review: Iron Man (2008)
2 CommentsMy my, I have been lax lately, I really need to write more reviews… it’s not like I haven’t seen any films lately… it’s just that I haven’t had a chance to write any reviews…
Anyway so… I saw Iron Man the other day. You may have heard of it, it’s directed by the multi-talented Jon Favreau (Jon Favreau is great, you should watch Swingers, everyone should watch Swingers.) and one Mr. Robery Downey Jr. as Tony Stark – inventor, industrialist, womaniser and part-time superhero, Iron Man.
It’s important to note part-time there…
Look, don’t get me wrong, I liked Iron Man. It was an entertaining film. I enjoyed it, I thought it was good. It’s just that it was no Transformers. I loved Transformers, it really set a standard for me… Transformers was everything a film with giant robots should be… and may I point out that there pretty much is a giant robot in Iron Man.
To be entirely fair to Iron Man though (because it just can’t compare to Transformers – edit re: comment – and yeah, it’s not really the same kind of film) I’ll put it on the scale with some other superhero films… It was vastly better than all the Spider–Man films, not to mention what little I saw of Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer before I fell asleep. It was also better than Superman Returns and Batman Begins but no way was it as good as the X–Men films. I’d say it was on par with Hellboy. Entertaining but not amazing.
I hate to say it because I’m not all about the huge action scenes and great effects but Iron Man could have done with bigger and better action scene and special effects. There’s nothing wrong with an origin story, everyone likes a good origin story, but mostly what we saw was a guy hanging out in a cave building a suit… then hanging out in a basement building a suit… this is not an origin story, it’s a guy building a suit. Tell us a bit about his dad, tell us a bit more about the villains… you could even tell us a bit more about Pepper Potts! I mean I couldn’t really give a crap about her but maybe if you’d told me something I might, she was as bad as Rachel Dawes. I just thought that there could have been more to Iron Man… watch it again and tell me where the actual story was because I certainly didn’t see it… and if I’m not getting a story with real characters and emotion then damnit, I wanna to see big explosions!
Anyway whatever, it just didn’t do it for me… I realise there are lots of people out there who did think it was great and I’d love to hear what you liked about it… so please… let me know!
Oh I forgot to mention one thing that was amazing about this film. The car – the Audi R8… what a car… seriously, where can I win one…?
7/10
I liked the film but yeah, it was a bit incomplete. Gwyneth Paltrow was disappointing – as if they couldn’t decide to make her a kick-ass professional assistant or a rubbish incompetent woman.
Not sure it’s fair to compare it with Transformers – that was unashamedly a film about giant robots whereas this tried to develop some actual human characters and happened to have some robots in it. The suit-building wasn’t about the suits, it was supposed to be establishing his brilliance, him developing some empathy for people and showing how awesome his lab is 😉 Don’t see much different from Peter Parker’s origin story – bit by a spider, had some awesome powers, made a mess, learned to control them.
I’m not saying the empathy bit was well-done but I can what they were going for.
In superhero film terms I reckon it goes: X-Men > X-Men 2 > Spiderman = Iron Man > Tim Burton’s Batman films (mostly due to their age) > [insert pool of mediocre superhero films here] > X-men 3 > Spiderman 3 > Spawn
Hellboy is excluded as I haven’t seen it in one sitting
Ah yeah, I know it was trying to do… I just didn’t think it did it very well and if it couldn’t do that well then it could have at least done a bit better on the action front!
Yeah… I was never really that impressed with Spider-Man, oh wait, I was impressed by exactly how crap Spider-Man 3 was…
I didn’t really know where to put the Tim Burton Batman films… I think I’d have to put them below X-Men though… I really liked those films, even the last one…
And sure, you can’t really compare it to Transformers… but I wanted to be surprised by it, like I was with Transformers and I just so wasn’t… to be fair they are aimed at the same people though, they’re pretty much the same genre – or at least, superhero films are a subgenre of whatever Transformers is in… Fun action films or something…
Anyway mostly I meant to half imply that it was fairer to Iron Man to compare it to other superhero films as you can’t really compare it to Transformers because yeah, Transformers was an all out romp…