I am sure I will be told straight away if there is but has anyone seen it?

I was wondering about it as I have found Robert Downey Jr very irritating in the past as he was either on coke or being sanctimonious about being off coke but he seemed OK on Jonathon Ross so am hopeful about the film

I watched the first 20 mins on watch-movies.net, pretty boring superhero movie (duh), but the racism on top of that is a bit too much. http://www.watch-movies.net/movies/iron_man/

The politics do kind of switch about all over the place. It's OK. I found it quite odd.

It's received lots of glowing reviews from people I'd normally trust a fair bit, but I just can't work up any enthusiasm at all. Iron Man means nothing to me as a character, and I don't have any particular desire to see another generic comic book superhero film, no matter how well executed.

Oh I don't think you would be missing anything by not seeing it. It kind of tries to say something and then turns into the usual stupid noisy explosions all over the shop type thing.

personally I'd rather see Vince Chase as Aquaman...

If you do go though I recommend staying till the end of the credits.

Saw it on Sunday.

Thought it was ace. I can't imagine anyone else playing Tony Stark now. Stark reminds me of myself (minus the superior engineering skills and cash). He's good looking, dresses nice and is loved by women everywhere...and then theres the Fartle'esque quips. Fantastic.

Hope we get to see Rhodes as War Machine in part 2. They seemed to hint at it during the film. Y'know, that bit where Rhodes goes into Starks workshop and sees the gold suit there and says "Maybe next time"...

I had difficulty in taking Jeff Bridges seriously. I can't imagine him being anyone other than 'The Dude'. When he was giving Iron Man a belting near the end, I kept thinking 'Well, he's like...hitting you...man'

Saw it. Loved it. Couldn't give a flying fuck about the politics; it's a comic book film about a man with an electromagnet in his chest hooning about in an exoskeleton blowing shit up, for heaven's sake. If you can't enjoy that, you're probably ready to sit next to the folks on Newsnight Review and sneer at everything (and even they quite liked bits of it, even the Northern Irish guy who hates everything).

Mind you, if you think the politics in this are bad, try reading the original Iron Man: Commie Smasher! type stuff from the good old days of Lee and Kirby.

Bring on alcoholism, Armor (sic) Wars, paralysis, Civil Wars and the death of Captain America, I say.

I haven't seen it yet because a friend of mine told me to wait until we could see it together and then he promptly fucked off out of town. On Friday afternoon I'll be in Boston with time to kill after the end of my meeting but before my flight home. I'll probably see it then.

I'm looking forward to it. I was never a big Iron Man fan*, but this looks extremely cool. Indeed, it's best not to think to hard about the politics in stories like this because it's unlikely that the writers thought much about them. It's just that, for a film set in the present or near future, there aren't many other good options for stock baddies.


*I'm not a big Marvel fan in general. I was always the oppressed minority among the comic geeks in my school, sticking up for the superiority of DC. I feel I've been completely vindicated.

I saw it yesterday and thought it was very good. Robert Downey, Jr. was great (probably the best superhero movie casting since Christopher Reeve), but then again, I always think so. Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang was one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen in the last few years, and he played a huge part in its success. The red and gold suit was very cool, and it had the least cartoonish SFX of the recent crop of these movies (with the last version of the Hulk and Spiderman being the worst).

I don't think it was as good as the first two X-Men movies, though that just may be my pro-X-Men bias showing through.

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I was always the oppressed minority among the comic geeks in my school, sticking up for the superiority of DC. I feel I've been completely vindicated.

Reed, do you mean on the basis of the recent Batman and Superman incarnations? I thought that Marvel was far superior to DC in my comic-reading years (1983-1988), and have mostly lost touch with comics since. When I was reading them, I found the underdog/minority vantage point of the Marvel characters (particularly X-Men and Daredevil) much more resonant than the masters of the universe-types at DC (particularly Superman, who bored the hell out of me).

Yes, it is a pretty cool film. Still think Robert Downey is a tad too old for Stark (especially as you consider that he might be called upon to do maybe 2 or 3 more) but I concede that he does pull it off. Fartle’s right about Jeff Bridges forever being the Dude. At one point his character spouts some vitriol like “that’s just hippie crap” and you just think, hey Dude, you’ve changed your tune.

(Similarly, the bloke who did the narration for Lebowski also did the narration for Ghost Rider and you just couldn’t take him seriously).

I agree with Lyra, the film starts slowly, a lot of time is spent on the origin and the main characters and there are some interesting political points made. The Hulk spent a similar amount of time before launching into the action but didn’t do it half as well.

After the first hour or so it’s just standard wham-bam super-hero fare until the end.

Again, as Lyra said, stay till after the credits. Although, unless you’re a Marvel fanboy like me, you might not see what the big deal is. Me, on the other hand, I nearly sprayed my shorts.

I didn't see the ending but have done on youtube (shock). Did it have to be that actor? He's the last person I saw playing him.

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Apparently, Ultimate Nick Fury was actually designed to look like Sam Jackson.

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True, but Ultimates was weird. I always saw him being played by a Tom Berenger type.

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That's actually how I saw him also, as I wasn't aware of the Ultimates version until I found that Wiki page after watching the movie (and being surprised that he was black). But then again, my comics knowledge is woefully out of date, and only updated when new movies spark debates about adherence to the source material.

I remember there being a TV film about Nick Fury called...Nick Fury.

David Hasselhoff was cast as Fury which tells you something about the quality of the movie...even if it was made for TV.