Hola all. Massawyrm here.
Next Wednesday marks a very special anniversary for me. You see, May 7th is the 7th anniversary of my very first review here at AICN. And it’s given me one of those rare nostalgic feelings in which I feel like it’s both been a lifetime since I wrote that first review and like it was only a few weeks ago. In those seven years I’ve gotten married, lost friends, found new ones, embarked on projects, journeys and adventures, and just last Thursday bought my first house. But most importantly those seven years took me from being the guy who talked way too fucking much working at a video store in South Austin all the way to seeing my words quoted in USAToday, on video boxes and on a 10 foot tall lobby standee for There Will Be Blood.
When I first wrote that review I had no idea I’d be beginning what would ultimately become my career – at least for the time being. I was just writing in to thank Harry for throwing a really cool event and to talk about a movie that I really, truly enjoyed. It was a first film by an actor turned director – a follow up to an incredibly popular underground hit that made its way headlong into the mainstream. And while the film I reviewed would ultimately become somewhat obscure, the talent we saw in that initial outing was unmistakable. The movie I reviewed was titled Made and that first time director was a man named Jon Favreau.
With Made, you could really see Favreau feeling himself out – taking his very adult comedy and character work into his own hands for the first time. Since then, Favreau has turned out three more films, each one continuing his quest to find his voice as a director. Elf showed us that he could handle a budget and that he could take something tired and weak like Will Ferrell’s manchild routine and make it really, really funny. But it was also a very different Favreau - a family friendly, toned down comedian going as far away from his hipster indie roots as he could get. Zathura was another trip into family fare, this time showing us that he had a handle on how to integrate special effects not only into a story, but into a film without feeling to fakey.
And now he comes to us with Iron Man, the whole reason you suffered through this protracted introduction. A lot has happened to Favreau in these 7 years. He’s moved out of the acting spotlight and grown with each film as a director. Iron Man is the sum of everything that’s happened in that time. Merging the adult situational comedy and drama with the awe and wonder of his family films, Favreau has found a road that lead him directly towards the Spielberg/Donner/Lucas level of filmmaking. Earlier this week Moriarty argued that Iron Man is not a kids film. I couldn’t disagree more. You see, the kids films I grew up with – movies like Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark Ghostbusters, The Goonies and Superman 2 - these movies had torture, charred bodies, people getting pushed into plane propellers, people cut in half by lightsabers, monsters, corpses and jokes about sex. And they’re heralded as some of the greatest family films or kids movies of all time. And Iron Man is definitely playing on that level.
Sure, nowadays we’re a bit more puritan about what we let our kids ingest in this country – unless of course you count television, Youtube and music – but really, Iron Man is, at its heart, the perfect melding of adult and family oriented filmmaking. It’s a mature film about a complicated hero set in a world of adventure and forced to make very tough decisions. And like those other films I mentioned, it manages to play with universal ARCHETYPES while keeping them from falling into the trap of being STEREOTYPES.
There’s a lot of shit in this movie that should be hokey. There are lines of dialog, ideas and even images that on the page might make your asshole pucker up tight as a drum. But they are all executed at a level that instead makes them iconic, dramatic, and most importantly, heroic. This film is without a doubt one of the best, most perfectly realized superhero movies to date. It is the model by which other superhero franchises should be framed. It is lean, mean and takes you through a whole gamut of emotions. When Tony Stark reaches the point at which he decides to become a Superhero, it isn’t some accidental foiling of a robber or some greater good/will to power bullshit. It is one hell of a “Let’s go get those mother fuckers” moment that galvanizes him into Iron Man.
But most of all, Iron Man doesn’t take its sweet ass time to let you know what kind of movie it is. It opens up and explodes onto the screen. It comes out swinging, dropping your jaw with a cinematic haymaker then puts its foot on your throat as it asks you if you’re ready to start fighting. Then and only then does Iron Man take a moment to tell you why you’re about to get your ass kicked. The first two minutes of Iron Man are probably the best two opening minutes of a film in recent memory.
Everything - and I mean everything - about this movie works. Remember how good we thought Downey Jr. would be as Tony Stark? Yeah. Turns out he was that good of a choice. Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, Jeff bridges. All of them are 100% solid. Even if you’re not a fan of any of these folks, you’re gonna like them here. And the special effects are as incredible as you could hope for them to be. You will believe a man can fly. And then you will watch that man get tossed around like a rag doll and beat to shit by all manner of firearms and artillery.
But to answer the question I’ve been asked by about fifty friends today: Does it KICK ASS? You bet your fucking balls it does. It is a movie so wickedly cool that it cries out for a Neil Cumpston review. You know, the kind with a “It will tongue bathe your taint while it Alabama Hot Pocket’s your mother” kind of metaphor. It is the kind of movie that we here at AICN live to watch, to pass around and ultimately to talk about for years. If this is the best Superhero movie of the summer, there’s still a chance that the others can be pretty god damned kick ass. If it is somehow the worst, then God help us all, because we’ve died and gone to heaven. Favreau’s come a long way and is now playing on par with the very best. As much as I want to see him realize a whole world of different filmmaking dreams, I would be content watching him make Superhero movies for the rest of his life. He gets them on a genetic level, and every second of this movie illustrates that.
Iron Man comes with the highest of recommendations. If you read this site (which you clearly do), there are few excuses that will permit you from not seeing it this weekend. And all of those include the loss of limbs or heartbeats.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
Okay, so the one thing I wanna know is how the fuck did Foggy Nelson
end up having to drive Tony Stark around?
