Chronic Review: Iron Man 2!

So I went to see Iron Man 2 this afternoon. I bought my tickets online and showed up about 30 minutes early to be certain of obtaining a decent seat. That ended up being unnecessary, since there were less than 20 people in the theater with me. I'm not suggesting that this is a sign that the film is tanking or anything. I'm sure it did well in those midnight showings yesterday, and I'm sure the house will packed tonight. I'm just saying that I caught the matinee and had the place to myself, and I don't think we have to worry about this film challenging Avatar's numbers is all.

For those of you who caught the Nerds of the Round Table show on Iron Man 2, you'll know that I was hopefully pessimistic about the movie. Most of the talent involved deserved the benefit of the doubt, but most of the post-wrap press sounded like tap-dancing around the fact that this was a cuffed and rushed cluster-fuck.

I'm pleased to report that this movie is legitimately outstanding, and does not come off as unpolished or lackluster. It feels slightly less magical because it has to. We've already had our socks knocked off by the first film, and it set the bar in a spot where the sequel can be equally as deft, exciting, vibrant, and yet something feels... missing. There is something missing. That empty space you came to the original film with is now filled with the worst possible thing you can bring to a work of art....expectations.

Also you're filled with a bunch of information from the trailers. I did a bunch of research for the Round Table show that didn't hurt my viewing a lick. I really, really, really, tried to avoid the trailers, because I want things to be a surprise. Unfortunately, I ended up seeing several movies that showed trailers of Iron Man 2 before the feature. And that absolutely detracted from my experience. Not a deal breaker, mind you. But significant.

If this is sounding like a negative review of the movie, let me turn that right around and say that I enjoyed the movie front to back. I have since read reviews of the movie that complain about "lagging" sections of the film, and I found the two hours zipped by in a blink. The other major charge leveled against the movie is that it isn't as "fun" as the first.

And that's true. Iron Man 2 is not a fun movie at all, nor was it designed to be. Iron Man 2 takes Tony Stark down a very dark road, not everybody is happy with him for much of the film, and he becomes a much more human character. Guess what? I liked all of that.

Yes, Downey gets to play the rakish rogue, and there are plenty of good one-liners to be had. But his keynote speech at the Stark Expo comes off with more blatant arrogance than charm, and that's OK. Tony's partying at his birthday feels a little more gross and a little less harmless. That a good thing. That's called, let's take the foundation of the character and move him toward something more flawed, more real, and still true to the path he took in the comics. Is it fun, exactly? No. Was it entertaining for me? Yes, ma'am.

I was worried about Whiplash as a viable villain, but his origins are re-worked in such a way that it works, and Mickey Rourke does menacing just fine. Matter of fact, I don't think anybody ever refers to that character as Whiplash. He's just Ivan Danko, a kind of ghost from the Stark family history bringing home some painful chickens to roost. That works, too.

After watching this movie, I have no idea why they needed Don Cheadle to play Rhodey. Didn't have a problem with anything he did, but nor did I see him doing anything that wouldn't have played just as well with Terrence Howard. Also, based upon my viewing I don't see audiences coming out with a clamoring for more War Machine. That nod goes to...

Black Widow. Scarlet Johansson was fantastic. She sells the capable assistant, she sells the competent super-spy, and she sells the action sequences on top of it. There is nothing sexier than watching Scarlet Johansson clear out Hammer, inc. of hired muscle. She also plays her character with just the barest trace of some vaguely European sounding accent, which is perfect. Romanov wouldn't run around spouting thick Russian, she's blending into an American firm.

I could definitely see interest in that character spiking, and they even have a new ongoing Black Widow book in place to potentially capitalize. The downside is that Marjorie Liu has her getting her ass beat badly straight out of the gate, which will seem like a downer for newbies interested in watching the strong woman they just saw on screen. Shame, really.

What else, what else...oh. Avengers stuff. Here's where the filmmakers are in a bit of a pickle, because they don't know what the other films are really going to do, hell, they didn't really know what THEY were going to do until somebody yelled "Action!" So they need to set up the Avengers film a bit, but they can't really commit to much, because it's all up in the air.

What they chose to do was take SHIELD/Coulson and give them a little more balls, which was great. Coulson was not some bumbler begging for an appointment, and SHIELD was an entity with a rich history and bigger problems than Iron Man, not a paper tiger still feeling out what to call itself. There is an "Avenger Initiative", but there are no details beyond that. Cap's shield sort of makes an appearance. Thor's hammer definitely does. And that's about the best we can hope for, is to have this movie acknowledge that such things exist while avoiding details that will inevitably have to be backtracked upon. It's satisfactory.

Olivia Munn! No, she is not Iron Maiden. In fact, she's completely expendable in this picture, taking up about 7 seconds of screen time posing as a Giuliana Depandi wannabe. Stark's big opening got major axing. That Gwynneth Paltrow kiss on the helmet? Cutting room floor. My guess is that Downey and Munn had a little red carpet interview that was flirtatious and fun, and Favreau decided that it didn't fit with his "Stark Disassembled" movie. And he was probably right. Maybe we'll find out when the DVDs hit.

I thought it was interesting to see Stephen Platt listed in the credits as an "illustrator." I don't know if that means he was doing storyboarding or what. Platt put Moon Knight back on the map with his pencils that boldly aped everything Todd McFarlane had done before him. He was about the biggest star in pencilling until he left Marvel and took that Prophet gig that went nowhere at Mach three. Now he's probably making more than Steve McNiven doing drawings for Hollywood. Good on ya, mate!

If you're expecting to see a repeat of the first film, you are not going to like Iron Man 2. It's too dark, too deep, and not nearly smarmy enough. If you want to see the dark side of Tony Stark and to see Stark struggle to rise about that, you're in luck. If you want to see some of the "real world" ramifications of what that kind of technology would unleash on the world, you'll be happy. If you want to see the Tony/Pepper relationship move forward a bit in a more bittersweet and less traditionally Hollywood way, you'll be in good shape. I think my favorite scene in this movie is a three way conversation between Tony/Pepper/Natalya just before Tony fights an army of Hammer drones. Spots like that highlight the Favreau "freeball" method of letting his actors do the work, and boy do they work at times. And yes, if you want to see guys in iron suits wreaking havoc on all manner of objects, that is available as well.

Iron Man 2 is better than good, and I think it's appropriate for everyone involved to be very proud of what they accomplished.

- Ryan

Chronic: Week in Reviews

Coffee, tea......or me? Well, that's me. With tea. Twinnings Irish breakfast tea, actually. Thanks to Cian for putting me onto that little delight, and thank you Ireland for being populated entirely by hilarious and angry people.

I was going to sit down and start hammering out another lengthy, dull review for nobody to read. I've decided that I would very much like to spend my evening watching episodes of Fringe while drinking more of this tea, so instead prepare yourself for a slew of items touched upon quite briefly.

The first thing I need to get to is Fantastic Four # 578, which was extraordinary as per usual. My love affair with this book is now well documented, so I should probably just shut up about it. Nah.

Eaglesham paints a scene in this issue when Johnny brings a bimbo home that is so deliciously disturbing.....you just have to see it. And by the way, that little bimbo was part of yet another layer that Hickman is layering onto this cake, which is already about 70 layers deep. This is the must read book in Marvel comics right now.

And remember those "home page" epilogues at the end of the last several issues, that read almost like a historian's recap of connected events? Turns out that our little Valeria has been creating those notes. It's also implied that she's worked out the "four cities" on her own, and I'm not convinced that her father has pieced that together yet. Clever girl, clever girl. I repeat: this is the must read book in Marvel comics right now.

Not far behind is Matty Fraction's Invincible Iron Man # 25. Or as I like to call it these days - Iron Man: Undouched! Tony Stark's recently uploaded mind doesn't contain any of the completely absurd crap that Mark Millar made him do, and voila! It's a brand new day, only without the Mephisto fisting.

Incidentally, Fraction is self-effacing enough to admit inside the book how silly it would be for Tony Stark to leave himself with an incomplete memory when he could have very easily had it refresh itself daily. I like that, actually.

That issue also contains a new foil in the form of Detroit Steel, some Machiavellian hijinx from the Hammer girls, and a cannot miss conversation between Tony Stark and Thor. This is mainstream superhero comics done correctly. Why this won't be offered at movie theaters across the nation on May 7 is beyond me.

Siege: Secret Warriors is kinda fun. This is about as good as you can hope for with these obligatory event tie-ins. There is a scene in here with Cap and Nick Fury that is so over the top...you either love it or you hate it. Maybe it's just my man crush on Jonathan Hickman, but I choose to love it.

This was my first exposure to Phobos, being that I don't read Secret Warriors regularly. I just picked this up for friend of the show Nick, and the tax he paid for me buying this was me reading it. At any rate, the Phobos stuff was directly related to the events of Siege # 3, and an interesting avenue to take, and executed with some care. I particularly liked the letter to the President at the end. Hall of fame? No. But these things are so often a crime against God and Man, so anything better than blind rage is probably a huge win.

I finally did score a copy of X-Factor # 204 at the Source. Bleeding Cool is feeling some market heat on this one with the unadvertised first appearance of the New New Avengers. I guess I can see that, although I'm not convinced that's why I had such a damnable time finding one of these. I honestly can't explain it.

Incidentally, X-Factor continues to kick seven shades of ass. The cliffhanger ending in this one can't possibly be true, and that's fine. The hook is finding out how Mr. David button-hooked us next month. This isn't pathetic false emotional gravitas a la X-Factor # 26. This is a showman at the top of his game having fun.

I like Peter David a lot. I just bought the Soulsearchers and Co. trades - that's how much I like Peter David.

I've recently decided that I need less money and have started collecting comic shop promotional posters! My first purchase was this Miracleman ad from 1985. It's got a DNAgents advert on the other half of it. I'm going to display mine with just Miracleman showing.



Why would I do this to myself? I don't know. I guess because I don't have the funds to collect original art, and something feels special about certain items. I look at this thing and say to myself "This could have been on the walls at Shinders 25 years ago, and nobody would have known how much trouble this little no-name UK character would cause for everyone." I would imagine Miracle Keith would be super jealous that I have this, except for the fact that he probably has three of them. Signed by Alan Moore. In the blood of Glycon.

I'm sure there's nobody in this boat, but for those of you whose first exposure to Hack/Slash was issue # 32....it's not always like this. Wow. I'm not mad or anything, because Seeley is on his way out of DDP and needed to get these things on the rack so he could move on to Image.

This comic doesn't really contain any pencils, we're pretty much left with the breakdowns. Seeley's cover looks like it was created by his 13 year-old self in about 15 minutes. It's kinda sad in that way. The silver lining is that everybody got paid, and this little gem can shine again at Image very soon. Good news!

I forgot to give Mike my copy of DV8: Gods & Monsters # 1 so he could read it. This is Brian Wood rebooting the concept, which was basically Gen 13 kids only really, really naughty. The concept is actually quite good. The team is dropped onto God knows what planet and left to their own devices in what looks like some kind of a "Trading Places" dollar bet about what would happen to the poor natives.

The concept is indeed good, the execution to this point has been lackluster. It's a set up issue, so I'll give benefit of the doubt on that. I'd really rather wait for the trade on this...but we'll see. I think part of the problem is that I have no prior love for any of these characters, so there's no juice for me in seeing how they've grown/twisted since I last saw them.

We just recorded the first real edition of "Nerds of the Round Table", and idea born from Mike and Mike mostly in which a rotating cast of podcast stalwarts tackle varying subjects as time and interest permit. We decided to tackle Iron Man 2, which is coming out in about a week, and the show went pretty well.

For some reason the blog won't create a clickable link for the podcast, so here's the gobbledygook:

http://nerdsoftheroundtable.mypodcast.com/

For the record, I'm predicting disappointment for the film. I have great faith in the director and the cast. I have zero confidence in Justin Theroux, and the reports I'm hearing about the rushed, shifted on the fly, clusterfucked nature of this production leave me more than a little concerned. They went in with essentially no script, and their non-script got wholesale re-worked right up to about.....five minutes ago.

It's one thing to allow yourself the flexibility to let better ideas creep in and the talent to shine in unexpected ways. It's another thing to go in without much a plan and make crap up as you go along. That's a good way to run an episode of Chronic Insomnia. It's a really dicey way to produce Iron Man 2. Don't get me wrong...I'm anticipating this film more than anything else in 2010, and I'm going to go see it in the theater. I'm scared, though.

Good night y'all! I'm off to watch the adventures of Olivia Dunham and Walter Bishop....

-Ryan