Topic: comic book film

‘Iron Man’ a well-oiled machine

By David W. Shelton | May 2, 2008 |

Iron Man is a film that had everything going against it. It languished for years in development hell, went through no less than three potential directors, at least two other title stars (including Tom Cruise - yikes!), and eventually became the first film financed by a new film studio division of Marvel Comics. Even when director Jon Favreau signed on as director, the sparks of doom didn’t stop flying. Robert Downey, Jr. was announced to fill the title role, and immediately tongues wagged. “Downey? he’s one messed up guy!”

Then I realized that so was Downey’s character, Tony Stark. This began a glimmer of hope. Gwyneth Paltrow was cast as Stark’s executive assistant Pepper Potts. Thus another twinkle. With Jeff Bridges added to the principle cast, there was finally something that wasn’t in the mix before: hope that it just might not suck!

Iron Man, like all of the other superhero films of late have three standards it must meet before it will be accepted in the realm of great movies. The question isn’t whether it would be good; instead, it was a question of whether it would reach the level of quality that was seen with 2002’s Spider-Man, 2005’s Batman Begins, and the ultimate superhero film standard, 1978’s Superman: The Movie. To date, only one comic book film has surpassed all of these standards, and that was Spider-Man 2, released in 2004. «Read the rest of this article»

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