Well, I think the movie itself was okay. One of the things I like about the "Iron Man" franchise is that it's not sinking into the entire "dark, brooding, ambigious" hero stereotype that most other works of this type are. Iron Man is still about over the top fun and superhuman swashbuckling when you get down to it, this version of Stark has a sort of childlike glee/wonder about the whole superhero thing that is a great counterpoint to other sueprhero movies like "The Dark Knight".InnerRebellion said:
That said it also illustrates some of the weaknesses of trying to put comic properties into movie format. Comics work because you can build this huge, interwoven universe between titles and having them cross over. With movies heroes for the most part have to exist entirely within their own cosm, and the efforts made to address this seem to have failed somewhat. This also hurts the depth of certain characters.
I think Justin Hammer was especially bad in this movie because he's the kind of character that needs time to develop. Also turning him into comedy relief of a sort (the bit with War Machine's "super missle" being the biggest punchline) was a mistake. In the comics if Hammer is involved, you can pretty much guarantee the bad guys are going to have some impressive hardware despite everything. In this movie, well... this portrayal didn't work as a villain or do justice to the character. But then again I'm not sure how they could have really made this guy a serious adversary in a two hour movie without taking away from other things. I could be wrong (it's been a while) but I seem to remember this guy built all the armor for "The Right" which was a fairly credible threat for a while, among other things. Hammer for the most part tends to act behind the scenes, but still I sort of felt the finale should have been a two on two battle, with Whiplash, and some kind of totally Hammer-designed death machine. For everything, Hammer *is* supposed to be an uber-genius who is almost the equal of Tony Stark (who himself runs just short of Reed Richards, Doctor Doom, and other Marvel Universe big brains).
I will also say that I got the impression that this movie was not setting up the entire "Avengers" thing as much as people might think, it seemed to be creating an "out" for the Avengers movie to *NOT* include Iron Man, despite previous lead ins. Something that would not surprise me since the amount of money Robert Downy Jr. is likely to command for doing that movie is going to be high, along with the amount of screen time he's likely to request.
Sometimes fans tend to forget how much movie stars demand for their work, and the fact that by agreeing to do a movie on the cheap, they can sometimes hurt themselves in later contract negotiations. This is why movies generally can't be filled with the ideal big-name actors to play various characters. Especially when you consider many successful actors are going to scorn bit parts, and fear how certain "fan" movies might hurt their perception as a serious actor.
Now granted, the other movies that would tie into "The Avengers" seem to have no names for the most part, but if we were to assume going with the "Ultimate" theme that we're going to have Samual L. Jackson, Scarlet Johannson , Robert Downy Jr., and Ed Norton (The Hulk) already, that's a massive wad of cash, and we haven't even gotten into Captain America, Thor, and any potentially big name actors doing supporting roles that this might require.
The end result is that I sort of suspect this huge "Avengers" movie might be a disappointment and some of the big name people we want to see are going to be missing. I am hopefully wrong, but I am sort of thinking Robert Downy Jr. won't be in The Avengers...
