I saw this over the weekend and was simply blown away. Iron Man is the best movie adaptation of a comic book character since Batman Begins and one of the best, period.
The story of industrialist Tony Stark (played to the hilt by Robert Downey Jr.) as he invents the “Iron Man” armor as a way of escaping terrorist agents of the Mandarin (updated from 1960s North Vietnamese communists) is smart, funny and bold. Downey’s performance is a showpiece and from the opening moments as he banters with G.I.s in a Humvee convoy, he never fails to impress. Gwyneth Paltrow (as his assistant Pepper Potts), Jeff Bridges (as Obadiah Stane) and Terrence Howard (as Stark’s best friend James Rhodes) give good performances themselves and serve to establish the microcosm that is Stark’s world.
The effects are fantastic, with Industrial Light and Magic once again proving they can create the impossible. The armor looks incredible and, most surprisingly, plausible. The attention to detail was astonishing and watching it in action a delight. ILM really outdid themselves here.
The story is a classic origin story, complete with the obligatory bad guy. However, unlike the Fantastic Four, a good balance is struck between exposition and action, which gives the movie a great sense of inertia. Not once did I feel everything slowed to the point where I was hoping something would happen just to get things moving again. The dialogue is dry, sarcastic and Downey does a great job with it.
After having to endure a slew of mediocre comic book movies over the last couple of years, Iron Man was refreshing. Not only is it a great comic book movie, it’s a good movie over all. Director Jon Favreau should be given the green light for the remaining two films in his proposed trilogy yesterday and Downey may have found the role which will be his Captain Jack Sparrow.
Greg over at Real Life is running a storyline in which he and his wife agree that each person has to watch a movie chosen by the other as a way of rectifying their ignorance about certain genres of film. Two days in and it’s already broken when “musical” clashes against “Kubrick.” However, even funnier is a section from an email sent to Greg from a reader about The Sound of Music:
DON’T get tricked into watching Sound of Music! I was promised Nazis – my mind thought “Like Indiana Jones Nazis? Sweet!” – but don’t be enticed! The movie is THREE HOURS LONG. THREE!! It would be a 60 minute movie if they weren’t breaking out into song ever 4 minutes to make 2 minute conversations take 10 minutes. And the Nazis? Last 20 minutes. They tease you with the possibility of Nazi vs Freedom fighter battling throughout the movie, but they wait until you’re about to go into a coma after two and a half hours of singing to finally bring in the action. There’s something in there about a nun turned nanny turned back into nun turned into band leader that takes up 90% of the movie. It’s interesting, but there’s way too much singing. Beware!!
It’s funny because I too was promised Nazis as the enticement for finally sitting down to watch this movie. However, it’s all bait and switch. The writer is correct – Nazis barely even show up in the movie. It’s terribly disappointing and almost made me wish the final scenes were the Von Trapps being loaded into a boxcar on their way to Buchenwald.
There are times when the Internet makes you want to run screaming from the room, clawing at your eyes.
There are times when the Internet is almost sublime.
This is one of those latter times.
Garfield Minus Garfield has a simple premise: remove Garfield from his own strips. What remains should be nonsensical and, most of the time, would be. With the main character absent, all elements of story should collapse. But what happens when you do it to a comic strip which has no story? In the words of the site’s creator:
Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.
Go. Go now. Revel in the black humor which arises from the corpse of the most non-offensive creation in existence.
Nothing in that title will make sense unless you read comics. Specifically, you read comics in the ’90s when Image Comics burst on the scene in a pathetic parody of revolution against Marvel and DC by producing superhero comics that were pale imitations of titles that had been around for twenty years.
Not only could none of them write worth a damn without plagarizing even the oldest of superheroes, but they couldn’t draw worth a damn some of the time. Rob Liefeld is a classic example. He couldn’t draw a human being to save his own life, much less accurately portray the form in action. He couldn’t draw, he couldn’t write and he was still one of the biggest names in comics during the ’90s. One of the “titans” that helped bring the entire industry to its knees with derivative storytelling, heroes with forearms bigger than their heads and women bent into impossible positions (to say nothing of having to drag around breasts that must have weighed forty pounds apiece).
So where does this diatribe originate? You might very well ask. Ask no more. Click on this link at your own peril if you’re one of the children who worshiped Image. If not, then sit back and look at forty of the most god-awful abuses of professional illustration ever actually published.
However, make no mistake. I know it was you who allowed someone like Liefeld to exist in the first place. Miller gave you The Dark Knight Returns and Moore gave you Watchmen, but it wasn’t good enough. You needed even more and crappier anti-heroes to adore. Then you decided you preferred comics if they didn’t actually have a story, because that left more room for half-naked women with big tits and bigger guns. Then you allowed Liefeld to not only defy human anatomy, but rules of perspective laid down since the Renaissance. (And yes, Picasso developed Cubism, but Picasso was doing it on purpose. You know how I know? Because he drew perfectly fine before breaking the rules.)
Oh, I know it’s cool to rag on Liefeld now, but I know who you are. One day it will all come out. Maybe when you move and your multiple foil cover, limited edition playing card issue number one of Youngblood falls out during a move. And then the world will know.
