Iron Man (Single-Disc Edition)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, Robert Downey Jr., Terrence HowardBrand: Iron Man
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 126 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-09-30
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Paramount
Movie Reviews of Iron Man (Single-Disc Edition)
Movie Review: Love Iron Man? You'll Love This Movie. Never Heard of Iron Man? You'll Love This Movie.
Summary: 5 Stars
I really liked this film. It's the best Marvel Comics movie yet. As a long time comic book fan, I find this movie fascinating for how it combines elements of the original comics with new takes on the character, all to perfectly capture his essence.
Iron Man first appeared in 1963. Stan Lee who created the character and wrote his early adventures makes no secret of the fact that Tony Stark Was originally based on Howard Hughes. I'm not talking the later, paranoid, mentally unhinged, obsessively germophobic, hasn't-trimmed-his-fingernails-or-taken-bath-in-five years Howard Hughes, I'm talking the young, amazingly good looking, high-level genius, kinda-looks-ike-Errol-Flynn-and-bonks-any-gorgeous-Hollywood-starlet-he-wants-to Howard Hughes.
The early parts of the movie pretty much follow the 1963 origin. While in a foreign country supporting the American war effort (in 1963 it was Vietnam and doing a field review of Stark-designed weapons' performance, in 2008 it's updated to the War on Terror and hawking the Jericho missile system), Tony Stark is severely wounded in an explosion, a piece of shrapnel lodged near his heart that will in weeks work itself inward and kill him. Imprisoned with Professor Yinsen (originally Vietnamese, natch, in the movie not) they work together to free themselves from the evil warlord who has imprisoned them both. Tony builds an armored chest plate that will keep the shrapnel from piercing his heart, and around that he and Yinsen design and build a crude suit of armor, somewhat paradoxically inset with all the cutting edge technological weaponry that a high-level genius intellect, feverishly battling for freedom and against death, can invent when pushed to the edge under incredible time pressure. Tony uses the first, bulky, prototype Iron Man armor to escape but Yinsen dies in the attempt.
Stan Lee always felt that every good hero, no matter how powerful, should have a counterbalancing weakness. In Tony's case it's the damage to his heart, and the irony (pun intended) that the Iron Man armor (or at least the chest plate of same) is not just there to be his superheroic identity, it's a necessity to keep him alive. Tony can never take off the chest plate, he has to wear it constantly, hidden under his clothes when not Iron Man, openly when he is. Eventually this goes away when Tony's damaged heart is removed and replaced with a cybernetic heart of his own design. Overtones of the Wizard of Oz's Tin Man without a heart do occur to me.
But...I get ahead of myself. Back to the early comic books, and the movie's storyline.
When Tony returns to the world, in short order, having seen and felt the ravages of war up-close and personal, he terminates Stark Industries' production of war materiel. Up til this point, the movie is pretty much a well-produced updating of the original story.
The rest of the movie skips ahead and pillages ideas from Iron Man stories of decades later, specifically Iron Man's conflict with Obadiah Stane who starts out as Stark's business rival and eventually dons a set of armor called Iron Monger to become Tony's armored antagonist. (Iron Man is always at his best when he's battling high-tech armored villains with suits to pit against his own.) In the movie Stane is recast as Tony's business partner and paternal figure after his own father's death.
We do skip in the movie the iterations of Iron Man armor between the first gray suit and the most current versions which are visually based on Japanese samurai armor, very techno-geek manga-esque. In particular we skip the sleek design that Stark wore longer than any other suit, and for me has always been THE classic Iron Man.
Pepper Potts was an early cast member who then disappeared for decades before eventually being reintegrated into the Iron Man mythos. James Rhodes (Rhodey), though retconned as one of Stark's oldest friends, was actually a much later addition to the series, not first appearing until the late 1970s. They both work well as supporting characters in the movie. The robot Jarvis, for those who aren't comic book fans and thus don't get the little in-joke, is a play on the long running character of the Avengers' butler, Englishman Edwin Jarvis.
The linchpin of the film is Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of Tony Stark. When I first heard of his casting, it was from a guy bitching about what a BAD idea he thought it was. "Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, that's just ridiculous." I said slowly as I thought about it, "Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark....that's just F--KING BRILLIANT. Perfect casting." And it was. Downey Jr. can play an incredibly good looking, talented, fast talking, charming and charismatic, high-IQ addict (I've heard it said we'll get into Tony's alcoholism in the second film) because he is in fact an incredibly good looking, talented, fast talking, charming and charismatic, high-IQ addict. It's tempting to say that Robert Downey Jr. was born to play this role.
Summary of Iron Man (Single-Disc Edition)
Suit up for action with Robert Downey Jr. in the ultimate adventure movie you?ve been waiting for, Iron Man! When jet-setting genius-industrialist Tony Stark is captured in enemy territory, he builds a high-tech suit of armor to escape. Now, he?s on a mission to save the world as a hero who?s built, not born, to be unlike any other. Co-starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard and Jeff Bridges, it?s a fantastic, high-flying journey that is "hugely entertaining" (Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal).Similar DVD Movies
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