Ironmania

The key to a successful superhero movie is the alter ego. If an audience can care enough about the regular Joe or Jane when s/he’s not flying, climbing walls, or turning green to suspend bloodlust between action sequences, a franchise can be born. Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, and probably Ed Norton as Bruce Banner all bring impressive acting chops to their roles and flesh out what is otherwise a series of explosions and fistfights. On the other hand, Ben Affleck as Matt Murdock, Nicholas ‘I’m Going to Shteal the Declaration of Independensh’ Cage as Johnny Blaze, and Brandon Routh as Clark Kent make viewers yearn for the action sequences, during which the heroes are typically too busy fighting bad guys to blunder their lines.

So Ironman, like any other superhero flick, relies heavily on Robert Downey Jr’s portrayal of Tony Stark, the brainy-yet-incredibly-naive man beneath the iron suit. Because Stark spends a good deal of his time talking to himself or the Thinking Machines he has created, the role is ripe for the sort of forced line reading that most actors (Keanu Reeves? Who said anything about Keanu Reeves? ) peddle as monologuing.

Aside from Brad Pitt or Tom Hanks (both of whom would’ve made the role entirely different in their own ways but still interesting), I can’t think of an actor as well-suited (eh? eh?) for the role of Tony Stark/Ironman as Downey, who presumably doesn’t need other actors to bring a role to life. Of course, he has other actors and actresses who, under the direction of Jon Favreau, blossom in supporting roles. Gwyneth Paltrow, who rarely does anything for me, is absolutely charming without being a damsel-in-distress as Pepper Potts, and Jeff Bridges is pitch-perfect as Obadiah Stane. Terence Howard , though, does little beyond a rudimentary combination of The Black Friend and The Voice of Reason Friend.

Which gets to the heart of Ironman’s problem: People of Color are either completely good, completely evil, or completely helpless, with little effort for the kind of dynamic character development offered the other players in the film. The central conflict examines the complicity of the US in problems abroad, asking whether our hands are ever clean and arguing that our enemies are typically enabled by our own foreign policy. It’s difficult to complain about this sort of theme, especially in a summer blockbuster, but by limiting the range of, for instance, Afghanis, Ironman re-enforces the idea that, however we got here, our presence and force is required across the globe; the US becomes the only entity that has the power to confront absolute evil in order to assist the abject helpless.

But what did I want? A summer blockbuster with no explosions? A two-hour diplomatic romp where our cyborg hero joins his body with technology to entirely passive ends? Well, maybe. But who’s terribly naive now?

I’d rather lose myself in the particularities of the film, from the fantastic Ironman suit to Favreau’s spectacularly framed moneyshot, where Ironman strolls casually away from an aggressive tank, never breaking stride as the audience marvels at the explosion to his rear. Ironman is, in the end, a delightful flick that masterfully navigates those most difficult parts of superhero movies, maintaining its momentum between action sequences, then rewarding interest in the characters with well-choreographed, bright shining fracases, setting the bar for the blockbuster onslaught to follow.