Alice Cooper
The original Iron Man is not exactly Citizen Kane, but it is perhaps the best summer action movie I've seen. There are two reasons for this. One is where I saw it:
That's the Family Drive In Theatre in Stephens City, Va. It's the only time I've been in a drive-in, and it's a very cool experience.
The other reason was because it kept things moving. About five minutes into the movie, you got your first explosion. Just about every scene was exciting, suspensful, advanced the plot, made you laugh, or a combination of the above.
I saw Iron Man 2 this weekend, and it was good, but lacked something the original had. They still did a fine job of translating the excitement and characters of a comic book onto the big screen, but at times it dragged. And I found it easy to figure out what the problem was. Since the rest of the review involves spoilers, I'm going to put a little break here. Click to continue reading.
1) There's no action in the first half hour of the picture.Until Tony Stark and Ivan Vanko meet on the race track, there are no explosions. Nobody's life is in danger. (Immediate danger, anyway. We establish that Stark is slowly dying, but that's not something that gets the audience's adrenaline pumping. Nothing really exciting happens.
This is easy to fix. Just put a simple action scene in. Iron Man could stop some bank robbers or terrorists. Don't have Robert Downey Jr. telling Garry Shandling that he's created the longest era of peace man has known; show some footage of him busting up a group planning massive destruction.
2) I paid to watch Iron Man 2, not The Avengers Prequel. My mother thought it would be a better film if they had taken out all the scenes with Scarlett Johansson and Samuel Jackson. I tend to agree; they were clearly in the film to get us ready for the upcoming Avengers movie. I wouldn't have minded if this was only a few minutes, but it seems to have been half the reason the movie was made. Seriously Marvel, Joss Whedon shouldn't need your help to make us want to see The Avengers.
2a) Scarlett was misused. I like to be surprised by a movie; I like to have my expectations subverted. But they need to be subverted well. And Iron Man isn't trying to subvert expectations; it feels like a comic book put on the big screen. Scarlett's obvious role was to serve as romantic competition to Gwyneth Paltrow. Iron Man 1 established Tony Stark was a womanizer; an attractive underling could cause great drama. Learning she was some sort of elite secret agent -- who Tony seemed to have no romantic interest in -- ruined that role. Also, her fight scenes were unconvincing.
2b) If you want people to stick around till the end of the credits for a cool easter egg, please make the credits interesting. I don't know how long they lasted, but I do know it was long enough for three separate songs to play. And nothing happened except we saw row after row of names we didn't care about. The 30-second surprise was not worth it. Break it up with Animal House style images showing me what happened next. Show outtakes like Jackie Chan did. Have a little animated Iron Man and War Machine chasing each other, like Wall-E. Give me something to look at other than the assistant caterer's name.
3) I wanted to see more of that waldo. In the first movie, Downey had more chemistry with the robot arm than he did with Paltrow. The same was true this time, but the arm got a much smaller part.
The other reason was because it kept things moving. About five minutes into the movie, you got your first explosion. Just about every scene was exciting, suspensful, advanced the plot, made you laugh, or a combination of the above.
I saw Iron Man 2 this weekend, and it was good, but lacked something the original had. They still did a fine job of translating the excitement and characters of a comic book onto the big screen, but at times it dragged. And I found it easy to figure out what the problem was. Since the rest of the review involves spoilers, I'm going to put a little break here. Click to continue reading.
1) There's no action in the first half hour of the picture.Until Tony Stark and Ivan Vanko meet on the race track, there are no explosions. Nobody's life is in danger. (Immediate danger, anyway. We establish that Stark is slowly dying, but that's not something that gets the audience's adrenaline pumping. Nothing really exciting happens.
This is easy to fix. Just put a simple action scene in. Iron Man could stop some bank robbers or terrorists. Don't have Robert Downey Jr. telling Garry Shandling that he's created the longest era of peace man has known; show some footage of him busting up a group planning massive destruction.
2) I paid to watch Iron Man 2, not The Avengers Prequel. My mother thought it would be a better film if they had taken out all the scenes with Scarlett Johansson and Samuel Jackson. I tend to agree; they were clearly in the film to get us ready for the upcoming Avengers movie. I wouldn't have minded if this was only a few minutes, but it seems to have been half the reason the movie was made. Seriously Marvel, Joss Whedon shouldn't need your help to make us want to see The Avengers.
2a) Scarlett was misused. I like to be surprised by a movie; I like to have my expectations subverted. But they need to be subverted well. And Iron Man isn't trying to subvert expectations; it feels like a comic book put on the big screen. Scarlett's obvious role was to serve as romantic competition to Gwyneth Paltrow. Iron Man 1 established Tony Stark was a womanizer; an attractive underling could cause great drama. Learning she was some sort of elite secret agent -- who Tony seemed to have no romantic interest in -- ruined that role. Also, her fight scenes were unconvincing.
2b) If you want people to stick around till the end of the credits for a cool easter egg, please make the credits interesting. I don't know how long they lasted, but I do know it was long enough for three separate songs to play. And nothing happened except we saw row after row of names we didn't care about. The 30-second surprise was not worth it. Break it up with Animal House style images showing me what happened next. Show outtakes like Jackie Chan did. Have a little animated Iron Man and War Machine chasing each other, like Wall-E. Give me something to look at other than the assistant caterer's name.
3) I wanted to see more of that waldo. In the first movie, Downey had more chemistry with the robot arm than he did with Paltrow. The same was true this time, but the arm got a much smaller part.
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