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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

""Iron Man""

15 Comments -

1 – 15 of 15
Anonymous Potswain said...

In most action movies, the bad guys' henchmen are suicidally devoted to the cause, even if they are just in it for money.

Sad they've decided to ignore the Muslim menace: then you would have a group of thugs with a rational reason to be fanatically devoted to the cause to the point of death. OTOH, if the villains had some evolutionary reason to be true to the cause - such as the desire to spread their seed all over Central Asia, ala Ghengis Khan - that too would work.

6/18/08, 10:42 AM

Blogger Acilius said...

The fundamental flaw of comic books is that by using pictures to dispense with time-consuming verbal descriptions, they quickly chew through countless plot permutations, exhausting all but the most obsessive readers.

Steve-

This sounds interesting. What do you mean? Do comics, equipped with still pictures and text, "chew through" more storylines than do media which use moving pictures and sound? If so, how and why? I don't doubt you're right, I just don't get your drift.

6/18/08, 11:57 AM

Anonymous testing99 said...

Steve, Americans used to LOVE comics and comic books. Well, teen age boys because the stories were all about teen agers or young men low on the social status totem pole, nerdy and shy, whom girls had ill-concealed contempt for and the jocks tormented.

They were of course, often created by shy Jewish outsiders and loners, with artistic and writing skills that weren't in demand in High School.

What happened is that Comics slowly devolved after the speculator boom of the early 1990's into a very niche and expensive product aimed at men in their late thirties, and available only in specialty comic shops of which there are not many. Less than 2,000 nationwide. Only the "trade paperbacks" or collected story arcs are available in places like Barnes and Noble. There is not much money in comics, many properties are published simply to retain the rights (like Wonder Woman, which reverts back to the creator's estate if DC stops publishing).

Among Marvel fans, Iron Man is a well-known character, and as you point out has only one real superpower, that of building cool technology. His character is sort of throw-back, in that he's usually pitted against "the Mandarin" who has magic rings against Iron Man's unabashed Howard Hughes like love of technology and progress.

6/18/08, 1:12 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The first half of the movie was excellent, IMO. It's a little disheartening that they had to go for the old standby of the American corporate types being the bad guys, especially because in this case even greed wasn't a plausible motivation. What multicultural band of Eurasian Genghis Khan admirers is going to be a better customer for a defense contractor than the U.S. government? Even if the arms dealers were amoral traitors, there is no financial incentive for them to do business with warlords; the warlords can't pay enough.

Jeff Bridges looked a little like Wayne Dyer bald.

- Fred

6/18/08, 1:37 PM

Blogger Kevin said...

It's a fun movie. "I am Iron Man" is not Downey's last line, however. If you haven't seen it, stay through the credits for an additional bit of footage, setting up a sequel.

6/18/08, 2:19 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"...The title of the song was conceived by Ozzy Osbourne; As a child Ozzy would spray paint Ironman and Ozzy Ironman everywhere he went. Geezer Butler took to writing the lyrics around the title, but was careful not to make it about the comic book character so as to avoid a copyright infringement lawsuit."
(wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man_(song)

6/18/08, 3:30 PM

Anonymous David Davenport said...

OTOH, if the villains had some evolutionary reason to be true to the cause - such as the desire to spread their seed all over Central Asia, ala Ghengis Khan - that too would work.

Isn't spreading the seed of the faithful the real gist of Islam?

6/18/08, 6:32 PM

Blogger Mild Colonial Boy, Esq. said...

I think the song is more likely to be "based on" the Ted Hughes' children's story 'Iron Man' ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Man_(novel) )

6/18/08, 6:34 PM

Anonymous Half Sigma said...

I thought the movie sucked. The whole plot can be fit into three sentences: (1) Good guy builds Iron Man suit; (2) Bad guy builds Iron Man suit; (3) Good guy and bad guy fight it out in their Iron Man suits--guess who wins?

6/18/08, 8:16 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

(1) Good guy builds Iron Man suit; (2) Bad guy builds Iron Man suit; (3) Good guy and bad guy fight it out in their Iron Man suits

What's so bad about that?

6/18/08, 9:17 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sort of like life...

1. Get born
2. Some stuff happens
3. Die

Citizen Cane it's not, but getting to three is more fun than most movies.

6/18/08, 9:23 PM

Anonymous bkult the world is round said...

The Black Sabbath song starts with Ozzy Osborne intoning "I am Iron Man!" in a robotic voice, so either the film has copied the song or the song has copied the comic.

6/18/08, 10:26 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

In contrasting present vs past celebrated tech tycoons you left out the more important contrast between Jobs (Dell, Case, etc) and previous tech tycoons: Jobs has no technical training or abilities - he is fundamentally a marketing/sales guy.

Today, Tony Stark would be a smooth-talking trust fund blesse MBA who wouldn't know the inside of a lab from a Star Trek movie set.

Thus has the world shifted.

6/18/08, 11:39 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"the leading man in a $186 million production must be insurable, and his work ethic should provide a role model for the crew"

I seem to remember Michael Caine saying years ago something along the lines of; he knew he wasn't the greatest actor in the world but he always turned up to work on set, on time, in the morning and didn't throw tantrums over the size of his trailer. The message being directors and producers knew they could count on him not to hold up production.

6/20/08, 6:49 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

For everyone complaining about the bad guys not being straight up and up Muslims, the terrorist organization was called "The Ten Rings", a reference to one of Iron Man's enemies, the Mandarin. Like a lot of Marvel movies, its a nice setup for the next movie, and a nice little fan service. As another side note, one of the Mandarin's powers was mind control.

6/23/08, 2:14 AM

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