Warning A: this post contains some stark language, it also has some suggestive and/or sexist stuff in it and it reveals the plot of one of 2008’s highest earning movies.
Warning B: this is a poor attempt at reviewing a movie. You have been warned.
Although I am a failed writer, I do not wish to join the ranks of other failed writers and thereby become a film critic. It’s just that, well, I’m having a hard time being (worst)writer right now and I have to have some form of outlet. The whole compulsive typing thing doesn’t do it for me all the time. At the least, this is better than running amok. Right?
When I was young I read comics. Not a lot, mind you, but every once-a-once I stole a comic here or there and enjoyed them while all the other boys stole playboy, jugs or hustler, etc. Of course, all those other boys got caught and faced some serious consequences. Their crime was usually in full view as it hung out of their zipper. On top of that, there is the value to society of what they stole. They say that crime doesn’t pay – but paying for crime does. And all is not lost with these lost boys that became found men.
Moving on to the lolly point I will fail to make.
One of my favorite comics is Iron Man. I don’t like all of Stan Lee’s/Marvel Comics creations, but Iron Man and Spider Man are two of my favorites. I also admire Lee for authoring so many characters. (My all time favorite is Batman, but he’s from DC Comics.) Anywho. Yesterday I took my son to see Iron Man, the movie. Just like when I saw Spider Man 1 (yeah, 2 & 3 sucked!), the joyous feeling that is/was the freedom of youth came back to me while sitting in a cinema seat. I once again found thoughts of self-built tree houses or day-time bonfires. While all the other blokes were gagging themselves with perfectly manicured pussies from high-gloss magazine paper, I was grasping at the hope that there were, somehow, real heroes in a world where men can so easily make children and then leave them fatherless.
A great substitute for not having a biological father is going to the friggin’ movies where magic and mystic stand above dogma. Most of the time, anyway. I can’t make clear enough how important and thought provoking ideas like immaculate conception were to my youth. Make-believe in movies saved me from religious righteousness and doom.
Wow, doggy. You way off topic now.
The weather recently broke in Germany. That means that after more than half a year, the sun came out. So I didn’t want to spend too much time indoors. But I had been talking to my son for weeks about the premier of what I hoped would turn out to be a cool film. As far as I’m concerned, and I don’t care how silly some people think it is, going to some superficial, brain-dead cinematic entertainment with your son is a pretty cool thing to do. Fortunately for me, my son and I have a few things in common and we like each others company a whole lot.
It’s Sunday morn. We were both excited. The film started at 11:00am. Over two hours of celluloid fun. We kept hitting each other to indicate what scene was cool. I have a sore upper arm as I right this and I wish my son were with me right now to hit me again. We laughed and went WOW simultaneously in the movie lit theater. What joy, indeed.
After the film we walked down the street and felt the warmth of entertainment run through us. We basked in the artificiality of super-hero worship. We joked about having popcorn for breakfast. Being with my son when he is happy is the most wondrous of human experiences. It is the only thing I will miss in death. Oh, I’ll also miss conversations/questions beginning with: “Daddy…?” or “Hey Dad…” The sun felt good, too.
Film.
For those who don’t know anything about this comic book hero… Robert Downey Jr. has become Tony Stark, aka Iron Man. He is the weapons guru of the American Way of Life, Inc., and one of the richest men in the Marvel Comics Universe. Although I liked/enjoyed the movie, I have a problem with its makers. Downy Jr. does a half-baked job of portraying Iron Man/Tony Stark and that’s not his fault. I mean, come on, what can we really expect from “actors” these days? They have comic books from the sixties to show the world how well they’ve honed their craft. (I wonder whose fault that is.)
Cynic.
Robert Downey Jr. plays a run of the mill, college grad, Bill Gates success-story cynic. The character immediately got me thinking that when I read the comics as a kid I don’t remember Stark being THAT cynical. I really tried to dig deep down to find any cynicism in those old dilapidated comic magazines that remained in my memory. Walking down the street with my son didn’t help matters. He just kept saying, “Dad, what is a cynic?” He’s going to be eleven soon.
The makers of this film should have caught what I consider a continuity problem and fixed it before release. It all starts fairly early in the movie/scene where Tony Stark meets a hot-chick with that atypical “come over her and fuck me look” on her face. The actress quickly turns the flirtatious scene into the sub-plot of the movie that dabbles in Hollywood’s stereotypical innuendo regarding American foreign policy and weapons dealing. Then she fucks Tony Stark. Afterwards, and as women obviously should be portrayed in this day & age of feminism and/or emancipation, Tony Stark goes about his business of being a cynical, sexually satisfied, super rich American male that is also a soon-to-be hero. Ain’t that cynically cool…
Hollywood or No-Hollywood. I have dabbled in the world of cynicism. To me, cynicism can be something wonderful. But not everyone agrees. “Cynicism is the/a sign of a weak mind,” I think I heard someone once say. Or were they referring to sarcasm? No matter. Same difference. As far as I’m concerned, the thing about cynicism is that it doesn’t translate well. It doesn’t translate well from country to country or from screen to audience. Isn’t cynicism one of them double-edged sword kind of things? Also – and here’s the crux of what I’ll eventually fail to get at – I think cynicism works best when it’s unexpected.
Does revealing the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster really matter? Especially when endings are so obvious?
After Tony Stark has his way with the obvious super smart and sure-of-herself Vanity Fair reporter Christine Everhart – played by the actress Leslie Bibb – he asks his assistant the next morning, Pepper Potts – played by the lovely Gwyneth Paltrow – to show the super hot reporter the way out. Pepper Potts does exactly what she’s told. Stark is obviously too busy working. Pepper Potts eventually returns to Tony Stark where he asks her: “Did she take it well?” What Stark is referring to, cynically of course, was whether the “come over here and fuck me look” reporter/character dealt well with the fact that she was left alone after the one-night-stand chestnut that we all just love to nibble at and never really bite into.
Character.
As (worst)writer, one of the things I’m most interested in is character development. Unfortunately, in order to develop a character you have to meticulously write that character. You also need a substantive story to go with that character. For me, the above mentioned scene towards the beginning of the film is a border-line devastating moment that was completely missed by the movie’s makers. That is, the scene corresponds with a later scene – and I don’t think the film makers knew that while they were making this movie. Either that or they are die-hard cynics and don’t give a hoot about audience intelligence. But I won’t get off subject. What is actually being done in this new blockbuster movie is one of the best examples I’ve seen yet of movie makers using the “screen persona” of an actor to fill in the gap of all that is missing.
Seriously. Trust me on this. I’ve worked in theater. I’ve actually worked with “actors”. No matter what you think or admire about actors – most of them are numskulls. Just like the rest of us. Seriously.
Does anyone get what I’m saying here? Then let me try this. Tom Hanks, Robert Di Nero, Jimmy Stewart, etc., etc. all have earned most of their “acting” wealth by playing themselves. They don’t “act” in most of their movies. They play their screen persona – it’s something like typecasting on steroids. Acting can be very grueling, you know. This new form of typecasting can be very profitable. Hollywood needs blockbusters! Right?
You know, acting requires you to read and memorize a lot … of words. It’s kind of like work where you can get drunk or stoned to do it. But that’s not the hard part. The hard part is systematically pretending with all those memorized words and becoming what you are not. Goodness forbid, I hope the shitting ghosts of Lee Strasberg or Stanislavski aren’t reading this while sitting on the krapper. On the other hand, we all have to do what we have to do. Right? After a certain point of dealing with the circus that is Hollywood, actors either completely commit to living/being their “screen persona” or they fall to meekness and wonder where their next million is gonna come from. Unless, of course, you’re Marlon Brando, Robert Redford, George C. Scott…
Rejuvenate or regurgitate typecasting. Or. Tommi’s version of Character Continuity – the problem with this movie.
What I like to refer to as Character Continuity requires that the actor remain in character for the the entire plot of the movie. I guess, if you change the plot, you can change the character. But who wants to see that? It’s like when an actor mistakingly looks into the lens of the camera – and the director forgets/misses to edit that out. I know, I’m referring to a comic book film here. But still. I’m middle aged. I’m a failed writer that has seen seen all there is to see – in movies. And there I sat in the cinema thinking: hey, I could have written that screenplay a hundreds times better and it would have done Downy Jr. an even bigger favor because I know that as a writer you shouldn’t let editors do your work.
What am I really saying? Nothing. The film is a $200+m hit in its first weekend. And I’m the only one to see its error. Oh, it’s lonely in Tommi-land today. So… Fuck it. I’m going to give the plot away. Deal with it.
Tony Stark has a fairly silly terrorist-based existential experience which leads him to question whether or not he has done the right thing in becoming the universe’s richest weapons maker. Subsequently he changes and instead of wanting to sell weapons he wants to help people. So what does he do? He invents some high-tech, metal alloy suit with limitless weapons and gadgetry. Going from bad to good is… good. Right? And then there’s all that wondrous CGI. If only Hollywood could find a CGI substitute for DIALOG.
The blurbs I read about this movie say that Tony Stark is the/a “cynical” bla, bla, bla tycoon turned super hero. The reality is, they don’t actually mean that HE is a cynic. What they mean is, the film is cynical. At the most, what Downy Jr. says is kind of witty – in a college frat house sort of way. Which is far from anything cynical – unless, of course, those same college grads become president of the United Mistakes of America and then save the world from the United Mistakes of America. Or something like that.
This whole idea of selling cynicism and war in a comic book super hero movie corresponds perfectly with the real world we are in. And therein lies the bucket of worms. If it works for the Pentagon, why not for Hollywood. Except Hollywood has one thing to contend with: errors in film editing. Those damn little details in the screenplays that require a bit more re-reading, story board analysis, fact checking, work. The dialog in this movie fails miserably – but the propaganda succeeds – and my hat is off to Robert Downy Jr. So let’s blame the writers.
Their excuse? The well branded Writer’s Strike. Or. It’s the Editors fault.
The only dialog in this movie evolves around the love interests of Tony Stark. And it all really confused the do-dads out of me. I kept thinking: can you cut to a terrorist scene or something. I mean, is Gwyneth Paltrow really this hard up for cash? Can’t she sell her Oscar statue or something? I couldn’t figure out any of the dialog. I was in a Frankfurt/Main cinema at 11am on a Sunday morning sitting next to an eleven year old. It must have been due to the German translation… Right!
Was Tony Stark trying to get into the humble pants of Pepper or was he trying to apologize for pre-existentially doing “come over here and fuck me look”? Remember, he had Pepper throw “come over here and fuck me look” out the next morn. Pepper seemed to do that with a certain kind of cat-like joy. Hard for any blond to act that, eh? But the clichés didn’t stop there. Later, when I was hoping this love-interest Krapp was finished, I swear, I sat there in the cinema with my hands raised, ready to yell: No! You can’t WRITE a movie like that! But if I did that I knew I would have a real hard time explaining it all to my son.
Luckily, there are lots of CGI intervals of Stark getting into that really cool, hotrod painted metal alloy suit ready to save the world from evil terrorists. But by the time the movie was over I was still having a hard time dealing with such bad dialog. It’s like a bad taste in your mouth. Brushing your teeth doesn’t even get rid of it. Sure, I forgave Downy Jr. for slipping out of “character” and showing us his “screen persona” – by practically staring into the camera lens. What choice did he have? There must have been a complete lack of thoughtfulness on the part of writers and/or editors – and, goodness forbid, even the director. Heck, actors aren’t responsible for the things they say and do on screen. Or? And, as the hotrod suit saved the day, I forgave all those dimwit movie makers, as well. At least there WAS continuity in the CGI.
Persona neither here nor there.
But what about this cynical “screen persona” that got Robert Downy Jr. this job? The love-interest scenario ended when Pepper Potts flirtatiously confronts Stark about his promiscuous (before the terrorist existential experience, of course) behavior with the Vanity Fair hot reporter and her “come over here and fuck me look”. The dialog here was so bad that nothing fit. If it weren’t for the fact that this movie was about human existential change, defeating silly terrorists with hotrods, good weapons that can save the world, I don’t know what effect it would have had on me in the end. You know, would I have been completely lost in my quest to become a better person? Even though Tony Stark only… almost changed? Almost changed is still cool, right?
I believe that Robert Downy Jr. can actually “act”. But too much of who he really is seems to proceed him. I really dug his work in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. And Chaplin was brilliant. But I think the makers of Iron Man love all those hysteric mug-shot pictures of a younger Downy Jr. after this or that cocaine binge or this or that DUI charge? Wasn’t his face all over tabloids throughout the 1990’s? Unfortunately or not: one of my favorite comics is stuck with this guys “screen persona” until the next remake of this cinematic franchise.
If this film is bad it’s not because of Robert Downy Jr. If this film is good it is because of Robert Downy Jr. All the other poorly described problems I have (worst)written about here can therefore only be due to lazy film makers and producers struggling to get by. And I didn’t even mention the flashback sequence at the beginning of the movie being completely useless. It wasn’t really even a flashback – it was more a… “let’s repeat the first fifteen minutes because we can – and it will extend the film to two hours”.
And here. One last (worst)thought: At least, for the future, we have CGI to look forward to. Among other things, CGI might also be the best way to prevent obstructive movie making things like… Oh, gee, I don’t know… a writer’s strike? I mean, could that have been the cause of a hastily written script, unthoughtful editing, bad direction – all the above leading to a pretty cool film?
Many thanks to Stan Lee.
Rant on.
-tgs-
