The TV Addict 

For those of you who can’t get enough of IRON MAN, and want to know about the future of the series, Entertainment Weekly has two really great interviews with director, Jon Favreau, and star, Robert Downey Jr. about their reactions to the film’s box office success, and the future of the series. You can check out the Favreau interview here, and the Robert Downey Jr. one here.

I’m not much of a weekend box-office reporter myself (as an English/Film guy, math and numbers sort of frighten me), but I suppose IRON MAN’s massive numbers merit a brief acknowledgement. According to Box Office Mojo, IRON MAN pulled a whopping $100.7 million dollars over the weekend, making it the second biggest 3-day release ever that wasn’t a sequel, right behind SPIDER-MAN. Not bad for a comic book character that isn’t nearly as recognizable as someone like Superman, Batman, or Spider-Man. It’s a credit to the marketing, to the tireless PR work done by the filmmakers, the awesome trailers, and the great reviews as well.

Also, on another note, that cricket chirping noise you hear is coming from all those people who thought the release of GRAND THEFT AUTO IV would somehow affect the box office of IRON MAN because purportedly they were both targeting a similar demographic, and for some reason were not believed to be able to multi-task and divide their attention to take a break from video gaming to see a movie. Heck, even I managed to see IRON MAN, despite being more or less glued to my Xbox since the game’s release. Nothing, not even GTA, could have kept me away.

It’s been getting nothing short of glowing reviews from nearly everyone, but given its massive box-office take this past weekend, I assume that means a lot of you went to check out IRON MAN, so I would love to hear what YOU have to say. So please feel free to post your thoughts and/or mini-reviews below.

There’s no shortage of things that work well in IRON MAN. It’s stunningly well paced and plotted, finding the proper balance between the action and the dramatic, and propelling the story along without anything ever dragging or become excessive. The special effects are accomplished, and the action sequences are efficiently and often deliriously staged, even it means just watching with sheer exhilaration (shared by our protagonist) as Tony Stark flies around in his suit.
Even things that shouldn’t work do. Robots with personalities in the film avoid becoming cheesy family-film material. Terrence Howard plays little more than a one-dimension supporting character who seems eerily omnipresent, but his friendly rapport with Downey Jr. and the sense that you feel there a bigger plans for his character make it okay. Pepper Potts, Stark’s super secretary should also be nothing more than a patriarchal stereotype, but (to borrow Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman’s dead-on observation) the adorable looking Gwyneth Paltrow “manages the neat trick of taking a character who’s a pre-feminist throwback and playing her with a liberated twinkle.”

However, what makes IRON MAN such a good film is its protagonist transformation. At the onset of the film Tony Stark is an inventive boy-wonder, a genius rock-star infatuated with his own cockiness. He heads a weapons manufacturer company that is intent on preserving democracy by providing the American army with the means of putting down the “bad guys,” without bothering about the moral ramifications. He’s sarcastic, prone to drink, and uses his natural charm and good looks to get any women into bed that he can. While giving a weapons demonstration of a new missile in Afghanistan he is wounded and captured, and put to work by terrorists who want the missile for themselves. There his naiveté is burst when he sees his weapons have found their way into the hands of “the bad guys,” and learns a little humility when his life is saved by a fellow captive, Yinsen (a marvelous Shaun Toub). He devises a suit to escape, does so, and returns home somewhat of an active pacifist, declaring that his company no longer will manufacture weapons, but privately builds an iron man suit that will enable him to make a moral difference.

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On the heels of an after-work Thursday night screening of IRON MAN (expect a review up by Saturday) totally kicking my ass with its sheer awesomeness, I came home to the pleasant news that if IRON MAN does as well as its expected to this weekend (analysts are predicting anywhere from $60-100 million), Paramount will immediately green-light the sequel for a 2010 date, meaning the film would go into production as soon as 2009. Given my instant desire for a sequel after walking out of the theatre, this was most excellent news.

Also, for those of you who need a little tease of my thoughts, IRON MAN is on par with SPIDER-MAN 2 and X-MEN 2 in terms of quality. In other words, it ranks amongst one of the greatest superhero movies ever made. It also has the best crafted/paced/written origin story I’ve seen in a hero film, and the endings sets itself up to make it an incredibly unique entry in the genre. Also, for those of you who are comic geeks like me, stay still after the credits. Trust me.

Source: /Film

The last trailer for IRON MAN had me already pretty excited for the film, but Favreau & Co. just had to give us another trailer with enough little extra tid bits to have me counting down the days till the film comes out on May 2nd. If you’ve seen the last trailer, this one will have some familiar elements, but throw in some classic Robert Downey Jr. humor, a cute looking Gwyneth Paltrow (glad she’s starting to do movies again), more of the origin story and suit, as well as awesome action sequences and music, and you got yourself a blockbuster film worth looking forward to.