast for. A hard role to pull off, but she did it. Interesting side note, in the comic book there was a love triangle between Pepper, Tony & “Happy” Hogan (Happy played by director John Favreau, Can’t say I blame him for taking that role) They played that storyline WAY down, into non existence even. Shame, I would’ve liked to have seen it play out. Oh well, maybe in the sequel. (Hint, hint.)

Another hard role to pull off was that of Obediah Stane. See, up until now in just about every Super Hero movie, the villain has a burning personal hatred of the hero. Not so in Iron Man, here it’s just business. This gave Jeff Bridges plenty of room to actually play the character without having to resort to any of the stereotypical comic book villain cliches. I was worried about how this would play to the audience, would they still see him in the same light as the Green Goblin, Doc Ock, the Joker, or even Lex Luthor? (Well, maybe in the same light as Lex, they are both bald after all.) Of all of the Iron man villains in the comic book, none has ever put as big a hurt on Tony than Obediah Stane, For a while he was the most hated character in the marvel universe, but that story took years to develop, time they didn’t have in this movie. Not that Bridges didn’t make him odious, I just didn’t hate him as much as I did in the comic books, I’m sure with some extra screen time, they could have hit that mark.

But in the long run, the movie wasn’t about the bad guy, it was about Tony Stark, a character that we are introduced to who was on his way to becoming the bad guy, until he’s forced to make a reassessment of his lifestyle & values courtesy of his conscience/Dr. Yinsen (Shaun Toub), has a change of heart & decides to emerge as a good guy. In this day & age it’s a good story, because who is sure that they are doing the right thing. Which one of us doesn’t want to be a better person? I know I sure as shit I do, thus the appeal of Iron man, this isn’t a story about revenge (Batman), Good Vs. Evil (Superman), Great power = Great Responsibility (Spider-man), or even controlling the monster within us all (the Hulk. Okay, that’s what Ang Lee’s Hulk movie was supposed to be about, I have no Idea WTF he decided to turn it into, all I know is that Marvel is offering up another Hulk movie to try to make up for that cinematic bowel movement.) Iron Man is about Redemption. Pure & simple.

All in all the movie was a lot of fun, definitely worth seeing. I’m an old school Iron man fan (duh!) & I’m not bitching, so go see it

Is it kid friendly? If you have a problem seeing people drinking & carousing, then maybe, but those parts aren’t central to the plot, it’s a superhero movie, so there is violence of course, this review is much more offensive than anything in the movie, so you decide.

I give this movie a box of donuts & an iced triple ripple vanilla road monkey frappuccino served in an Iron Man glow in the dark collector’s mug.