Iron Man
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DVD Review
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Review
Iron Man
Disc 1
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) is a billionaire weapon designer that loves the party lifestyle with fast cars, fast women and magazine shoots. He is in Afghanistan demonstrating his new Jericho missile system to the military when his convoy is ambushed and captured by a terrorist organisation who attempts to force him into replicating the missile system for their own purposes. Stark obviously doesn’t want to build this weapon for the terrorists and so creates an Iron Suit with which to escape, this is the Mk1 suit, a crude iron structure that enables him to escape the clutches of the bad guys.
When back in the US he is a slightly changed man, I say party because he is still the cock-sure, party loving guy, but he also has had his eyes opened to the kind of person he was and saw first hand what his weapons were doing and so he works on perfecting the Iron Man suit through from the Mk2 all the way to the Mk3 and this is the sleek, cool Iron Man suit that shows us the birth of the latest superhero.
Robert Downey Jr plays the part of Tony Stark and he is perfect in the role. In the few movies that I have seen RDJ star I always feel that he is playing himself, his cocky one liners, his persona everything. However what differs from those other movies is that this movie needs that, and so RDJ is the perfect man to play Tony Stark/Iron Man. He plays the cocky guy so well, but also once he escapes from the caves in the mk1 suit we get a more thoughtful man whose previous experience has changed him somewhat and he is able to play both sides of the coin perfectly.
Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane is a good counter to RDJ’s Tony Stark, a big bear of a man who is the number 2 in the weapons company a charming guy that has an underflow of menace. The other main characters are Terrence Howard as Col James Rhodes and Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts. Howard doesn’t really have a massive role in the movie, but it does allow for smooth transition into the military, and Rhodes and Stark are good friends. Paltrow as the loyal PA is very good, she is confident, almost immune to the womaniser that Stark is, but she is also his rock and someone he relies on, there is a great chemistry between them and I would be surprised if that was not exploited in some when the sequels come along.
The suit itself is awesome, especially the mark 3 version in its partially red finish. It looks sleek and mean, loaded up with weaponry to take out the bad guy and matches RDJ personality in the movie. After looking at the extras you realise that the suit itself was a real piece of engineering both on a CGI level and the “real life” bits that they created. Everyone will want one.
There isn’t a massive amount of full on action in the film, this is not a film that just takes you through action set piece after action set piece, there is however a fair bit of character development which is normal and inevitable when we see the first in a series, however you never really feel that you are being cheated out of anything, there is enough action for us to buy into the film, and certainly enough to make us want to see a sequel. This is helped greatly by the special effects, The flying sequence when he shares some airspace with 2 F22’s is brilliant and the Sfx are seamless.
I’ve never read the comics so I have no idea how true to the source material the film is, although upon watching the extras it would seem that although there are a few changes such as it being set in the modern day rather than Vietnam the actual characters are quite true to the original and that will be nice for the purists out there. As a side note something that kept my interest going was that Iron Man has no super powers as such, he isn’t a Superman or Spiderman. He is an ordinary guy that like batman creates a suit and has access to gadgets and that is what he uses to achieve his goals, it will be interesting to see how this very human superhero fares in the future and how he overcomes his obstacles in future.
Extras: There are also some extras on Disc 1
Deleted/Extended Scenes: 11 Scenes in total. Nice extras, I enjoyed watching them but I wished they would have had a commentary so we know why they were cut. I wish they had kept them in, well most of them, they seem good fun although they were probably taken out for time purposes.
Iron Man: Armoured Adventures: An advert for the Animated Iron Man series
Disc 2
I am Iron Man:
A superb extra tacking us from pre-production all the way through production and everything inbetween, we see how the suit is created, we speak to the main actors although there is a fair bit of the “everyone is the best” type speeches, we speak to the director we find out about difficulties that they encountered on the shoot. This is what a making of extra should be.
The Invincible Iron Man:
We find out from Stan Lee, who also has a cameo in the film (as he has in all of them) about the origins of the Tony Stark/Iron Man character. It is an interesting extra but the “I am Iron Man” extra is the better of the two.
Wired: The Visual Effects of Iron man:
an almost 30 minute extra on the special effects of Iron Man, some pretty interesting stuff in here. When done well these extras that show the Sfx are always good and this one is no exception.
Robert Downey Jr. Screen test:
The main actor going through some screen tests, I was actually quite impressed at this, how he gets into the dialogue and character.
The Actors Process:
Robert Downey Jr and Jeff Bridges rehearse a scene from the film.
The Onion “Wildly Popular Iron Man Trailer to be adapted info full length film: I am not really sure of the purpose of this feature. It seems to be a joke of some kind where people discuss making the Iron Man trailer into a film.
Galleries:
This contains concept art, tech, unit photography and posters.
Presentation:
Daylight shots are beautiful, the colours are rich and sharp, dark scenes such as in the cave are a little too dark for my liking. Sound wise we have a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix and I think more could have been done with it. The surrounds were used but not really taken advantage of. For example in the flight sequence when Iron Man was up against the 2 F22s a lot more usage could have been made of the surrounds, but even then most of the sound seemed to come from the front array.
Overall:
A superb superhero movie and I cannot wait until the sequels come, the slight disappointment with the dark scenes and soundtrack in places does not spoil the film at all, purchase recommended.
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