I am Iron Man indeed

[ericcoleman]

Yeah ... great movie, they could not have cast anyone better than RDJ as Tony Stark. And yeah, the bit after the credits ... OH FREAKIN YEAH !!!

And if anyone wants to talk about it more, there is always the comments section, which is the cue for the folks who have not seen it to understand that there may be spoilers there.

Comments

[freeimprov.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm also gonna post this unpopular minority opinion in my LJ momentarily, but...

Speed Racer is a better movie than Iron Man.

Iron Man, for all its good points, suffered from serious developmental deficiencies in the villain department. What was his motivation, again? How did he change? What event changed him from a person to a supervillain, other than putting on a damned suit? Srsly, folks, he was a pretty lame villain. No reflection on Robert Downey Jr, who was SUPERB as Tony Stark - but I suspect his role was to make a pretty good movie out of a potentially mediocre one. No reflection on Jeff Bridges either, who polished that turd as much as any actor could be expected to do. Ultimately, the reason it's a B-rate movie rather than an A-rate movie falls on the writers.

Speed Racer didn't suffer from that, if only because the characters didn't NEED complex motivation. Adequate acting was all that was needed to play out cartoon characters (which are simpler than comic book characters, really). The story and pacing are simplistic, but quite functional, with no great holes. And the LOOK! I think they've scored a visual breakthrough with Speed Racer that's as powerful and important as what they accomplished with The Matrix. I've never seen such seamless integration of live action and animation - arguably because others have always tried to fit the animation to the live action, rather than the other way around.

Anyway, we saw Speed Racer on IMAX... which I unreservedly recommend for it.

[ericcoleman]

Speed Racer doesn't interest me at all. I didn't like the cartoon, so I don't see much reason to see the movie. And I hate the look of what I saw. That and it looks like it needs ritalin.

[erik]

I was not impressed with Speed Racer. I thought they totally missed the point.

The original series was an OK adventure story that happened to be produced using animation. The movie, notwithstanding that it was more-or-less live-action, is a cartoon. Bleagh.

[freeimprov.livejournal.com]

I thought of it more like an anime-movie, based on the larger-scale plot of an ongoing anime series. Which really, is what it was. And I always liked the Speed Racer story arc, even if it was pretty simplistic. So I thought they did a fine job of taking the basic characters and story and adapting it to a modern theme. Story-wise, it was about as successful as such adaptations usually are. Most importantly, it didn't screw anything up or try to introduce "improvements" to the characters or their motivations (see the Jim Carrey version of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" for the model of how to screw up).

Cartoon, yeah. Actually, HELL yeah!

[hiei2k7.livejournal.com]

uh, lets see here. This is how the 2008 movie set up the supervillain as I saw it.

pre-set of the movie showed stark overtaking the other guy's CEO job.
paying terrorists to capture and kill stark in the middle east.
getting the board of directors to cut him from the company.
finding the suit and building one of their own, which is something he did not want done.
down to tracking him down and stealing his electromagnetic lifesaver.
and putting on the suit and fighting him.

That's what I can remember off the top of my head.

[tlunquist.livejournal.com]

That was how the movie story communicated to the audience that Stane was a world-class creep, yes. But I believe what freeimprov was asking was more about WHY he did all that stuff. Sure, Stark "unseated" him as the CEO. But why does that make him want to be some kind of major international warlord, creating huge nasty horrific weapons and selling them to all of the highest bidders in order to propagate unending war with maximum civilian casualties, which seems to be the short list of his goals by the end of the movie? This is not just about petty personal gripes or grudges between Stane and Stark. Stane is obviously a lot more evil than that. But freeimprov has a valid point that we don't really know what caused him to be so evil, based on what we see in the movie.

Of course, it could be that it really is just about the CEO thing, but jeezus -- couldn't you just sent a hired gun to his house to take him out, rather than involving a multimillion dollar company, the U.S. government and entire tribes of Afghanis in your weird little vendetta? That's not evil - that's just absurd.

[freeimprov.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I consider mere greed to be an inadequate motivation for a SUPERvillain. (cue Dr Evil saying "A MILLION DOLLARS!") Compare to the Spider-Man villains... Green Goblin lost his company, then shot himself full of experimental superpower chemicals and went insane, AND went on a vengeance trip against Spider-Man. Dr Octopus wasn't in full control - when his human spirit started to falter, the evil robot arms would take over and do what he would not. Sandman was trying to pay for care for his sick daughter. The alien Spider-suit was, well, alien. And Goblin II was on a vengeance trip AND inherited his father's madness AND was in a romantic triangle with Peter Parker/Spidey AND knew the secret identity!

Those were some motivated villains. It puts Obadiah Stane in perspective, doesn't it? I mean, he wasn't even double-dealing weapons to become the ruler of all Asia himself! He just wanted to sell product. :/

[freeimprov.livejournal.com]

So riddle me this... WHY did Obadiah want Stark killed in the first place? I mean, AFTER Stark went all Gandhi and tried to get out of the weapons biz, yeah, kill him then. But before? He was "the goose that laid the golden eggs" in Obadiah's own words. He was either busy in the lab making the best new military hardware on the planet (and thus irreplaceable), or he was out being a billionaire playboy and paying no attention to the day-to-day functioning of the company. So WHY would Obadiah want to kill him? Obadiah already had day-to-day control of the company, and the company wouldn't be what it was without Stark's brains.

The only rational explanation is that he wanted sole controlling interest in the company... but unless he was the heir to Tony Stark's shares, that wouldn't happen either. He'd most likely wind up dealing with someone less useful and pliable than Tony Stark.

See what I mean? That's a MAJOR motivation problem, really sloppy writing. That's like, George Lucas level motivation problem.

As for whether his actions constituted "supervillain"... I still say no, he's just ordinary CEO material. Your average Fortune 500 CEO in the real world would already cut the hearts out of live babies if it'd give them a 2% boost in share prices, much less kill their worst enemy.

[guppiecat]

I could care less about Speed Racer... but it would take work. ;)

However, I completely agree about your assessment of villains. I would have greatly preferred to see a single bad guy instead of trying to introduce both the hero and TWO villains in the span of a single movie. It tried to do too much and there were huge pacing problems as a result.

[lisagems.livejournal.com]

But the first villain was really just the unwitting henchman.

I read it as primary villain being pretty much a bad guy from before, he was, afterall, willing to sell weapons to both sides while unashamedly going on about "keeping America safe". They play subtly on the original comic book characters background as a communist, with the 'keeping power in the right hands' comment, and other things.

Besides, it IS a comic book. How much motivation do ANY of the villians really have. (aside from Magneto, of course *snickers*)

[guppiecat]

The problem is that if you look at comics on a single-issue basis, the motivation is really paltry. However, if you look at the backstories that evolve over the decades, the villains get very complex and compelling motivations... that are entirely ignored when they become movies.

I compare Iron Man with Batman Begins, as they are similar in plot and stereotyping. Batman Begins had a much more believable villain and compelling story. Iron Man COULD HAVE, but didn't. I find that regrettable.

[freeimprov.livejournal.com]

That's where I am, too. I'd still give Iron Man a B+ just because everything else worked so well, but other movies - even inferior ones - have had fully-developed supervillains. And Iron Man could have done it as well, if they'd only given Obadiah Stane a reason to fight beyond the stock price of Stark Industries and some petty resentment.