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Film XXXIX
Oh dear.
XXXIX: Jon Favreau, Iron Man (2008)
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) makes weapons, particularly weapons that kill people with other coloured skins. Now it turns out that - shock horror - someone has been selling the other side weapons too, which sort of seems fair enough to me. What's that phrase - weapons deficit? non-recipricol engagements? Make a fair fight as it's about making money from killing.
Stark inherited his company from his dead dad, who gave it in trust to baldie baddie Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) who now wants to kill the golden goose by offing Stark. Fortunately Stark is able to create a super suit of armour to allow him to escape, with less equipment than Scrapheap Challenge. Stark then uses suit 2.0 to go after the people who he doesn't want to have his weapons - who will presumably be supplied by another US corporation in future. Baddie Stain finds the the first suit and the convenient blue prints, and makes suit 3.0. Cue suitably Oedipal Obadiah Odaddier battle with Stark. Cue use of coldness of extreme attitude as established in third reel. Cue zero-explanation of why this doesn't now work (note villains cannot be killed first time). Do not cue scene explaining decompression sickness.
So what's good about this film? Downey gets more work, but please. I'd prefer Chaplin II. Or having my eyes gouged out. The dude abides, and is just nasty. Nope, still not gettting it.
Ah - GwynethPaltry Paltrow is cast in the thankless Gwyneth Paltrow role. Heigho. No Coldplay on the soundtrack?
Oh - Stan Lee now thinks he's Hugh Heffner. Collapse of stout party.
Oh yes, the post-credit sequence, with Samuel L Jackson putting more cool into ten seconds of screen time that the previous two hours of train wreck, opens the hopeless vista of franchises. But Marvel Films will have their work cut out reaching the standard of David Hasselhoff's Nick Fury Agent of Shield (1998). Oh yes.
Edit: Paltry Paltrow. Back at the point when I was still looking forward to seeing the film and dismissing bad reviews as well, what do you expect from Barry Norman/Chris Tookey/Kaleidoscope/Mark Bloody Lawson/Peter Bradshaw? I heard the snippet that this was the first film that she's done since taking a break to bring up her kids. H'mm, I thought. So she's easing herself back in: she's another beard.
What did she get to do in Se7en? I've always assumed it's her embryo in the box rather than her head, but either way her function is to a) make it okay for Pitt to go after Spacey and b) reassure the audiences that Pitt is straight given how easy it is to queer buddy relationships. (Uma Thurman in Gattaca does much the same job - Robin Wood in Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan does a good job of queering buddies.) Actually, though, I not so sure she's the same kind of beard - which given the supposed downplaying of sexual attraction between Pepper (pah) Pot and Stark (why do I get a flash of Peppermint Patty and Charlie Brown?) might not work. In fact she's mother, there to clear out the trash (a line which I admit found funny, but imagine it in the mouth of Betty Davis).
Because the other woman in the cast (I exaggerate - the other female speaking role?) is this award winning journalist, suspicious of the big boys with their big toys who is reassureed by the Real Man with his Real Toy and then cast aside like a used condom. She's the beard, if beard is needed. Christine Everhart (Lesley Bibb). Christ-loving Always-Loving, to state the obvious (and superheroes are all messiahs, natch).
No, worse than beard, she gets to be mummy (it's risking being Pink Floyd: Mama's gonna check out all your girlfriends for you/Mama won't let anyone dirty get through/Mama's gonna wait up until you get in/
Mama will always find out where you've been), the super-ego, why yes, you do have a heart. She saves her little boy. (There is nothing wrong with being a mother. But it's lazy characterisation)
That's about it for female speaking parts - a screaming woman in her car, a screaming woman or three in the Afghan camp (all mothers), oh yes, the fancied female soldier in the car at the start, whom Stark has clearly thought a man at first - where did he put that beard?
You know what I'm suddenly reminded of - and I don't have any quotes to hand: Robert Bly, Iron Man: A Book about Men (1990), all about men estranged from fathers and seeing themselves as failed lovers. Perhaps the film should be subtitled Dealing with Daddy.
I guess I expected more of director Favreau - I enjoyed Swingers, which I thought knew its central characters were jerks. Maybe I gave him too much credit. If it was meant to be Irony Man the Marvel Machine has edited it out.[Edit Ends]
Totals: 39 [Cinema: 14; DVD: 23; TV: 2]
XXXIX: Jon Favreau, Iron Man (2008)
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) makes weapons, particularly weapons that kill people with other coloured skins. Now it turns out that - shock horror - someone has been selling the other side weapons too, which sort of seems fair enough to me. What's that phrase - weapons deficit? non-recipricol engagements? Make a fair fight as it's about making money from killing.
Stark inherited his company from his dead dad, who gave it in trust to baldie baddie Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) who now wants to kill the golden goose by offing Stark. Fortunately Stark is able to create a super suit of armour to allow him to escape, with less equipment than Scrapheap Challenge. Stark then uses suit 2.0 to go after the people who he doesn't want to have his weapons - who will presumably be supplied by another US corporation in future. Baddie Stain finds the the first suit and the convenient blue prints, and makes suit 3.0. Cue suitably Oedipal Obadiah Odaddier battle with Stark. Cue use of coldness of extreme attitude as established in third reel. Cue zero-explanation of why this doesn't now work (note villains cannot be killed first time). Do not cue scene explaining decompression sickness.
So what's good about this film? Downey gets more work, but please. I'd prefer Chaplin II. Or having my eyes gouged out. The dude abides, and is just nasty. Nope, still not gettting it.
Ah - Gwyneth
Oh - Stan Lee now thinks he's Hugh Heffner. Collapse of stout party.
Oh yes, the post-credit sequence, with Samuel L Jackson putting more cool into ten seconds of screen time that the previous two hours of train wreck, opens the hopeless vista of franchises. But Marvel Films will have their work cut out reaching the standard of David Hasselhoff's Nick Fury Agent of Shield (1998). Oh yes.
Edit: Paltry Paltrow. Back at the point when I was still looking forward to seeing the film and dismissing bad reviews as well, what do you expect from Barry Norman/Chris Tookey/
What did she get to do in Se7en? I've always assumed it's her embryo in the box rather than her head, but either way her function is to a) make it okay for Pitt to go after Spacey and b) reassure the audiences that Pitt is straight given how easy it is to queer buddy relationships. (Uma Thurman in Gattaca does much the same job - Robin Wood in Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan does a good job of queering buddies.) Actually, though, I not so sure she's the same kind of beard - which given the supposed downplaying of sexual attraction between Pepper (pah) Pot and Stark (why do I get a flash of Peppermint Patty and Charlie Brown?) might not work. In fact she's mother, there to clear out the trash (a line which I admit found funny, but imagine it in the mouth of Betty Davis).
Because the other woman in the cast (I exaggerate - the other female speaking role?) is this award winning journalist, suspicious of the big boys with their big toys who is reassureed by the Real Man with his Real Toy and then cast aside like a used condom. She's the beard, if beard is needed. Christine Everhart (Lesley Bibb). Christ-loving Always-Loving, to state the obvious (and superheroes are all messiahs, natch).
No, worse than beard, she gets to be mummy (it's risking being Pink Floyd: Mama's gonna check out all your girlfriends for you/Mama won't let anyone dirty get through/Mama's gonna wait up until you get in/
Mama will always find out where you've been), the super-ego, why yes, you do have a heart. She saves her little boy. (There is nothing wrong with being a mother. But it's lazy characterisation)
That's about it for female speaking parts - a screaming woman in her car, a screaming woman or three in the Afghan camp (all mothers), oh yes, the fancied female soldier in the car at the start, whom Stark has clearly thought a man at first - where did he put that beard?
You know what I'm suddenly reminded of - and I don't have any quotes to hand: Robert Bly, Iron Man: A Book about Men (1990), all about men estranged from fathers and seeing themselves as failed lovers. Perhaps the film should be subtitled Dealing with Daddy.
I guess I expected more of director Favreau - I enjoyed Swingers, which I thought knew its central characters were jerks. Maybe I gave him too much credit. If it was meant to be Irony Man the Marvel Machine has edited it out.[Edit Ends]
Totals: 39 [Cinema: 14; DVD: 23; TV: 2]
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Husband: Harrison Ford's saving the president.
Me: Let me guess--by killing lots of people? and blowing things up?
Gah. Maybe it's because I'm getting old that the "violence is the (only) solution" sthick is, too. Then I look at my own writing, and I think, let's face it, you're infected too.
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My favourite Harrison Ford film is the one where you discover that you need to be shot in the head to become a decent father. Or you need a father like a shot in the head. One or the other.
I'm not against all violence, mind. It's when tehre's pretensions of Deepness that I wince.
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On the other hand. Maybe I'm not relieved. If the two of you see it that way, then why the hell are so many other people not getting it?
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