Finally! The guy with the months long Iron Man avatar can stop reading other people's reviews and comment about the movie itself.
It was a very good superhero movie. A superhero movie doesn't have to be a classic like
Batman Begins or
Spider-Man II or
The Incredibles (which people don't mention very much because it's computer animation, I guess). It simply has to follow a few rules, such as:
- Present the freaking origin to the audience in the right way. Don't embellish and stay true to its roots.
- Have continuity from the opening to the ending credits and don't go off on unnecessary tangents (i.e. The Hulk)
- Cast and direct actors who can translate the major and minor characters to the big screen. Robert Downey Jr. did a hell of a job as Tony Stark. Likewise, Gwyneth Paltrow played Pepper Potts equally well. Jon Favreau did a very good job directing, imo.
- Use special effects which matches the character's powers or abilities.
A few things I absolutely loved about the picture:
- Stark's virtual workstation was positively kick***.
- His trial-and-errors while perfecting the armor
- Favreau's staying true to the Golden Avenger armor
. In contrast, one of the few things I hated about the X-Men movies was the use of the generic uniforms.
- Stark's blase billionaire view of the world before his transformation.
A couple of things I didn't like:
- The notable absence of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s figurehead (don't want to give away a spoiler here)
- I was fine with Terrence Howard's portrayal of Rhodes, but I have seen enough of his previous work to know that he could've given his character an edger side.
- For personal reasons, I wish that the bad guys had been located somewhere in Southeast Asia instead of Afghanistan, preferably China or Mongolia. I kinda hoped there had been some sort of tie-in or future reference to the introduction of The Mandarin.
- While watching the movie, I hoped that the #1 Afghan bad guy would somehow don the other armor and become the Crimson Dynamo. That's contradicts my own principle of staying true to the book since C.D.'s origin is Russian, so sue me.
Well, that's two original Avengers down. While
The Hulk was a huge disappointment (which the new movie will hopefully improve greatly upon), he was the first to hit the silver screen recently. With Iron Man out of the way, there are only three to go, even though I doubt that Ant-Man or The Wasp have a chance in hell of being a lead character outside of an Avengers movie. When will someone finally get a Thor movie made? There is so much they could do with the character, it's scary, imo. It's time that the god of thunder had his say.
