John Favreau took the paint-by-numbers approach to making Iron Man insofar that to colour too far out of the lines might take advantage of the two things the film have going for it. A) That the hero is older, jaded and egotistically suave Robert Downey Jr. and B) That there is a chance to make some commentary on the Military Industrial Complex which has come into even sharper in our Blackwater and Halliburton age. Alas, outside of the opening minutes (which are played broad and were over-emphasized in the marketing materials) the film has neither. The Middle-Eastern goons are silly and void of anything resembling Nuance. They are puppets to get the plot in motion - a plot that ends the same way that an alarming number of these films end - two CGI created cyborgs pummeling each other. Attempts to ground the film in a Batman Begins type ‘realism’ are ludicrous (making me wonder why comic book properties even attempt this) underscoring the problem with these types of pop-myths, whether it be comic books or a Deity-less Troy, midichlorians or blood infections explaining the nature of vampirism, why make a fantasy film and take out the fantastic?
But above all there is such a “been-there-done-that” feel about the film that all that is left is the pyrotechnics and the feeling the top bar can be achieved simply by narrative clarity, a delightful central performance and handsome production design (admittedly many of the big summer tentpoles lack this). There is wish-fulfillment on the go here, with Stark parading first around with fast cars and buxum blonds, and later in three different versions of the neat-o powersuit. But the film lacks any sense of wonder, or on the flip-side, anything vaguely resembling humanity. Humanizing the potentially divine (the flawed hero) is what comic books do best (at least that is what the opening and closing minutes of The Ice Storm taught me), and Ironman offers little of this, the enterprise being far more concerned with nods to the fanboys. Being faithful to the source material does not necessarily make a good adaptation.
On a personal note, one of the biggest distastes I had the with film were that many of the visual elements/scenes in the film: the tongue-in-cheek satire of corporations, the privatization of might, the egos of billionaire business tycoons and men-in-robot-suits was all done with a lot more verve in Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop. Wasn’t Iron Monger just a glorified ED209? The autotargetting hostage situation, the pull the man through the drywall, the awkward suit-movements all reminded me of a movie that was simply better at doing what it did at hero-making.
Iron Man feels like a calculated amalgamation of many of the Marvel A-list titles that had its edge watered down for the PG-13 set. Sure it may be a lot more coherent than Michael Bay’s Transformers, but it is equally lacking in its ambition beyond selling Burger King and Audi products and allowing folks to turn their brain off for a few hours. That may be enough for the season, but I am in a glass-half-empty frame of mind regarding both the narrative dead-end of the Superhero comicbook film and the kick-off-the-summer season.
See Also: http://www.rowthree.com/2008/05/06/finite-focus-id-buy-that-for-a-dollar-robocop/
And: http://www.rowthree.com/2008/05/06/cinecast-85-down-syndrome-whackiness/