Saturday, May 03, 2008

Iron Man

I'm going to do this review a little different, I'm going to try to address a bunch of issues real quickly, so here goes:

1. "Iron Man", although it's being advertised quite a lot durring kids tv programming is not for little kids. It's got some subject matter that is a little too mature for children, think James Bond and you'll know what I'm talking about. But that's alright kids, because we've got "Wall-e" coming out soon, and that'll make up for any and all movies you may feel like you're missing out on.

2. Ben completely ruined "Iron Man" for me because of the Onion web clip he posted over on the family site. It was unavoidable to compare the "feature length film" to the trailer, and let's just say that the trailer was better. The trailer was like the Cliff Notes of the movie. You get all, and I do mean all the best stuff without the boring character developement filler. If you haven't seen the trailer yet, go to the link for trailers to the right of this blog, and save yourself 8 bucks.

3. It's kind of hard to appreciate "Iron Man" on any level after you've just seen the new Batman trailer. Am I doing it again? Am I building up too much anticipation in my own mind for this movie? I sincerely hope not, but it feels like the days are dragging so slowly waiting for July 18th.

4. Maybe you shouldn't be thinking about the trailers you saw before the movie while you're watching the movie, but I don't know if I could be more dissapointed than I am with this "Prince Caspian" .... ( I used the "...." because I was going to say "crap", then I thought I'd say "excrement", perhaps I'd even shock some people by using a real bad word, but I decided to leave it up to your own discretion. Anyways, how can a group of filmmakers get so much so wrong? I am sad. Perhaps this just means that the BBC version it, and I need to realize that the best way to enjoy this series is the way it was meant to be enjoyed, in my own imagination.

5. In closing, the best part of "Iron Man" was Robert Downey Jr's final line, and the second best was the action scene towards the end of the film because I actually drifted off for a few minutes and felt well rested for the drive home.

P.S. I was just thinking that it would have been a better movie if they would have had Harry Connick Jr. and Robert Downey Jr. playing brothers, one being Iron Man, the other maybe as Skillet Man or something like that.

7 comments:

Edwardo Crum said...

I think it would have been good if the "iron" in "Iron Man" referred to the common household appliance, and Iron Man's main purpose was to help keep the world wrinkle-free.

Martha said...

Hey Peter! Are you saying the BBC Prince Caspian was good, or just better than the new version coming out?

Thanks for the review of Iron Man. The boys are watching the cartoons as I write this. They respect your opinion and understand that they won't be watching the movie.

Say Hi to Jess for me. We miss you guys!

Aunt Marty

Nate said...

I think you got it wrong. It was a good movie. Everything is in the title. Before you go to see this movie you know that you are seeing a comic book/superhero movie. The special effects were great, the plot was good for a comic book movie and robert downey jr. and his robots were like-able. If you compare this to supermam, spiderman, the hulk, the 3 batman movies inbetween the good 2 and spawn, than you are going to have to say that this is the better movie of this genre. That's what i think atleast.

Peter said...

I'll address these in order...

First off, Edwardo, you make me laugh.

Secondly, I have very fond memories of the BBC versions of Narnia. The casting was great, and despite the relatively low production values the filmmakers at least got the spirit of the story right. The trailer for "Prince Caspian" seems to be a Disneyfied, Lord of the Rings wanna-be, adventure movie. So to make a long answer short, I like the BBC versions more than the Disney versions. Also, I really don't like that they're advertising movies like "Iron Man" so heavily to children. It's PG-13 and rightfully so. I remember vividly not being allowed to see what looked to be the coolest movies when I was younger.

And thirdly and finally, Nate, I don't disagree with you. As far as comic book movies go, this was up in the top 15 or 20. Way better than "Fantastic 4" or the 3 Batman movies you refer to. But I would say definitely not in the same category as "Superman" (the real one), "Batman" (Burton), "Sin City" or "The Crow". On top of that, I'd already seen the movie in the trailer, so it wasn't as exciting. Maybe it was wrong not to mention more of it's qualities, like Robert Downey Jr's personality, or the 'learning to fly' sequence or the credit cookie. I enjoyed it while it lasted, but relatively speaking I was dissapointed.

Matthew R. Crum said...

The Flash TV show was by far the best of the superhero genre... or at least I remember it that way... so that's what I have to say... make sense of that movie buff brothers

Benjamin Crum said...

Nate, I wish I could isolate movies into Genres and then enjoy them based on that contained view but the truth is (as Peter mentions with his Speed Racer review) their are movies that have something more... 'soul' or 'heart' or whatever, some movies just rise above the crowd, regardless of genre, and some movies are mediocre regardless of special effects, likability of characters, or relative decency of story as compared to other crappy stories.

Benjamin Crum said...

...and I know I messed up and used "their" rather than "there"