Thursday, May 01, 2008

- Saw the new Iron Man movie Tuesday night at special sneak-preview. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's a very good comic-book movie, and a decent movie overall. Out of a score of 1 to 100, I give it an 82. I put it into the upper-echelon of comic-book movies, along with Batman (1989), Batman Begins, Superman and Superman 2.

Downey Jr was wonderful! He poured his heart and soul into his performance. If you have no expectations of who or what Tony Stark is about, then you will walk away thinking Downey Jr makes an amazing Tony Stark. Downey definitely sold me on the techno-babble, and he made Stark into a witty, caring character. Unfortunately, I was still disappointed in his portrayal of Tony Stark, when compared to the comic-book version. The comic-book version of Tony Stark is sophisticated, suave, worldly, devastatingly handsome, and completely sure of himself at all times. Downey often came across as smarmy and irreverent, two qualities you would never find in the comic-book Tony Stark.

The scenes where Stark designs, builds and tests the Mark 2 and Mark 3 armors floored me! It's like they stripped those scenes straight from the comic-books. I was as giddy as a school-girl watching those scenes. I think I embarrassed my friend sitting next to me. I dont care though. I had fun watching those scenes.

The script was overall satisfactory. The plot seemed to get sillier and sillier as the movie moved along, but that's typical in comic-book movies. Big plot holes towards the end of the flick.

There are at least a dozen little easter-eggs to watch for in the movie. I wont point them all out here, because I dont want to spoil them, and besides, anyone reading this review will be able to spot them on their own anyhow. However, here are three I hope you dont miss..

1. Listen to the music played in the casino when Stark is gambling. If you have ever watched the old Iron Man cartoon from the late 60s, you will recognize the music. My last update led you to this music.

2. Look for a nod to Howard Hughes in Tony's office, later in the film.

3. You have to be a true-blue Marvel fan to catch this one..listen for the call-sign of a particular F-22 raptor.

The movie, as of this writing, is at 95% at Rotten Tomatoes (90 fresh/5 rotten.) Much to my surprise, it's gonna be one of the big movies of the summer. It's guaranteed of making 200 million. Will it break 300 million? I hope so. The movie is good enough to warrant sequels.

Here are some Iron Man related links, to tide you over until you see the movie:

I wrote a longer, and spoiler-filled review, at super-hero hype.com:

http://forums.superherohype.com/showthread.php?t=300981&page=2

Iron Man at Rotten Tomatoes:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/iron_man/

The Iron Man video game comes out May 2nd. I pre-ordered it. Here are the various Iron Man suits you can un-cover in the game. Very good historical descriptions of each suit:
http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2008/04/10/sega_unveils_iron_man_video_game_suits

Real-life Iron Man suits. This stuff motivates me to try for A's in my calculus classes:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080421/sc_livescience/realironmansuits

George Orwell's five tips to effective writing:
http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/george-orwells-5-rules-for-effective-writing/

The ten most historically inaccurate films:
http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/10mosthistoricallyinaccurate.html

On a related note...the five most ridiculous lies you were taught in history class:
http://www.cracked.com/article_16101_5-most-ridiculous-lies-you-were-taught-in-history-class.html

A true bionic eye. Some day Steve Austin and Iron Man wont be science-fiction:
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1078909

The answer is 42, but what exactly is the question?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7283155.stm