Iron Man Review #2.

I saw Iron Man yesterday. I thought it was very good. My girlfriend had been dreading the thought of seeing it for about a month, and she even admitted after it was over that she was it was so good. I guess "shocked" would be a good word to use. So that should pretty much tell you what the average non-comic fan thought about the film. She even thought the part after the credits was worth waiting for.

I thought it a very good movie, nicely-paced (but it did lag a little in a couple of spots) and it was very faithful to the comics. Stark's Mansion in Malibu was exactly like his West Coast mansion in the comics; I thought that was really well done. Robert Downey was very convincing as Tony Stark and Terrance Howard was great as Rhodey. There were a lot of subtle nods to the comics and a couple of hints at what will happen in the sequel. I do have a couple of complaints though. They are:

1. Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane. I am a huge Jeff Bridges fan, but a couple of times during the movie, he sounded like he was reprising his role as The Dude from The Big Lebowski, only he had a goatee with a shaved head; and he was in a block-buster comic book action movie. I thought he did a great job in the last half of the movie, but he played it a little too Dude-like in the beginning of the movie.

2. Jon Favreau inserting himself into the movie. Did we really need this? Couldn't they have casted someone else in this meaningless role? And he got a lot of face time very early on in the movie. I just found it highly annoying. I hate it when Tarantino does it, and I hate it when other directors do it too.

3. The Stan Lee cameo. Can we please stop this as well? It's getting real old, real fast. I know he was great and all, but I'm just really over his cameos in every single movie Marvel is involved with.

4. Gwyneth Paltrow/Pepper Potts. She was serviceable, but the character she played (Pepper Potts), was very badly written. I thought there were times where she came off as a ditz, and then a few minutes later she would be doing something very outrageous; like hacking into a Stark Industries server. Yeah, ok then. Her character was just very uneven. And obviously they needed her to be the love interest, but that part of the movie seemed a little forced.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty good movie, I'll probably buy it when it comes out on DVD. So go out and see it if you haven't already.