This movie was quite a surprise in that it avoided the cheesy lameness of Marvel comics movie adaptations as of late, and it manages to attract stars such as Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Terence Howard and Jeff Bridges! This line up of stellar stars gave character to these, uh... characters in that they have that underlying mannerism that doesn't really boil to the surface, but it's tangible and it's there. No doubt the stars drew these traits from their own personalities, so you can see parts of Robert Downey Jr. shining through Tony Stark, or even the lovely Pepper Potts has a little Gwyneth in her.

I don't know who Jeff Bridges channeled his asshole demeanor from, but man, did he play that part perfectly.

In keeping with the original storyline of the comic books, Tony Stark is a genius play boy industrialist that inherited Stark Industries from his parents. After a brief stint under Obadiah Stane's mentoring, Stark emerged from beyond the shadows and became one of the most charismatic, yet naive, merchant of death. Only after his convoy was ambushed, and he fell into enemy hands, only then he realized all the weapons he produced found creative ways reaching to the people he rather not want using his weapons.

During his captivity, his captors wanted him to replicate a weapon he designed capable of unleashing hell fire from just a single missile. Considering the state of the prison was in, you would think it absurd to recreate a sophisticated weapons system; but he managed to create a chest implanted device necessary to keep him alive from all the missiles and weapons made available to him. Knowing the tremendous available power from the chest implant device, he set out to create the first of the prototype of his infamous suit of armor.

As he made his escape, you can see the change of heart he underwent, adamant in preventing his captors from using the weapons he produced, correcting his wrongs by destroying the stockpiles of weapons bearing the mark "Stark Industries".

What's amazing is that they chose to keep the look of the suit realistic, insofar creating metal and rubber suits to be interspersed with CG sequences. The team that previously worked on Zathura under Favreau came and did the suits for this movie as well. And as that movie showed us, the final product really blurs the line between what is real and what is CG.

I'm not saying that the CG version of the suit isn't impressive, far from it. Every detail of the final Mk III suit has a specific purpose to control his flight and his life support system. Every surface animated, every flap opening and closing, controlling his flight trajectory, every function is grounded in movie based science, where it has the plausability factor of a far greater magnitude than being bitten by a spider and getting superpowers.

The technology and the science they use to explain and use to depict the gadgetry of the Iron Man suit and Tony Stark's house is based on real life, albeit a few more years in the future. The home automation, the 3D projection, the interconnectibility of the devices, even the Iron Man suit can theoretically be achieved given a few more years and a few more billions of dollars. No wonder the officemates I went to watch the movie with were swooning at all the gadgets.

That's about it though, that's as much as I'm willing to disclose so as to let you fine readers to go watch this action packed, well written, and well directed movie. Director Jon Favreau, which also is in this movie as one of Stark's body guard who got to race around in a Rolls Royce, hit a jackpot on this one. Combining CG effects that blends well with live action sequences, focusing on the major storyline points while letting the actors improvise their lines made for a great experience. The character of each actor shows through their silver screen counterpart, and it only made the movie that much more likeable. No wonder it's shaping up to be the most well received movie of 2008, and stands to become the highest rated superhero movie of all time.

9 out of 10. It is that good!

Image copied from ComingSoon.net

Labels: Movie, Reviews

Posted by SoulJah at 3:21:00 PM

Your review on the movie is very cun and spot-on chief. I'm going for seconds tonight ;)
By  Reedz, at Thursday, May 08, 2008  

Yupyup. 1st superhero movie that I would want to watch over and over without cringing. Absolute jewel.
By  Intaniz, at Thursday, May 08, 2008  

saw this late.. just thought that you should have added the thing at the very end of the credits, where Samuel L Jackson makes an appearance as Nick Fury and introduces the Avengers
By  Ashrin, at Monday, June 09, 2008  

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