Does everything that an iron can…
Glorious. That’s my one word review for Iron Man, the new movie from Jon Favreau starring Robert Downey Jr. Why is it so good? Why is Graeme Tuckett so completely wrong?
For starters there are the performances. This film is stacked with talent, and while Downey, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges and Terence Howard are bringing their formiddable skills to a comic book adaptation, this lends extra weight to material that has its own depth. As Tony Stark, Downey goes on a journey as a weapons magnate that gets a dose of his own product, and realises that he needs to clean up the mess that his company has made. There’s nothing trite or arbitrary about his decision, and shows a man that suddenly has realisation thrust upon him, not some sort of unearned epiphany.
For comic book fans this film is a watershed moment, and not just because it is a standout example of how to take comic book source material and give it weight, but it signals in no uncertain terms what Marvel’s intentions are for their universe on film. By taking control of their properties and distributing their films through the big studios, they are finally opening the films up to the same kind of cross-pollenation of their characters on film that’s been going on for decades in the comic books. While this has led to some rather extreme or unlikely combinations, it’s much less likely that we’ll see sketchy crossovers in the short term, given the kind of money involved in making movies as opposed to print.
After Iron Man’s suberb opening weekend ($100m+ US box office, $200m worldwide), Marvel have announced how they plan to build on their new model. You can read the story on Stuff here.
