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Capone finds deep psychological depth to IRON MAN 2…and great ass-kicking action!!!
Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
In many ways, director Jon Favreau has done something rather remarkable--he's made a film about a man who has decided rather impetuously to take on the problems of the entire world and make them his own. And then we get the distinct pleasure of watching that individual crack and crumble under the weight of that self-imposed responsibility. Tony Stark has learned that with great power comes a psychological meltdown that he may not recover from, and who other than Robert Downey Jr. could personify such a person? As much as we like to think that Christopher Nolan's dark, brooding and largely perfect Batman films have cornered the market on tapping into the psyche of a man who has elected to become a protector of humans, allow me to submit Favreau's IRON MAN 2 as a film that challenges nearly every level of hero building and turns it into a profile of a man whose massive ego is simply not enough to handle the task at hand.
Of course, IRON MAN 2 also features explosions to the tenth power and some of the messiest, clunkiest, and most believable fight sequences comic book-based films have seen to date. The beats of this film don't resemble (I'm hoping intentionally) any superhero film I've seen to date, especially in the earliest scenes. Even the first fight sequence between Iron Man and Mickey Rourke's Whiplash on a Monaco racetrack seem realistically paced. Just as it begins to get revved up, it's over, and Rourke is captured (perhaps by design). But then we realize that Rourke's Ivan Vanko wasn't trying to defeat Stark--the man he hates most in the world largely because of sins committed by Stark's father, Howard, against Vanko's Soviet defector father decades earlier. He was trying to show that the Iron Man technology is out in the hands of criminals, and this, to quote Vanko, would show the world that "God can bleed." For the first time, Iron Man is made to look vulnerable.
Most of the film takes place six months after IRON MAN, and in that time Stark has essentially turned the world into a peaceful place, primarily because the world's evil empires are afraid of the red-and-gold warrior kicking their ass. The U.S. government (in the guise of Gary Shandling's Senator Stern) of course, wants the Iron Man technology for weapons purposes; Stark says No, because Iron Man isn't a weapon. He says it's an extension of himself.
Stark is now a man with two jobs--running Stark Industries and protecting the entire planet--and like most overworked people, the strain on his life is overwhelming, so much so that he turns over the reigns of the company to his trusted assistant Pepper Potts (a returning Gwyneth Paltrow). And like similar busy men, Stark's world of associates grows to include a new helper in the form of Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson in a nice, understated turn, if you disregard the extra-tight wardrobe) and the more overt presence of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, including Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson in a much bigger role this go-round) to help him with his superhero business. Fury is still after Stark about joining--perhaps leading--the Avengers initiative, which means that these events take place before or during those in the recent THE INCREDIBLE HULK film, where Stark's cameo makes it clear he is fully on board with the super group. But I digress…
There are two enemies for Iron Man to contend with in this IRON MAN 2, which makes the film sound a bit overcrowded, but it doesn't feel that way at all. Vanko is the defective twin of Stark, with his bastardized, crude Iron Man technology helping fuel his Whiplash persona. Even his facial hair is a knockoff of Stark's perfectly groomed goatee. Vanko isn't a bad man, and in a strange way, we feel for the guy only because we know growing up the way he did, he didn't have a chance. Rourke conveys a wrestler's swagger with an intelligence and patience that no one else in this movie even comes close to. I love the way he peers over reading glasses when sizing up someone.
On the flip side of Stark's nemesis list is fellow inventor Justin Hammer, played to scene-stealing perfection by Sam Rockwell, who inhabits the lesser industrialist like a used care salesman trying desperately to sell you the worst car on the lot. After Vanko is captured, Hammer swipes him out of prison and stages it to look like Vanko is dead. Hammer admires Vanko's skills as an engineer along with his overt desire to kill Tony Stark, and he sets Vanko on the task of building a new army of Iron Man soldiers. If Vanko is a unformed twin of Stark, then Hammer is Salieri to Stark's Mozart, and it's fascinating to watch the dance these two do. Stark has no respect for Hammer or his hack work, but it makes some degree of sense for them to stay aware of what the other is doing. Favreau and screenwriter Justin Theroux (TROPIC THUNDER) are smart to give each new character a complete justification for being added to this universe and giving them things to do once they are dropped into the IRON MAN world. There's no window dressing or famous faces just sitting around giving this film some added level of clout.
For those uber-comic book geeks, Favreau hasn't forgotten you either, since a portion of his job with IRON MAN 2 is to pave the way for THE AVENGERS film. There are repeated references to events transpiring in New Mexico ("The Land of Enchantment"), and a certain star-centered shield makes a rather blatant cameo here (and don't you dare leave until after the credits are complete). Favreau in many ways is setting the tone as well as plot for THOR and CAPTAIN AMERICA. And as structured as you might think Favreau has to be to make all of that happen, IRON MAN 2 has a spirit as free and wild as the man at the center of this story. Writer Theroux seems to know exactly how to write for Downey, how to inspire him to build Tony Stark into the most human of all superhero alter egos. There are several sequences in which there's actual overlapping dialogue, much like a revved up Robert Altman film. When Stark walks through a room full of admirers after he opens his company's Stark Expo or maneuvers through onlookers at a Monaco restaurant, he doesn't just exude confidence; he talks the talk and never loses his place in simultaneous conversations. Downey is breathtaking at times.
Never is that more apparent than in the scenes between Downey and Don Cheadle (as the recast Lt. Col. James Rhodes), which are loose and funny and truly resemble encounters between two age-old pals who also happen to work together frequently. Rhodey is the only man worthy of the tricked-out War Machine armor that he ends up wearing for the film's climactic battle. But more impressive is the armored fight scene between Rhodes and a drunken Stark at a party at Tony's house. I'm sure most of what we're looking at is CGI, but damn, does that brawl feel real and weighty and nasty.
The details of the plot I'll let you discover, but I appreciated that it was dense without being confusing, and I loved that it felt grounded in a kind of reality where pressures and emotions figure into a person's disposition as much as their reaction to being praised and loved by millions. IRON MAN 2 is a different kind of superhero film that still manages to roll around in the glitz and glamor and expectations of studio films while taking chances like an indie might. Favreau has assembled a team to make these movies that should never be broken up, and I hope he and Marvel Studios have the courage to keep caring about characters and plot as much as they do about spectacle and volume. After seeing it twice now, I've grown to really appreciate IRON MAN 2's attempts to harness a certain kind of intellectual appeal and make that as sexy as the explosions. This is a film that I think gets better upon second viewing, and I'm beyond impressed with the life that bubbles forth from this work. I can't wait to see it again.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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May 06, 2010 11:09:33 PM CDT
Iron Man movies come out good because Favreau is a Star Wars fan
by jackslater4
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But you really ought to have a spoiler warning--you reveal details of two of the movie's three fight sequences.
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until after I see the movie.
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I wonder why some people, like the guy from Batman-on-film didn't like this film that much...
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records and grosses, which might happen but wouldn't make Dark Knight any less of a film, or Iron Man 2 any better.
I'm guessing I will love it, War Machine is what drew me to Iron Man comics initially. -
not sure what to expect
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It really cheapens the language. Why stop at 3, why not 33? Why not end EVERY headline with 2 as a rule like Hercules? Or how about why just start using !∞
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May 06, 2010 11:33:57 PM CDT
Joss Whedon to try and get me to see one of his movies!∞
by jackslater4
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All they did was curb the Alcohol and not beat you over the head with it but it sounds like the same story only with the disease and the pressure on Tony subbing for the booze. Now I'm actually interested in seeing this.
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Going to check out your number one movie of the decade!
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May 06, 2010 11:45:16 PM CDT
Iron Man 2 was just, definitely hit and miss for me
by youcantbanthephoenix
Villian sucked. Hard. Monaco sequence was embarassing. Nick Fury stuff, Natasha stuff was just there to serve as a bridge to the Avengers. Pepper Potts, Happy Hogan, Paul Bettany were just sort of there. No Iron Man flight sequences, for shame Favreau, for shame. War Machine vs. Iron was a thing of brilliance though. Stole the movie. Don Cheadle was great all around.
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waiter! give me some batman!
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In my pants!∞
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He was just a generic villian. Meanwhile Pepper Potts/Paltrow is just an embarassment, Scarlett/Widow was totally wasted.
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May 07, 2010 12:06:51 AM CDT
UH, I BELIEVE I REQUESTED SOME RAPE IN IRON MAN 2!!!
by tehcreepythinman
The only thing that was missing from Iron Man was some quality rape scene's. Like Tony getting raped in the cave by those filthy savages. Or Pepper getting raped by Tony. Or Tony getting raped by Obadiah. Or Pepper raping Obadiah. Or Happy getting raped by Rhodes. Maybe Hollywood will one day realize the untapped market potential in rape. Until then, Iron Man 2 is full of fail.
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I like the cool,cut through the bullshit review.
Does it suck or not?
Answer...NOT....that's all I'm looking for..
I'd be watching it now, but had to work late.......
There is always the 10:15am show -
Iron Meh Too is a revolutionary epic masterpiece that will change the way you experience movies ! ! !
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... but not as good as the first one... entertaining and setting up The Avengers... a transition movie.
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May 07, 2010 12:23:07 AM CDT
Teaser for J.J. Abrams' Super 8 Leaks Online!
by trannyformers_apologist
Teaser for J.J. Abrams' Super 8 Leaks Online!
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and whilst that may sound like refrained praise, I love the world they've created here. No angsty teen emo crying, just grown ups and professional actors having a ball in a fantasy world - in an industry trying to shove Le beefs and Worthingtons down our throats, for this Iron Man 2 has my 100% approval.
The 'build' of the Avengers motif did dominate more of the movie than I thought it would but considering what they're trying to do, it didn't overpower it. All in all (before this conversation descends completely into 'but it's not as good as teh batman'), lets just count ourselves lucky we're not at the 'lets reboot for Iron Man 4 and put him in high school in 3D' stage.
Yet. -
I mean, yeah, it was just O.K.. It felt like a theatrical trailer to the Avengers movie. :(
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tha more retarded the talkbacks...people with nothing constructive to say. I look forward to this. Not reading anymore in case some jackass ruins it in the talkbacks. Oh, and first posters suck and have no life, but we all knew that anyway.
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when i watch it i will confirm!
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always be living in the shadow of Christopher Nolan's movies. What I mean is, that it is not going to take much for Inception to be a better movie than Iron Man 2. Just like The Dark Knight was better than the first Iron Man. I respect them both, but Nolan is just in a different league than Favreau.
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Favs is a genius.
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How dare you come in here with your reasoned approach to criticism! Look, something sucks because A) other people like it, or 2) it makes a lot of money. Since I think IM2 might be one, if not both, of those things, it sucks an entire bag of dicks. Since my opinions matter way more than yours or anyone else's, you should feel bad about yourself. Try alcohol. It'll make you sad and mean and better equipped to handle the rigors of Talkbacks.
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Generally a great film. Brilliant casting, although I thought Favreau was in it a bit too much and Jacksons' performance just felt like filler.
That said, most enjoyable superhero sequel ever. Builds on, and improves the original. The villain is established as more of a credible threat, the third act is excellent, and the banter between Cheadle and Downey is spot on perfect - Rhodes is a more well drawn character in this film (although part of this could be because I've always preferred Don Cheadle as an actor). -
If I was a betting man, which I am, I'd wager that this is gonna suck. I guess I'll find out in the morning.
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Nolan owns Favreau's ASS.
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First of all There is less action than in the first one. It feels like none of the main characters are in any kind of jepordy at any time.'Tony discovering a new element via his dads stark expo model is so retarded it mirrors Batman and Robin logic(really it does that's not hyperbole). This movie was made in a hurry so Marvel(a new company at the film financing gig) can make as much as possible as quickly as possibly. Anyone remember Favreau wanting more time between #1 and 2 which lead to marvel thinking of hiring someone else? This movie is so light and breezy it's a shame since he first one was so much fun. The action scenes(there is only 2.5-3) are so standard it's a joke. I don't get why everyone is loving the montecarlo scene it's only 3-4 minutes of action of which 1-2 of those minutes has iron man in it. That's the other problem is the lack of Iron Man. He's got maybe 20 minutes of screen time(that's a generous estimate by the way) and the suit case iron man suit looks to meek compared to the other suits. This movie was rushed and it shows. I don't think this will be the success(opening weekend aside)that the first one was. It would have been nice for the film makers to carry over the mandarin foundation the first one established into this film but it's not mentioned or referenced at all(at least that I noticed).
Don Cheadle sucks balls as Rhodey, I liked Howard much better(and I had some issues with him in the first place) but he's just there for the paycheque and the notority that comes with being in a big budget super-hero tentpole film. I'd love to know what the budget was on this one compared to the first, I'd bet it cost more than #1 but only because that's the way it works in hollywod. The first one feels like a
more expensive ride but I guess everyone got a raise this time around. Sam Rockwell and Mickey Rourke are pretty awesome. The whole Whiplash wanting revenge on the stark family is lame but those whips are pretty fucking cool. Once again the villian is easily beaten(Iron Man beats him twice the last of which Whiplash kills himself predator style, laugh and all). Mickeys Character is underdeveloped
Blah blah blah, this movie is filler. Skip it -
It's bigger and better in scope, action and character development. It's also a much deeper movie than the first Iron Man 2. There's a lot to chew on in this movie and as Capone mentioned it's a movie you want to see again and again. I can't say that of the first movie. The key difference is tone. There's much more at stake in this movie whereas the first movie was an origin story and more fun. In IM2 it gets down to the nitty gritty of a truly unique comic book character that is unlike any we've seen before. Credit to the writer(s) but most importantly Robert Downey Jr for bringing the added dimensions this time around. Anyone that thinks it sucked is simple minded and should stick to replaying the Joker's pencil disappearing trick in Dark Knight over and over again. Because as much as The Dark Knight may have advanced the art of the comic book movie, Iron Man 2 pushes the envelope even further.
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May 07, 2010 1:32:09 AM CDT
How is it you say it's got CHARACTER, other critics say it doesn
by jonchambers
Wow - your review is so at odds with every other review I've read so far. They all decry the LACK OF CHARACTERIZATION in this film, that it's all explosions... I'd like your view on Why This Big Difference?? Hope to hear from you on the talkback board!
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May 07, 2010 1:34:20 AM CDT
I bet it's Rosie O'Donnell that comes out of that Train.
by orionsangels
In the Super 8 trailer
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good for one view only. I loved it, but somehow never been able to watch it start to end again. I hope this one gets better on subsequent viewings.
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I really hated it. J.J. Abrhams is the King of Cool, and the Queen of Substance. His films mean NOTHING.
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You couldn't just review the movie without revealing major plot twist?
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I mean, Revenge of the Fallen, any day of the week. For a summer blockbuster, it's pretty good.
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...but not as much as the first one. For some reason both parts of that disturb me.
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May 07, 2010 1:48:27 AM CDT
First image of the Super 8 monster! http://tinyurl.com/2a28yyo
by orionsangels
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I'm not understanding all the hate this movie is garnering. My only gripes with it were two fold: 1) (SPOILER) The resolution to the palladium problem was, at best, ridiculous. The absurdity of it was only amplified by Jarvis's deadpanned "You have created a new element." It sounded like a video game telling you you've just won the level and gotten an upgrade. 2) I'm not the only one to say this, it lost a little bit of the surprising wit and freshness that the first one had. You see this alot in sequels to good movies that no one was expecting anything from. Its not so much this movies fault, as it is the first ones for coming out of no where. Don Cheadle blew Terrence Howard out of the water. Maybe it was just because he was given more to do here, or maybe he's just a better actor. Whatever the case, I believed the friendship of Tony and Rhodey more here than I did in the original. Sam Rockwell was, of course, great. Its a shame that this will probably be the role that gets him the big offers and recognition from now on and not his performances in movies like Moon or The Assassination of Jesse James, but I'm not picky, I'm just happy that he'll be getting it. Oh, one last problem I had. (SPOILER) The final fight between IM/WM/ and Ivan was pretty poor, especially compared to the pretty awesome sequence that lead up to it. All around, awesome flick though.
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hmm... I heard it was a lion
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Scarlet looked hot as fuck and was believable as a super sexy super spy can be.Also, no one has commented about DJ AM being in it. He died from an OD, but somehow managed to be in one of the best parts of the movie. Maybe he was trying to pull a Ledger, although no Oscars are given out for replaying other people's music in a crowded setting. And Cheadle pwned Howard. Best move by Marvel since they decided to burn every existing issue of Maximum Clonage. Oh wait, they haven't done that yet. Maybe now that Disney is in charge, they will. I know they are big fans of people that burn books! Heil Goofy!
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There's only so much Whiplash can do. He should have become Crimson Dynamo for the finale. His armor looked too similar to Iron Monger and War Machine, being all gray and silver. But unlike with Bayformers 2, you could still tell who was who. After this fight between robots, Bay has zero excuse for the shit he's produced.
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Anybody who says this movie is "a trailer for the Avengers" is wrong. You read the same review I did over at Rotten Tomatoes and regurgitated it. The Avengers stuff is very minor and as it happens very cool. IM2 is an awesome movie and anybody who says different is obviously not a fan of movies or comic books. All of the acting in both movies has been top notch and the special effects are the best I have ever seen. Kudos to the 'Black Widow kicks butt scene.' Personal favorite. Go see Iron Man 2 and watch a living comic book. A.
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May 07, 2010 2:09:29 AM CDT
I am baffled that people are out-right hating this movie
by george newman
It's a whole lot of fun, there's Fantastic characterization and Creative action. It is a great IronMan movie.
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Yes, we could've used more Iron Man action but when Stark is in the suit it's a total thrill ride. The addition of War Machine was absolutely bad ass. Don Cheadle was masterful as Rhodey. A definite improvement over Howard.
The screenplay was smart and funny and even packed some emotional heft. There were perhaps one too many jokes crammed in, but they were all pretty funny, and hey, thank fuck Iron Man didn't get the totally exhausted "grim and gritty" treatment.
Downey Jr. was again impressive as Stark. He's an actor of such a high caliber that he almost makes it looks easy. He turns in another engaging, multi-faceted performance. The supporting cast were all outstanding, especially Gwyenth Paltrow and Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer. What a great actor Sam is. He's a joy to watch.
This Iron Man series shows the true potential of adapting these comic book stories and characters to the screen. Both films have a lot of meat on their bones character-wise, and the fact that they're both so witty and engaging only enhances the experience. A great job by everyone involved. This is what summer movies are supposed to be like.
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This film is much like its predecesssor. It's entertaining as all hell, but I'd really love to see a more extended combat sequence with the main supervilliain.
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It might have been a bit absurd in terms of having to create a new element but the best thing I like about Iron Man 2---- and this is something that no one has touched on--- is that it's more of a sci-fi movie than the first one. Especially with all of the technology that's at Tony's disposal. Just as LOTR's Two Towers was much more of a fantasy movie than Fellowship, which is the reason why I love Two Towers out of the three, Iron Man 2 has a lot more sc-fi elements at work and to me that's what makes it a much better movie than Iron man. To put it simply; it's more imaginative. Just as the Starks has pushed the envelope of technology, the movie pushes the envelope with combining comic book movies and sci-fi. As for Jarvis' deadpan delivery, he just says it as it is and with everything going on it plainly informs the audience that Starks has created a new element without the BS. I mean what do you want Jarvis to do? Fire streamers and confetti in the air to celebrate? As for losing its freshness and wit from the first one, well yeah these characters are like family now so there's bickering, arguing and short tempers, which makes it more real and less of a glossy, wink-wink buddy buddy movie. There are a lot of scenes that highlight this, with Tony arguing with Pepper over the art collection and the more important dynamic between Rhodey and Starks. I agree with you about Cheadle and Rockwell. There's a lot of really good performances in this movie and as someone else pointed out, it's really comes across as a mature comic book movie made by adults.
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Stark is going for broke, putting his heart into everything while trying to always wear a brave face. Rhodes is a great, Meaty role; a Huge step up from the first film. Pepper Potts is an extremely interesting role: while you love the bravado of Tony, you empathize with Potts' concern and almost-motherly responsibility. The Stark-Whiplash interplay is great regarding the intellectual tech respect while dealing with sins of the fathers-type stuff).
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May 07, 2010 2:25:18 AM CDT
Haters are like guys who prefer their Own Hands to vaginas
by george newman
"It's not like how I think it should be, wah wah wah." So simply watching robots fight isn't as satisfying as playing with action figures; Go Drag Out the Toy Bin and roll around on the floor!
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What I meant about Jarvis's line was that it didn't need to be said at all. Its obvious, as we see that Tony is satisfied with it, and we already knew what he was attempting to do. About it losing some of its wit and freshness, I'm not about to agree with you that it was because it was more "real" or that they're "bickering". Most of everything that was said between Tony and anyone in the first film was bickering, but we still got gold like "oh this is the fun-vee, the hum-drum-vee is over there". What I mean is that the essence is lacking, but not in what feels like a on purpose sort of way. I think they probably just had a hard time recapturing all the magic they got the first time, though its still mostly there
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Holy fuck, I've never seen that many people standing in line for movie at that theater. This movie is going to be HUGE. Watch out TDK!
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As I was watching I kept thinking, "Holy shit - This is really, really good!" It's truly a quality sequel - such a rare thing in movies. Audiences are going to be checking this out through the summer I think.
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Just got done watching it, and it's superior to the stellar first film.
Stay after the credits, you won't regret it. -
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about those points. Jarvis is Tony's digital assistant so of course he would chime in with something, especially when it involves creating a new element that is the crux of the story because it saves the main characters life. Could be seen as corny? Sure but there are a number of corny things in this movie that just plain work. The scene of Starks watching his fathers movies and the moment when his father addresses his son and tells him he's his most important creation. Corny? Yes. Effective. Sure. In terms of wit and freshness, I think those things give way to drama and intensity for the sequel, and I happily accept the exchange even though there are still a lot of fun parts and dialogue in IM2.
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Is letting the excitment get to them. You can really only judge a film off of the 2nd of 3rd view. Trust me, while I did not like this film at all(loved number # 1) I'm betting once it sinks in this movie will feel like filler. The job of a sequel is to up the ante and besides all war machine this sequel had no charateristics as the great sequels(you know the ones) of film. There is almost nothing different from the 1st film compared to this one, except Rhodes is really fucking black. But yeah I say give it a few months and this conversation will be different or I'm completely wrong. Either way this movie is just filler and you can see it through out the movie. Favreau was right when he said there should be more time between sequels maybe we would have gotten a more thought out layered movie instead of a rushed Iron Man lite movie.
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There are probably the same amount of action scenes as IM, but IM2 is a longer film, so there doesn't SEEM as many. The final battle at the Expo beats anything we've seen in IM, in terms of scope, size, etc...
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If so, was the entire movie full screen IMAX or just certain scenes?
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Waiting through the credits to see Thor's hammer in a crater in New Mexico was not worth it.
The film, as someone mentioned, seemed rushed. I felt no peril for any of the characters at any point during the film, and the action scenes were nothing special and weren't very entertaining.
Still, I liked the Howard Stark stuff and RDJ was fantastic again. A solid B or B- for me. -
I was smiling ear to ear. As for IM2 I had some problems with it, but mostly I enjoyed. It was about the same as the first.Paltrow had nothing to do. it made me wonder why she was even back for the sequel.
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there is no reason to pay extra money to see it on one of those screens. my review here: http://tinyurl.com/2ewx6es
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Why can't they place the end scene after the initial block of cast credits? About two minutes in. More people would see it that way.
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It was a decent film. I can't say that I like it any better or any worse than the first one. The Avengers stuff wasn't as overpowering as people are saying. Don Cheadle was excellent as Rhodey. Potts, however, pretty much just yelled at Tony the whole time. I thought she was a lot less likable in this one than in the first. Rourke did an excellent job as Whiplash. Like Capone said, his patience and the way he sized people up was excellent. I like this one just as much as the first--no more, no less. Definitely stay after the credits--you really won't regret it.
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I am so glad they replaced the opening scene with Starks and Pepper with Pepper saying "go get'em" as she throws his helmet out of the plane. Starks then replies "you complete me" as he falls from the plane. That was REALLY bad corny to me when I saw the trailers and I'm glad they replaced it with the much more straight forward approach of just having Iron Man jump out of the plane. It was a more raw take and evoked something of a quarterback football vibe. Shit was dope. I would've hated the whole Starks/Pepper alternate exchange. Also, there wasn't a scene that had Tony showing Natalie how to fire the arm thingy, which may also have been a good thing. Not sure how that would have worked. Basically; the editing was tight.
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The first 20 or so minutes I was bored out of my skull. Seriously, did Mickey Rourke have any lines? Why do all the sets look fake? Once it got to the car race the story kicked in.
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Actors all gave great performances (except for Scarlett Johnansen, who seemed bored and miscast as a badass Black Widow--her fight scenes just weren't believable). However, the story had too many plot threads going on at once and felt kinda thrown together. There were a few major points where the right thing just inexplicably (and illogically) happened out of nowhere to propel the plot forward. Also, the subplot about Tony dying makes no sense when you remember that the only reason the arc reactor was ever placed inside his chest was just to power an electro magnet--he could have made the power source an external unit (like, say, carried in his pocket, connected via a wire, and then clipped into place in the armor) and his life was saved in 10 seconds. Also, the supposedly badass villain dies way too easily in the final battle. The script could've used one last final polish to iron these things out (no pun intended), and excising some of these things in the editing room would have made for a cleaner picture. All in all, though, a fun movie that kids will grow up with and love for the rest of their lives.
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The print was excellent, better than seeing it in a crappy theater that has shitty sound.
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If youre like me and LOVE the first one this movie is going to leave you very disappointed. Wait for the DVD http://tinyurl.com/2ewx6es
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Nothing awful, but nothing particularly great, either. The dialogue to action ratio is pretty incredible. In all, there's only 15 minutes or so of action. Also, the CGI is quite cartoony. They obviously didn't spend as much time or money on it as they did with the first film.
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"intellectual appeal"... Jesus H.
Look, I liked Iron Man 2, but it was nothing more than a summer popcorn flick. It was a fun movie for sure, but let's not pretend like this was some great piece of cinema. The plot was straw thin and cliched and a lot of characters were just there. Thank God for some good directing and acting otherwise it would've been a whole lot worse. -
May 07, 2010 3:33:43 AM CDT
LIst of plot weaknesses (Spoilers...like I forgot to say in earl
by jsarnold513
1. Why did Tony not just think of switching to an alt. power source for the electro magnet, or of relocating it to some place outside his body? It's just an unnecessary and silly plot contrivance to make us feel like he was in danger.
2. Why exactly did Whiplash hate Tony Stark so much? I know Tony's dad screwed his dad once upon a time, but that's still flimsy justification to suddenly devote your whole life to ruining someone else.
3. Nick Fury and Black Widow served no real purpose in this movie other than to look cool and spur on the aforementioned godawful "Tony's dying" subplot.
4. Whiplash dies way too quickly and easily at the end after building himself up as a major big bad.
5. The resolution to the horribly written "Tony's dying" storyline was what really made it stupid. So... his dad, who 36 years ago knew that his son would one day be in this exact situation, left some touching stock footage to explain it directly without actually giving a useful detail, but his genius son still picked up on his dad's entirely nonsensical clue and figured out a way to invent a brand new element in his basement in only a few hours' time. Um... yeah... -
Haha don't let me laugh!
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Tony never seemed in danger, Whiplash sucked, Everything was a joke and apparently everybody has a sense of humor and is funny in the iron man universe.
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TDK was good for what it was. But Batman's voice + the endless Plot holes surrounding everything The Joker does + Two Face dieing before ever getting a chance to do ANYTHING worth while + Batman killing Two Face after just saving The Joker's life = Way to much bullshit for me to ever consider TDK as anything better than average.
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May 07, 2010 3:38:46 AM CDT
i think thecreepythinman was right. not enough rape
by charlesbronsonlives
seriously. rapemechs are the new heath ledger.
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its 340am and i just watched iron man 2, its not dark knight but it kicks everyones ass anyways
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In every scene they told you his power source was killing him. He very nearly died during the Whiplash car race attack. I thought he was in danger all the time. Not from Whiplash, but from his own power cell.
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May 07, 2010 3:49:36 AM CDT
"Tony Never Seemed In Danger!", "None of the Characters Seemed
by pawprint
For fuck's sake - name me ONE major Superhero film where you REALLY believed that the hero was in genuine peril and might die!
Was TDK a breathless rollercoaster ride because we were worried that Batman could be killed at any moment? Fuck off.
Yes IM2 has plot-holes if you really go digging for them - as do most Superhero films; if you just accept it as a Marvel Comic Book Film, it's really good. More character-driven than action-oriented, IMO, but that's a good thing - TDK wasn't exactly 'Commando' on the action front, was it? IM2 has the balance of action to character just right - I was NEVER bored while watching it. It beats TDK in terms of action, certainly, and there were a few points during TDK where I could feel my attention wandering.
IM2; better than the first; more entertaining than TDK. A fun time at the cinema. -
I don't think I'm giving anything away here, but there is a marker in the final scenes for the timeline of this movie in the whole Marvel storyline set. Towards the end of the film Stark is back in his houselab (I'm a little tired, but I think I have the location right) and you are looking at or through a computer screen showing a TV news report with the caption "Incident at Culver University." This is where the Hulk has his second run-in with Ross, in the middle of the film from a couple of years ago. So the majority of this film takes place in the month or so before the Incredible Hulk. I think the reason Stark still wears his power plant is to keep it literally to himself and make it harder to steal, which fits in with the movie quite well. Finally I think that any Marvel or DC movie is always going to mean a little more to readers already familiar with the character than to the non-comic-reading public. I'm really glad that Nolan and Favreau and others are making good comic book movies that everyone can enjoy, but people who have been following Peter Parker or Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark for a while will get more out of seeing these characters brought to life than most people. I really enjoyed Iron Man 2, and I hope lots of people see it. Even if you find faults with it, we're still seeing more and better comic book movies now than we've seen in a long while. For those of you purists and perfectionsists out there - keep pushing for better, but enjoy what you're getting too.
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What the fuck are you playing at with your thoughtful, considered, rational posts?
Do you have ANY idea where you are?! Wise up, and stop being so fucking insightful!
Good post, mate. -
I must insist.
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to do it the long way, wouldve brought the entire movie down...so he did it short hand...and it worked not as much fun as the first movie, but still a heck of alot better than that pos cop film posing as a super hero film...and the girls are much better looking in this one
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in the scene with Nick Fury and Stark, while talking about the avenger deal , you see the aftermath of the hulks rampege at the school grounds on the monitors. It does fit in the timeline with the scene in Hulk that many say something falls to earth in the background (thor or his hammer they say) I can see something,and it can´t be the rock the hulk sent flying ,cause that went completly the other way.
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I was really looking forward to this, like many I been a fan of comics since I was a kid and LOVED the first movie, but left the cinema last week dissapointed.
It is an "okay" movie which probably could of done with being 30 minutes shorter. I was looking at watch by the time sam jackson rocked up. And as for whiplash- Jesus- has a villian ever been defeated so quickly in a final showdown. I really thought he was going to beat the shit out of iron man, all he did was try the trick he did at the race track and failed again. He was a completly mis-matched against iron-man.
RDJ is great in the part no agruements from me there but I just feel there was too much tony stark and not enough iron.
People are comparing this to the dark knight, its not even batman returns- its really an overhyped non event that gonna make a shit load cash. Just hope the next one is better -
Or, so I've been told.
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very uneven..some scenes dead slow or completely unecessary.. as all the real critical reviews have said...everyone except the chorus line of loser shills who review on this site.
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Too many TBers become armchair film-critics and go into something TRYING to knock it down a peg it seems. Sometimes you just have your mind made up before you see something which could work both ways. I find that the villains were great, Rockwell was what Tony Stark could be without the moral compass or the genius. Mickey Rourke proves less is more sometimes and I believe that not a moment he was on film was wasted. I can see where a lot of people see this as an Avengers transitional situation, but on the flipside, it was always sort of meant to be the second act before The Avengers as Iron Man's third act. The Avengers situation does not overpower the film so much as it is a subplot. I am not digging Thor's hammer. It looks kind of silly actually to me. Love how the Hulk's rampage was shown on one of Shield's TVs. I would say it was just as awesome as IM 1.
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As opposed to ordinary people who went to see the film and enjoyed the shit out of it? Because critics MATTER - especially REAL ones.
So were the critics who said 'Blade Runner' was shit, REAL ones or just pretend? And all the ordinary people who really enjoyed 'Blade Runner'are wrong, of course, because they're not REAL critics. -
It just shouldn't have been killing him! That was my point... the way it was handled didn't make sense. If it was killing him because it was plugged into his chest to power a simple electro magnet, just move it somewehre else and hook it up with a wire, or even run the electromagnet off a damn battery, little gas engine planted in Tony's ass... whatever! Or better yet, find a better, more compelling way of having Tony slowly kill himself (it's easy to do--hell, just have him suffering liver failure from all his drinking!). That was just lazy writing. You take out the "Tony must find an alternate power source or die" angle and a much needed 20 minutes of running time could have easily been trimmed.
Now, I liked the movie. I just think these few things kept a potentially great superhero film from living up to its potential. The first one worked better and has a lot more replay value because of how compact and straightforward the story is. This one tried to get complicated and make things bigger without really looking at how well the building blocks of the story were constructed or fit together. -
May 07, 2010 4:19:39 AM CDT
Not saying one opinion's more valid than the other...
by robertoinfinitethemoonlander
I just see way more negativity in these talkbacks than anywhere else really. And a lot peppered with big words and sarcasm. Just seems really douchey. At the end of the day, they're all just opinions and it doesn't make me lame for liking something you disagree with just like it doesn't make you or whoever else lame for not liking something I do. It's the people who're always knocking things with an air of superiority...that are lame.
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My post wasn't aimed at you, but at quantize.
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"And then we get the distinct pleasure of watching that individual crack and crumble under the weight of that self-imposed responsibility. Tony Stark has learned that with great power comes a psychological meltdown that he may not recover from..."
Capone, this is what the film was 'about' to you? Hmmm. I think Stark's 'meltdown' (which amounts to pissing in his IRON MAN suit at the party) is because of his imminent death. Nothing to do with the responsibility of keeping the world at peace. -
Did they send Justin Thereuox in to write this little exchange because its as transparent and contrived as his weak ass script for Iron Man 2: Full Throttle. Why didn't they just get the writer of the bad ass original to do the sequel? Because he knew it was going to be a shit sundae and he didn't want any part of it so they hired this hack to be the dingleberry on top.
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Perfect example there.Why come to a site where "loser shills" review movies? I sure wouldn't if I felt that way.And I wasn't referring to you as douchey Pawprint.
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The Dark Knight will forever own it hard. Because Iron Man is a crappy one note character. And Favereau is a hack!!
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And I DID enjoy IRON MAN 2 (a little less than the first tho).. it's a fun popcorn movie with some snappy dialogue and good fx and you judge it as such.
But as others have said the 'Tony is dying' subplot felt forced and the eventual 'solution' to it was a real credibility low point.
The hidden clue in the vintage showreel which requires Tony to make a 3D model of the Expo set, and then to somehow extrapolate from that the 'new element' to power his suit.... and this was all 'laid in place' by his dear old Dad all those years ago just for that moment. Puhleeeeze.
Keep chewing that popcorn and don't think too much. Don't think at all. It's the way to enjoy movies like this. -
Capone, but maybe i'm just not intelligent enough to 'get it'.
I wish i'd seen the 'deep psychological depth' that you did it this movie. But I didn't see it. -
"I haven't seen this much deep psychological depth in a movie since Peter Parker went emo in SPIDER-MAN 3." Capone.
Keep setting the bar low aicn. The dumbing down of the world is in your hands. -
"I haven't seen this much deep psychological depth in a movie since Anakin killed the younglings in REVENGE OF THE SITH." Capone.
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"I haven't seen this much deep psychological depth in a movie since Vince Vaughn re-analysed his marriage in COUPLE'S RETREAT." Capone.
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Much prefered it to TDK, Iron Man isnt ashamed to be a comic book movie, RDJ and Rourke were amazing. And even better, I saw this like, two weeks ago.
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Let it be.
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I agree on the 'meltdown' issue - it was quite obvious that Tony's breakdown was connected with his perceived impending death. If anything, Tony seems to get off on saving the world: he brags about it, celebrates it, and fights tooth and nail to make sure nobody else can do it by taking his suit.
The whole power source solution did not bother me - I found it to be no more far-fetched than storing and deploying Iron Man armour from a suitcase - or if we zoom RIGHT back - no more far fetched than a man building his own flying armour. We're watching films based on COMICS, people - not even TDK is free from far-fetched moments. IM2 is classic cinema entertainment; it's not meant to be picked apart and analysed, but enjoyed on an emotional level. Pick at anything for long enough and it'll start falling apart. -
*panting* *lowers bloodied whip and staggers in to take a shower*
"I feel dirty." -
Just been released!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFoI0_RrIXs -
Don't get me wrong i enjoyed IM2, but no way was it either of those things, not by looooooong shot.
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May 07, 2010 5:02:49 AM CDT
Batman runs.......because the cops have to chase him.......huh
by thedannerdaliel
ooooohhhhhh i get it...cause hes the DARK knight.......i get it ......
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In the Captain America movie...No News for that?Perfect casting too by the way.Was anyone else bothered by the fact that Tony may take a consulting position in Avengers?? I want RDJ as Iron Man not some SHIELD upstart.
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Plugging my ears, closing my eyes. Not reading any reviews, not watching new trailers or interviews until after I see it today. LALALALALA no spoliers for me, even though I have accidentally seen the cool after-credits scene....LALALALALALA...
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May 07, 2010 5:09:14 AM CDT
The Dark Knight> Spiderman 2>Batman Begins>Iron Man> Iron Man 2
by lashlarue
Search your feelings... you know this to be true. :)
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isn´t that character alittle.....you know....comic booky?
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May 07, 2010 5:09:42 AM CDT
"before or during those in the recent THE INCREDIBLE HULK film"
by instantclassic
I just watched Hulk yesterday.
When Fury and Stark meet at the end you watch the TV and you see news footage from the campus fight with Hulk and Blonsky. Exact same as you see in Hulk. -
May 07, 2010 5:10:14 AM CDT
Seriously, if you can't work out what happend at the end of TDK
by barnaby jones
You should start slow and work your way up to it. Try tying your shoe laces yourself, drinking from a 'grown up' cup, stuff like that.
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May 07, 2010 5:11:30 AM CDT
lets hate on Toby Jones for being Arnim Zola for no reason!!
by thedannerdaliel
aaarrrgghh rabble rabble rabble!!!
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May 07, 2010 5:12:31 AM CDT
People let me tell you bout my new best friend!
by robertoinfinitethemoonlander
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Everyone's opinion is more superior to the previous guy's (or gals..Doubtful).Toby Jones is perfect because he once played that evil turd blossom Karl Rove. Agree 100% with Barnaby Jones re: the ending to TDK.
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http://tiny.cc/ihxgj
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Brad Bird's first live action feature will be MIIV
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This one... not so much. It' s still a solid movie, though. To tell the truth, I'm very curious to see what Branagh does with Thor. He has a terrific cast, and it seems like he is due to make a great movie. fingers crossed X
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but just based my opinion of of everything AICN says, I would literally think we were in some great renaissance of film. Hell, with Harry's review for Nightmare and now all the raves for Iron Man, you'd think the two greatest films of all time were just released. Nothing is just "A good summer movie" anymore. Everything is hyberbole. It's visionary, it's breathtaking, staggering. Every OK director on a cant miss project is a visionary genius. Come on. IM2 is an entertaining summer action movie, nothing more nothing less. What I took away from it, though, was like a lot of people said, it's building to something. I'm not getting a full story that stands on it's own, and that wasn't the intent of the studio. I had the feeling during this that the people involved didn't give a shit whether or not I liked the movie, they know I'd give my money just like they know I'll give my money for Thor or Captain America or The Avengers... and that's what the goal is, not to make the best movie they can make. This is without a doubt the most intellectually bankrupt period Hollywood has ever gone though, and IM2 is very much a product of it's time, but it's still every enjoyable... just please,come back down to earth with the reviews a little. It's OK for something to be taken at face value and not pumped up as some intellectual masterpiece. They'll still send you T-shirts
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that was STRICTLY for fan use only?
also, I dig the Toby Jones casting.Arnim Zola is bad ass. Not soo much durin WW2 ( hes bad,just not bad ass) I digg what he turns into. Its almost like M.O.D.O.K
Agree 100% with Barnaby Jones re: the ending to TDK. He had to run....son....... -
The reason theres a backlash against films like IM2 is because it's overpraised by so called fellow geek people, ie the people that run this site, when in truth this movie isn't the second coming, it's not even the first coming. It's a solid movie, that gets by on it's stellar cast, that frankly, without it it would fall apart.
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Did Iron Man stand there and fight Whiplash within range of his whips rather than flying up and blasting him from a safe distance. Things like this are made for children who don't notice such absurditys..or grownups with childish minds.
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I mean, I don't even know where to begin. It commits every cardinal sin of a comic book filmmaking that Marvel should be smart enough to be avoiding. Sidelining a character with an arbitrary malady to create false drama, wasting perfectly good villains, ZERO character development, very little world building, you name it and this film does it. And the lack of time they had to work the script was so incredibly evident up on screen. There was so much pointless meandering bickering whenever any two characters shared the screen I'm wondering if there was even dialogue written down.
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and a shameless ego centric
Fat Driver/Bodyguard character(no one remembers his characters name) has more scenes than Rourke and Johansen put together!!! Dave Hasslehoff and Jack Braff would approve!! -
Had more convincing chemistry than any of the characters in IM2!!!
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i like the triple threats set up in the first act. during the first hour i thought i was watching something in the same league as spidey2, or x2, or all those amazing second superhero sequels. for a minute it looked like the movie was heading into greatness. then the second act happened, and everything burst out at the seams.
i kept waiting for whiplash's backstory to be delved deeper. but after his amazing intro in monaco, he didnt get much to do but being a grease monkey, busy working on his robots in a warehouse somewhere. dont expect any history revealed between his dan and stark's dad, all you need to know about his revenge motive is right there in the first opening scene, no more. yeah, it's that shallow and that stupid - if whiplash always had a blueprint to build an arch reactor, his family didnt have to suffer poverty. he could build reactor powered weapon waaaay before stark was forced to build his mark 1 in a cave. and what a way to whiplash to kick the bucket. the ass-kicking intro in monaco seems like a promise to a grand climax between stark n whiplash. but what a weak ass battle was that? suicide bomb? like predator? like terrorist? how about something original?
stark was also dying. and we see how that affected him, throughout the story he grew more and more out of control while hiding his depression from everyone. lots of cool potential for this story thread i thought. watching stark sink deeper and deeper into his depression, his friends abandoning him, and he being the smartest guy in the room cant think his way out of this mess this time, that made me root for him even more to pull himself out. i thought, how would he do it this time? what would he do to make everything right? he didn't. nick fury dropped by like a fairy godmother, waved his magic wand, and make everything alright for stark. i kid you not. everything was solved not by stark's own doing. it's nick fury who saved the day. he didnt even need a proper intro, he just swing by as if from another movie and make things right for stark. convenient or bad writing?
black widow is useless, just like whiplash. both actors are way underused. scarjo is nothing more than a gimmick, a window dressing. i didnt even notice that hyped up butt shot that harry glorified in his review. it's too dark, and her fight scenes have been done better by trinity in the matrix.
the subplot about rhodey betraying stark also ring false. the transition from him being stark's best buddy to someone who would steal his iron suit for the military is just not smooth, hence it feels just like an excuse to have the two battle each other out. because we know fans just love to see superheroes duke it out before they team up, right? riiight.
but i cant say enough good things about downey, watching him do anything in this film is a whole lot of fun. his lines delivery, his gestures, i love him more as stark without the iron man suit, than as the iron man. -
If you're going into this purely for action, you WILL be disappointed. There are 2 action sequences, 3 if you include the tussle between Rhodey and Stark.
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I also think that really, fanboy reviewers are basically what's making geek movies bulletproof. Stuff like NOES got skewered by most critics, but Dunes can shake that off and say "Well, the geek community loved it" based on Harry's review. I'm sure they'll be some internet reviewer who's pandered to enough to give Jonah Hex, which is absolute garbage, a good review. IM2 is being hailed, like you said, as the second coming by sites like this, and that gives the studios the opportunity to discount all negative reviews by claiming that "They don't get it" (like Harry did to Ebert, also setting a terrible trend) It's going to keep getting worse and worse. Everything's a franchise now. We're gonna start seeing summer movies getting oscar buzz, just because the standards are now so low that stuff like IM2 is being hailed as genius film-making. It's 4AM and I'm probably not as eloquent as I should be but yeah, bottom line is, stuffs not good, and this isn't helping.
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Look at all the regular talkbakers opinions (the one proven to have somthing inteligent to say over the years not the career trolls)
Begging you all not to see this in cinema and encourage John Fatso-eaus hack direction.But the glitz and wizz bang ACDC trailers probably have your money already.proves you can polish a turd afterall. and this is all IM 2 is , a thin brittle polished shell of a soft as shit smelly gooey centre!!
youve been warned!! I wish someone had warned me before seeing this!!!
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Nobody is saying TDK is complicated or complex, or hard to understand (at least I'm not).
What people are saying is that it is not perfect and it has its share of plot holes. -
saw it last night, it had potential but was hugely disappointing (to me anyway)
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Favreau was in Batman Forever? Probably not, blink and you'll miss him, but he was, and now you know.
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..care little for deep backstory,and developing character arks,subplots etc etc
The words have no meaning to the majority of ticket buyers.Most just want a good night out,to get away from it all.
Those things only matter to moviemakers(not all), and people who think they know moviemaking(but really have no clue). -
May 07, 2010 6:14:47 AM CDT
No sorry, the Stark dying story was terrible conceptually
by industrykiller!
That's just SHAMELESS inventing of an arbitrary problem in order to create false drama. it had nothing to do with anything and, even worse, it had nothing to do with the character of Tony Stark. in fact it kept Stark from being delved into further as a character with real deep seeded problems and flaws because this completely outside thing keeps popping in and sucking up precious screentime. Im not saying they should have done Demon in a Bottle, in fact now I hope they never do, but there is a lot to explore and a lot of personal problems that could arise in a guy with Starks, let's say tenuous, grip on the outside world, and they just invented some bullshit malady?? In the words of Christian Bale "Christ you're amateur."
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Because they don't reflect the real movie that IRON MAN 2 is.IRON MAN 2 is a movie that is as good as the first one. No more, no less. yes, it has bigger explosions, and more action stuff with the suit. There's more then one Iron Man suit in many sequences. and then we have the final fight, between two Iron Men and a small army of Iron Man-like drones and an upgrated version of Whiplash's suit. So, yeah, IRON MAN 2 has a bigger scale to it, but the end result is a movie as fine and good as the first.And that is a good thing. IRON MAN was better then 95% of the bullshit made in Hollywood every year. So is IRON MAN 2. IRON MAN 2 is a pretty good movie.But super-glowing reviews liek this do the movie more dammage then good. The reviews wich bash IM2 are wrong. but so are those which want to turn this movie into some supernatural great cinematic achievement. to claim it's as good or better then THE DARK KNIGHT is just absurd. It's misguided. Because it doesn't reflect what's onscreen. There is no need for hyperbolic exagerations. that misrepresent the movie and is just another lie, as much as the claim that it's a shitty movie.IRON MAN 2 is a damn fine movie. It's not the tragedy that the detracytors make it out to be, quite the contrary, but neither it is the reinvention of the comic book movies as the hyper-glowing reviews make it out to be, quite the contrary.And there is nothing in IRON MAN 2 that you havne't see before. All the tropes in IRON MAN 2 you have seen elsewhere before in other comic book movies. The difference and sucess of IRON MAN 2 is that they are very well made by a group of very talented filmmakers and actors.The trashing reviews and opinions about IRON MAN 2 are starting to irritate me, but so are the hype-glowing reviews who try to make IRON MAN 2 into something it's not. IRON MAN 2 is a damn good light-weight nice time at the theaters movie. And what's fucking wrong with that?
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about some older actor buddy telling him he (Howard) could be the greatest actor ever, and without a hint of self-deprecation, Howard talked about how the weight of that truth was something he took as a serious responsibility.
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May 07, 2010 6:16:41 AM CDT
I disagree Asimovlives, the bad reviews are justified
by industrykiller!
And I think I just provided a pretty good example of one of the reasons. I'm sure we'll be having it out in the future on this one. Gotta sleep now though. Cheers.
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like Don Cheadle whose performances are smooth and seemingly effortless has taken over the role in IM2.
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Fanboys really have become a cancer on the thing they claim to love most. Loving ANYTHING related to a property you love is the same as not loving that thing at all. If you are truly passionate about film and comic books, you'll demand the kind of quality you know the material deserves. Anything less is not a passion, just a past time. Reviews like Harry's really do damage to these films turning out better int eh future, I would love for him to just keep his mouth shut.
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Preach it. Exactly what I was trying to say, but you said it better. The words "innovative" and "groundbreaking" need to be illegal. I wanna find whatever high school english teacher started the "hyperbole = good writing" trend and beat them within an inch of their life.
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Now I feel dirty.
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with NO critical faculties...go fuck yourself wanker.
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"I haven't seen this much deep psychological depth in a movie since Jar Jar Binks realised peoples gonna die in THE PHANTOM MENACE." Capone. -
Hold any film up to that much scrutiny and you'll find flaws a plenty (IM2 would be annihilated), fact is regardless of these, TDK is still head and shoulders above 99% of so called 'blockbuster entertainment'
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Please please please. Don't trust Capone's review.
IM2 is NOT a movie with deep psychological depth. It really truly isnt.
It's a silly, entertaining popcorn flick. That is all. -
It would be like if food critics began raving about every new burger McDonald's came out with. Sure Mickey D's is fast and cheap, but you know what you're getting... but if enough food critics called a big mac a work of culinary genius.. well, you'd get a lot more people eating at McDonald's and a lot less focus on gourmet food. That's what's happened in Hollywood, they've realized people will not only eat McDonalds and rave about it.. so they serve us our McDonald's on a silver platter and watch as we rave and try to pretend it's something its not. Hell, look at the Oscar noms this year, it's just gonna get worse. Like you said, IK, loving anything about a property isn't truly loving that property. It's allowing the idea of something to overshadow what it really is.
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Look at any review where Harry or anyone else gets self rightous about film-makers needing to get the franchise right and make it intellectually challenging, then read the GI Joe review where it says ignore all that, it's good because it's "FUN!" Just stop trying to out-think the room with comic movie reviews... it's unneccisary and will inevitably just turn you into a hypocrite. Faverau would still take that picture with you and call you "buddy" when he needs something even if you just judged the movie on it's own merits and kept out all the hyperbole
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wasn't impressed at all. I really liked the first one, but part 2 was just meh. The action lacks any real tension and only excites 12 year olds (or people with the state of mind of a twelve year old), the story barely moves anything forward, nothing really changes, no character growth, nothing has an emotional punch or real danger to it and Tony Stark wastes half the runtime of the movie by building his chest thingy... again. I loved downey in almost all his scenes and I really dug sam rockwell and rourke. Heck, I even found black widows action scene pretty nice, even if her character didn't needed to be in this movie at all. It was overall all right and not a waste of my money, but I won't see it again. Not in cinema and not on dvd or blu. Don't have any high hopes for the avangers anymore, to be honest.
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May 07, 2010 6:40:15 AM CDT
I agree with you all. George Clooney does not need a hair cut...
by thedannerdaliel
and Gordon knew Joker would attac the convoy.....knew they would have to take multiple detours.....and the cops all of sudden knew Batsy killed those guys at the end (someone knows how)
I loved TDK and i totaly get why he had to run (because they have to chase him son) No ,to protect the legacy of a maniac....
I just love how the "TDK-can do no wrong-people" always mention it....always mention it...... -
don't know what they are talking about. TDK and even batman begins are in a whole other league of filmaking. you cannot compare a nice nice cheeseburger (Iron Man) with a 5 star chefs special menu (BB and TDK). You just can't. Its ok if you like the cheeseburger, but thats quality wise not comparable.
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Any good easter eggs comic book fans should be keeping an eye out for?
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Everyone looked to what people liked in the first one and amped it up in the second. More RDJ as Stark, more people in Iron Man suits, more AC/DC !
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Look out for a shield !
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because whenever I read anything about him he sounds completely fucking mental.
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Iron Man is a fun time, nothing more. Fanboys should crack open some real literature instead of ascribing faux-profundity to comic book properties. As was said above, it does a disservice to the filmmakers' intentions, which was surely just to provide a fun comic book movie.
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Hollywood Formula For Sequels.
IRON MAN climax = Iron Man vs Robot
IM2 climax = 2 Iron Men vs 20 Robots -
Disclaimer: the above Formula does not factor in the 'deep psychological depth' of IM2 into the equation. That is because it does not exist. Except in Capone's fanboy-addled mind.
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1) Ramin Dwaji's score. Remember in the first movie when Tony test-pilots the Mark II? That uplifting "theme" music is gone.
2) Yensen. I know Yensen died and can't come back, but I realized here how much I missed the way he encourages Tony.
3) Terrence Howard. Don Cheadle was a great replacement, but I think the movie would have been well served with cast consistency. Marvel should have paid the guy what he wanted; this flick is gonna make huge coin.
4) Those "quiet, tender moments," as Mickey put it in Rocky III. Iron Man 2 is a larger, noisier affair and, but for Downey, strays close to Spidey 3 land. Gone are those moments when we get Tony alone marveling at his new suit (Yeah, I can fly) or seething at the violence on the TV, gone is the intimacy with Pepper, who is now a preoccupied chatterbox cuz she's running the biz.
But make no mistake--I loved the movie. But the first one is the better of the two, overall. Oh, and I've said this elsewhere, but ENOUGH with all the adversaries having arc reactors. Maybe in IM3 the bad guy's talents for once won't be derived from Stark technology. Is there some rule that all the villains and sidekicks must have a circle on their chest? Fuck. -
Iron Man 2. No more dancing heroes, please.
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That formula is pretty much dead on. The climax was eye-popping, but never did I feel like those Hammerdroids posed any threat. Those who saw the movie will recall how easily Tony dispatches them with his "one-off" trick. And Whiplash lasts all of 30 seconds as well. I felt cheated. Or should I say, Cheadled. And Whiplash 2.0 was just another Iron Monger.
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Iron Man 2 is not great cinema, it's not a travesty... it's a 3 out of 5 star action flick. Maybe 3.5 stars if you really love RDJr (like me.) Shit... I haven't even SEEN it yet, and I know this. Look, when I found out they were going to be a bunch of different hero movies, then tying them all together through an Avengers thing, that sounded cool. Nothing I've seen so far is making me sorry they're doing this. Could they have delved deeper into Stark's personal flaws? Absolutely. BECAUSE THEY ALWAYS COULD. Shit... I thought they mangled Bruce Wayne's backstory by throwing in that whole Rachel bit. HATED it, hated her character... and didn't buy it. It's stunning to me how TDK and BB have become canon for so many... but whatevs.
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Abom, on your fourth point I totally agree. Why did the writers even have Pepper running the business - anyone else feel this was unnecessary and a subplot too far?
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Yeah, the whole subplot about the blood poisoning was okay--but in the end it was just an excuse to 1) distract Tony so that appointing Pepper CEO could occur and give him some time to pause, reflect, brood, etc and more importantly 2) give Tony a different looking chestpiece, as in "oooh! A triangle arc reactor" Yeah, it's a new element, and I suppose the next one will call for the construction of a star or rhombus-shaped reactor.
Oh, and Rhodey's a thieving Judas and tony should have handed him his ass. How would YOU like it if your supposed friend stole the tech YOU designed and built and tried to school you with it? You'd own him, that's right. -
I suppose it could be argued that Pepper was named CEO so Tony could devote more time to his Iron Man gig, which in turn allows for more focus on the Avengers angle. Which is fine, but like some others I felt was shoehorned a little much into THIS movie.
Oh, and they should have had a scene with Gwyn and Scarlett showering together. I mean why not? It's beautiful and right. -
was the inclusion of some decidedly non-kiddy language. It's beeped in the movie (cuz it's on TV) but Senator Stern (Gary Shandling) flat-out tells Tony "Fuck you, Mr. Stark. Fuck you." The word prick is used a couple times, and Tony alludes to "pleasuring himself"
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Abom, definitely. Lose the Pepper CEO subplot and add in a Black Widow unrequited lesbian love for Pepper subplot. An unusual love triangle. Stark's trying to hit on Black Widow but she only has eyes for Potts. That would have been brave and beautiful.
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Funny you should mention the "80s formula" thing for superhero sequels.
I picked up on that too, but not for the same reason. Rather, I noticed that IM2 hits a lot of the same beats as Superman II and III, Rocky II and III, Batman Returns, and Spidey 2 and 3.
Namely, this installment is the one where the hero must reconcile his double-identity. For even though everyone knows Stark is Shellhead, Tony must find a way to fit it in his schedule, rebuff the govt's demands for the tech, etc. The introduction of Rhodey as an alternate hero / ID offsets the ailing, brooding Tony the same way black-suit Spidey and "evil" Superman did in the third installments of those franchises. -
Ah. THERE'S the attitude! Of course, working in a little lesbian-experimentation subplot would have taken no effort at all. They should do that in every movie. Silly boy.
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In fact, I regarded the new Delta-shaped arc reactor as but a symbol of that underexplored love triangle between the three. Tony displays clear lust for Natalie From Legal, even while we suspect his heart belongs to Pepper. So the only proper thing to do would be to get them all into a shower stall together and let them work things out.
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it kind of makes you wonder whether the writers feel they HAVE to tell this story with every hero... or if the producers are like, "If we don't give the audiences this same story they'll lynch us." Right? It's like a rite of passage for EVERY superhero. I would have thought they would have dispensed with this, Stark being a different ball of wax... but I didn't really expect them to stray from the norm. They're out to make big blockbuster action flicks for the whole family, after all.
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True dat. There was more tension in IM-1 when Pepper copies the "ghost drive" and Obidiah walks in
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I see what you mean, and yes Stark is a "different ball of wax." No better was that demonstrated in the comic books than the Demon in a Bottle storyline, which is only hinted at a little here and was pretty interesting when they did it. For a couple moments I really DID feel like Tony was endangering himself and others. And THAT would have been cool to explore, along with Scarlet and Gwyn reenacting the "Do You like Phil Collins" menage a trois from American Psycho, yes indeed.
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all it does is follow what sequels do WRONG...ramp up the explosions and pay little to no attention to a good story.
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fat driver/bouncer character whathisname(Favreau) saves the day. Tony flies him to a forest crearing where a giant spaceship lands. The ship door opens and we see silouets of more Favreau's "go home now" Favreau says
Tony cries Favreau's index finger lights up and he points it at tonys chest "Ill beeee Rrrightt hhere" Favreau shuffles onto the ship and tony watches as the doors closes and the ship lifts off and flys away into the night sky leaving a rainbow behind!! -
just like last time!!!
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.....this movie was an incredible letdown!!!! It's not awful, but they really wasted an opportunity to utilize RDJ and make an awesome movie. This movie was ALL OVER THE PLACE! I think Marvel cares more about merchandizing than they do story and narrative. This movie is an obvious build up to that inevitable Avengers flick. I did enjoy this movie more than most I've seen recently, but man, did they miss the mark. I'm done with Marvel films. All they care about is promotion. Also, John Favreau must have a MASSIVE ego. His character was in this movie WAAAAY to much. Happy Hogan sucks and it dragged down the best action sequence.
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the only references to a larger Marvel universe is S.H.E.I.L.D., Caps Shield and Thor's Hammer with a bit of Hulk thrown in. It is a large movie universe indeed is it not?
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Although I enjoyed the movie overall, it had several distracting issues.Whiplash is barely in the movie. He's kinda goofy too. He laughs a lot, at seemingly innapropriate moments. He's very concerned about getting his Baretta bird. I kept thinking that was going to pay off somehow or amount to something, but no. He's this real hardass guy, but you can steal the shoes right off his feet. He's also a physicist who can get past a super-technically advanced firewall in seconds. He just doesn't feel like a real person.Pepper Pots is sort of a bitch now, which is an odd choice. She's always sort of berating Tony, even after he gives her a massive career advancement.Tony's kind of a dick too. He stands on the stage at the Stark Expo and tells everyone what a badass he is. Kinda bizarre. And Rhodey is now a thief!I'm not sure what role Nick Fury plays in the film exept to be Black Widow's boss. I'm not even sure why she's undercover at Stark, particularly after she reveals herself to Tony.It all seems sort of thrown together, particularly the ending. It feels very "I guess we gotta wrap this up, how about a quick battle and roll credits?". The end battle is literally over in about 45 seconds with Whiplash inexplicably raising his face sheild, apparently so we don't forget he's inside. They may have done that since his suit at the end looks exactly like Monger at the end of the first movie. Apparently the only thing they can think of for Iron Man to do is fight other power suits.So yeah, kinda dissapointed, but it's still got RDJ as Tony Stark and there's some fun to be had there. I would say this film feels kind of clumsy and a lot less "fun" than the last one.
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....THE LARGER MARVEL UNIVERSE! IT RUINED THE PACE OF THE ENTIRE MOVIE! This film could have been awesome! The Avengers' movie is going to suck HARD. There is no way they can balance all the characters. They couldn't even do it in this movie!
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....needed an Avengers' preview! I paid money to see Iron Man and RDJ in action!
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.....movie isn't Batman Returns awful, but it's completely forgettable! The first Iron Man is a classic. This was a waste of time!
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All I got was that *SPOILER*His dad somehow had solved the whole thing but instead of actually building it.....he put it into a model? What the fuck? So then RDJ bounces some lasers around a room and viola, new power core!What the fuck ever.
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I noticed Tony's arrogance too--at first. Then I realized he was overcompensating becuase of his illness. He didn't want anyone knowing he was sick, so he kept being the same old egotistic guy the world knew pre-IM1.
And right you are about every bad guy being in a power suit. There's no excuse for not having Mandarin anymore--I know Favreau suggested it was too fantastical, but c'mon, if you're going to open up your universe to include Cap America and Thor, you can't make excuses like that anymore. Hero from Asgard with a mystic hammer? Okay, if you can have that, why not have Mandarin and his rings?
The biggest let-down here was indeed the final battle. Hell, it seemed like none of the three combatants took more than a couple steps,and it's all over inside of sixty seconds, all in the center of that Epcot Center sphere or whatever the fuck.
It would have been ballsy showing, or at least confirming, that many guests at the Expo were killed by the Robot rampage. There's no way they can go crazy with those guns and missles and NOT have casualties. -
Yeah, really.
I mean, did Tony even bother trying a pair of Eveready Alkaline AA batteries? -
Gwyn and Scarlet don't so much as kiss in this movie, much less tongue-bathe each other.
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May 07, 2010 8:49:25 AM CDT
Why my friend, Capone is dead wrong about IRON MAN 2
by bruce of all trades
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ScarJo has a wicked sense of humor and might have been into it, but Gwyn is a girl with high-minded ideals. NO WAY she's into even toying with anything like that.
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go back after seeing the movie (I know you will, hate and all) and watch 'Batman Begins' and 'Dark Knight'. You loved DK because of Heath Ledge, *not* because of Christian Bale, who only conveys one emotion: anger. IM2 is a *family* film, where fathers get to explain to their sons the price of irresponsibility without having to preach. You can bet young teenage boys will remember that fight between Tony and Rhody.
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Is that a guy in robot armor will throw you around? That's seriously what you got out of that scene?And I'm not hating on IM2, I liked it. I just acknowledge that it has some problems. It's pretty obvious that it does.
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I will see the movie MULTIPLE times just to spite you bitches! Thanks for the incentive to enjoy it even more, knowing YOU don't like it!!
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I checked the film out on the web yesterday. I am paying to see it again in a proper setting today.
All of the reviewers talk about how Favs ad-libbed everything and it lakes away from the film, blah, blah, blah.
That loose talk shows exactly how people wo are used to each other and can gauge how the other person thinks would talk. especially when dealing with different personalities and motivations.
I found the film to be a great exploration of a man whose overwhelming ego gets the best of him.
Quite honestly, I think that the way it was dopne also showed very well how Tony might decend into dependance on alcohol.
couple that with the revelation that the device that daved him and changed his life is also, Ironically enough, killing him.
so now we see a man who starts playing fast and loose, because he feels that time is short.
Sam Rockwell is easily one of my favorite actors working today.
He can just inhabit so many personas. His smarmy assed, enviously impetuous Justin Hammer is no different.
He so desperately want what he doesn't have the capability to aquire.
I liked Don Cheadle as Rhoady and really didn't miss Howard and his effeminate voice at all.
Scarlett was Scarlette. I have no disappointments with her. I will say that her short action sequence was very well done and played great against Happy's comedic fight.
Some of the effects seemed a little dark, but that could have also been from watching it on the pc.
Bottom line, while you may feel that this film is a rehash of the first, you would be cutting the film very short by thinking that.
Unlike Unlike Batman where a self made man becomes something more to overcome the obsticals before him, Iron Man is about a man who creates obsticals before himself that are guaranteed to destroy him.
I give it 3.5 out of 4 stars. -
Anyone who likes it are MORONS! No questions about it.
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No they won't! its a dumb cartoonish scene. You like Iron Man 2 so that makes you an idiot. I'm going to have a field day berating anyone who denies that this movie is a PIECE OF SHIT!
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Tony's father said that the world he lived in did not have the technology for his Ideas to be brought to life. He was a futurist after all. So he built it for Tony. And he hid the elemental code inside of the Model where no one else would find it but Tony.
Tony realized that in order to actually create the element that would power the armor he needed something he didn't have. Which was a SHG (Small Haydron Collider) Like the big one at CERN that will destroy the world one day.
The amount of power those things create in a collision is beyond anything that a standard reactor could create.
He trapped that power into the matrix of his power core. -
I'm not going to pretend IM2 is great cinema, but yeah I dug it. It's a lot of fun. It's akin to a great one night stand. Not a meaningful relationship, however, just some toe-curling pneumatics
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Hard to imagine how he can invent technology in his head that didn't exist....but couldn't create it. Then to make a video message especially for Tony...but not tell him about the design but instead hope that one day he would glare at the model while simultaneously trying to think up a new miniature power core.....that's a bridge too far for me. Too many unrealistic things happening all at once.
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It worked for me because I simply assumed that back in '74 the elder stark had already begun building the original arc reactor. This is implicit since Ivan has the schematics his old man worked on with Howard.
The older Stark left a cyptic message for his son not because he'd have any reason to know Tony would need power for himself, but because the world might benefit from such a source of energy. But yeah, the timing of all this at the same time is a gap you just have to leap. -
My bigger issues with the film are character changes (everyone's an asshole now) and too much stuff going on that overcomplicate the story.
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May 07, 2010 9:44:04 AM CDT
This review needs a spoiler warning, as you basically give away
by moore12
Thank you, did you have to tell us Whiplash is captured in the first fight, that he is broken out of jail. I had to stop reading your review in fear of what else you spoil. I am sorry but this is a terrible review.
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May 07, 2010 9:45:30 AM CDT
Good review Capone, but you're wrong about one thing...
by rickey henderson
In Iron Man 2, Tony Stark isn't really wrestling with any of those cliche "WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY!" problems as you suggest. This is a superhero at the top of his game, cocky as hell, and making apologies for nothing. When the US government tells him they want his suit, he tells 'em to go to hell. His only conflict is the fact that he's dying and wants to establish his legacy. Iron Man 2 is free of all that brooding and self-introspection that we're bombarded with in other superhero flick and Rickey enjoyed that immensely.
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That article is nearly a year old and we haven't heard anything since. Like the Robert Rodriguez Hotwheels movie, I think these things get started all the time and die.
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That last post was supposed to be in the Pac Man thread.
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May 07, 2010 9:50:18 AM CDT
In many ways, director Jon Favreau has done something rather rem
by kingralphuk
or in another way, he has made an over-long, steaming pile which serves only as a bridge to the Avengers movie, which Im now dreading.
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Rickey was concerned that the witty Downeyisms would get a little stale this time around, but his performance is wickedly amusing. Rickey's favorite line:
"I WAS GOING TO MAKE YOU AN OMELET AND TALK ABOUT IT!" -
The one that shows the rampage of the Incredible Hulk? You know, the one that let's you know firmly when this movie takes place compared to The Incredible Hulk? Come on man, I figured even you knew about that!
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I don't get that reference.
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...if I could understand what
Mickey Rourke was mumbling. -
Something involving Kenneth Branaugh, Chris Hemsworth, and a hammer. It's pretty vulgar stuff.
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You laughable cock.. 'REAL critics'? Do they go to a special 'Critic University' to get a special degree? A critic is just a journalist with an opinion - their opinion is completely subjective. So they've watched a lot of films? Big fucking deal - the day I need someone with no qualifications at all to influence my opinion and tell me what I should or shouldn't enjoy when it comes to films will be the day you get laid. Never.
As I said, if your precious critics are the last word, then 'Blade Runner' is shit. Really? -
I saw the movie last night, caught all the bits about SHIELD and the shield and the hammer but nothing about the Hulk, was there something on TV? I liked this movie just fine, BTW. Harry was right about Scarlett's ass in that pencil skirt, that's worth my ticket price right there. There's not nearly enough T&A in comic book movies, honestly. -
May 07, 2010 10:14:15 AM CDT
Not a huge fan of Thor- is that where he lands in the comics?
by d.vader
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Terrence who? Truly, Don Cheadley owns the character. He should had been cast in the first movie. I always liked him as an actor, and again he's a joy to watch onscreen. The man is smooth!
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So if Iron Man 2 is a great one-night stand, could we then say The Dark Knight is the meaningful relationship with a great lady...who is always reminding you of how great she is and how lucky you are to have her and how she always deserves utmost respect and is always right, no matter what? Just a thought. I'm worried about the added Samuel Jackson screen time(never thought I'd say that),
but I'm anxious to see it nonetheless. -
What's with the naked Obama doll and the scary looking Northern CA trashy white guy doll behind him in the upper right corner ad? And the US flag behind them both? I need coffee.
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Maybe they're referring to "The Incredible Hulk" movie itself, wherein (SPOILERS) Downey as Stark approaches Gen. Ross in a bar for purposes of contacting Banner / Hulk to be part of the Avengers. I don't recall anything in IM2 referencing Hulk.
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I'm not sure what that's about. But if you want to know who actually buys that crap, just check your sheriff's dept for a list of registered sex offenders
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Showing the destruction the Hulk caused in the Incredible Hulk movie. So the end scene with Stark from Hulk takes place after Iron Man 2.
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Yeah, the contemporary stuff in THOR apparently takes place in NM (Rickey's not too familiar with the property either but is very intrigued by it).
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To many unrealistic things for you?
Its a science Fiction film based on a comic book? How realistic can it be?
I will just hit on the major things here that everyone is complaining about.
Howard Stark - Those films were made back in 1963 This was stated by Nick fury AND by Tony Stark
A Haydron collidor was not even a fantasy at that time.
I also see no problem with Tony Stark building a small one considering his knowledge and resources.
Pepper - She is bitchy because not only has she had the weight of being C.E.O. of a multinational Company thrust upon her shoulders, but she also has an increasingly egotistical boss who continues to make messes that he leaves for her to clean up. And you wonder why she is so bitchy?
Scarlette - (Multiple purposes)First to establish that she is a SHIELD agent and also to give them a bigger presencein this film.
Fury said she was put in place to study Stark and make evaluations on him and the possibility of him being in the AVENGERS. This is because Stark is getting increasingly out of control. Being a Military man, Fury is all about control. He doesn't need some hi-tech loose cannon ruining everything.
They also establish that Tony's dad was part of SHIELD.
Tonys chest reactor - The electromagnet is inside the reactor. Considering that the thing is there to keep very small shrapnel fragments from getting into his heart and killing him, It would make no sense to have it just attached with a wire on the outside of his body. Not to mention, that there is just no way to -fill- an empty hole in the middle of his chest.
Additionally, in the more recent books like EXTREMIS and the new Matt Fraction books, Tony is being poisoned by his tech.
Rhoady - The reason that Rhoady takes the Armor back to the military is because he see's his friend who happens to be a walking talking WMD getting more out of control every day and there is no one to stand up to him if he loses it.
Rhoady's first commitment is to the Military and the USA. This is pretty much how it was back in the comics when he was introduced.
Ivan and his Dad - Back in the 60's when dad defected to the US, He brought his own genius to us for our benefit. But when things didn't work out right. Stark had him deported back to Russia. Obviously they wouldn't welcome him back with open arms so he ended up living in squalor. Never acheiving any of his former glory. His son even made his own mistakes by selling nuclear Tech to Pakistan.
When his Father died, he placed it all back on Stark whom his Father likely always complained about.
It didn't help that Ivan sees an overly egotistical Tony on TV at the time his father dies. So he gets focus for some revenge.
As far as Whiplash being more of a threat, honestly, not many characters really are much of a threat to a character like Iron Man.
Why does he always have to fight men in Suits?? - Well, its because his tech is the new hotness.
Take the iphone for example. It came out and changed the face of mobile phones. Ever since its release, the entire phone industry has been trying to emulate its success. That is how tech works. The film should reflect that.
You can also look at how Turbo prop fighter planes took a back seat to Jets when they were created.
I could really go further. But most of this stuff should be obvious to anyone who actually pays attention to the film. -
It doesn't identify it as Obama. It is called "African America - Advanced Version". I don't know what the fuck that's supposed to mean, but yeah it's a weird thing to have on here.
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Proving in a single statement that you know nothing about Batman or cinema. Congrats.
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always turn my posts into a fucking giant wall of text. I spaced each section by 4 fucking lines to seperate it andd it still smushed it all together.
Update your site. Jesus. -
Thanks, I'll look for it. I'm seeing it again tonight with Little Miss Abom.
Return of FETT--what I want to know is, does Obama "African American Advanced VErsion" have a Kung-FU grip? I'm so there if he does. -
for Thor II. You heard it here first. They can't not have him.
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"To many unrealistic things for you? Its a science Fiction film based on a comic book? How realistic can it be? I will just hit on the major things here that everyone is complaining about. Howard Stark... "
MAD_MIKE don't get mad - get with (only without the spaces) -
I saw one promo image that showed a silver robot/power suit that looked a LOT like Ultron. Is this the best-kept secret in Hollywood?
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I don't dissagree with any of that. I'm just saying that it's too much stuff that isn't allowed to percolate. It' just hurled at us in rapid succession. By the time the film is wrapping up we've given up on being emotionally invested in anything going on onscreen and it's like "Fine, just blow shit up then." I still fail to see how making Pepper a condescending bitch, Rhoadey a thief and Stark a fuckin' asshole somehow makes it a better film than the first no matter how you try to justify it.Bottom line: This film should have been about Iron Man not being able to deal with the responsibility of being Iron Man. We need an emotional attachment to him to make us care about that problem. That doesn't mean Stark being a jackass, that means we need to get inside his head. Pepper Pots and Rhoadey are the perfect vehicle for us to do so, but they aren't utilized. None of those three apear to have a valid connection to Tony, they just sort of tolerate him. That would be okay if we saw Stark realize he's alienating them and attempt to repair it. He ALMOSt makes that gesture by giving her the company, but instead of that taking their relationship to a new level of trust, she just bitches more!Vanko really needed to be more established. The opening credits are so corny and cliche. We've seen it a thousand times and really tells us nothing about him. All we know is that he's a brilliant physicist who apparently lives in a metalshop and mumbles about his Baretta bird. That's just not enough. And the weird constant laughing just makes you think "What the fuck does he think is so funny?"
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I think the Iron man suits are all
metallic gray/silver until Tony
paints them. -
May 07, 2010 10:50:53 AM CDT
Iron Man 2 kicked up everything up to 11, including the flaws
by iamnicksaicnsn
of the first. Now that it's out in the states I can go into SPOILERS. (though I wish I had written my thoughts down while they were more fresh). Mickey Rourke did a great job with what he was given, but ultimately, the final battle sequence was so freaking short. I felt he was going to be a severe force of evil until the final battle scene, where he went down almost instantly. Sure, he sent his drones to blow a lot of stuff up, but there was never a point in the movie where it looked like there was a dramatic loss of life (it doesn't matter if it was implied, it could have been shown in a classy way and still gotten the PG-13). I actually thought Rhodes was wasted. I know it's a little crazy to say that considering he freaking fought Tony Stark at one point, but they really didn't give Don Cheadle any heavy lifting. It all seemed very rote. Very VERY popcorny with an emphasis on corny. I agree with other talkbackers that the fact that the element was killing him was a shitty plot device, a Lost Season 6 time waster (from a die-hard apologetic Lost fan). It started out somewhat deep, but it was too easy for him to overcome - it was nice that he found a connection to his father, but it was just a little too cliche for me. There were probably other issues for me to dislike, but at the end of the day, it was a really enjoyable movie - Scarlett and Mickey really hit it out the park (for me), the battles were better, other than the total waste of Rourke at the end, even the SCORE was totally improved which some might find heretical to say, but I don't know, the first score was just kind of boring to me. It's worth watching again, and maybe I'll find more flaws the next time around, but I had a good time. It's just not genius, it's definitely not perfect, it's just a really good time.
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Just seems to be an excuse for a drone army. He's another example of overcomplicating the plot.In my opinion it would have been far more effective if that drone army (or frankly something more original and interesting) was financed by faceless Russian investors so we could focus on Vanko.S.H.E.I.L.D. shouldn't have been in this movie at all. I like Nick Fury, I like Black Widow, but they distracted from the plot. Give them their own movie and I'm there opening day, but let the Iron Man movie be about fucking IRON MAN!
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Anyone recall the four-issue Machine Man miniseries from like 1983? Greenlight that fucker.
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May 07, 2010 11:03:48 AM CDT
Maybe it was one of Justin Hammer's drones that I saw?
by royston lodge
Hmm...
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Too bad he didn't hang for his betrayal. I recall interviews with Cheadle where he said he was glad there was finally a black superhero.
Too bad what he does in this movie is 1) betray a friend, 2) steal an expensive appliance, and 3) defy authority figures.That's not how we do it, huggybear.
Bring on Luke Cage! -
I wonder if you or anyone else saw those clips of other countries demonstrating their versions of the iron armor and had a flashback to what was essentially the same thing in ROBOCOP 2. Because that's what it was.
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I guess in IM2 War Machine's greatest weapons are his cold heart and his ability to turn his back on his friend and steal things that don't belong to him, and use them against the rightful owner, who designed and made them.
Minor SPOILER. Would it have been so hard for Rhodey, sans Mark II armor, to confront Tony and say "Hey man, you're getting a little out of hand." I seriously doubt even a drunken Tony in his suit would get aggressive with his buddy. Ah, but then there wouldn't have been an armor vs armor fight. Plot device. -
1) Spider-Man 2
2) Iron Man
3) The Dark Knight
4) Spider-Man
5) Batman Begins
6) Iron Man 2
7) X2
8) KickAss
9) Incredible Hulk
10) Hulk
11) X-Men
12) Daredevil
13) X-Men3
14) Wolverine
15) SpiderMan 3
16) Superman Returns
17) Fantastic Four: Surfer
18) Ghost Rider
19) Fantastic Four
I didn't count stuff pre XMen (1999), so I didn't figure in the "old" Bats and Supes. -
You sure do like yourself some Iron Man.
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For me, BATMAN BEGINS and THE DARK KNIGHT are my Batman cannon. It's my favorite incarnation of Batman ever. But if there's Batheads who disagree and prefr other incarnations,, it's perfectably understandable. My favorite is Nolan's, that's all. The good thing about Nolan's version is tha tit's one of the most intelligent and well thoughout telling of the Bat tale. As for the character Racheal, she works very well into the Nolan's story. The problem is nt so much the character and her service to the story, which is important, but the actress chosen. And i don't think Katie Holmes did a bad job, she was good, but she was surrounded by excelent actors, and every each of them at the top of their game. The poor girl looked worst then she was due to such comparisons. She was surrounded by giants. And rumour tells it that Katie was not even Nolan's choice (but a studio impossition), the actresses he wanted was either Natalie Portman or a then still not very well known in USA Emilie Blunt. My hope now is that Nolan casts Blunt as Catwoman for his 3rd Batman movie.
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That would be near the top for me. I know you said no pre-99 stuff, but that should be on any list of great superhero movies. I'm afraid I must declare list fail, homie.
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I'm not getting to see this until Sunday earliest.
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It belongs on that list.
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That would be the total win. I hope Jon Favreau is taking notes for the next movie.
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Hey there! I saw it Tuesday at a screening, courtesy gofobo.com and Cinemark and Carol and Johns Comics. They had a promotion tied in with FCBD. Yeah, I dig me some Iron Man. I guess it's the strong acting, which is why the IM and Batman entries rank so high.
ebonic, actually, I've not seen any Blades. And now that you mention it, I forgot to rank the Hellboys (which I did see). I'm sure there's other comic-related entries I forgot, like Catwoman and Aeon Flux, but really--who cares about those. I'd love to see other people's lists, regardless of the years. I'm just makin' discussion. -
Actually, i think the movie is very dated. The only parts that actually stand timeless is the scenes at Krypton and the scenes at Smallville. But the Metropolis stuff reeks of dated as a muffin made back then. And since the vast majority of the movie is set in Metropolis.... well, there you have it.
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I agree, the first Supes was not just a great superhero flick, but great cinema. What is like, like 32 years old now? Still rocks my cockenballs. RIP Chris
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from his movie. I really, really love that whole sequence set in Krypton in Donner's Superman. If anything, i think one of the biggest mistakes the filmamkers do when they make or develop a Superman movie is they they always skip or short-changed Krypton. Big mistake.
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That was pretty good, too. Ought to be in my list. Shymalanamanan did okay by that one IMO
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I wish i had the same enthusiasm you have for Donner's supermna. What i see is a very enjoyable, but very flawed movie. Needs more Krypton.
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Ummm...he didn't have a role at all in the first movie, Capone. The one scene he filmed wasn't even in the movie.
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May 07, 2010 11:35:58 AM CDT
I could watch a whole porno set in Donner's Krypton
by abominable snowcone
Speaking of which, I forgot about Supergirl, starring Helen Slater 1984. I actually saw that when it came out. Probably 'bated to it a bunch of times later, too. But it would be near the bottom of my list. That's a fucking snorefest.
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That would rank way high on my list of superhero movies, even if it wasn't sourced from a comic
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In the 80s, Helen Slater was pure masturbatory ambrosia for the teens of the time.
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Iron Man just has a different tone than Batman, I wish people would not throw TDK in everyone's face. They are different films. I'm very excited to see this movie tonight, and refuse to pay attention to the bitter fools that e-mail negative shit from their parents basement.
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I agree with your point about feeling a little dated now. But I think it's quaint-looking now and has aged well overall. I think today's action-heavy sequences have diluted the impact of stuff like the helicopter rescue in the original Supes, stuff like that. But as a WHOLE, great interpetation of the origin story, great work by Reeve and co
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Yes, Helen Slater / Supergirl unwittingly took me by the hand (my free hand) and ushered me into manhood. The Octahedron became an oracle of sexual climax
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Maybe you posted a review at AIBN? I'll check.
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You'll have fun. I'm nitpicking the movie, but that's only because I did thoroughly enjoy it and care about the end product from RDJ, Favs and the gang. And because I'm a fucking dork.
Count the number of times Tony "mutes" an electronic device. WTF was with that, anyway? -
Yes, it's there and I think Zed did one as well. Mine has spoilers, so be advised if ya don't wanna know.
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I just noticed the exclusion, and I'm always up to extoll the virtues of the first Blade (the second one is pretty good, too. Stay away from part 3 though.) I'd also put the Hellboys in there somewhere, maybe bumping Daredevil or FF. I guess "list fail" is pretty harsh, as aside from minimal re-arranging, that top 10 is solid, IMO. Back when I was exiting the theater for Spawn, I would have never guessed we'd ever get a top 10 list that I could feel good about like that. It's nice to count the blessings. -
I agree that parts of it look dated, but so does The Godfather. It's of its time. Taken that way, it remains timelessly classic. IMO, the greatest superhero movie of all time, if only for the brief scenes with Ma and Pa Kent.
The extended version contained some additional Krypton scenes. That said, I prefer the original cut. There's something about the richness of the origin scenes (Krypton and Smallville) that make you forget they're really quite brief. For me, the extended scenes added nothing, but maybe that's because the original cut was just so perfect to me as is. -
I'm grateful that even though I no longer read comics, that all the ones I DID collect back in the bronze age have made it to the big screen. Back in 82 when I had that 4-part Wolverine miniseries no one knew who the fuck Wolverine was, or Juggernaut. COuldn't have imagined they'd end up in the movies. I actually did enjoy Origins: Wolverine, even if I didn't find it especially timeless.
I guess what I'm saying is like you, I'm counting the blessings. Took a long time, but nice to see Hollywood returned to the idea that comics have great characters and story material -
You mean the extra Krypton stuff where they "judge" and sentence ZOd and co, and the other elders make fun of JorEl like he's Rudolph the Reindeer and don't believe his portent of doom?
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I don't know HTML though so what do I do, just place that after my sentances when I want to have a space?
@Fett; I think the laughing that Mickey was doing was basically him silently showing that he has zero respect for Hammer and will string the guy aong all while pushing his own plan forward.
Just like when Hammer comes and takes his stuff away. It doesn't bother him because he spent time in a gulag and this little man really cannot take anything from him. -
They were the original climate change deniers. One day Earth will go the way of Krypton and I'll be in the spaceship saying I told ya so.
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A lot of the things that we would hope for as character development that wasn't explored, would be stretched over a couple of years in the books. Or across a season if it was a TV show.
In a two hour film, you sometimes have to hope that the audience gets it.
Again, Rhoady didn't actually steal the armor as much as he made the decision on which master he would serve. The military is his master and he could see that his friend was getting out of control and the need to have a way of stopping him if that happened outweighed his loyalty to Tony.
Seriously, if Iron Man truly existed, he would destabilize world peace. He wouldn't insure it. His very existance would create a new arms race as other countries speculate on all of the negative possibilities of Iron Man. -
I would hope The Godfather looks dated, it takes place in 1945.
Posters on this site sometime astound me. -
Abom, my ten 'superhero' flicks would go somethin like this...
1/ BATMAN BEGINS
2/ SUPERMAN
3/ SUPERMAN II
4/ THE DARK KNIGHT
5/ IRON MAN
6/ XMEN 2
7/ DARK MAN
8/ SPIDER-MAN 2
9/ THE ROCKETEER
10/ BLADE
I think IRON MAN 2 would prob be in there between 10-15. -
Sorry you are right but in my head I was thinking Scarface. So let's use that as the example.
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just saw it on your list
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Yeah, Rickey also caught that blatant Robocop 2 reference during the senate hearing scene. Funny stuff.
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I found this on-line of a concept drawing for a next-gen Iron Man suit. It's not exactly the image that I have in my brain of what I saw, but it looks sorta similar.
Tell me you don't agree that the helmet is very Ultron-like! Go ahead, just try and tell me that!!!
http://tinyurl.com/39u4qog -
I think BLADE II was actually pretty good but I can't disassociate it from that dreadful pussy-slurping review Harry wrote and now as a result I hate it.
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And the action sequences (many of the big setpieces) were plotted by Genndy Tartakovsky. Nice fucking stuff.
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1.) The Dark Knight
2.) ANG LEE'S HULK
3.) X2
4.) Blade
5.) Batman Begins
6.) Superman Returns
7.) Iron Man
8.) X-Men
9.) Blade II
10.) Spider-Man 2 -
Hobo, you liked SUPERMAN RETURNS more than the originals? Why???
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Because no one has superpowers, so they're forced to go all moody and deep into it. The action pieces are cool, but they're not mind-blowingly good or extravagant like most other superhero flicks have and will have to be due to keeping with source material. If Bats actually had the power to transform into a giant bat, I doubt all that "characterization"would be there.
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I know you all have your quaint little superhero film lists, but they pale in comparison to the mighty, undeniable truth of this one. Be prepared to say "Shit, he's right. Everything I've ever believed up until now is a fucking lie!". Prepare to have your fucking fanboy ass rocked like Britney Spears in an all-male general population prison.To qualify for this list it must have been a live-action film featuring a comic book character that played in US theaters.1) The Dark Knight (fucking deal with it. There is no discussion, there is no debate, this is a fact of life you need to come to terms with. No other superhero film can even scratch TDK's manly ballsack)2) Watchmen (yes, you read that right bitches)3) V for Vendetta (oh yes, I fucking went there)4) Iron Man (pretty much fucking perfect, just not as weighty as those above it)5) Batman Begins (can you dig it? I knew that you could)6) Superman: The Movie (Reeve pissed, screaming and flying into space when Kidder dies is one of the greatest moments in superherodom)7) Blade (tight scripting, direction and unforgettable performances put this near the top of the heap)8) X2: X-Men United (Singer catches his stride and gets the budget to take these characters to their zenith without short-changing any of them in an interesting story)9) Spider-Man 2 (a little weepy and mopey, but genuine growth in the characters and Doc Oc’s fantastic OR frenzy and train fight)10) Superman II (this one had some goofy powers in it, but is an excellent example of how to ramp up a sequel without losing what works in the first place) And that’s it. There’s no point in going beyond the top 10 because everybody starts getting really opinionated after that. I think we can all agree that these are all must-see superhero films. They represent the best so far.
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The originals were a little before my time. They seem dated to me now. I think Singer's movie really captured the soul of those films though and was vastly underrated. Singer would have completely killed a Zod sequel and I'm pissed people shat all over his version.
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May 07, 2010 12:53:16 PM CDT
MacGruber has 100% RT rating after 7 reviews
by trannyformers_apologist
Something Iron Meh Too could not achieve----> !!!
MacGruber > Iron Man 2 -
May 07, 2010 12:53:39 PM CDT
I'M IN TOTAL SHOCK NO ONE PUT THE WATCHMEN IN YOUR LISTS
by bringingsexyback
That's in my Top 3 for sure.
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reins, man. not reigns.
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BLADE II was a big improvemenet in al departments, and i wouldnpt even rate that in any best 10 comic movies list.Our compadre RETURN_of_FETT is right about one thing, THE DARK KNIGTH is, bar none, the best superhero movie ever made. BATMAN BEGINS should had been futher up that list, though. Like, second place.
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Two very similar words I'm sure share a common origin, but duly noted.
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Is mostly the second half. It really starts to lose cohesion about the midway point. The costume isn't that great, it's got silly stuff like the Scarecrow telling Rachel his secret plan, the film not being able to carry through on it's "fear" theme logically (people comply with things they are afraid of...wait...no, they ATTACK things they are afraid of), the fact that they turned Batman into Kite Man, Ra's Al Ghul being a white, Irish guy, etc. First half is utterly brilliant though.
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Whistler died in the first film...he just did. The sodium lighting was kind of goofy, I realy hated Scud or whatever the new tech guy was, the CGI, particularly with the frog-like jumping ninja action (which doesn't even make sense. If they were there for Blades help why did they start fighting?), but mostly it's because the character of Blade got lost amidst the Blood Pack and Daddy Vampire Issue storyline. Yeah I like Blade II, but I like a tight, focused, well-executed story better, and that's the first film.
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The ultraviolet light bending around tunnels when the grenade thing went off was really stupid and frankly just a lazy way to get rid of them all.
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1. The Dark Knight
2. Blade
3. Iron Man
4. X2
5. Spider-Man 2
6. Batman Begins
7. Iron Man 2
8. The Rocketeer (good call Cobra)
9. Blade 2
10. X-Men
Honorable mentions: Incredible Hulk, Hellboy 1 and 2, Ang Lee's Hulk, Punisher War Journal, Spider-Man 1, The Incredibles And I haven't actually seen: FF2, Kick Ass, or Wolverine. And I am not counting the original Superman (and the first sequel) because I honestly don't know where I'd rank those. -
sure, we know why rhodey did what he did. it's all there explained clear as day in the film, as were all the other plot points you mentioned. the problem is in the telling. good storytelling is not just a matter of showing you A to B to C, it's the matter of how well you transition from A to B to C. just because you get the point of the scene, doesnt mean that the scene flow well. that's why some people, myself included, feel certain plot points in the film jarring. it's not because we dont get it, it's because they're clumsily structured.
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i read your complains about ironman2, and i was with you there all the way then i saw your list and you put watchmen at no.2 spot. i think we have to part ways now.:(
everytime i see someone praise that stinking pile of poo, my skin starts to look greenish. -
May 07, 2010 2:03:30 PM CDT
But what is Stark's arc in this film? And Bruce Wayne is lame.
by ash talon
My major problem with IM2 is that it's ultimately about...intellectual property. What kind of character arc does Stark go through? None. His "character" arc is about him building a new chest arc.
And he's just out to prevent someone else from selling robot tech to the US military. There's not even the threat of them selling the weapons to another country. It's really a movie with a lack of a central dramatic threat.
And TDK sucks. Sorry, it does. Get over it. Like IM2 it lacks a central story and feels like a segment of "what's Joker doing now." Character development for Batman? Really? How so? We find out he wants to steal his woman away from a loving relationship with another man. Yeah...real heroic. And he just cries about wanting to quit being Batman...like every single superhero in their 2nd movie. Talk about people reading into a movie. TDK is Heat for dummies. Nolan has pulled the wool over a lot of people's eyes and made them think his movie is smarter than it really is. Brooding and long doesn't mean smart. -
It is an incredible film. The layers of subtext in that film are staggering. I don't know if people just aren't latching onto that or if they are just hypnotrized by blue cock or what. Watchmen is perhaps the most philosophical superhero film, and that's just very, very fucking cool.
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Watchmen was a 3 hour music video. Iron Man 2 was an actual movie.
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Every now and then, there's a film that just captures the zeitgeist of the time. It scoops up the popular culture, bakes it into a pie and smashes us in the face with it. THAT'S The Dark Knight.The Dark Knight is about how we feel towards 9/11 and the “unknown” threats we live with, or think we live with. Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers before it, The Dark Knight expertly preys on our fears of a foreign foe we can't even begin to understand. It's about that feeling we all had in the pit of our stomachs while watching the towers fall over and over again, then finding out someone did this....on purpose.The Joker is Osama Bin Laden as WE SEE Osama Bin Laden. He's a crazed anarchist, spending every waking moment planning ultimate chaos for chaos' sake.It's because we are afraid of the world and we don't know what to do about that which makes The Dark Knight so penetrating. Old rules don't apply. The old rules of law are moot. We're making this up as we go along, and not for the right reasons, but because we don't know what else to do. This is the world The Dark Knight shows us. This is the world we live in.But let's bring it down to the film itself. Batman Begins had some problems. The Dark Knight not only keeps from repeating those mistakes, but actually goes back and fixes some. For instance, it really bothered me that the tumbler was a Wayne Enterprises vehicle, yet nobody connected it to Wayne. TDK addresses this.Everything about TDK is better than Batman Begins. The suit is just light years ahead of the last one. Surprisingly, he begins the film in his old suit then gets the new one.Remember how it was frustrating in BB that you couldn't see the fights? Fixed. Batman now kicks all ass in full, lit view.We also see him being a detective, although I still don't quite understand the ballistics test he did.The city feels bigger. We see more of it this time. Even cooler, Batman does a mission overseas. The action is bigger, the sets are bigger, the cast is bigger, hell even the running time is longer. Never for one second does it drag either. We are totally engrossed the entire time wondering what's going to happen next.Everyone is talking about Heath and rightfully so. Suffice it to say his performance is pretty indescribable. To everyone (including myself) who doubted his casting, we are officially Chris Nolan's bitch. He can cast Paris Hilton as the Catwoman and we'll know she will be perfect.But let me take a moment to talk about Aaron Eckhart. In many ways he is the star of the film. He obviously has the biggest arc and seems completely genuine the entire time. There's nothing artificial about him at all. And that makeup, oh my god that makeup! Picture the animated series Two Face made real! It is amazing! It is fascinating, repulsive and 100% real looking.Maggie Gyllenhaal. Yes she is a far superior actress to Mrs. Cruise, but I still say she's ugly as shit. If I had to find one fault it would be that the woman Bruce Wayne wants is a dog.Everybody knows where these characters begin and where they end up, but the way Nolan fills in the blanks so naturally is amazing. I've never seen Gordan realized better. He is a true hero in this film.I don't even want to get into the plot because you should just get swept up into it. I'll just say that it reminded me a lot of The Usual Suspects. That's the vibe I got from the trailer and that's the way it went, though in all kinds of beautiful ways.TDK also spends a fair amount of time as a meditation on what being a hero actually means. I wouldn't say it reaches a conclusion but it's theories are very interesting.I won't tell you how the film ends, but films don't end this way. This is not a Hollywood ending. It's a very bold choice. I wouldn't call it a downer ending, just a somber one. I don't want you to get the idea it's some sort of european “everybody dies” thing because it's not at all. It's a slightly different take on the Batman myth that is powerful and poignant.TDK is so gutteral and primal that by the time the lights come up you will feel like you've just emerged from a particularly purging therapy session.TDK smashes all expectations. I don't think it's possible to have too high an expectation for this film. It's the perfect Batman film. Period.I don't know how the hell Nolan tops this, but I'll be front and center when he tries.
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in book form. in film form, it sucks donkey balls. alan moore is right, once again.
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Yeah, it sucks so much that it gets brought up in EVERY comic book movie talkback and practically every other talkback as well. Every comic book movie to follow is compared to the Dark Knight. That's how much it sucks.
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It's like a plastic toy imitation of a real working piece of machinery. It fails on so many levels compared to the comic from which it was adapted that even the parts that DO work are disappointing. That movie irritates me more and more every time I think about it. Zack Snyder's Watchmen does not exist in my dojo. -
well said. the film drained every nuances and depth of the characters, and replaced them with a video game sensibility. the book made the drawn characters feel real, the film made the live actors look like cartoon characters.
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Take your Bryan Singer and shove it studios.
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When it is probably the most faithful comic adaptation of all time, well except for the squid ending of the original of course. The movie ending is better and that's just all there is to it.
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...more like Taxi Driver than 300. (And I liked 300! Need to add that to the honorable mention list.) Snyder should have used that R rating to make us feel the moral decay, not the "weight" of cartoon violence. Same way V for Vendetta should have been much more Children of Men than the Matrix. But I digress. Anyway, we've all been through this. I'd rather count the comic book movie blessings we've just had bestowed. "She did a spread on me too. And then wrote a nice article." -
AN OUTLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWW
totally unrelated but seeing this commercial for the 800th line has made me wonder why nobody jumping over how horrible this delivery is. -
I appreciate Snyders fidelity, I really do, but the tone was ALL wrong, the film just had no soul.
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May 07, 2010 2:44:14 PM CDT
Return of Fett, you're the only other person I've heard
by industrykiller!
Draw the 9/11 paralell with the Dark Knight. Good form man. Im sure others have done it, but I can't believe more people don't see hte obvious allegory of Batman as the perfect hero. The anti-politician who will never sell us out, will always do the right thing even when it's difficult, and will never abuse his power. It's one of th reasons I actually like the cell phone device. When Batman destroys it, even if it could be an invaluable tool, it shows how power will never corrupt his ideals, unlike certain leaders of the country at the time.
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What a pointless list, there aren't 10 great superhero films in existence. At the top are The Dark Knight and the first Iron man, after that it ranges from pretty good to awful. Although I did like The Incredible Hulk, I think it's a better Hulk film than it is actual good movie. Donners Superman and Burtons Batman are also good, but good more in a relics of their time sort of way then truly excellent films. Kind of like Greek Theatre, great history, but so much better has been done.
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but IM2 was at the level of a "summer film worth seeing". It wasn't the second coming of Jesus. Its just the other shit we have to watch is SO BAD that when something comes along that is what its supposed to be rather than some half assed first weekend money grab, everyone flips.
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May 07, 2010 2:50:47 PM CDT
I've had people argue with me about the 9/11 connection
by return_of_fett
But that's because they're fucking stupid. All anyone has to do is look at the fucking poster:http://rvivekshanmugam.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/the_dark_knight_poster1.jpgI don't think Nolan could have made it any fucking clearer.
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I found the "after credits" scene on youtube if anyone doesn't want to watch the credits.
http://tiny.cc/oo4io
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a "superhero movie" in the same vein as the Iron Man movies. TDK would have worked as a movie that wasn't a Batman movie (replace Batman with a cop, Joker with a criminal, etc), it was a detective movie that just happened to have Batman as the protagonist. I don't know if it's the best superhero movie ever made, but in terms of movies based on superhero, it's the best actual movie.
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....but it wouldn't have been nearly as good.
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I've heard a lot of political discussions about TDK, it's very much a Bush era film. The theme of retaliation and escalation ties in with the war on terror. Are our actions stopping terrorism, or are we bound to create a new breed of terrorist? I know a lot of Republicans who actually took that "he's not the hero we need, but the one we deserve, so we chase him" speech at the end to parallel Bush, being someone who was doing what he believed would help while being hated and protsted, the right guy at the right time. Also, it hurt my rewatchability of Iron Man 1 that Dark Knight could deal with political themes yet Iron Man actually somewhat functioned in our world, with the war on terror, and really glossed over it.
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People actually argue about that? TDK would be a vastly different film if 9/11 had never happened. In fact, the film might not even exist.
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Yeah, it wouldn't have been as good but it still would have worked as a movie. I'm just saying that trying to say whether or not IM2 is better than TDK is comparing apples to oranges, they're two entirely different types of movie.
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I never will.
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...in that a list of, say, "best western/cowboy movies" would feature a lot more objectively GREAT movies than a list of "best comic/superhero movies." But that doesn't mean you can't compile an objective list of best superhero movies. I think that's where people get confused and start flaming each other, they don't realize there are many standards by which to judge a movie. Apples and oranges, man. I think some of the better superhero movies would rank as good-if-not-great action movies, and then many of those great action movies would rank as good-but-not-great movies as compared to the objectively great movies of cinema history. Compared to the terrible-if-not-drunk superhero movies we had been used to seeing, though, I'll take Nolan's Batman and Favreau's Iron Man any day of the f'ing week.
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Did we see anyone die other than a few guards and Whiplash? The movie seemed to be too safe for my tastes. Letting the kid with the iron man mask get killed would have made some major emotional impact on Tony Stark, instead everyone lives and they can continue like nothing happened.
They had the makings of a great movie and squandered it by making it safe for kids. -
in your list? It certain fits as a superhero movie.
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When Rhodes lands in the hanger I thought Optimus was going to come out of there.
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if they had given the movie to a dirrector that would had focused on the themes, characterization, mood and spirit of the comic. Instead, they had gave the movie to a guy who could ony ber bothered with the most superficial elements from the comic, to copy and paste the comic images, and to add his own lame ideas. What a fucking wasted oportunity. I waited 10 years for that crap?
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You know you want it.
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would only contain 2 titles: THE DARK KNIGTH and BATMAN BEGINS. I pity the fools who think otherwise.
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... ROBOCOP would look like if made today.
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He replicated the comic book. he used the images as storyboards, copied the dialogue, even took the music cues. I frankly can't understand people who say he somehow fucked it up. They can't pin it down to anything he did or didn't do, so they fall back on "mood" or "spirit" or some shit.
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May 07, 2010 3:31:55 PM CDT
"Some motherfuckers are always tryin to iceskate uphill"
by mattmanreturns
How can you not love Blade?
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Wasn't Aranofski working on a remake? Like most Aranofski projects I assume he got really fucking weird with it and it got pulled?
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FUCKING BLAMO! Hell fuckin' yeah!
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...but I guess I was mostly aiming for stuff adapted from actual specific comic books, and not superhero movies inspired by comics in general. Otherwise I'd throw stuff like Special and Defendor in there too.
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for a longer film it would have to be ironman vs robocop vs terminator vs predator vs rambo.
but a more interesting film will have to be rambo vs mclaine vs dutch vs... oh wait, that's actually happening. THE EXPENDABLES!! still looks like crap though. i hope, no... i pray i'm wrong. -
May 07, 2010 3:40:39 PM CDT
Why does everyone think political commentary is the greatest thi
by starlesswinter7
Make a film about political criticism, and it's the most genius story ever told. What happened to films that just have well-told stories? Is saying something about humanity worth less than making a comment on government? It seems like most films that do the latter (almost always with a liberal mindset) are automatically praised.
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That's right, Snyder couldn't. That's the whole point. Becasue he's so limited as a filmmaker and intelelctually as a person. WATCHMEN was too much for him to bite, and it' shows. He didn't had the minerals to pull it offf, and it shows. Everythign that the movie fails, it's a show of his limitation. This Snyder guy, the most intellectual he ever got was 300, and that movie is retard beyond belief. Snyder's true talent is the same as that Abramanito guy, he's very good at selling himself, and the geeks buy the bullshit line hook and sinker. It's unbelievable! What the fuck is wrong to the geekry that now they have their asses owned by a bunch of hacks?
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More then the movies, the geekry loves the hype. Geekdom used to be about the movies. Now it's all about the hype. Fucking traitors to the cause.
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May 07, 2010 3:45:27 PM CDT
So when people say theylike the comic but hated the movie...
by return_of_fett
of Watchmen, what they're REALLY saying is that they wish he had made a movie with very little resemblance to Watchmen?Something tells me people were just going to bitch about that movie no matter what.
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Political comentary can and many times is one of the element sof a well told story. You ever considered that though? It's called layering, it's called enriching the story and thus the experience of watching the story unfold. Think about it. Consider it food for thoughs.
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Solid Snake did.
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@RETURN_of_FETT... lots of things wrong with the film. i went at great length about it at one time or another. just too lazy to repeat everything here again. i'm sure you can google it if you want. just look at the nixon's nose in the film. that pretty much sums up the film for me. fake and ridiculously stupid.
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Resemblance to the comic is more then just a shallow ass superficialities with the looks. You could had the looks AND the themes as well. Snyder couldn't make both, because he's INTELLECTUALLY LIMITED like a 13 years old boy. He made the movie like a 13 years old boy would if he had read the comic. The movie is at best a mockery and a parody of the themes and mood and characterizations found in the comic. to say Snyder is clueless about WATCHMEN is an understatment. The assclown who made 300 souldn't had been alowed to get close to WATCHMEN, much less direct a movie adaptation. It's like giving 2001 to be directed by Michael Bay, talk about wrong. That Zack Snyder man-child can go fuck himself.
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I know that political commentary CAN enrich a film, but many people act like it AUTOMATICALLY enriches a film. Big difference.
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In fact, he is one of the co-wroters. If there is one argument used that will never ever convince me to accept some bulslhit movie is the "the scriptwriter did it, don't blame my favorite hack". Yeah, i do blame the fucking hack, he's resonsible. snyder is mroe to blame for the failures of WATCHMEN then the writers. Snyder was responsible for presentation,a nd that movie's presentation is juvenile, to be charitable about it. Pretty fucking shallow ass stupid would be more acurate.
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Jesus Fuckin' Christ!Will somebody, I don't care who, get him to shut the fuck up, huh?
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The fuck are you babbling about? I think what you're really saying is that you don't understand political commentary and that frustrates you. So you just condemn it as stupid or whatever.At some point maybe you'll understand that politics isn't "dem bastards in Warshington", it's about society in general. It's about how people section themselves off into groups. It's about how people problem solve and relate to each other.TDK has fuck-all to do with tea baggers or Congress. It's about "what do we do in this new world formed by terrorism and fear?" TDK doesn't take a liberal vs. conservative stance at all. And THAT'S pretty fucking brilliant. how do we as a society decide where the moral boundaries should be? That's an intrigueing idea. How do we review those who get their hands dirty? Are they right? Are they wrong? Should we admonish them? Should we mimic them? All interesting questions that apparently went right over your fucking head. Sorry, maybe you should go back to polishing your gun and filling your spitoon.
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Not can, DOES. If the filmmaker can pull it off or not, that's another matter.
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IM2 and TDK are shit. At least TDK can boast a truly thrilling and memorable performance, though--"MY-DOGS-ARE-HOOOOONGGRRRYYYY!"--fuckin' genius. Seriously, though, this is it--I'm done w/ you morons. I'm lookin' at you, Fat Boy, and all your miserable cohorts. This site is bullshit, and you should be ashamed. Capone, you need to shut the fuck up.
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They mistake the forest for the trees all the bloody time.
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Snyder completely missed the point of Watchmen.Okaaaaaaay.
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If the Max Fischer Players from Rushmore had done a shot-for-shot adaptation of Watchmen, with a cardboard squid and the pirate interludes and the two Bernies, would it still be "just as good" as the comic? Actually, I think it would probably be a lot closer to the spirit of the book than what Snyder came up with. The super-stylization (as I'd refer to it when I'm feeling generous... "fake-ness" when I'm not) of his production worked for 300, but it completely backfired for Watchmen. Again, I'd have liked to have seen it more in the style of Taxi Driver or Seven, not 300/Sin City. -
Saying that it DOES automatically enrich a film is narrow-minded. Now, your second comment (if a filmmaker can pull it off or not) is what I'm talking about. The term "political commentary" does not mean include the word "good". RETURN_OF_FETT, I'm not talking about TDK. Where did I say that? It was a good film; not the best piece of art I've ever seen, but it was a quality movie.
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Attacking me isn't necessary. I wasn't defending the guy, I'm simply saying the movie was primarily written by that Snake guy. Watchmen is the only Snyder movie I've liked so far. I hated 300 and Dawn of the Dead. I just don't think Watchmen is all that different from the comic, honestly (apart from the ending).
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Seriously, it's like having our own personal autistic Borat. I thought you had an understanding about the specialists.
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They're not as highly regarded as some of the other comics films by you folks.
They're incredibly faithful to the source material. The main character appears exactly as he does in the books. The creator, Mike Mignola, was directly involved in both films. That's a rare thing.
The movies have everything you'd ever want in a comic book film. An original, cool-looking, wise-cracking hero (with a troubled soul beneath the "armor", naturally), a great supporting cast, including other freaks who are members of the team, and finally, nasty mythical monsters to go toe to toe against.
Also, the Hellboy movies have a strong supernatural/occult flavor that helps set them apart from your normal capes and tights stories. That's a big plus. The Hellboy films stand out in the crowd.
And no love for Sin City? Another excellent adaptation made with bold visual flair and featuring a riveting performance by Mickey Rourke in the central role.
Those 3 films are superb examples of how to adapt comics to screen, as opposed to Watchmen, which was a total fucking mess. -
I know you were basically joking, but I actually woul dlove to see that idea come to fruition! (re: Max Fischer Players)
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but to sum up...
@RETURN_of_FETT: right on tdk, wrong on watchmen.
@IndustryKiller! & ebonic: right and bloody right.
@MattmanReturns: director > writer, in the hierarchy.
@Al Swearengen: at least he's talking about a movie. you're just a screamer.
@AsimovLives:right on watchmen, still wrong on... what was it the film that we argued about? cant remember. anyway, i'm right and you're wrong on that one.
:) -
A Deadpool/Cable movie
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starring the ever shitty Kristen Bell.
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May 07, 2010 4:20:56 PM CDT
4 out of 5 stars, IRON MAN 2 is an extension of the original
by jdanielp
Easily makes the top 10 superhero movies of all time, ranking above BATMAN BEGINS.
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That is a tough call, in all seriousness.
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And IM2 has already garnered $132m @ the box office
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All that cussing makes you look so cool, man! If I used "fucking" in every other sentence, I'm sure it would really drive my point home, too.
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Specialist, huh? So, if'n I understand your meaning, you're saying that cocksucker is like one of them degenerate tit-lickers?
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G'day,
Saw Iron Man this morning at the 11:00 showing. The movie has excellent cinematagraphy and some really fantastic action sequences. The best action though is watching the eye candy in the form of Scarlett Johansson. She looks fantastic in this. A movie like this might get lost in the expanded array of characters that get introduced but not in Iron Man 2. Everybody gets a chance to display their acting chops,from Mickey Rourke as the villian Whiplash to the limited role by Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. It's a fun movie to watch,with the only complaint being a few more appearances by the title character would not have hurt. The movie violence is of the harmless variety for the most part. It is smart,funny,very cool and I give it 3.5 stars.
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...when the IRON MAN case was being tossed from the car, Ms.Potts should have slid it off her lap like it weighed 50 pounds, not 5. (I appreciate the little details.)
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...I forgot Sin City in the honorable mention category of my list, but I wouldn't rank either the first HB or SC in the top ten. My problem with Hellboy is that, while the artistic influence of Mignola was almost perfectly realized, the story had too much "studio notes" clogging it up to work, and it needed more of a horror atmosphere than the sci-fi/action tone it had. The movie only worked for me because of the genius casting of Ron Perlman as HB, but the shoe-horned Agent Myers character was a lame way to provide an everyman with which to identify (it should just have been Hellboy and his freak friends, a mistake corrected rather hastily in the sequel.) Also, it actually suffers from Del Toro's compulsion to overfill everything with costumed weirdness and special effects (more so than Blade 2, IMO), when I was hoping for more of a restrained, Devil's Backbone approach. The sequel was much improved, but still a little too X-Men wannabe for my tastes. I'd like to see a stripped down Hellboy that just focuses on him doing his job, a la "The Corpse and the Iron Shoes" rather than always having super action adventures to save the world from total obliteration. But if Perlman puts on the horns again I'm definitely there. As for Sin City, Rourke as Marv (and to a lesser extent, Clive as Dwight) saved that movie from being a greenscreen version of a high school play. Bruce did his stoic best, but when that first scene with Bruce and Madsen played out, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach that didn't go away until Mickey Rourke showed up and just owned everything in sight. Some of Miller's dialogue is great on the page, but spoken aloud, just sounds worse than DTV/SyFy schlock. And Alba as the non-nude stripper was total fail. Both of those were decent movies that were completely saved by star making (or star-reinforcing) performances. But they definitely didn't fire on enough cylinders for me to call them great comic book movies.
And finky re: Max Fischer, you and me both! I had to revise that post a few times because I kept finding myself thinking that would actually be an awesome movie/play. The squid-bomb would DEFINITELY require earplugs. -
I bleat because I grow weary of that cocksucker's droll oration.
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Whiplash Could've fucking torn him in half if he wanted to, that was so fucking unrealistic yet very funny scene. A punch in the face from Iron man would turn your skull inside out. Tony never seemed in danger because you knew that shit was going to be resolved, Whiplash was so weak and the way he got beat, crossing the streams? Really Iron Man and War Machine, you are so gay you have to cross streams. The last scene is how the film should've started, way too fucking talky, I think this film should've ended bad for Tony, it was a giant commercial for the avengers and for thor instead of a standalone film. Everybody apparently is Jerry Seinfeld in Favreau's Iron Man Universe, It has more cringe indulging pun-filled dialgue than the Sex and the City, Tony creates a "NEW ELEMENT" because he moves around the globe in a fucking diorama from a video his dad made a billion years ago? what kind of crazy shit is that? Give me a fucking set-up for the mandarin not the gay Thor Hammer at the end. Scarlett was a waste of fucking time, I didn't see a love triangle anywhere. Tony didn't get laid in the whole film, nobody really got hurt in the whole film.
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And Swedgin, tit-licker might be being generous, given some of the wild and spurious accusations that get tossed around the seedier TB's. But what happens in Portugal, stays in Portugal.
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belongs in a different category from the other movies being talked about here. We could compare it to Kick-Ass, because they're both comic book-ish without any character actually possessing super powers. (Damn, I am a geek for even analyzing this shit.) In all pathetic seriousness, though, throw all the non-superpower "comic book" movies to the side. The list goes like this Spider-Man X-Men 2 Iron Man Spider-Man 2 Incredible Hulk Ang Lee's Hulk (that's really close, but while I love Lee's comic book editing and his striving for some operatic drama, you can't just have a Hulk movie without him laying waste to a lot of real estate) X-Men (great start with a pathetic budget, e.g., the cops looking up to mark to the audience where the floating cars are going while Magneto is levitating them conveniently off-screen) X-Men 3 (corny direction mostly, but the superpowered battles were straight from the wild action of the comics) Blade. And if the paragraphs don't form, I am appropriately embarrassed. But not of my list.
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Now, that's a fuckin' expression I've heard!
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than Batman, thus the inclusion in the list.
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Is really going to fucking awesome!
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I dont care about Iron Man 2, even though I read everything that is posted about it. I just care about The Dark Knight, the best movie that was ever put on film! I mean, come on... why should we even have posts about these other movies. I want to come here and talk about the genius of Christopher Nolan! Did he even make a movie before Batman Begins? Anyone want to trade pics of us masturbating to the Dark Knight? Anyway, I have to go now because my mom is making dinner
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Great points across the board. I'm looking at those films a bit differently now.
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Batman Begins was better than The Dark Knight. From any other perspective, TDK wins by a landslide. Batman Begins felt way more like a comic book movie (albeit a genius comic book movie) than TDK. Can't really compare IM2 and TDK in my opinion--they're way too different.
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does not mean that your movie while have the same artistic value and quality which the original artwork posses.They maybe be both visual mediums but they are different artforms.Thats why Watchmen failed as a film.The director tried to replicate the soul of another artist,instead of puting his own soul into his movie as it should be.that was Snyber biggest mistake,he should have his own vision for his film but instead he tried to copy something as identical as possible in order to satisfy the fucking fanboys.idiot.
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Oh wait. Sin City didn't fail.
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he was a dream project of his,thats why he left DAG in order to make the film.He didnt just try to copy the frames of the comic,he tried to adapt it into the medium of cinema.In fact ignore even Sin City.The remake of Psycho is even a better example.it was replicated frame by frame into the same medium but it still failed.why?
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Loved the flick. Favreau knows what he's doing. Downey is on the money as Tony Stark. Im still not sure why everyone feels compelled to become a "comic movie expert evaluator" though, starting with Capone and going on down the line.
Everyone's a critic. It's hilarious. Let's just start by saying that the current Batman rendition is THE BAR so I laugh when we get:
"largely perfect Batman films"
by we_pray_for_mad_skillz Proving in a single statement that you know nothing about Batman or cinema. Congrats.
You think "Mad Skillz??"
That was a tough pill for you but when Capone rifted about how much he hated seeing Scarlett in tight clothes (Are you #@%#$@^# kidding me???) you were cool with that? Don't quit your day job bro... -
But if the artist doesn't get Zooey just right I will gut him like a fish.
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The difference between the WATCHMEN comic and the movie are world aparts.
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"Narrow_minded" was a very poor choice of words by you. It even gets irony, given the context of what was being discussed and the thesis you advocate.
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Like the old Batman films before Nolan and like with SPIDER-MAN 3 this film suffers, I repeat, SUFFERS from too many characters and villains. The plot meanders along with no real purpose. What exactly are we supposed to care about happening for most of the movie? It's so poorly developed that when Tony finally gets his Daddy Loved Me moment it rings hollow and is left meaningless. Fun in its parts but ultimately quite EMPTY entertainment that has lost everything that made the first IRON MAN so endearing because you cared what was happening. AICN really needs someone like MORIARTY that can create a solid and insightful review. Only even over at HitFix Drew hasn't posted a review which says volumes (but there are lots of interviews which is even more telling in light of no review posted by Drew).
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Why every fanboy geek in the solar system had to compare every comic book movie to the fucking dark knight. Was TDK great? Gods damn right it was, but it was a completely different character from a completely different company set in a completely different fantasy land. I enjoy seeing comic characters being real and gritty, a'la TDK, but sometimes I just want some over the top, campy fun- which was exactly what the first IM delivered, and IM2 is more of the same. As for all of you saying, " some plot elements aren't real". MORONS! It's a fuvking guy in a hot rod red gold titanium alloy suit that can out fly, out maneuver, and out gun a fighter jet! He can get bladted out if the sky by a tank and be ok, but oh dear comic book gods-don't let him do anything as comic hooky and unrealistic as create a new element to save his life...
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Although, I would have found a way to include Burton's Batman- if nothing else for Nicholson's Joker. And- did you ever notice when supes screams and takes flight after kidders death he has fillings? How did the man of steel get cavities?
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1. Mother fuckin swamp thing
2. Elektra
3. Catwoman
4. Spawn
5. The late 70's, early 80's spiderman flicks with the mirrored lenses for eyes
6. Fantastic four '94
7. The incredible hulk returns( made for tv, first appearance of Thor)
8. The cap movies from the 80's- had a nasty lookin red skull
9. Superman IV the quest for peace- loved how Supes all of a sudden had telekinesis
10. Lundgren's punisher
just kidding- the punisher and swamp thing were actually good- used to watch swamp thing with my dad, makes me a bit nostalgic...
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