I watched Iron man last night. It was mildly entertaining; the dialogue was funny and Iron Man himself looked pretty cool. Somehow though, Downey felt/looked very out of place throughout the movie. I just could not come to terms with the idea of Robert Downey Jr as a star in an action movie. It was too weird. Other than that, well, the plot was horrendously predictable and well, pretty stupid at points.
“Hi, I’m the worlds foremost weapons designer. I know that since the concept of ranged weapons first appeared man has been striving to achieve pinpoint accuracy with these weapons. Nevermind those piddly crusie missiles we have that (allegedly) “can fly 1,000 miles and hit a target the size of a single-car garage.” You’ve been getting it wrong all this time. I’ve just designed the scariest weapon ever thats going to terrify all the bad guys into changing their ways. Its a single missile carrying multiple payloads that strikes and destroys a wide area. Hey, each payload might not be individually targetable, but the missile can level a hill so its scary…really.” Strange that this weapons design genius seams to have unknowingly reinvented a sort of MIRV (if you haven’t heard of Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles, they are the nuclear warheads carried on ICBMs, which you probably have heard of), something US and Russia already had during the cold war. Yes, Jericho is a smaller scale version and doesn’t cary nuclear payloads, which in some ways make it preferable (but far less scary IMO), however it’s targetting capabilities appear to be much less advanced than that of MIRVs. So really, Tony Stark provided the US millitary with a “latest and greatest” weapon that is,, in truh, somewhat inferior to what they already have.
“Hi, we’re a big bad terrorist organisation. We’ve just captured the world’s foremost weapons designer. Now we’re going to lock him in a cave full of products from his company and give him all the equipment and materials he needs to build weapons for us. Of course he is going going to build us our weapons. No, we’re absolutely sure he wouldn’t even consider using the equipment we’ve given him against us, to effect his escape.” *sigh*, I know, I know. This is actually pretty true to Iron Man’s origins in the comics. Who woulda thunk that when marvel finally decides to stay true to one of their characters’ origins, they chose to do it with one of the worst of the lot?
Then there are all those failed flight attempts which, while amusing, should have left him with a broken neck or multipe spinal injuries at the very least.
Bah, I’ve never been the biggest Iron Man fan, so this movie wasn’t really much of a dissapointment in the long run. I’m just amazed at the number of people that raved on about it. All it was was a bit of mindless fluff (like most Hollywood action movies) lacking any sort of substance or imagination. I wasn’t a big fan of the Spidey (allright, I absolutely hated some things about this one) or Hulk movies but at least they were marginally less predictable and had some semblance of substance to them (Spidey especially really did have some depth to it. Even I have to admit that). They deviated from the normal Hollywood formula at least a little bit. Iron Man stuck to the formula almost religiously. Mildly entertaining really is all I can give it.
