Great movies. It's strange, but I saw Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang on comedy central just a week before I went to see Iron Man and Hulk. It might have been the very first Robert Downy Jr. movie I've ever seen, and I'm glad that it was. Good, fun movie.
I paid $8.50 for both movies, and was pretty happy with that. Happy enough I spent $11.00 on a White Russian Daquiri and Iced Coffee after Iron Man, so I would be a little more awake and happy for what I thought would be a mediocre Hulk movie(what!? Unless it's World War Hulk, I'm just not into Hulk.)
I did, as is becoming habit, take notes throughout the films. It does take away from the movie, but then I haven't sat back and just enjoyed a movie for a while without nitpicking it, so I figured (around X-Men 3), that I might as well start taking my critique just a bit more seriously.
Note: the notes are made during the movie. Italics are used to denote something that I penned in after seeing the whole film.
SPOILER ALERT:
Iron Man:
-A Stark Industries missile injures Stark. Awesome.
Flashback:
I like that they did this flashback. The beginning was quick and action-y and then they slow down to introduce us to Stark in 36 brief hours before jumping back to his jarring experience.
They shopped Tony to be pretty hot at 21...or maybe it's the absence of that ridiculous goatee.
Stark's adviser and Starks' dad. Pretty familiar guys. But who are they? Jeff Bridges, but I don't know that other guy...maybe I should've stayed for the credits. ;)
He's a douche with the prize giveaway, but he does it with a nice quote.
I'd kill to get the layout on his house...
Don't tell me this bitch is the love interest.
Don't tell me there's a love interest. :(
The thing with his secretary...the first scene between them...I like it. It is awesome.
"Waiting on you now." What a dick.
WTF is with that plane?!
500 million units or dollars. Probably dollars, Kris.
-How long was the flashback? It went quick, but then, this is a two hour movie.
-Nice ring on the bad guy. (Mandarin?)
-Family of his Arabic(?) friend is dead. What a fucking twist. :( I guess I should've known there was no place for him in the rest of the movie.
-Landing like that--even in sand--would have killed him.
-"Cheeseburger first." LOL
-...and they fucking follow through!
-"It's like operation." Ha!
-1st test is cool-if predictable & reminiscent of Jackass, however, it leaves only the conclusion that Tony Stark is from Toontown.
-I am a bit tired of this 'learning their powers' bit in the middle of my superhero movies. Maybe that's why I liked X-Men, Superman, and Spider-Man 2, but can't watch the original Spider-Man.
-"Proof that Tony Stark has a heart." Man, I want some coffee.
-Nice cameo by Stan Lee. The credits say he's playing himself. :P
-They play mentory guy...ambiguously...I likes it.
-Potts asks him about his SSN...awesome. To his defense, he did manage to get that tux on all by himself.
-For the suit-up, more practical effects would have been nice. The helmet looks great, but the rest of it...eh.
-The testing fight scenes and the 'training exercise' were great. The training exercise bit succeeds only because of that most essential element of comedy; timing.
-Leaving the guy to his victims. Good Authority moment. I guess everyone dreams of doing that to despots and bullies.
-AND THERE'S MORE MOVIE.
-See, I don't think it's great that for these two-hour epics that there's is space where you could just end the movie and you could go home. I can see it. I saw it in Speed Racer and I saw it in Iron Man. It was like...'here's the end of the movie,' but we had a whole reel of film left over so we just shot some stuff.' Not saying that what came after wasn't good or that it was somehow contrived. It's just that there is this set of circumstances, motivations, and scenarios that seemed to emerge from the placid waters of a 'false ending' to create a very, very long and complicated epilogue with its very own story arc. There. Now I've ruined some kind of leviathan metaphor and still failed to make my point about movies being too long.
-...okay, so Obidiah is definitely the bad guy.
-"Leave your guards outside." Idiot. Obidiah, do you not know that the fancy-pants white-collar criminal who hires the real badass to do his evildoing always gets backstabbed and left in a ditch because he wears a fucking tie and the other guy--
-Fuck. Never mind.
-Stark convinces Potts to stay with him: Best gay speech ever. Kyle Brovloski couldn't have done it better.
-"Left part of himself in...that cave"?!...! I guess...I dunno. I expected a better ending to that sentence. There was this pause...like the movie was getting ready to say something...something about how going into a warzone on the other side of the world can change a person when they get back. Maybe how people come back wounded and fundamentally different. Maybe it wouldn't have carried much weight coming from the bad guy. Maybe it wouldn't have had a place in a movie that is, after all, a simple piece of entertainment. I dunno. For a moment, I thought Iron Man would border on having some sort of message instead of...well, having a guy fundamentally change his character because his company double-dealt to one set of guys for the almost sole purpose of getting him killed. It was like "everyone has our weapons," when really, only a few guys had their weapons, and that was only to kill you. I also don't get why terrorists/guerillas needed munitions designed for use against caves when they were fighting both US forces and civilians in cities. Maybe they hate other terrorists/guerillas. The movie does, in retrospect, break down from trying to exist in such a vacuum and having some really poorly drawn villains.
-...wait, he never fixed the hole in his fucking Malibu mansion with the AI butler. WTF?!
-"Next time baby." That's who he is! Cool.
-I do like those S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Hope they preseve that coolnes for the next few movies instead of just becoming bullet sponges surrounding
-"I thought it would be bigger." LOL! Pepper Potts fucking steals that last quarter of this movie.
-She just runs when she sees the suit. No scream. No warning S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Just bolts!
-The final fight was nice, even if Iron Man didn't get to shine, but they stuck to the rules they established earlier and he got to shine when he was testing the suit out. He uses experience instead of raw power and stealing. That was cool.
-3 Final Quotes:
"He's my bodyguard. Isn't that flimsy?"
"If I was Iron Man...I'd have a girlfriend..."
"The truth is...I am Iron Man."
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