Superhero Film #245: Iron Man

I remember waaaaaaay back in 1989 while riding in a cart through the local grocers seeing what at the time and probably to this day what was the BIGGEST cereal toy I have ever seen: the Batman bank. Shrink-wrapped to a box of Batman cereal, the free toy overshadowed the box! I had to have it, and having obtained the holy grail of kids cereal toys, I now HAD to see this Batman movie. I knew little of Batman at the time, being only five years old at the time. Much of my knowledge was based on the advertising that was coming out at the time. I knew Batman lived in a giant mansion with a butler named Alfred and that Batman loved Diet Coke and hated the Joker. Regarding the Joker, based on an action figure that I owned I knew that he could turn his white skin to pink when left in the freezer for ten minutes and back to white when placed in hot water.

While the Batman marketing machine greatly influenced my life in ’89, it wasn’t until the VHS release of Batman that I witnessed the film itself. I loved Batman! The film had every element that would later become the standard for telling a superhero movie. (A)The hero’s origin is told, (B)the hero and supporting cast do their thing, (C)the villain’s origin is depicted and an evil scheme is set in motion, (D)the hero faces the villain and the villain dies. Then, the final shot features the hero flying/climbing/leaping through the city as a voice-over states what they have learned, what they promise to do and they usually end with “I am (insert hero name here)!”. Roll credits. As time passed Spider-Man, The X-Men,The Punisher, Daredevil, Hulk, The Fantastic Four, Batman Begins and Superman Returns arrived and each of these films followed the Batman format. And as each film came, my excitement and wonder dwindled. Sure these are excellent films, but I’ve seen the format so many times that now I’ve come to expect A,B and C to occur to reach D. Sum everything up in an inner monologue. Roll credits.

Now here we are in 2008, dozens of superhero films later and “Iron Man” has come and I’ve seen it. And while A,B, C and D occur, there are surprisingly a lot of elements that go left when a usual superhero movie goes right. What follows are The Top Five Ways “Iron Man” Stands Out From The Rest

1: Location

While 95% of the superhero movies exist in New York or the East coast, Iron Man is set in Los Angeles, California. A smart move for the film’s creators, this change from the comic books original NYC setting gives the film a different look and feel. Sort of a glossy, stark look. And yes, that was an unintentional Tony Stark pun.

2: Time Period

“Iron Man” successfully places the story in the present day. While the film could very well have been a period piece set during the 1963, thankfully our country is now in a very similar military situation in another part of the world. Replace Vietnam with Western Asia, and voila – Iron Man circa 2008! Thank you terrorism.

3: Visual Effects

Iron Man is at the advantage in visual effects with a metal suit concealing all signs of humanity. The CG double seamlessly blends with the tangible Iron Man suit, something other spandex-clad heroes struggle with when jumping between live action and digital. See the noodly Peter Parker of “Spider-Man” for an example of digital double gone wrong.

4: Villain

Tony Stark fights “The Dude” in a giant robot suit. While not groundbreaking, Jeff Bridges is the goofiest actor to play a bad guy since Willem Dafoe.

5: Final Scene

In the final moment of the film, Tony is asked who REALLY is the man inside Iron Man. Tony admission of “I’m Iron Man.” assures us that the sequel will avoid the secret identity plot which at this point is gasping for originality in the superhero film genre.

When it all comes down to it, is “Iron Man” a truly great superhero film?
No, it’s not great. In a genre of film that has become heavily saturated in the last twenty years, “Iron Man” goes in the good pile but doesn’t impact the genre enough enough to join the ranks of “Superman” (1978), “Batman” (1989) and “Spider-Man” (2002). If you see one superhero film this summer (that isn’t a sequel) see “Iron Man”, if you want a superhero film that could reinvent the genre see “The Dark Knight”.

I Believe in Harvey Dent

As the presidential primary and a number of local primaries come to a head in Pennsylvania, voters have been asked from every media outlet for candidate’s support. Over the past week I’ve received a sizable collection of postcards, a few e-mails and almost a dozen pre-recorded phone calls. The mailings and emails I can handle, but the phone calls have become my make-or-break for candidates. You call me, you lose my vote. Well, not really. I’ll still vote for the candidates I support, but three calls in a row during the last hour of work on a Friday is a bit much. So, is it wrong that the one candidate I leave my desk for to listen to their complete pre-recorded plea AND take a 2 minute survey for is the Gotham City D.A. Harvey Dent?

For those not in the know: The Dark Knight is the upcoming sequel to 2005’s Batman Begins, a gritty re-imagining of Batman. Hitting theaters July 18th, The Dark Knight is looking to be the Batman film audiences wished the previous film was. While Batman Begins villains Ra’s al Ghul and the Scarecrow were entertaining, the average person has no clue who these guys are. Thankfully The Dark Knight is giving us Harvey Dent aka Two Face and (sound of trumpet fanfare) THE JOKER! While these two alone are enough to put butts in the seats, Warner Brothers have really taken the film’s publicity to a whole new level.

Utilizing viral marketing (marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to increase brand awareness), Warner Brothers has created almost a dozen websites dedicated to fighting the Joker’s rise in crime, assisting the Joker in rising in crime and praising or defacing (no pun intended) Harvey Dent. ibelieveinharveydent.com is a near-perfect spoof of the Obama/Clinton campaign sites, including an updating map of Gotham showing the rise in support for Dent, endorsement videos and printable campaign support kits. The largest move the faux campaign has made so far is a nationwide tour of Dentmobiles, campaign support vans which show up in major cities to crowds of fans sporting homemade campaign gear chanting “Dent! Dent! Dent!”

On the reverse, a series of defacing sites have appeared as well as whysoserious.com a site dedicated to the Joker. Since the death of Heath Ledger the site has become a memorial, depicting a black ribbon atop a viral game. About a month after Ledger’s death, new Joker sites have cropped up. The latest being clowntravelagency.com. As with the previous Joker sites, Joker fans are asked to perform real-world tasks in order to obtain prizes. whysoserious.com awarded the first image of Ledger’s Joker to those who emailed the site, slowly revealing a photo as more emails came in. Another game asked fans to head to the streets taking photos of signage based on clues on the site. As the photos were sent in, select letters of the signs were placed on a page resembling a kidnapper’s clip-and-paste note revealing what is now the eerily fitting message on Ledger’s memorial site; “The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules.”

While the 2008 primary and eventual election envelops our lives, its rather funny that the best way to escape the election is to follow and participate in a mock-election for a man who was once played by an over-the-top Tommy Lee Jones. Some may say that fictional pop-culture has superceded interest in the real world, but I believe that people are still very committed to the electoral process. Ah, never mind. Why so serious? I believe in Harvey Dent.