Watched Iron Man again on DVD this afternoon. This *has* to be considered among the best of an otherwise somewhat mediocre lot of Marvel superhero movies over the past several years.

To date, there have been 3 Spiderman (1st two were decent, last one was lame enough to quit watching midstream); 3 X-Men movies (liked all three but the first two were far better than the last one – lot of missed opportunities with that one); one Wolverine movie (haven’t seen it yet); two Fantastic Four movies (first one was decent, second one was pretty dumb); two Hulk movies (can you over-CGI the big guy more? Who cares, never saw them, bring back Lou Ferrigno!); and a plethora of misc. movies (Daredevil, Elektra, The Punisher, Blade, etc. – who cares, why bother? – just see the first Hellboy instead).

What I really liked about Iron Man (and played a bit of a role in the first Spiderman and F4 movies) is having the main characters not take themselves so seriously – and yet having a real ‘menace’ rise up during the movie. Here, it was Jeff Bridges (probably why it’s best to seal him BACK in the computer come next Christmas – woo hoo!) and he was understated but increasingly evil! And he even turned on the afghani warlord and sold him out too – always nice to have in a bad guy – the best evildoers always eat their own by the end of the story, no? 🙂

Finally, I liked the other casting choices – RDJ plays the Tony Stark character just right – overconfident, brash, but somehow ‘gets religion’ by the end – now we wait for his still controversial personality to cause him more problems in the sequel. GP is good and still keeps her distance by the end – although I predict that will change (a la Mary Jane and Spiderman) in the sequel. And the other main actors do well too, although they really didn’t give Terrence Howard enough to do, IMHO.

So, to sum up – well-rounded characterizations (for a superhero movie, anyway) bad guy gets his, lots of zooming around with several well-done ‘Iron Man kicks ass’ battle scenes – what’s not to like? It’s also interesting that Tony Stark is in some ways the opposite of Bruce Wayne – TS already had the world on a platter (arguably for the wrong reasons) when he got religion – vs. BW came from wealth based on helping people, but then became a vigilante (powered by wealth) when his parents were murdered in front of him. Despite this movie’s more ‘loner’ portrayal of him, Iron Man is more aligned with the forces of law and order than Batman ever was – and in the comics, leads The Avengers (unlike Batman, who remains a loner, vigilante killer – Superfriends kiss my ass :)). But for me, just so long as they keep kicking ass – that’s ultimately what matters?

And what DC superhero has a Black Sabbath song of the same name, either? Too cool……

candybowl