"The only thing wrong with this movie is that it was over too quickly."
POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT
IF YOU ARE SMART AND YOU READ THIS REVIEW BEFORE YOU SEE THE FILM, YOU WILL DISCERN CERTAIN FACTS THAT COULD RUIN IT FOR YOU.
As I settle down in my seat for an hour before showtime (gotta get a good spot) I ponder the film I am about to see. The trailers got me hyped. The cast is stellar, and the director is a fan of the source material. Still, I am nervous about the actual quality of the completed film.
From the first second of the film when I hear the opening lick of Back In Black, I'm fucking electric. We go to a shot inside a hum-v, and Robert Downey Jr. starts what is to be a stellar performance with some casual dialogue. It settles me in. Makes me comfortable, and most importantly makes me forget that I'm watching a movie. This could all be real, the people behave like real people, it's just weird because with the world this movie presents, it's like actually seeing Iron Man, in person with a working suit. So, within the first five (brilliantly shot) minutes, I forget about being a critic, I forget about looking for special effects, grading the cinematography, or all the other technical bullshit I get bogged down in.
This film has it all. It's true to the origins of the comics character, but the characters are developed so well simply through good screenwriting and phenomenal performances that even a first-timer would care for these people as though they existed. I'm glad that a director finally stopped trying to be word perfect to the comics, and realized that the Movies, like Ultimate Marvel, and the 616 Continuity, are all their own universe, and should be treated as such.
The special effects are exquisite. I wasn't so sure about the "Inside the Helmet" stuff because I was worried it would seem really choppy and slow stuff down whenever they cut inside, but it works perfectly.
And, JustARatherVeryIntelligentSystem (JARVIS) being a computer doesn't phase me one bit, and I've been a comics geek since I was eight. SO any of you fatass Jeff Albertson types who start bitching should go home and take a shower, because the theater was full of you and you all smell like old grease.
There are so many Mandarin references in this movie I was almost expecting to see him pop up at the end vowing revenge on Tony Stark.
The last line is... fantastic. It represents a bold (and I think fruitful) decision on the part of John Favreau to make the screen version of Iron Man a very distinct and original, and the clip after the credits gets me more excited than I should be for a movie that probably won't come around until 2012.
My Rating: 8.9 out of 10
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