There is only a single scene in Iron Man where the movie threatens to become a lie about advanced American firepower and the power (right?) it grants us to police the world. Luckily, the scene is short and bittersweet. The rest of the movie is like watching an excellent – detached, methodical – surgeon performing open heart surgery on the American body politic. “You have everything and you have nothing,” a convenient but not entirely one-dimensional Third World humanist tells us, via Tony Stark, at the start of the movie and it’s quite right.
The Tin Man is back and it’s never been a more compelling character. This is the finest of the Marvel adaptations and, not surprisingly, the first it financed.
Ana adds: “I like that Iron Man got his ass kicked by…” and was unable to defeat his opponent. In fact, it’s only when Stark’s likewise workaholic and lonely assistant blows up a magical sustainable energy reactor that the bad guy is defeated.
Could this be the best super hero movie made to date? Better than the first Superman?
Bonus: it really brought home just how much of a shit movie Transformers was. And, Audi / Marvel: that last Audi integration, with the perfectly white soccer mom and family, it nearly derailed the movie. Easy does it.