Every Geek’s Crazy ’Bout A Sharp-Dressed Man | Robert Downey Jr. suits up in Iron Man.
IRON MAN
Directed by Jon Favreau. Starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard. Now playing.
4 stars
For comics fans (especially militant ones like myself), a new comic-book movie is like an election: you know it’s not going to turn out the way you want it to, but it’s your duty to show up anyway. So it gives me great pleasure to announce that Iron Man just might be the best comic-to-screen adaptation since Superman. Fellow comic geeks, rejoice: this is the real thing!
Iron Man’s 45-year-old origin story gets an upgrade as we’re introduced to Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), CEO of Stark Industries, the world leader in WMDs and other designs of death. But the seriousness of his business seems to be lost on our swingin’ bad boy, who focuses on the more bacchanalian benefits of billionaire-hood: cars, chicks, and booze. But when Stark is in Afghanistan to demonstrate his latest creation, his convoy is ambushed and he is taken hostage. It’s then he realizes that his designs are not just being used by the U.S. military—his country’s enemies have their own stockpiles of Stark weaponry.
Our resourceful hero manages to cobble together an iron battle-suit from odds and ends from various Stark products. After narrowly escaping his captors, he returns to his cliffside mansion a changed man. He declares that his company will henceforth be in the business of peace, abandoning all weapons technology. Meanwhile, he secretly refines his iron suit, making a more streamlined model, vowing to use it to hunt down his weapons and keep them from hurting innocents. So, unlike most superheroes, Iron Man’s powers do not come from a mutant defect or an accident of science: Stark’s greatest power is his sense of accountability.
With his charming swagger and glib delivery, Robert Downey Jr. was born to play the Armoured Avenger—is there anyone better than Downey Jr. at making self-involved assholes seem appealing?—and his presence gives the superhero genre a much-needed boost of legitimacy. And the unusually high-powered supporting cast, which includes Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, and Terrence Howard, is a welcome sign that Marvel Comics (which is now producing on its own instead of selling individual character rights to studios) is getting serious about making quality movies... and they’re making them as fast as they can, with redos of recent blunders like The Hulk and The Punisher both coming out later this year.
After his starmaking directing debut with the cult favourite Swingers, Jon Favreau’s subsequent choice in projects (Elf? Zathura?!?) have been a little strange. But I suspect he’s merely been biding his time, establishing himself as a reliable, versatile, on-time-and-under-budget moviemaker, someone who can be trusted to take on a big-budget special-effects blockbuster without letting it get out of control. Interestingly, Favreau’s comic sensibility only works in the movie’s favour—especially in the scenes where Stark clumsily masters his suit’s flying powers. Meanwhile, it’s in the quieter scenes where the cast really shines—the scene where Paltrow (playing Stark’s long-suffering girl Friday, Pepper Potts) inadvertently plucks out the device that keeps his heart beating is unexpectedly sweet and even romantic.
At the same time, Favreau never forgets that the quickest way to any fanboy’s heart is with lots of kickass special effects, filling-rattling explosions and enough comic-book in-jokes to make even the most closeted geek scream “Excelsior!” I hope he had as good a time making Iron Man as I did watching it, because if he keeps this up, Favreau-brand blockbusters will soon be as much a summertime staple as Slurpees and Deep Woods Off.
