I had a chance to catch iron man on saturday night, may 3rd, and i had to wait in line an hour early for a 9:30pm showing. The line was about 50 -60 people long and that's something I always try to avoid because i pretty much hate waiting in line for anything, but I had errands to run in the afternoon so that ended up being the only showtime I could get.
Special-effects wise, it was top notch. Very real looking, life -like, with excellent grades of light and surface texture. Way better than Star Wars prequels or The Hulk. Nothing in Iron Man was cartoonish or super smooth like a piece of peppermint candy, as in the aforementioned movies.
The inner conflict Tony Stark (Iron Man's public persona) dealt with gave him a real human quality. In the beginning of the movie, he was dogmatic about how his weapons were instruments of peace in an ever violent world. But after his capture by the Afghani terrorists, he started to see everything in a different perspective. He saw how his weapons, when in the wrong hands, could destroy communities, families, and societies.
Nevertheless, you would not want to go see this thing to comtemplate inner turmoil and all that shit. It still is a comic book/ action movie. The scenes where he flies around avoiding jet fighters assigned to destroy him because the military didn't know he was on their side was hot enough to give you goosebumps.
Robert Downey Jr gave an awesome performance. You sometimes forget how talented this guy is. I personally think he got into all the drug abuse shit because he ran with a bad crowd, but mainly it was because he had so much potential and everyone placed such high expectations on him, it became too much to bare. But now that he's older and more mature, he's finally ready to embrace all that talent everyone saw in him. I'm gonna tell you right now, he's gonna start putting up a body of work that's really gonna shine in the next couple of years and he's gonna be bigger than Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, and George Clooney. But I gotta admit, I keep thinking about Charlie Chaplin when I see Robert Downey Jr. Maybe it's just me.
Gweneth Paltrow, what can I say about her? When she's on screen, you feel like she's right there, looking into your eyes, and soothing you. She just captures you. But her performance was a bit on the fake side in this movie, for she has trouble doing the "heroine in distress" moves. She needs to stick to her Shakespearean crap. Kirsten Dunst is someone she should emulate.
Overall, for those of you who haven't seen this, I'm guessing 60? It's worth the 10 bucks for some good ol' entertainment.
