Is IRON MAN really good, or everything else so far in 2008 has been bad?

May 2, 2008

Iron Man was one of my favorite comic books growing up.  I think because he was easiest to draw.  Spider-Man had too many web-lines and his acrobatic stances are too difficult to put on paper if you are really only a circle and stick drawer.  But also because I liked how smart Tony Stark was/is.  My favorite parts in the comics always came when Iron Man’s suit somehow always had trouble (low batt, broken jets, no oxygen, etc) but Tony Stark was always so smart to find a scientific solution in the midst of being blasted by bombs by the bad guys.

So, I find the movie very good because it showed how smart Tony Stark is, especially when he was able to devise that first suit of armor with all the needed power supply in a cave with spare parts.  It’s actually good propaganda to the millions of teenagers watching this film to find engineering cool.

I was happy to see that the Mark I armor he used to escape Afghan forces was not clunky and had cool weapons and almost (almost) martial arts movements.  That made for a more cinematic and dramatic escape sequence.  By the time we see the Mark III suit, when he is flying along side fighter jets, the summer movie satisfaction is complete.

It’s amazing that the Iron Man rating on Rotten Tomatoes is as high as 95% positive reviews.  I have a feeling the movies that have come out in 2008 have been so feeble that the first thing of any quality to come along garnered so many thumbs up.  I think for this movie to rank as high as "Batman Begins" and "Spider-man 2" in all-time best superhero movies will be a stretch, but I think the sequel will not be encumbered anymore with set ups, so we can expect better battles and challenges to the characters.