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iRONMAN (pg. 5)
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| Clovis |
| quote: | Originally posted by RJT
Dude, NPR gave it a good review. :wtf:
Seriously though, I'm as skeptical of big "blockbuster" movies as anyone - but I'd bet dollars to donuts this one is nothing like Transformers. |
I read a review in New Yorker by one of their reviewers (Dave Denby) that I usually trust, who basically said it was a poorly polished turd.
*edit* found it online:
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In the past twenty years or so, Robert Downey, Jr., has gone through the following stages: a good young actor with a melancholy smile; a good young actor who was also a drug addict, jailbird, and insurance risk; and now, no longer young, an actor who may become the first genuine hipster star since Robert Mitchum and Marlon Brando. Michael Keaton and George Clooney, in the “Batman” series, brought an instinct for satire to comic-book movies, giving their mock-stentorian lines a twist. But Downey, who completely dominates the whooshing junk pile that is “Iron Man,” is on his own wavelength, and he turns the movie into a hundred-and-eighty-five-million-dollar put-on. Sporting a neat, dark Vandyke beard that cuts the air like a knife and complements his glittering black eyes, Downey plays Tony Stark, a billionaire arms manufacturer and playboy. Stark lives in a cliff-hanging Malibu mansion with a gigantic basement that serves as his toy room and his laboratory; his private jet comes equipped with female flight attendants who double as in-flight pole dancers. Nothing matters to him except inventing things and having a good time. Downey, muttering to himself, ignores everyone else in the movie for as long as he can. Fixing his eyes, at last, on another character, he seems faintly annoyed that his privacy has been violated. Yet he delivers—to the camera, and to us. He can make offhandedness mesmerizing, even soulful; he passes through the key moments in this cloddish story as if he were ad-libbing his inner life.
Back in 1963, Stan Lee, working with his brother, the writer Larry Lieber, and with the artists Don Heck and Jack Kirby, created the character of Tony Stark for the Marvel Comics series “Tales of Suspense.” The war in Vietnam was heating up, and Stark brought his newly invented supertransistors to the battlefield, only to get captured and enslaved by Wong-Chu—a chubby Commie tyrant. One might blush at this memory of sinister Orientalist Cold War pop, but the updating of the material for “Iron Man” hasn’t made it any smarter. The director, Jon Favreau, and two writing teams, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, and Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, have enlisted Iron Man in the war on terror. Stark is now showing off his advanced missiles to American forces in Afghanistan. He gets ambushed by a mysterious group of burning-eyed men who hang out in caves and scream in foreign tongues. They are never identified, though their leader, Raza (Faran Tahir), says that they want to conquer the world. In any case, the freelance fanatics, or whatever they are, waterboard Tony Stark, which, considering what some American interrogators and their surrogates have done to suspects recently, is enraging to watch. Such are the ways of pop: we cast our sins onto others. The complaint sounds a little wan, but it’s worth noting that, possibly, more Americans will see this dunderheaded fantasia on its opening weekend than have seen all the features and documentaries that have labored to show what’s happening in Iraq and on the home front.
The fanatics demand that Stark build some of his missiles for them. They’re a little careless, these fellows: though they watch Stark on video cameras, for a long time they manage to miss the evidence that he’s really making a gigantic suit of armor for himself. Downey, beefed up, his torso drenched in sweat, looks like a nineteenth-century blacksmith. As he welds and solders, using spare parts from spent shells (the insurgents possess some of Stark’s own products), the movie briefly becomes engaging as a kind of Erector Set dream of home manufacture. Yet the clanking suit, when it’s finished, is a letdown. Given its provenance, we expect a patchwork—like the battered old spacecraft in “Star Wars”—not the gleaming computer-generated steel plate that we get. And once Stark climbs inside and becomes Iron Man he loses his perverse charm; Downey without eyes is Downey cancelled. Iron Man shoots bullets and emits liquid flame from his gauntlets, and when he gets bored he just flies away. Unlike Superman or Spider-Man, this superhero has no vulnerabilities or specialized skills. He’s an all-purpose fighting vehicle—an airborne Robocop. At one point, he’s chased by two American F-22s, and Favreau and his animators spin him around wildly in the air, but the sequence is more clumsy than enthralling. Without a continuous infusion of visual poetry, digital spectacle quickly burns through one’s sense of awe.
There’s a slightly depressed, going-through-the-motions feel to the entire show. When Stark escapes and comes home, now and then doing battle secretly as Iron Man, almost every scene is played as a joke, but, apart from Downey’s private sense of amusement, the kidding lacks conviction. Gwyneth Paltrow, widening her eyes and palpitating, can’t do much with an antique role as Stark’s girl Friday, who loves him but can’t say so; Terrence Howard, playing a military man who chases around after Stark, looks dispirited and taken for granted. Jeff Bridges, though, performs with skill and persistence as the movie’s true heavy—Obadiah Stane, Stark’s treacherous No. 2 at the arms company. Downey keeps shrugging him off, but Bridges, who has the shaved head and thick beard of an outré professional wrestler from about 1958, refuses to be edged out of the picture. He bear-hugs Downey furiously, all fake affection and murderous envy. The contest between the two begins to amount to something, but then they disappear into their armor and battle like two oversized beetles.
Will “Iron Man” become a franchise? Superhero fantasies have generally drawn their emotional energy from teen-age male frustration, or from early wounds that shaped the heroes’ characters. Bruce Wayne sees his parents killed; Clark Kent’s home planet gets destroyed; the X-Men (and women) are outsiders—mutants—and Peter Parker is a nerd. But Tony Stark is more like James Bond—he’s always on top. At the end, Stark acknowledges to the public, “I am Iron Man,” setting up a possible sequel. Downey has a star’s confidence now, and, if the audience takes to him, he could probably do this insouciant acting turn again. But it would be a bad joke on him—his most unfortunate mishap—if he winds up clanking around in a metal suit forever.
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I may give it a chance at blockbuster, but I'm not paying 8$ to see this in a theater. |
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| RJT |
| quote: | Originally posted by Clovis
I read a review in New Yorker |
Don't even need to read any further. The New Yorker is a rag designed to let the ultra pretentious know what they should avoid in order to appear hip.
Their reviews of just about anything are absolutely meaningless to me - it's just bizzaro entertainment weekly. |
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| Silky Johnson |
| Dave Denby obviously doesn't read comics. Way to miss the mark completely with that review. Clearly doesn't understand Stark's character, lol. |
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| wotyzoid |
Watched it Sarturday. If it wasn't for the first spider man and batman begins I'd say this was the best superhero movie to date. I had only read a couple of iron man comic books when I was younger but my friend is a big fan he he swears it's follows the story. It was very well shot and the script is ultra clever. I loved it and yeh they totally gave out War Machine hints. I'm totally a tony stark fan now and I'm gonna try to read some more comics, he's so badass.
Coolest line:
Jim Rhodes: You're not a soldier.
Tony Stark: Damn right I'm not. I'm an army. |
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| RJT |
| quote: | Originally posted by jennypie
Dave Denby obviously doesn't read comics. Way to miss the mark completely with that review. Clearly doesn't understand Stark's character, lol. |
I just don't know why anyone would even both to either write, or read, a review of a movie like this for the New Yorker. Anyone who has any idea about what the New Yorker is knew before they even started reading that review what it was going to say - that magazine is as predictably snobby as Dubfire is underground. |
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| Clovis |
| quote: | Originally posted by RJT
Don't even need to read any further. The New Yorker is a rag designed to let the ultra pretentious know what they should avoid in order to appear hip.
Their reviews of just about anything are absolutely meaningless to me - it's just bizzaro entertainment weekly. |
The review highlights pretty much the same things that I would take issue with when watching this kind of film, and explains them pretty well.
Given that I happen to agree with most of what is said in the articles, I guess that means I'm an ultra-pretentious trying to appear hip? :conf:
In any case I'm glad there is someone not willing to keel over to the "don't take it seriously, its supposed to kind of suck!" crowd that is always trying to get me to see these movies. |
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| Silky Johnson |
| quote: | Originally posted by Clovis
In any case I'm glad there is someone not willing to keel over to the "don't take it seriously, its supposed to kind of suck!" crowd that is always trying to get me to see these movies. |
LoL, please. Means nothing coming from a guy who clearly hasn't the right background to be reviewing such a movie in the first place. |
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| Clovis |
| quote: | Originally posted by jennypie
LoL, please. Means nothing coming from a guy who clearly hasn't the right background to be reviewing such a movie in the first place. |
What exactly is the right background? Kind of funny since he even goes into the history of the original Tony Stark for a bit. |
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| RJT |
| quote: | Originally posted by Clovis
The review highlights pretty much the same things that I would take issue with when watching this kind of film, and explains them pretty well.
Given that I happen to agree with most of what is said in the articles, I guess that means I'm an ultra-pretentious trying to appear hip? :conf:
In any case I'm glad there is someone not willing to keel over to the "don't take it seriously, its supposed to kind of suck!" crowd that is always trying to get me to see these movies. |
I guess, but it all just sounds like the same closed-minded bull that has been spewed by the New Yorker since its inception.
And how a review where someone so clearly misses the point, and is quite obviously not even remotely familiar with the source material, explains anything is beyond me. He may as well have not even seen the film, that review could have been written by someone whose just read everyone else's thoughts on the movie and said "OK, now how can I write this so I sound like I'm smarter than the rest of the peasants?"
Sorry bro - but the bulk of the New Yorker comes off to me as nothing more than high minded bull with absolutely no substance to it what-so-ever. It's just bizarro Fox News. |
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| Silky Johnson |
| quote: | Originally posted by Clovis
What exactly is the right background? |
Someone with a passion for comic books.
This says it all right here:
"Nothing matters to him except inventing things and having a good time. Downey, muttering to himself, ignores everyone else in the movie for as long as he can. Fixing his eyes, at last, on another character, he seems faintly annoyed that his privacy has been violated."
EXACTLY! IT'S TONY ING STARK!! |
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| RJT |
| quote: | Originally posted by Clovis
What exactly is the right background? Kind of funny since he even goes into the history of the original Tony Stark for a bit. |
Edit: NM, Jenny got it first. That article is rife with inaccuracies, Clovis. |
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| smakmagik |
| Why don't you just watch the movie and judge it yourself instead of relying on a stranger's opinion? Better than spending 2 hours here arguing over a movie you haven't even seen. |
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