David Edelstein, New York | “Every age gets not the superhero it deserves but the superhero it needs to ease its anxieties: in Iron Man, we get an American weapons mogul whose guilt over facilitating the deaths of U.S. soldiers and Mideast civilians impels him to turn off the arms pipeline and rescue Afghans from marauding warlords. The military-industrial complex ravages the Third World—then its former emissary swoops down from the sky in the guise of an impregnable weapon, using his might (and money, and American ingenuity) to undo the damage. Iron Man Akbar! It’s utter, wish-fulfilling crap, but when the whole world hates you, it does feel good.”
David Denby, The New Yorker | “The hero, Tony Stark, 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 him, 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.”
David Poland, The Hot Blog | “The use of Middle Easterners/Northern Africans as Colorform villains and victims is actually close to offensive if you spend more than a second to think about it. Really, we are at the ‘wog’ level. The flagrant disinterest in these people being anything other than cardboard cutouts is kind of sad. Do we really think the use of the remembered imagery of American businessmen and journalists beheaded by dark-skinned men in headdresses is already the kind of kitsch you throw into a comic-book movie? I don’t. But hey... I’m just being a nasty old f***, judging a comic-book movie like it was actually supposed to work as a regular movie.”
