Electrons ... They Don't Dance!

Iron Man (2008)

Rating ... C+ (51)

Marvel returns to their bread and butter with Iron Man, a franchise foot-in-the-door whose colloquial tongue-in-cheek habitually recalls the studio's endeavor with the most financial clout, Spider-Man. Though unencumbered by the soap opera nadir of the most recent and most digressive of the Spider-Man series, Iron Man contains little of the cozy insularity found in Parker's NYC environment or the intimacy of his initiation to newfound ability. As if out to counter the unearned gravitas often fronted in other superhero films, Iron Man swings too far the other direction and plays everything for lulz, with seemingly little else on its mind. (Instances when the characters knowingly - and often explicitly - shun traditional superhero clichés are perhaps Iron Man's funniest moments, but scenes like Tony Stark testing out his thrusters play like a stunt from Jackass while the last line of the movie practically codifies the film's jesting atmosphere, a fact that only seems troublesome given the film's otherwise slight impact.)

The underlying problem with Iron Man is that it's principally a film of easy moral stances, if any at all. Tony Stark's Iron Man is not a pinnacle of complex progression or complicated ethical dilemmas; head honcho at Stark Industries, an industry leader in the manufacturing of weapons, Stark undergoes a brisk, forseeable turnabout after a run-in with Afghan terrorists demonstrates to him first hand his weapons - usually intended for peacekeeping via threat, or if needed, one-stop shopping in the department of total annihilation of one's enemies - actually incite violence in third world countries. This outrage at war profiteering and putting weapons in the wrong hands, stretched over a two hour running length with little else bolstering Stark's ethos, can't help but seem embarassingly thin, especially in light of the expert deconstruction of public image and the price of heroism in the summer's occasionally harrowing The Dark Knight.

Just as Iron Man is unconcerned personally, so to is it politically. The narrative strains for global reverberation at the same time it half-heartedly details what compels Stark to become Iron Man. Allocation for origin material is obviously a must, but it's no excuse for a letdown denouement, where Stark simply cleans out skeletons in his corporate closet, at best a tenuous suggestion America needs to address its own infrastructure before policing with big guns. Little attention is paid to the element of mechanization here, which never veers into cybernetics but nevertheless ignores that Stark finally acquries a "heart" when imbued with new technological powers, and how dangerously clear-cut plans of action become when he begins to use the suit. Seldom rousing or discerning, the general apathy on display here suggests Iron Man is business as usual.