Well, I saw ‘Iron Man’ over the weekend, and I must admit – it was a really good movie!
There are spoilers ahead – so if you haven’t seen the movie yet, and intend to, you might wanna skip the rest of this post.
I collected Iron Man back in the day and the movie version did not disappoint me. Having said, that, it has been a really long time since I’ve cracked open a copy so I don’t know if they screwed anything up or not – which is a good thing. I think not having preconceived notions in my head of what I wanted to see, beyond a kick-ass suit of armor, helped me go into this thing and truly enjoy it.
I do recall reading the origin story at some point – and I believe Tony Stark was captured by the Vietnamese or something (BOY it’s been a long time!), and his heart is damaged so a pacemaker is put in. I could be way off base there. Anyway, they want him to build something for them and instead, he builds the Mark 1 Iron Man suit and breaks out. He still needed the chest plate to keep his heart going though, so he always wore it beneath his suits and stuff. And he liked the suit so much, he perpetuated a myth that Iron Man was a Stark employee and his personal bodyguard or some such.
The movie followed that story-line pretty well, updating it to our time. Stark is a weapons manufacturer who is captured by some bad guys when he’s showing off his latest greatest missile over in Afghanistan. He is wounded and has en electromagnet installed on his chest to keep some shrapnel from getting to his heart. If he wants to live, he has to keep that magnet powered.Just like in the origin I recall, the bad guys want him to build something for em – in this case, the missile he’d just demo’d for the army big wigs. Seeing it as his only way out, he agrees. First thing he builds is a bigger, better power source / chest piece to protect his heart, then he gets busy on the Mark 1 suit.
It was fantastic!
I liked the way the suit moved – it seemed to make sense. It was the way you’d expect a big hunk of metal to move and function. You could even hear the gears clicking and whirring as he walked or did anything.
Of course, our hero escapes the bad guys and makes it back to civilization where he declares Stark Industries will no longer be making weapons seeing as how all the terrorist type bad guys who’d just been torturing him and forcing him to do their bidding, were doing so with a mess of his weapons lying around. That doesn’t set well with some, like Obidiah Stane.
I’ve no recollection of Obidiah Stane or Iron Monger from the comics, but apparently he was pretty huge in the Iron Man comics. In the comics, he was a rival who eventually takes over Stark’s company – in the movie, he’s a friend/subordinate who’s doing all sorts of shady stuff behind Tony’s back. He even goes so far as to create his own suit (Iron Monger I assume) and they end up battling it out in the city streets.
Iron Man wins (of course) but he needs his assistant, Pepper and his friend, Jim Rhodes (War Machine) to lend him a hand. Lastly, he needs help covering it up, and who better to do that than an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.?
The effects were awesome, the writing really good and the acting very well done. For the first of the new ‘marvel Studios’ movies, I think it’s a winner. I’m very excited about the prospect of crossovers now (Marvel isn’t licensing the characters out anymore – they’re making their own movies, which allows for crossovers)!
…and speaking of crossovers – S.H.I.E.L.D. appears throughout the film. So, of course, at the very end of the flick, after all the credits have rolled, we see – who else? Nick Fury!
“I’m here to talk to you about the ‘Avengers’ initiative.”
Yes!
