Iron Man
Director: Jon Favreau
Year Released: 2008
Rating: 1.5
War-monger/weapons salesman Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr., chock full of sass) realizes that making the tools used to kill innocent people of Middle Eastern descent is bad (boo!) so he decides to use his mechanical expertise to craft a suit to fight against evil (yaaay!). Thoroughly dumb example of what David Foster Wallace called F/X Porn (or, nowadays, CGI Porn), with the audience oohing and ahhhing when the suit comes together, with all its joints and interlocking parts and special features (missiles everywhere!) and less so with its rather mundane plotting and from Downey's incessant dry sarcasm. Stealing the show is a metallic arm-thing that 'extinguishes' RDJ when he's on fire, and there are your prerequisite advertisers (gasp! I love that Bvlgari watch!) to flood your subconscious. It's odd how comic books themselves are still regarded as 'nerdy' and yet comic book movies reach all layers of the populace....
