The Road to The Avengers: Iron Man

“Iron Man”. That’s kind of catchy. It’s got a nice ring to it.

Going back to April 2008, before The Dark Knight came out; before Marvel’s The Avengers (sorry, Marvel’s Avenger’s Assemble) was a speck on the horizon, an Iron Man movie was a significant risk. X-Men, Blade, Batman and Spider-Man had formed the initial landscape of the super-hero genre in the new millennium. Iron Man wasn’t known beyond fervent comic book readers, people who listened to Black Sabbath or kids who may have caught the cartoon in the 90s. Launching a potential franchise with a character – a very tech-orientated James Bond/billionaire playboy – with little awareness could have turned out like other less-popular comic book films such as the disappointingly weak Elektra or Fantastic Four. That it turned out to be good as it is, is down to Robert Downey Jr’s performance, amongst other things.

Tony Stark (Downey Jr) is a wealthy, arrogant industrialist, presenting his latest and greatest tech at a presentation in Afghanistan where he finds himself fighting for his life after his convoy is attacked. Kidnapped and with very little help, Stark is forced to build a suit of armour to escape his captors and upon freeing himself decides to use his technology to fight evil.

The above synopsis sounds cheesy (anything that has the words ‘fighting evil’ makes me cringe), but it’s to Marvel’s credit that in the context of the film it doesn’t sound laughable. Placing Tony Stark in a climate not far from our own (switching Vietnam for Afghanistan, introducing Apple-like interfaces) makes it much more relatable and palatable. It still retains much of its comic book ‘wham-bam’ personality but it’s not as far-fetched as it could have been, despite having a man who flies around in a high-tech suit of armour.

A lot of that is down to Jon Favreau’s direction (building up his big-budget aspirations after Elf and Zathura), Matthew Libatique’s brightly coloured, realistically-shot cinematography, ILM’s visual effects contribution and a hugely talented ensemble that function as one of the more impressive ones seen in tentpole filmmaking outside of The Dark Knight franchise. The emphasis is on character, not action; humour not broad stupidity (Stark’s bickering/flirting with his assistant, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts, is a highlight), building a solid core for the action scenes. That the action isn’t particularly memorable is down to Favreau’s lack of nous/ambition, resulting in a third act fight that preceded Real Steel’s rock-em, sock-em antics. The action is perfunctorily done, a blemish and a missed opportunity for something that offers more scope than just people punching each other with metal fists. It’s a good thing the characters are this much fun as the limp action could have sunk the film.

It doesn’t help matters when the narrative is as formulaic as this one. Redemption narratives are too easily telegraphed: a strong opening half full of conflict eventually gives way to a busier-but-less-interesting second half that tries to resolve issues with a neat little bow. The initial villains (The 10 Rings) don’t offer much of a threat unless it’s of the very generic kind, and the main villain (Iron Monger) is a bit bland, a word you could apply to the film when Downey Jr is not on screen.

That he’s front and centre is this film’s greatest asset. Downey Jr’s revival (Hollywood loves a bad boy come good) is reflected in his cracking performance here after his great turn in Shane Black’s Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (coming full circle with Black coming onboard to direct Iron Man 3), ‘owning the screen’ instead of chewing the scenery. Without him, this film simply wouldn’t be as good.

7/10

[Ramin Djawadi’s score is the film’s least memorable part, a heavy metal orchestration that mimics its protagonist’s ostentatious sense of worth/rock star life/Black Sabbath, forgoing a theme and opting for sonic wallpaper. Disappointing, especially when he's capable of crafting memorable themes like this one.]

In Cinemas: Cowboys and Aliens

Whether you end up in Heaven or Hell isn’t God’s plan, it’s your own. You just have to remember what it is.

It took five writers to come up with this?

The mixed reception afforded to Cowboys and Aliens lingered in my head as I sat down in the cinema with a friend (given even more time to roam after waiting half-an-hour through assorted trailers and adverts). An annoying facet of reading reviews is uncovering the film’s perceived positive and negative attributes before seeing a frame. With Cowboys and Aliens its faults are too obvious not to take notice of and its more positive aspects are shrouded behind the mundanity of what’s on show.

Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the desert, bloodied and dirtied without a name, boots on his feet or memory of who he is. In a fantastic scene setter, Lonergan violently dispatches a gang before heading towards to the town of Absolution. There he encounters the mysterious Ella (Olivia Wilde) and Col. Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), a man who wants Lonergan for an incident that happened in the not-too distant past. When the town comes under attack from alien spaceships and abducts several of the townsfolk, Lonergan and Dolarhyde band together to rescue their kin before it’s too late.

Cowboys and Aliens downfall is that it’s just like every other alien invasion film, with just an older, dustier facade replacing the modern cityscapes. It must have taken numerous drafts and re-drafts to rid the film of anything particularly interesting (if it was interesting at all) and fill it with something so rote and ordinary. A John Ford esque western mixed with alien film should feel unique, instead Jon Favreau and co conform to the standard of a blockbuster without injecting any danger or excitement.

There’s a workmanlike quality behind the film’s structure, setting the various strands and character motivations in a very traditional and serious way that fails to have much fun with the concept. When it does let loose, it opts for shock and awe, explosions and CGI, something audiences are accustomed to seeing on a regular basis. Cowboys and Aliens doesn’t differentiate itself from the pack enough and believes that marrying the Western and Sci-Fi genres is all it needs to do. It’s not, it needs surprises, it needs invention and it needs to do something more than just a conventional three act structure with the resolution at the end that is entirely predictable.

The reveal of Olivia Wilde’s Ella is interesting but also faintly ridiculous. Interesting because it is genuinely unexpected and ridiculous because it doesn’t make much sense for her character to have behaved the way she did prior to that revelation. The aliens are unthreatening (and look like bigger, hulking versions of the beasties in War of the Worlds) and worst of all look fake, continuing the trend of this summer’s unimaginative alien design. Matters aren’t helped by loosely applied logic, in one moment a character suggests that the aliens “don’t see very well in the sunlight” and then the aliens go on to disprove that notion straight away, it’s like no-one bothered to check the script for consistency.

But Cowboys and Aliens isn’t as bad as I’ve made it out to be, it’s an average film, a deeply average one in fact but funnily enough what saves it is its familiarity. It goes for the tried and tested formula and is completely predictable and soulless for it. In its attempts to offer up blockbuster fare, it at least hits the expected notes/beats and is never less than watchable even if the film fails to inspire as much entertainment as its premise does.

6/10

It was on tv, so I watched it! Iron Man

Iron Man is a good film but that’s all it is, a good film. I guess that’s the minimum I should expect and yet the sensation I get after watching it is that it could have attempted more. It seems much of its popularity was in contrast to that other stonking summer blockbuster called The Dark Knight which as its title indicated was rather more solemn compared to the light-hearted frivolity of Iron Man. It depicted a superhero that didn’t need to ‘darkness’ to sell itself to an audience. That isn’t to say that Iron Man is not a good film in its own right but it is certainly not perfect in trying to bring the character to the silver screen.

Review: Iron Man 2 entertains but also disappoints

Critically acclaimed, financially successful Iron Man was the first film to launch under the (then independent) Marvel banner in 2008. Fans and non-fans alike loved it, Marvel set upon producing a sequel and in doing so laying the foundation for its larger universe. Would lightning strike twice? Alas not quite and while Iron Man 2 is a good film, at times a very enjoyable film to watch, it suffers from sequelitis. Simply put, there is far too much happening in the film.