Certificate:

Director: John Favreau

Release Date: 2 May 2008

Tagline: Fully charged.

Main Cast:

Robert Downey Jr … Tony Stark

Terrence Howard … Rhodey

Jeff Bridges … Obadiah Stane

Gwyneth Paltrow … Pepper Potts

Comic book conversions… Some are good, some are bad and some are just average. Iron Man falls into the latter.

It’s shallow and very, very predictable. Now, I know that suspending belief is important when watching comic book films, but Iron Man is at times so ludicrous that this becomes impossible. Possibly the most implausible is the scene where the US Military locate Stark in the middle of the desert and don’t gun him down with friendly fire before he is identified (sorry… Can’t help myself from taking a shot at the trigger happy Americans).

I also think that it does nothing to calm the relations between the USA and Afghanistan. The ‘Jericho’ missile and the ability to wipe out the enemy through such means in the hands of the Americans is, apparently, a great thing.  However, when the tables are turned, the man responsible for these weapons has a sudden stab of conscience when he realises that his own weaponry has been used against his country.

The criteria for a comic book that makes a good film are a) a strong protagonist  b) great supporting characters, and c) a variety of great villains to pit the heroes against. Sadly, Iron Man has none of these.

The two best adaptations of comic books are Batman and Spider-Man. Both of these have all of the above criteron. Both Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker are characters we can identify with and warm to. Stark is just not likeable. He is a shallow character that you just can’t warm to. And Pepper is just a poor imitation of Spider-Man’s Mary Jane Watson.

The CGI is, however, very good and I really enjoyed the clever use of it.

I really can’t see how they can make a sequel out of this, but I’m sure they will.

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