Iron Man

The Marvelous ROSSMAN

Duh-duuuh, duh-duh-duh! Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh duuh duuh duuuuh! Heavy boots of lead; Fills his victims full of dread! Running as fast as they can; IRON MAN lives again!

Yes, kiddies, Iron Man kicks metal buttocks. There's no two ways about it. Robert Downey Jr. took all of his angst from not being able to snort or inject anything for the past few years (thanks to that court-ordered ankle bracelet), and poured it all into his Tony Stark role for this movie. Yeah, Gwyneth Paltrow was cute in it, Jeff Bridges played a bizarro Dude Lebowski (who instead of "chilling out" and becoming really, really cool, went into business and became the anti-slacker that I love him best for, but who still captured a bit of the glint in the classic Dude's eye), and that black dude played Jim Rhodes (the future War Machine)... but this movie was all about the Downey.

The RD Jr. nailed who Tony Stark is (like he nailed every crack whore from Malibu to East LA), even better than the comics that spawned him as of late. Seriously, Tony's turned into a giant douchebag in the original Marvel continuity, and the Ultimate Stark is slowly turning shitty as well. Honestly, the closest to RD Jr.'s awesome Tony Stark is the Iron Man in Twisted Toyfare Theater... Oh hell, they're tied!

As for the movie, Iron Man goes a little something like this: Tony Stark is a billionaire weapons developer who has it all. He's got power, money, sweet cars, a top of the line A.I. butler, tons of booze, and hot chicks throwing their pre-moistened panties at him wherever he goes. Seriously, unless you buy him a woman from a third world country that he's never even heard of for his birthday or Christmas, he's already got it. So Tony makes high-tech weapons for Uncle Sam and he doesn't really think two tits about it — that's just what he does. But then while out on an uber-powered missile demonstration in the field (somewhere in Afghanistan), Tony's entourage is ambushed by a bunch of Jihadist assholes (who have access to an assload of Stark Industries' guns and grenades themselves) who kidnap him after wiping out all of the young men and women ordered to protect him. Then the terrorizors eventually force the Stark into recreating his greatest secret weapon to date (the Jericho missile) for their own dicky needs. Tony Stark does not like getting pissed on though, and with the help of a fellow kidnappie (a doctor who operated on Tony and saved his life by keeping the shrapnel from the initial attack from entering the Stark's heart) he goes about setting himself free.

Remember how Doc Brown, from Back to the Future fame, bragged to Marty McFly about being contracted by some Libyans to make a nuclear bomb, but instead he gave them a shell casing filled with used pinball machine parts? Well, Tony Stark does. He took all of the missile casings, explosives, computers and everything else the terrorist kidnappers gave him to build the missile, and he put them together into his very first Iron Man (Mark 1) suit. Even though it looked like it was soldered together by some stoner art students for their art appreciation doctorate, the Mark 1 suit was a beautiful thing to behold. Director Jon Farvvera's designers fucking NAILED its look. And the carnage that this suit is able to dish out on the assholic fuckers who held Tony hostage for all those months was fantastic retribution! I'm glad we're finally past the point of Hollywood saying, "Oh noes! We can'ts portray bad guys as Middle Eastern men! That's racist!" *Ahem* Middle Eastern men ARE our biggest enemy right now, and it felt REALLY GOOD to see the good guy kick their terrorist asses for once. Seriously, I think the last time a great movie was made in which Middle Eastern men were the bad guys was True Lies. What was that, 15 years ago? Come on, Hollywood, wise up! America (and judging by the global receipts, the entire free world) wants to see real bad guys get what's coming to them. In the 70s and 80s it was the Ruskie commies, the 90s and 00s it's the Jihadickheads, and in the 10s and 20s it'll be China. Give us what we want! We'll reward you for it! And no, I am not a fucking retard who believes that ALL people of Middle Eastern decent are American-hating terrorists. But I'm also not a moronic, PC pansy who closes his eyes to the world as it is in the hopes that all the bad shit is just a dream. Give us some Taliban baddies getting shot to shit by the good guys every once in a while! That's all I'm saying, dickless.

Anyway, back to Iron Man (the MOVIE! WOW!). After freeing himself from his captors, Tony has a bit of a change of heart when it comes to making money off of making weapons... No, he doesn't turn all hippie and try to change peoples' minds about war with flower power. Instead, Tony wants to do what he set out doing: Making our soldiers' lives safer. To this end he plans to stop making super guns and missiles that the enemy can get their hands on, and instead he focuses on making something even more powerful, but that only HE can operate. Try and guess what it is.

Yes, this is an origin story. Normally I detest them, seeing as I just want to get to the meat and potatoes of things — meaning super heroes beating the shit out of super villains — but director Swingers filled this thing with interesting bits from the opening seconds all the way until the final scene after the closing credits. Every minute with Tony being held captive in that cave, every second of Tony developing the gold and red suit through countless prototypes of failure, and every jet chase, missile explosion, and metal-on-metal punch between Iron Man and his final nemesis in their fisticuffs battle at the end was interesting. There were no moments during this movie in which I thought to myself, "Uuuuugh... Seriously, either bone a chick or blow something up...." Every second had me riveted.

And the BEST part of Iron Man (even better than Sir Robert Downey Jr's take on Tony Stark)? Well, that'd be the obvious foreshadowing of sequels yet to come — not only Iron Man sequels but quite possibly even an Avengers movie. Hell, if it's based on either The Ultimates 1 or 2 storylines, with Sam "the Man" Jackson as Nick Fury, I'll buy 20 tickets right now. Oh hell, honkeys, I'd be looking forward to that more than Guillermo del Toro's The Hobbit flicks!

So, what'd I think of Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man? It's as good as it gets. 6.5 out of 6.5 Iron Mongering Stars of Madness. Now, Marvel, don't wait too long for a sequel, bitches.

ANGRY AMY

Okay, fine, I have to admit that this thing wasn't that bad. Robert Downey acted like the doped up fool that he really is, but it actually fit his character this time. Eh, I guess a "stopped clock," huh?

The one thing that I truly didn't get is that Iron Man has that shrapnel in his chest, about to enter his heart, and he needs that glowy magnet-thingy to keep it from killing him while in that cave in Afghanistan... But once he gets back home, why doesn't he just have some super surgeons expertly remove it for tons of money? Why does he keep his hollowed-out chest cavity wide open for all to see like that? What's the point of being a billionaire bastard if you don't use your power and influence and money to save your own life?

I liked it alright, this movie... But the next time the Rossman blackmails me into acting like his date to make some chick he met at the flea market the previous week jealous I will blow up his car. With me in it if need be. I also thought it was kind of shitty of him to force me to sneak in through the exit in the back of the theater. Not classy.

SHE DEVIL

Good: Tony Stark sold his soul to me (in order to become the rich s.o.b. that he is in this movie) by selling weapons of mass destruction to the government. Bad: He turns his life around and stops selling weapons. Good: When he stops selling guns and missiles he instead focuses on making a powersuit that can blow things up and kill just as well as an entire platoon of Green Berets. Bad: He uses his new power for good and kills only terrorists. Good: Through his own negligence his partner in baby-killing weapons makes billions himself selling weapons to all sides in most global conflicts. Bad: Tony finds out and stops him.... I could do this all night.

Despite its "goody-goody" attitude, this Iron Man movie was not all that bad. It was pretty dark for a big summer popcorn flick, but still, they never did kill that Pepper Potts bitch. She made me sick.

I've got souls to rape across the coals now (you read that right), so I'll just toss my score out: One thumb up. That's not bad.