Cinema Hype

It seems to me that May 2 was a perfect, and perfectly metaphorical, release date for Iron Man. Aside from rescuing us all from the movie wasteland that was spring of 2008 (and thank goodness for that), this is a movie that’s trying to have things both ways: character and action, exposition and explosions, hero’s journey and summer blockbuster. Maybe, in the end, the movie can’t have it all, but it sure makes a good effort.

If anything, the movie errs a little on the side of seriousness: the first half of the film is almost pure plot and character, with surprisingly little of the flying and shooting we’ve come to expect. Director Jon Favreau starts things off with a bang, literally (to stave off Ang Lee Hulk-itis), and then hits the brakes, cutting back in time to introduce the audience to Robert Downey Jr. as our hero, Tony Stark. It’s not boring—electromagnet in the heart, terrorists, some fancy work with an iron forge, etc.—but there’s a lot of set-up; Iron Man as we come to know him doesn’t even appear until somewhere around the halfway point. It’s a risky move, exposing us to all that careful narration and character development (!), but it works because Favreau knows what he has in Downey: a stellar alter ego. Tony Stark is the kind of role Downey was born to play, and has played so well in so many movies over the years. He’s snarky and mildly tortured, with a heart of (electromagnetized) gold beating underneath, and just watching him and his pitch-perfect line delivery makes the delayed gratification of the Iron Man suit totally worth it. And after that halfway turning point, well, all bets are off: let the clanking, zooming shoot-em-up begin!

It’s not just the Iron Man movie that’s straddling a few fences. Iron Man himself is a bit of an amalgam of some of his more famous super-buddies, combining Batman’s wealthy-playboy alter ego and reliance on a suit (i.e. no actual super-powers) with Spider-Man’s philosophy regarding great power and great responsibility. The latter is, in fact, the backbone of the movie—Iron Man has always been political (he started out as an anti-Communist superhero in 1963) and he’s now been brought into the 21st century, specifically post-9/11 Afghanistan. In the end, Tony Stark is the kind of guy we all wish were really behind the U.S. weapons trade: a patriot with a passion for truth and transparency, somebody who embraces both the perks and the ultimate weight of his position. The movie does an interesting job of combining the comics’ tradition of patriotism with the postmodern Hollywood tendency towards pacifism (except, of course, where urban action scenes are concerned).

Iron Man is only one of several comic-book movies in the last decade to attempt something deeper than pure escapist entertainment (see Batman Begins), but it’s certainly a role model for future adaptations, especially if audiences get used to a certain level of sophistication. And, well, it really is a little bit of rocket science.

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