Mari Ness - Iron Man, part 2

I never got into Iron Man or the Avengers, even in my heaviest comic reading days. It wasn't merely because the original Avengers shared the then ubiquitous Marvel trend of adding token female characters with generally passive superpowers which emphasized their fragility (thus, Invisible Girl of the Fantastic Four merely goes invisible and puts little shields around herself (the powers displayed in the movies are considerably later additions); Marvel Girl can move small things around, but usually hides and comes out at the last minute, if at all; worst of all, the Wasp grows tiny, as if to emphasize her comparative powerlessness – I've never been able to stand the Wasp.) They just seemed, I don't know, unrealistic. And by unrealistic here I don't mean the whole preposterous concept of a woman that could turn into the size of a wasp (sigh), but rather that not one issue ever gave me the feel that these characters would actually work together, or would want to actually work together – or indeed, that any of the Avengers were anything other than imported characters (Captain America) or sad shades of earlier characters (taken to extremes with the Vision, revealed as merely an android of a previous character, not to mention the ridiculous storyline where his children ended up not even existing, but Giant Man was not exactly an original character type, and Iron Man owes quite a bit to Batman.) Even Tony Stark's alcoholism felt just like another Marvel angst saga. I never felt the storylines, and never felt drawn in. I'd read an issue here or there, but that was about it.

I was expecting the same thing from the movie. But surprisingly, I was drawn in – this because the movie took the time to be something other than a mere action flick, or even a mere superhero angst flick. The script sets the film in a contemporary, very realistic Afghanistan, and doesn't flinch from showing terrorism and the price of war before moving into more action flick territory. This grounding not only gives a surprisingly real feel to a pretty preposterous storyline (er, he, um, made some super battery thing that his own company couldn't develop in a cave in Afghanistan? And just how careless would his watchers really have been, and who seriously thinks that any terrorists would believe that a single person could, even with parts, put together a major missile system in a cave in Afghanistan? I mean, really, and yet, the film makes it work) but also makes us feel that this could be really happening, while giving more than a token look at the grey morality of weapons manufacture and torture. (Incidentally, a large number of people, alas, will probably watch this film and still come out not realizing that the U.S. government has also been practicing waterboarding….but I digress. Back to the movie.) ) This is quite a lot for a superhero movie. Obviously, quite a lot of this is wish fulfillment stuff, both a "AUUGH, THE ONLY WAY I CAN COMBAT THE GREY MORALITY OF THE WAR ON TERROR IS BY GOING INSANE AND PUTTING ON A METAL SUIT WHERE I CAN TALK TO MY BRILLIANT BRITISH ROBOT AND SHOOT THINGS," and a "BUT AT LEAST I, AN INDIVIDUAL, CAN AND AM DOING SOMETHING, RIGHT?" Hmm.

This may be why this is one of the few movies I've seen that generated spontaneous cheers from the audience – that realistic background forces us to genuinely care about the supporting characters, and gives the villains genuine, believable motives, at least, up until the last ten minutes when all of this is abandoned for a pretty typical hero vs. villain fight, with pretty good special effects and those ludicrous high heels I was complaining about in the earlier post.

I doubt that any of this would have worked if Robert Downey, Jr. hadn't been playing Tony Stark – his Tony Stark is an utter asshole, but played with Downey with just enough charm to keep him likeable. Any less, and the first few scenes might have convinced us that the terrorists should have just killed him. The script also helps – it gets in a few good laughs at the right places, and with the exception of the aforementioned slightly overoptimistic terrorists, everyone is fairly believable.

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So, is the next Iron Man flick going to focus on Tony Stark's alcoholism, as I originally thought this one would (actually, I thought it would come up more in this movie, but they did at least keep a strong motif of drinks in the film) or, as that final scene would suggest, on the creation of the Avengers? And if the second, which Avengers? I understand that Robert Downey, Jr. makes an appearance in the Hulk film, suggesting that the Hulk could make an appearance, but otherwise, seriously, who? The very realistic nature of the Iron Man movie immediately means that Thor's out, and the same is true for Hercules, although Captain America could certainly make an appearance.

And then who? Ant Man/Giant Man? God help us, no. Hawkeye and Mockingbird? More than workable. The Scarlet Witch/Quicksilver? Hmm. The Black Panther? Sure. The Black Knight? Sure, if the Avengers weren't being recruited through the U.S. government, which might not want to use the term "Knight." The Black Widow? Maybe, if we go with the concept that the KGB is still training superspies and just not paying them enough to keep them from defecting. Ms. Marvel? That could be cool. She-Hulk? If Bruce Banner has a cousin in this summer's Hulk movie, I'll expect this one. Spider-Woman? Kinda hoping not.