(actually wrote something before but with the whole quick reply/reply thing . . .)
Watched this last thursday and I have to admit that I enjoyed it, much like nearly everyone else did.
Now this was not a perfect movie. It terribly underutilized some of the darn fine actors they had. Gwyneth Paltrow in particular was not used to her best,
being relegating to, as one critic put it, a Girl Friday role. And there are some plot holes, such as why did Stane keep a very incriminating piece of
evidence? Why was a CEO making a weapons demonstration? Things like that.
However it was still a darn fine action movie. As someone else put it, it's the anti-Superman Returns (not that I didn't enjoy that movie as well), in
that it's about explosions.
Maybe the reason why it's such a good movie is because it felt no need to hew to the original source. It goes to show that the idea that if the original
source gets in the way of a good story, then jettison it. It's why the movie Godfather is not much like the novel. It's why the new Battlestar
Galactica isn't much like the old one.
Let's look at the original Iron Man stuff: weapons designer Tony Stark steps on a landmine in southeast Asia and gets kidnapped by commies. He builds a
suit of armor that serves as a heart-magnet thing and then goes back to America. He paints his armor gold to make it less scary and continues making weapons.
And so on. Howard Hughes in a suit of armor was what Stan et al. were going for. And you could make a movie about that. But this movie is the better for
letting all of that go.
-murmur
Watched this last thursday and I have to admit that I enjoyed it, much like nearly everyone else did.
Now this was not a perfect movie. It terribly underutilized some of the darn fine actors they had. Gwyneth Paltrow in particular was not used to her best,
being relegating to, as one critic put it, a Girl Friday role. And there are some plot holes, such as why did Stane keep a very incriminating piece of
evidence? Why was a CEO making a weapons demonstration? Things like that.
However it was still a darn fine action movie. As someone else put it, it's the anti-Superman Returns (not that I didn't enjoy that movie as well), in
that it's about explosions.
Maybe the reason why it's such a good movie is because it felt no need to hew to the original source. It goes to show that the idea that if the original
source gets in the way of a good story, then jettison it. It's why the movie Godfather is not much like the novel. It's why the new Battlestar
Galactica isn't much like the old one.
Let's look at the original Iron Man stuff: weapons designer Tony Stark steps on a landmine in southeast Asia and gets kidnapped by commies. He builds a
suit of armor that serves as a heart-magnet thing and then goes back to America. He paints his armor gold to make it less scary and continues making weapons.
And so on. Howard Hughes in a suit of armor was what Stan et al. were going for. And you could make a movie about that. But this movie is the better for
letting all of that go.
-murmur