What Happened to Iron Man
For those wandering what could have driven me to dredge up this bit of old business, I think its time for a look back and perhaps even a bit of a celebration of the super hero movie that taught us (and producers) that not every film about a man in a costume had to be either dark and/or Batman. However with this celebration comes the inevitable backlash of the next mornings hangover.
Iron Man was many things upon arriving on the big screen. These things included: fun, loud, colorful and a career savor *cough* druggie *cough*. It also served as a almost tutorial example of how to mix the real world and the super hero world. An example as learned by and improved on by X-Men: First Class and one of the many things on which the Green Lantern film managed to find a sharp edge on which to cause itself even more pain. By taking a witty, brash and arrogant businessman (like we all used to know and love/hate until Patrick Bateman came along) and fitting him into a mechanized power armor and very uplifting character arc made for not only massive entertainment but also I suspect a good deal of good old fashioned capitalist empowerment. This empowerment was only enhanced when his chosen foe was some deranged megalomaniac in his doom fortress but rather corrupt businessmen and a loosely defined terrorist threat. This odd mixture of an over the top hero battling down to earth villains added to both the suspense and the immersion of the action. Though not a perfect film or even a perfect super hero film it was certainly a throwback to a brighter and maybe slightly dumber era. That dumber era possibly being responsible for The Dude in a small scale Mecha-Kong, a phrase which even on reflection induces a sense of awesome.
And here’s where the game went through some changes. Due to Iron Mans addition to the roster of Marvels upcoming crossover extravaganza: The Avenger’s, suddenly Iron Mans choice of sparring partner wasn’t looking all the kosher. Whereas within a self contained universe the battle of good and evil taking place with some dodgy physics and very aggressive objectivist politics is fine and dandy. When mixed with characters such as Thor battling the Rock Biters answer to the smurfs and Captain America taking on the might of sun burnt Nazi Agent Smith, you suddenly have a recipe for disaster. For this reason I suspect the villains of Iron Man 2 where made considerably more cartoonish, using the old favourite: Russian wielding Whips of Lightning. Therefor for all its delightful casting and outlandish fight sequences we notice a definite and not entirely welcome shift in tone from the first of the series. It is this glaring alteration that I would pin as the focal point of many peoples complaints with Iron Man 2 for almost all its major flaws can be traced to the decision to make him more in line with a comic book hero and their more exaggerated circumstances.
All in all however, I hold my head up high as I stagger to the bathroom with my more cartoonish morning after. For its flaws in continuity and leaps in logic it was at its heart a barrel full of playful, heavily weaponized and rehabilitated monkeys and to be honest, I wouldn’t have them any other way.
