Superhero Movie Smack Down – Round 2

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Kurt Christenson – Iron Man

I don’t like Iron Man. Or Tony Stark.

I mean, Civil War painted him as a fascist and when I was a teenager he was the drunk superhero. But over the past decade Iron Man’s profile has taken a giant leap forward. Maybe he’s borrowing from the Batman relatability of millionaire-turned-iconic hero, but either way he’s become a top tier superhero, all thanks to the movie by Jon Favreau (and Warren Ellis’ Extremis storyline). How often is a comic book movie so good that it makes the comics step up? (See Matt Fraction’s deconstruction of Iron Man.) Even the animated teenage version on Disney XD was a lot of fun.

Robert Downey Jr. sells Iron Man (2008) – it’s almost a comeback role to cement him within the Hollywood elite forever. The banter that rings true in the everyday hilarity of each interaction makes it real. But the message about finding an alternate to weapons manufacturing is one that is as timely as it gets. We see Tony build himself a suit three times, a new suit for each act: one for survival, one for fun, and finally one with hot rod red and gold trim, as an international anti-war superhero. That sounds like the motivation a superhero should have these days. But seeing someone like Bruce Wayne invent a suit that gives him Superman-like powers, that’s the ideal origin mash-up – as fantasy realistic as you can get.

This is also the birth of a Hollywood-based Marvel Universe. This is so good a film that it’s spawned another Hulk, a Thor and a Captain America movie, all culminating with the in-development Avengers movie. For the first time ever we will see a true crossover on the big screen, a Mighty Marvel Team-Up, and many more characters come to life, all due to the quality of this movie.

We see Iron Man four times in the two hours and all the scenes in between aren’t filler – they’re actual character development, giving more life to these

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characters than the comics have in years past. The action scenes are epic and unique, believable and fantastic. The villain is built up more than usual (though I admit, he’s a bit slap-dashed in there), and the hero is lauded for his ingenuity and genius, rather than just his gadgets. With the nods to the Mandarin (a terrorist cell is called the Ten Rings) and the soundtrack opening with AC/DC and wrapping up with the riff from Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” this is everything superhero fans could ask for.

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The first round of the Superhero Movie Smack Down pitted Donnie Darko, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, The Rocketeer, RoboCop, The Dark Knight, Dolph Lundgren’s The Punisher and the original Superman against each other. Half the voting was split nearly evenly between Nolan’s second Batman installment and Christopher Reeve’s classic turn as the Man of Steel, with a slight advantage going to the Bat. The Rocketeer rounded out the top three. We have carried these three films over into the second poll, to see how they stand up to the movies in the new batch. Vote now!

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