IRON MAN- blech.

Ken B. wrote:

Alright, I should qualify that...I thought The Village did a great job creating tension and atmosphere, but yeah, the ending pissed a lot of that away. Worse, it was a twist you saw coming a mile away.

So I really dug about 3/4 of it, the rest did go downward from there.

I disagree. THAT would be my review of Signs (apart from seeing the twist).
All of Sham's prior films were VERY well made, and his voice was unique. The Village was just pure shit from frame one. Shit composition, somewhat shonky acting, boring shots, boring editing with a pace that just didn't work. Hate signs all you want, but the film had TENSION. 6th sense had tension, as did Unbreakable (though not of the horror kind.) The Village was just flat, no sense of Dread, no sense of "what's behind the corner?" Nothing. I don't know what the fuck happened, but Sham's lost it, big time.

Didn't waste my time with Lady.

The new one had it's original script rejected by every studio, which is a first for Sham. Be interesting to see if the rewrite will save it, because online reviews of the original rejected script were fucking terrible (if you don't care about spoilers hit google).

No horseshit Frank- I read an interview where he said he actually pitched the story as a three part thing. I don't think it was going to be so much of a continuation, I'm sure he was going to try to do something unexpected with it.

THE VILLAGE. Clumsy, awkward, and goofy. And the Scooby Doo monster reveal was WAY too early in the plot.

Michael Barnes wrote:

No horseshit Frank- I read an interview where he said he actually pitched the story as a three part thing. I don't think it was going to be so much of a continuation, I'm sure he was going to try to do something unexpected with it.

THE VILLAGE. Clumsy, awkward, and goofy. And the Scooby Doo monster reveal was WAY too early in the plot.

I agree with that. The early reveal robbed all of the climactic scenes of their tension. It's like it was inserted out of order, because the whole sequence in the forest is played straight up. I think the idea was that "we based our story on a real-life monster we heard about" and that was supposed to create some sort of tension there, but that's ridiculous.


I dunno...he was trying to create his own little world here with its rules that you kept having to question. I'll admit I've only watched it twice, but the first time I was digging most of the movie. Then it deflates. And the M. Night cameo is RIDICULOUS...but not as bad as what he did in Lady in the Water, where he cast himself in the Jesus Storyteller role.

The heart of a movie like Iron Man should be the story. When people say that Iron Man has no heart, I think that they're really saying that the story was unsatisfying.

Iron Man is rubbish because the story completely defies logic. The comic book source material is more coherent and intelligent than the film. Iron Monger could spin drunken pirouettes through those gaping plot holes without fear of scratching his paint job.

Juniper wrote:

The heart of a movie like Iron Man should be the story. When people say that Iron Man has no heart, I think that they're really saying that the story was unsatisfying.

Iron Man is rubbish because the story completely defies logic. The comic book source material is more coherent and intelligent than the film. Iron Monger could spin drunken pirouettes through those gaping plot holes without fear of scratching his paint job.

Yeah...but all comic book films have "plot holes".


Take a great film like Spidey 2. Spidey is strong enough to stop a train with just some webbing and his arm muscles. His body is obviously strong enough that he can put his legs down on the train tracks and the ground crumbles...his legs don't shatter into pieces.


Yet...with all this strength...he can punch Doc Ock in the face and his face doesn't shatter like glass. Doc had no superstrength, only his mechanical arms.


In Superman II, Superman goes into the Red Sun chamber and it's obviously a painful experience for him...just check out the trippy sequence with him screaming and his flesh falling apart. Yet...he later "reverses the chamber", the Krypton villains are exposed to the same effect, and yet...they don't even realize it?




And don't get me started on why the Penguin had a Batmobile schematic in Batman Returns.

Ken B. wrote:

Juniper wrote:

The heart of a movie like Iron Man should be the story. When people say that Iron Man has no heart, I think that they're really saying that the story was unsatisfying.

Iron Man is rubbish because the story completely defies logic. The comic book source material is more coherent and intelligent than the film. Iron Monger could spin drunken pirouettes through those gaping plot holes without fear of scratching his paint job.

Yeah...but all comic book films have "plot holes".

Take a great film like Spidey 2. Spidey is strong enough to stop a train with just some webbing and his arm muscles. His body is obviously strong enough that he can put his legs down on the train tracks and the ground crumbles...his legs don't shatter into pieces.

Yet...with all this strength...he can punch Doc Ock in the face and his face doesn't shatter like glass. Doc had no superstrength, only his mechanical arms.

I think Iron Man is worse:

Why did Tony Stark have to go to Afghanistan to demonstrate the Jericho missile? The US government was the customer, so why not do the demo at home?

Do arms manufacturers really develop and manufacture weapons for the US government *before* they've received the contract?

Is a Jericho missile of any use to the kind of warfare being fought in Afghanistan?
Why was the plot to assassinate Stark so needlessly complicated?

Being a top executive at Stark Industries, Stane probably commanded a fortune in shares and stock options; why would he jeopardize that fortune by killing Stark and demolishing the market value of those assets? There are easier ways to force someone to retire, especially an alcoholic playboy like Stark.

If Ten Rings can buy Stark Industries armaments directly from Stane, why does he need Tony Stark to build a Jericho missile?

Is it really so easy for a US arms manufacturer to deal directly with the enemy? There are laws against that sort of thing, and the government scrutinizes the export of that stuff.

How does Stane get into Stark's house to steal his "heart?" Wouldn't Jarvis have mentioned Stane's presence in the house to Tony?

Stane was trying to steal Tony's technology, so why did he break into Tony's house without attempting to enter the garage where all the technology was kept? Even if Jarvis (illogically) gave Stane access to all of the house except the carport, wouldn't Stane have tried to break the door down or -- I dunno -- enter through the hole in the roof?

Why did Pepper Potts wait around all day before she decided to warn Tony about Stane?

And on it goes. Just because we're willing to forgive some things that don't make sense (like the idea that a teenager can stick to walls or that an Arc Generator can exist and be implanted in a man's chest) the movies expect us to tolerate sloppy storytelling.

Iron Man was a lousy movie.

Here's the best plot fuck up of all. Why did Pepper Potts have to go into Tony's office to get those files off the computer using a thumb drive? All that high tech crap and he can't access his computer from his house (or his cellphone, watch, or Lamborghini)?

Oh no, here's a better one...he gets locked up in Afghanistan, "sees the light" and decides that he wants to be responsible and accountable for what his company has done. And to that end, he makes an announcement that would in the real world cost public shareholders, CXOs, and employees right down to the janitors millions (and possibly billions) of dollars, resulting in layoffs, closures, and spending cuts. How is that "responsible"? Turns out, it was a pretty damn selfish move!

All the corporate stuff, although I commend the attempt at questioning the corporate/feudal state of things, feels like something written by someone who doesn't have a duke of an idea of how corporations- specifically military industrial corporations- operate in conjunction with the US government.

It's like "Yeah man, Corporations do bad things!" Yes, but what and how Mr. Screenwriter? "I dunno, they just do!"

Michael Barnes wrote:

he makes an announcement that would in the real world cost public shareholders, CXOs, and employees right down to the janitors millions (and possibly billions) of dollars, resulting in layoffs, closures, and spending cuts. How is that "responsible"? Turns out, it was a pretty damn selfish move!

Oh, absolutely. It seems at first that Stane is a supervillain who is motivated only by an altruistic desire to protect the value of the company. That's not only interesting, it's consistent with what we know about him; that he was a loyal business partner to Tony's father Howard, and that he's probably a competent businessman. I would have liked to see the film continue on that path, allowing Stane to be a badguy with a valid point.

But then we find out that Stane had always harbored a secret plan to seize control of the company. And he waited through TWO GENERATIONS of Stark family control of the company before he decided to put the plan into effect. That's rather implausible.

THEN, we find out that he's insane, and he just wants to steal the Iron Monger suit so that he can ... actually, I have no idea what he was going to do with the Iron Monger suit. By the time the big fight scene starts at the end of the movie, Stane no longer has any rational motivation for his actions. It's just a fight for the sake of a fight.

And then, something happens to Stane that somehow kills him and leaves Stark and Potts (who were both closer to the blast than Stane) unharmed. I don't understand what the fuck happened in that scene.

The film almost raises the questions about responsibility that you've mentioned, Michael, but then it chickens out and reaches for a brainless resolution to the moral conflict.

Well, the problem is that it makes the very real issue and turns it into a childishly simplistic good and evil thing. And it really, at the end of the day, makes anticorporate viewpoints look marginal and half-baked, which I don't think was the writers' intention. It just looks crackpot- like turning the Lockheed-Martin logo upside down and plastering it on the sides of missiles (which just isn't done, folks).

The thing is, in a comic book setting stuff like branded missiles are fine. But when a film strives for a realistic setting, it looks dumb. Like Stane's bizarro "heart removal" tool. Where the hell did that thing come from?

I really don't know what happened in that last fight. Actually, I can't remember what happened. All I remember is that somebody blew up and The Dude died. I wasn't really interested in the outcome.

Michael Barnes wrote:

OK, I saw IRON MAN. The friend I went to the movies with refused to see SPEED RACER so we wound up seeing it instead.

Well, I'll say this. It was a very professionally made, technically proficient film with an excellent performance from RDJ and a couple of really nice bone-tosses to Marvel fans. The suits looked great, the character was right on the money, and the action scenes were very well done. However, it is also probably the most soulless, mechanical, and (ironically) heartless movie I've seen in a long time. Everybody's been saying that something was "missing", and that something is all of that. It was almost completely without passion.

There's a lot to like- I really dug the messages about corporate responsibility (although announcing that a multi-billion dollar publically owned corporation is suddenly dropping its vertical is one of the most irresponsible things a corporation could possibly do) and the topical politics (although that will ultimately date the movie horrendously). I definitely see why it's so popular and getting good notices. But it just felt almost completely controlled, completely engineered, and completely designed to be liked by the widest audirnce possible. Blah. I was really kind of bored. It didn't help seeing the DARK KNIGHT trailer before it, which looks awesome- edgy, gritty, and daring instead of routine, glossy, and safe.

At the end, it's just an empty movie despite its strong central character and leftist politics. Compare it to SPIDER-MAN 2, which had a lot of heart to back up the technical qualities.

But yeah, the surprise at the end (after the credits) was pretty awesome...I'll give it that.

I thought it was the best Marvel movie since X2. Not saying much, but still. RDJ was really the best thing about it, he carried the movie. The story wasn't very different from the Marvel-Movie formula of "Guy becomes superhero, fights human badguys that he defeats easily, then discovers a super-baddy that is tougher to fight, cut to credits" the same formula that Hulk 2 will doubtless follow. But I thought the acting and visuals were definitively better than any of the marvel movies to date, and I hate to say it but I really dislike all the Spiderman movies. The last one was a hundred-million dollar saturday morning cartoon. X Men 2 was my favourite Marvel movie to date, after viewing Ironman the first time I thought Ironman was. Admittedly, I saw it again the very next day to see it with a friend, and this greatly reduced it's impact, but I still give it a high rating (7 out of 10, say).

As an aside, you definitely should have seen Speed Racer, and should still if you haven't yet.

Jupiter and Barnes, consider yourselves both on warnings.

If I wanted to read ubergeek anal nitpicking I'd go to AICN.

Stop fagging up my boards. It was a movie, not a Michael Moore Doco.

The pussyfooting right wing but "isn't war bad, yeah" politics of Iron Man really pissed me off. If you want to see a film about why arms companies are bad, go and see Why We Fight ( video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=9219858826421983682 ). The rest of the film was well your standard fare.

Michael Barnes wrote:

No horseshit Frank- I read an interview where he said he actually pitched the story as a three part thing. I don't think it was going to be so much of a continuation, I'm sure he was going to try to do something unexpected with it.

THE VILLAGE. Clumsy, awkward, and goofy. And the Scooby Doo monster reveal was WAY too early in the plot.

The Village was why I didn't go see LITW. What if the aliens in Signs had turned out to be douche-bags in costumes? Oh, what a twist! I loved Signs, so much that I actually liked 6th Sense more after seeing Signs, due to how much I liked Signs. Going from that the The Village was just sickening. Maybe if I'd seen Unbreakable, I would've been more prepared for the depths to which M-Night is capable of sinking.

The new Marky-Mark picture is Shyamalan's last chance with me, I am willing to give it a shot, but if he blows it I am never seeing another Shyamalamadingdong pic again.

Citadel wrote:

The pussyfooting right wing but "isn't war bad, yeah" politics of Iron Man really pissed me off.

I agree it was not what I would call "Left-wing" at all, it was really more of a "popular opinion" film. I actually liked the parts where Ironman was beating up on "The Terrorists(tm)", led by Xerxes, more than when he fought Mecha-Jeff Bridges. It was cool to see war-film type stuff, only with the adition of Ironman, and definitely made the movie stand out from every other superhero movie where the hero beats up on "Street-Thugs" before finding a super-villain to punch.

Michael Barnes wrote:

No horseshit Frank- I read an interview where he said he actually pitched the story as a three part thing. I don't think it was going to be so much of a continuation, I'm sure he was going to try to do something unexpected with it.

Yeah I have read him say that too, but my point was did he say that when he was making Unbreakable, or after when the film was a nerd hit?
Smells like Lucas prequel bullshit to me. I have little doubt that when he was making the film he intended it to be stand alone.