May Movie Mash

Reaper · May Movie Mash

It's been a while since I did a review so, Ladies and Gentlemen I give you.....

Iron Man: <--- Website Link Here

So it's May kids, you know that means blockbusters annnnnd comic movie time! Hurray and Huzzah etc Now last year I'm sure you will all remember that for the most part the blockbusters and comic movies were a little.... disappointing (puts the nice hat on), so does that mean that this year will be a turn around and wipe 2007 from our minds?
On the lists so far we have Iron Man, Dark Knight, Incredible Hulk, Speed Racer and various others and they all look pretty good really.

To say that Iron Man has started off the summer movie season pretty well would be a little short of understatement, this is a far superior effort to that of Spider-Man 3. Quick caption synopsis, Tony Stark - Merchant of Death weapons manufacturer - is kidnapped and forced to create a missile for nasty terrorist types, he declines and makes a big robot. Violence enschews. Realistically theres more to it than that but that'll get most people interested as long as they aren't retarded.
It covers a slightly revised version of the origins of Iron Man, updating it to Afghanistan (where else) rather than Vietnam. In some places they could have probably done with minor rewrites, such as how Tony Stark and his fellow prisoner manage to contruct Mk1 without their captors shooting them on the spot, it was obvious to all but them that Stark was up to no good.
It's kind of rare to see a cast and not really be able to pick out someone who shouldn't be there, Iron Man has managed it. Robert Downey Jr is the quintessential Tony Stark, after seeing this I can't think of anyone out there better suited and that's a hard thing to do when it comes to comic fans, you can never please us with casting. Gwyneth Paltrow is exactly what Mary Jane should have been in Spider-Man, tall, attractive, slinky and red haired, not short dumpy and a grouch - Sorry Kirsten -. Pepper Potts and Stark have a wonderful chemistry and their burgeoning attraction is handled in a similarly wonderful fashion while Jeff Bridges slimes and gruffs his way around the pair of them.

Iron Man rolls on at a gentle pace over it's 2 and a quarter hour run time, it's not in any particular rush but it doesn't drag by the time you reach the end scene you do think 'where did the time go'. At the same time there does seem to be a little bit of a lack of build up to the robo-battle-of-doom, it's still fairly impressive don't get me wrong but I think I would have liked to have seen more of Iron Man in solo action. Though saying that when you first get to see Iron Man MkIII I was in a near giggling geek state, it does look fantastic and that's not surprising seeing as the film had atleast five effects companies working for them including ILM and Stan Winston. That's a hell of a line up and it should be due to how the film has to look and thankfully they deliver (Incredible Hulk take note!).

I'm trying to decide if I like what they've done to Jarvis or not, gone is the faithful butler we all know and now Jarvis is a semi AI creation that helps Stark with his designs. It took Stark calling the system Jarvis twice for me to catch on and in all but physical attributes it is Jarvis, right down to the extremely well spoken butler voice. But I'm not sure if it was the right choice though it does work.

There's little in my book to pick on the film, it would have been nice if some of the better moments didn't feature in the trailer, it takes the surprise and ooooo factor away from them. Thats a standard Hollywood trailer approach these days so it's not that big a surprise I guess.

Oh and by the way, stay till the end of the credits you won't be disappointed!

9/10

Batmanuel

Exellent review, job done Smile