Movie Review: Iron Man

My view of super hero movies was skewed thanks to the original Batman type movies that made them feel like ‘cartoons’ rather than comic books; the distinction may not be obvious, but if you’re a comic book reader, you know exactly what I am talking about. A comic book has nuances that are often dark and subtle and for many years these were simply ignored (I note the more recent Batman movies are a lot closer to the comic book). Thus when I contemplated watching Iron Man, I really wasn’t looking forward to it as I didn’t expect the comic book to transfer very well onto the big screen.

Tony Stark is a young man whose propensity to toying with gadgets and making them better continued into adulthood and led to him becoming an expert military weapon designer. As he is demonstrating his latest powerful weapon he is caught in an ambush and kidnapped; the terrorists intend to get Tony to design them powerful weapons.

Tony, whose self preservation combined with his innate goodness, decides to use his abilities and fool the terrorists by building a suit of armor that will help him escape. Once he has escaped the armor becomes his obsession and he decides it’s now in his power to defend the people of the world!

So as you read my quick synopsis you’re probably thinking that the movie really isn’t going to be that good as it doesn’t have much of a storyline to build on. While it is built in a modern world we all know and understand the underlying premise of being able to build a suit of armor that will turn a normal man into a superhero just seems too farfetched. You get the feeling that this is going to be just another good guy becomes super hero and save the world type movie, and in a way you are right.

However, having said that, the movie really isn’t meant to be based in our reality and is supposed to follow the world created in the comic book, and in that respect, the movie does a great job.

You begin to learn about Stark via some flash-backs which make the story a little hard to follow but do add a lot of character to Iron Man; it’s almost as if they used this movie to simply setup the character for the next movie, while giving a little ‘plot’ in this movie.

For once though, the movie did a great job intertwining the action and non-action; in fact the amount of action is probably far less than most would expect and this for me was actually a good thing as it allowed me to understand the characters a lot better!

The action that is present is very well done and enhanced the movie rather than BEING the movie. It was interesting to see the development of Iron Man, and this actually added some nice comedic elements.

I also like the fact that Iron Man could be anyone as long as you know how to control the armor – you don’t have to be born on a different planet, or get bitten by a radioactive spider to become Iron Man, you simply have to put on the suit – it does help If you are a genius who is a whizz-kid in electronics though!

The movie simply becomes an introduction to the concept of Iron Man. It does have a plot, but this is almost secondary as you watch the characters develop and the suit design improve over time. You also get to learn about Stark’s past and his motivations as well as a potential love interest at some point in the future.

The movie won’t please everyone though; some simply want action action action, and this movie was not about action – the Super-Hero isn’t particularly that super as well! I liked the fact that acting was actually important for a Super Hero movie, and Downy did a great job in portraying Stark as a relatively normal if a little idealistic character!

To conclude, I thought the movie was good – it didn’t try and fill the screen with explosions, but managed to get a decent plot into the character development and really setup the series for the future – definitely worth getting on DVD!