I Am Iron Man

Holy. Shit.

I saw Iron Man the movie last Thursday here in Manila. And those were the two words that instantly came into my head.

Iron Man is so damned kickass as a movie. The acting was great, with Robert Downey Jr. pulling off an excellent Tony Stark. Terrence Howard playing Jim Rhodes was a bit strange, seeing as how the Jim Rhodes I remember from the comics was a more physically built, jock type character. But the acting was great for everyone.

Then the story. They stayed true to the origins of Iron Man, at the same time modernizing it and making it occur in Afghanistan instead of Vietnam, where the original Iron Man story took place. Another small change which fit the movie was in the number of suit prototypes. Sure he had all those years to develop prototypes and versions in the comics, which was why they only had to make 2 or 3 versions in the movie. I understand the constraints of a movie.

Which is why I totally enjoyed the movie.

The CG was also most excellent. My faith in CG has been restored, though there were times when you could clearly identify the CG character because of how it moved.

On a side note, isn't it interesting to reflect upon the fact that even though all the advances in technology have been made, CG animation for live action films seems to have taken massive steps backward? If you see the original Jurassic Park the animations of the dinosaurs there were almost flawless. They looked like they were really there. Then sooner or later animations started getting more obvious, maybe because too many directors or whatever are relying on motion capture technology. Maybe good old fashioned keyframes will help CG animation. Take a look at Pixar movies, the characters move so smoothly and so lifelike. But I digress.

Iron Man was a solid movie for me. It was so damn good I'd definitely want to get a DVD copy of it. That's how good it was.

Out.