Iron Man is one of those characters who’s much better in concept than in execution. A billionaire playboy with a suit of armor should be the best character ever. Sadly, in the 45 or so years since Iron Man debuted, that potential has been largely unrealized.
Unlike most of Marvel’s original characters, Tony Stark wasn’t the product of a single creative vision, or even a defining creative team. Stan Lee (briefly seen playing Hugh Hefner in the Iron Man movie) and Jack Kirby produced 102 issues of Fantastic Four. In 100 issues of Amazing Spider-Man, Lee worked with only three artists. And while Lee and Kirby created Iron Man, they quickly handed off the reins. Iron Man saw more artists come and go in his first year than Spider-Man did in eight.
And then there’s the fact that Iron Man’s origin was tied in to pre-war Vietnam from the very beginning. (The movie keeps the basic origin, updating the locale to Afghanistan.) In fact, his early years were virtually defined by the Cold War. He was always beating up on Evil Commies and taking on the Red Menace. And then, early in the 1980’s, with Marvel looking for mainstream attention, they made Tony Stark an alcoholic.
On the one hand, it did create a bit of a stir. On the other hand, it pretty well ruined the character. Part of the appeal of Iron Man was Tony Stark’s lifestyle. Tony actually was the guy that Bruce Wayne pretends to be. He’s gambling and hooking up with models, and the saving the world thing is only one of his many interests. Once they made him an alcoholic, it put the proverbial turd in the punch bowl for all future stories. Even worse, the actual story wasn’t really that good.
Sure, when I was a kid, I really liked the story. In high school, when I rediscovered it, I thought it was really powerful and compelling. A recent re-read led me to the realization that, well, Tony wasn’t even really that drunk. Seriously, the event that made him realize he needed help was when he wrote down the wrong address. In high school, that convinced me I would never drink, ever. Now, well, I get addresses wrong all the time anyway. I’m not much of a drinker, but I do know that it doesn’t really take much drinking to be more drunk than Tony Stark at his absolute lowest point.
His creator theorized that Iron Man didn’t click the way other characters did because it was a story about a suit. Iron Man doesn’t have to be Tony Stark the way Spider-Man has to be Peter Parker. Somebody else can put on the suit and be Iron Man. Maybe that’s why Tony always had to have some crippling handicap. The biggest mistake they ever made with the character was fixing his heart problem. Just to keep the drama, he had to become drunk, a recovering alcoholic, unemployed, drunk again, paraplegic, a teenager, and so on. It’s been a mess.
So while Iron Man is a great concept, the number of really great Iron Man stories is pretty small. Luckily, the new movie took everything that worked and ignored all the rest. Tony Stark is a cool guy who’s pushed to develop a suit of armor and save his own life. A crisis of conscience leads to genuine altruism, and suddenly he’s fighting to make the world a better place. But he’s still a billionaire with cool toys. Freed from four decades of continuity and the weight of a monthly franchise, Iron Man finally gets to be fun.
Iron Man is the only comic-based movie I’ve ever seen where I felt like the movie improved on the original. Director Jon Favreau and the various screenwriters whipped Iron Man into shape, shined him up nice and pretty, and presented him to America. Picking out the elements that worked from his long history, they threw his 1960’s love-interest Pepper Potts, his 1980’s nemesis Obadiah Stane, the modern version of his armor, and everything else that people liked about the character. Putting them all together turned into a $100 million opening weekend for a guy who’s hard pressed to break sales of 45,000 with his monthly series.
It really is amazing how much they were able to take directly from the comics. Iron Man’s origin, though transplanted geographically, is entirely intact. Tony’s history, revealed in a video segment at an awards show, is the same as the one I’ve known since I was knee-high to a much taller man. Obadiah Stane follows almost exactly the same arc that he did in the comics.
That, by the way, was a stroke of genius. Iron Man’s rogues gallery is more than a little pathetic. Other than the cold war relics and embarrassing caricatures, (Iron Man’s most famous enemy is the Mandarin, who started as a racially insensitive portrayal of the Yellow Peril, and never really got much better.) he’s got a bunch of lame gimmick villains that couldn’t fill five minutes of screen time. There are no Jokers or Green Goblins in this bunch. When a list of his top ten enemies includes a guy who uses a whip (against a guy in armor, mind you), well, you know you’ve got to think outside the box. Stane (a great low-key creepy performance by Jeff Bridges) was a one-shot villain 25 years ago. (Good Lord, I’m old.) Over a lengthy arc he forced Tony out of his company, then fought Iron Man with his own suit of armor. They took a reasonably obscure character, found the story in him, used it, and it worked. A movie with the Mandarin wouldn’t have worked half as well, though he does live on in the name of the movie’s terrorist group.
Not only does Robert Downey Jr. match the Iron Man in my head, he looks exactly like Tony Stark. It’s perfect casting, to the extent that it’s not even uncomfortable when you see Downey drinking scotch after a hard half-hour’s work. That’s Tony Stark, not Robert Downey. His early failures with the armor, as well as his mildly adversarial relationship with his robot assistant, are genuinely funny, and not forced. It’s a fun performance to watch.
Terrence Howard plays Stark’s longtime friend, James Rhodes, and they wisely based the character on the way Rhodey was before he got irritating and boring. I felt like Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts was sort of a weak link, though. She has some nice scenes, including a really well-done sequence where she reached into Tony’s heart-hole. A lot of her scenes fall flat, though. It seems like she doesn’t have the ability to do anything but read dialogue as it’s written – most of the movie is pretty smooth, but she has some seriously clunky lines in the last half of the movie. Rather than smoothing over unnatural-sounding dialogue, she sticks to the script, and it just seems a little off. Still, even at her worst, she’s only mildly distracting.
And then there’s a post-credits scene that is pure, flat-out nerd porn. Obviously, I loved it. I think anybody who cares has already seen the movie or heard about this scene, but I don’t have the heart to spoil it.
Favreau, Downey, and company took everything that was good about a B-List character and turned it into a monster hit. Best of all, it’s just as enjoyable whether you’ve spent decades with Iron Man or if you thought the movie was based on that one Black Sabbath song.
Recommended Reading:
This is kind of tough, because my favorite Iron Man period, and the material that seems most in keeping with the movie, is the late 80’s David Michelinie / Bob Layton period. Those issues haven’t been reprinted in any depth. My second choice is Ultimates (Volume 1 and 2), this modern tweaking of Iron Man and the Avengers showcases a Tony Stark who fits the movie model pretty nicely. And as a bonus, you’ll find out why I squealed with delight at the mystery scene I mentioned above.
