(andPOP) - I'd like to rub the face of anyone who dared to defend last year's Transformers as a good movie in at least one frame of Iron Man. The first few seconds of its final battle alone are more engaging than the entirety of last year's giant robot blockbuster. More coherent, too.
This is quality entertainment. This deserves to be a worldwide smash. Critics are not curmudgeons (not all of us anyway). We are not adverse to summer movies made primarily to sell popcorn. But there's a difference between a good popcorn movie and a bad popcorn movie. In a bad popcorn movie, unbelievable things happen to unbelievable characters. In a good popcorn movie, unbelievable things happen to believable characters. I did not expect Transformers' Sam Witwicky to be the second coming of Ferris Bueller. I did, however, have every right to expect a protagonist who was more than a collection of teen movie cliches.
Like the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Iron Man is technically an indie - it was financed by Marvel Comics' new film division, which doesn't answer to the studios. After putting it in the hands of filmmakers with actual talent (unlike George Lucas... the screenwriting half of him anyway) the company wisely took a hands-off approach, knowing that a good film would bring in more repeat business than a mediocre one.
If IMDB is to be believed (and let's pretend it is) then Jon Favreau, a fine comic actor and the director of Iron Man, deserves a raise:
- He's crafted a superhero movie, like Batman Begins (a conscious influence), that doesn't feel like a superhero movie. He does this by making the first action sequence involve nothing out of the ordinary: it's a military assault in Afghanistan.
- He establishes a character who could plausibly exist in the real world. Granted, Tony Stark, a gambling, boozing, womanizing arms dealer who also happens to be a brilliant inventor and shrewd businessman, is second only to Peter Parker in Marvel's considerable stable of terrific protagonists. But the film wisely presents him as a character who could have easily been the villain in another movie, until he witnesses firsthand the destruction his weapons have caused.
- Favreau has created a film that is neither a message movie nor an insult to the audience - Stark's dealings appear to be on a legitimate world stage, and while they doesn't hold up to comparisons with Lord of War, they're a solid introduction for viewers who don't know the first thing about arms dealing. Yes, there are people who design weapons and profit off war, yes, those profiteers often hail from rich countries, yes, they usually profit off regions said countries are trying to protect, and yes, the enemy often gets their hands on those weapons, resulting in additional income for the profiteers.
- In a nod to Robert Altman (another influence) Favreau turns the dialogue between Stark and his long-suffering assistant, Virginia "Pepper" Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow - it's saying something when one of Stan Lee's trademark alliterative names is the most unrealistic thing about the movie) into flip exchanges worthy of a 1930s screwball comedy. The pair frequently talk over each other and provide some of the film's most memorable lines ("Face it, this isn't the worst thing you've caught me doing," says Stark when Potts sees him removing his suit). While they don't quite have a Mulder-and-Scully chemistry that doesn't (or shouldn't) turn into romance, you can't exactly call Potts a love interest either. And she's far more involved than the typical non-heroic female lead in such movies.
- And Favreau was responsible for casting Robert Downey Jr. in the lead. This simultaneously matches the perfection achieved by Kelsey Grammer as Beast in the lastX-Men movie (an otherwise execrable affair) and Jerry Bruckheimer's genius when casting an offbeat and respected actor like Johnny Depp in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Hiring Downey, a talented actor once known for his substance abuse problems more than his performances, to play a substance-abusing superhero meant the potential payoff was enormous. And yes, he is that good. Iron Man's chief weakness is its two-dimensional supporting characters; by turning Stark into such an engaging hero Downey more than makes up for it.
In the other supporting roles, Terrence Howard and Jeff Bridges shine as usual (though Howard's character, Jim Rhodes, doesn't become Iron Man's sidekick, War Machine, until the next film). If I hadn't known Bridges played the main villain going in, I wouldn't have known he was the main villain until halfway through (my one gripe: for no apparent reason he turns out to be involved in more of the proceedings than I would have liked).
Make no mistake, Iron Man is not groundbreaking. It's formula done well. Anyone directing a "smart" movie would have killed for this cast, and yet I think in no way, shape or form can you call Iron Man dumb. When it was over (stick around for an extra scene), I realized something: for the first time since Spider-Man, the prospect of a sequel felt less like a punishment and more like a treat.
