REVIEW: Iron Man

I just came back from seeing it. This has to be one of the best translations of a comic book character to the screen.  They managed to merge 60s and 70s Iron man stories together to weave a solid origin tale with no fat. And Jon Faverau totally got the character abd gave the film a terrific look. Jeff Bridges makes a great villain as Obadiah Stane and Robert Downey Junior was a revelation as Tony Stark.

This is easily in the top three superhero movies of all time. And the Stan Lee cameo is hilarious this time.

I won’t say more. Go see it.

UPDATE: It’s made $201 million world wide this weekend. Holy crap.

1. I can only assume, sir, that you stood your ground and waited till after the credits rolled for the extra not-so-top secret footage that supposely involves an individual who is infamously known for not liking snakes on a plane...?

   Posted by  on  05/02  at  02:43 AM

2. I watched the end credits until the computer animation stopped. So if there was anything after that I missed it. I hadn’t heard about that.

   Posted by  on  05/02  at  07:49 AM

3. The footage that Ezekiel mentions wasn’t included in most advanced screenings.  But cell phone footage of it is up on You Tube if anyone is so inclined.

   Posted by  on  05/02  at  07:53 AM

4. This was the best of the comic book movies so far.  I will see it at least once more.

   Posted by  on  05/02  at  09:18 AM

5. It took a long time, but Hollywood has finally managed to make a few good superhero movies.  I think the two things most responsible for that were SFX finally getting good enough to keep the movies from looking stupid, and the emergence of directors that understood why comics are cool.
   The trailers for Iron Man look good, I’ll have to check it out.  Did you ever read Adam Warren’s Iron Man series, “Hypervelocity”...?  Great story and layouts, but the artist kind of spoiled it, alas.  I have scans of Adam’s original “layout script\” and it’s a page-turner.  I’m told there are some suspicious similarities between some of the action sequences in his series and some in the movie, but it’s probably just coincidence, or a sort of convergent evolution.

   Posted by  on  05/02  at  02:04 PM

6. Some of the movie did seem to be taken from Adam’s work. it probably was, but its hard to be sure. I’ve seen his layouts, also.

   Posted by  on  05/02  at  02:18 PM

7. I just saw the movie and have posted a review on my site. I do have a question though, Hud. You being a comic book guy and all, you made no mention of the foreshadowing of the villian who’ll probably be in the sequel.

   Lemme think...the organization that took Stark captive was, um ‘The Ten Rings’. Was there an adversary of Iron Man’s who had something to do with ten rings? Based in Asia? Maybe?

   Posted by Big Bad Wolf  on  05/03  at  03:22 PM

8. Yeah, I knew you’d seen the layouts.  His layouts are more detailed than many other artist’s full pencils....
   As a side note, a excellent example of how whether or not the director “gets comics” is crucial, take the example of the X-Men series.  Singer got it, and the first two were fun.  Ratner did not, and The Last Stand showed it.

   Posted by  on  05/03  at  07:18 PM

9. Yeah, I also expected suit he fought to be Titanium Man, but nope. I think the Mandarin will probably be the villain next time, except Osama isn’t Chinese. They seemed to be going for an Al Qaeda vibe here.

   Posted by  on  05/03  at  07:25 PM
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