Iron Man
Before I begin this, I want to mention something that I just found out. A while ago I reviewed the movie Next. It was an OK movie about a guy who can see two minutes into the future. Around that same time I bought a collection of some of Phillip K. Dick's short stories. I've been reading them a little bit at a time. One of the stories is called "The Golden Man" which is about a world where mutants are hunted down and killed. One mutant manages to survive to be a teenager. He isn't like the X-Men though. He is hairless and golden. He is also a wild child. It turns out that he can see into the future and he is also very fertile. If not contained he will pretty much make every woman he can get near pregnant effectively out breeding humanity.
Well guess what? Next is "based" on "The Golden Man." I know, right? I just found that out and I was totally amazed. Odd how the rewrite process works in Hollywood.
Now believe it or not this is actually kind of relevant to Iron Man in that this film is very tightly plotted and undoubtedly underwent some really serious rewriting. That isn't to say that it is bad. In fact, it is really really good. It kicks the ass of Spider-Man, that is for sure. However, it is one of those movies where every single thing that is said mentioned or done in the first half of the film becomes essential to the plot in the second half. On one hand I really admire that kind of writing. I could never do that. On the other hand, I find it kind of irritating because it makes everything so artificial and precalculated that it sucks some of the believability out of it.
If you know anything about the character or have seen the trailers you know pretty much the plot. Stark makes weapons. Stark gets captured by bad guys and makes an iron suit to escape. Someone makes a great big iron suit and Stark has to beat the great big iron suit. There really aren't any surprises but it is well done. It works really well.
five thumbs up
stay until the end
to see the special surprise
you motherfuckers
