I finally saw Iron Man!
I went with my brother-in-law on Saturday night (after a long day of doing the final cleaning on our apartment) to see my first big blockbuster of the summer. It was a great way to start off the season!
Iron Man had all the things you could really want from a quality comic book adaptation: faithfulness to the already-established characters and origins, great effects, fun and engaging plot, humor, and so on.
It’s also extremely accessible. As a recent conversation among friends and family during moving day showed, unless you’ve been into comic books at all, you’ve probably not heard of Iron Man the same way most people have heard of Superman or Wolverine. You needn’t have heard of him, though, to enjoy the film — obviously! I think Iron Man’‘s box office receipts speak loudly of its broad appeal and accessibility.
As far as some of the less-cursory elements of the film, while it didn’t delve quite as deeply into the kind of extra social and moral thematic elements like Spider-man or X-men or Batman Begins did, it wasn’t totally a fluffy movie. Just like those other films, it did deal heavily with the idea of using ones gifts for a purpose, and using them with responsibility. In that way, it calls up Biblical lessons like the Parable of the Talents and even simple verses like 1 Peter 4:10.
Other fun aspects of the movie included director Jon Favreau’s small cameo role, as well as Stan Lee‘s usual Marvel-movie appearance, plus many subtle winks to the comic-reading faithful who would find some of the inside references very fun (especially for those who stick around after the credits). Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts played a great counterpart to Robert Downey, Jr.’s extremely well-played Tony Stark, and while Jeff Bridges chewed up quite a bit of scenery over the course of the film, he was enjoyable to watch — in a creepy, can’t-stand-this-guy sort of way.
So go check out Iron Man. It’s one of the better comic book movies in the glut that we’ve had lately, and it’s worth the ride!
Despite some weaknesses, I really liked this movie. It was funny, it had good casting, and the battle scenes didn’t drag out so long that they became boring.