OK, as much as it pains me, I have to respectfully disagree with The Shimel about his review on Iron Man. First off, I really think you have to have some knowledge of the Iron Man comic story to truly appreciate this movie. Clearly Alan does not have that history (and he is probably going to call me a dork or something since I do) when he makes statements like this :
I didn’t understand how he got the superpower, it was just a powered suit and how it worked was pretty silly.
HOLY CRAP!!! That is near heresy in the Marvel Universe! Tony Stark does not have powers other than he is extremely intelligent (I believe he developed some extrasensory powers one time, but I have not collected and read comics for a while). That is what enabled him to make the suit and the piece of technology that powered the suit.
I have to say that while I do agree with Alan that the movie is predictable, I also must say that it is thus far the best big-screen representation of a Marvel Comics character. It stayed very true to the original story, which is always very important to me. In contrast, the Hulk movie was horrible and boring (have more hope for the next one), Daredevil was just pure idiocy (mostly because it Ben A Fleck in it - though the playground fight scene was almost as bad as the ice skating scene in King Kong), the Spiderman series has always been underwhelming (they have screwed that story up so bad that Spidey might as well be shooting webs out his ass), The Fantastic Four movies were just…well, I wish they weren’t (especially since they royally hosed Silver Surfer’s story and character, which really pissed me off since he is my MOST favorite Marvel character of all time), and the X-Men movies, while pretty dang good, were still off on the story lines.
I guess what this all comes down to is three categories:
1. You have no preconceived notion of what the movie was about, so you can enjoy it or dislike without baggage
2. You thought you had some idea what the history of the characters are, so when you see something other than what you expected you don’t like it (similar to Alan’s review in this case)
3. You are intimately familiar with the story line pre-movie and either love the movie for being accurate or hate it immensely because they screwed the story up completely.
Of course, then there’s the fourth group that would not go see the movie if they were strapped to a wild team of mad donkeys (my wife falls firmly into this category - love you baby).
So anyway, now that I have blown off some steam, I think the movie was good precisely because Tony Stark did NOT have superpowers. He didn’t in the comic, and he didn’t in the movie. Just a really smart dude who knows how to build really cool toys that just happen to blow up crap. Kinda like Batman (yes, I know he is DC).
Man, I know way too much stuff about comics. Oh, here’s a picture of me with The Hulk. It’s remarkable how close our builds are, isn’t it?
And here’s what I looked like after I read Alan’s post on Iron Man:
UPDATE: I think I will use the Hulk picture in the same way I use my Orange Juice Award picture, except it will be reserved for when someone pisses me off…
Vet
