So, the trailer for the new
Incredible Hulk film looks absolutely horrible despite the fact that it features Ed Norton smashing the hell out of Yonge Street but luckily for Avi Arad and the suits at Marvel their fortunes aren't resting entirely on the big green guy. It's been a rough time for Marvel on the big screen lately, the latest
X Men and
Spider-Man flicks sucking it up in a pretty big way and all signs pointing to the
Hulk disappointing twice in a row - though I'm actually a fan of the Ang Lee version despite the incomprehensible ending - but luckily for them they've got a LOT of titles to draw upon and the screen version of
Iron Man is pretty easily one of the best Marvel based films to date.
Here's the thing with the Marvel books, the reason they've survived and thrived the way they have is they manage to tap into some pretty serious cultural angst.
Spider-Man and
The Hulk both tap into cold war era techno fears,
X Men plays on racism and the civil rights movement, and
Iron Man? Well, if ever there was a hero tailored for our times it's Tony Stark and his kick ass metal suit.
A serious alcoholic in the midst of a moral crisis - though the film plays down the booze angle a fair bit - Stark is a brilliant arms designer who has wracked up a sizable fortune by applying his genius to selling the biggest and shiniest tools of destruction going. He doesn't think twice about how he's built his fortune until he's captured by Afghan warlords who want him to build them a high tech rocket and Stark realizes that the tribal warlords are hefting weapons made by his company from his designs. Whoopsie. Maybe selling big guns isn't the best way to make a living after all ... he builds his first metal suit rather than the demanded rocket, busts his way out and dedicates himself to cleaning up the mess that he made himself, taking the guns out of hands that he first put them in himself.
So there you go.
Iron Man is one of Marvel's most human heroes and one of their most flawed, one with a huge amount of relevance in the current global climate. We are, after all, fighting forces in Afghanistan that were trained and armed by western interests in the first place, fighters who are largely financed by Western oil money. Director Jon Favreau doesn't dive into the subtext, though, he's smart enough to keep it in the background, but there's enough of it there to give the film a welcome layer of depth. That's one major plus to it.
The other? Robert Downey Jr was simply born for the role, nobody else could do this. A cocky, amoral genius with a substance problem more prone to partying than thinking until it is very nearly too late? Yeah, that describes both Downey and Tony Stark perfectly well, and Downey steps into the part wholeheartedly. Good lord, this man is good and it's a blast to see him simply go for it like this, to spread himself across the screen this way all in the name of a good time. The rest of the cast is strong as well. Gwyneth Paltrow basically calls her part in but she's got enough going on that she never really loses her way and Jeff Bridges is an absolutely inspired choice as Downey's mentor at Stark Industries. And, yes, once shit starts blowing up it blows up real good.
Iron Man is the first big popcorn film of the year and it's setting the bar high. The tech end is great, the action quotient high, character work strong. It's smart, funny, and blessed with a stellar cast and a director smart enough to know when to say something about the world we live in and when to just get out of the way and blow stuff up. No surprise that they've already greenlit the sequel ...