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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
What did Thanos ever do to deserve that kind of disrespect?
This song needs more love.![]()
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Well shit, you've got me there.
Anyways, me and a few tropers went back and rewatched the first Iron Man together, to kinda get readied for Infinity War. I didn't notice until now but god damn the pacing is absolutely tight. Every detail in there is important and necessary, the pacing is gorgeous, the editing and score are gorgeous, and you know, gonna be honest, Stane is seriously underrated as a villain. He gets lumped into the same league as other lesser MCU villains but while he's certainly not top tier, he ain't bottom tier either. I forgot how damn menacing and tense some of his scenes were. Stane is kind of basic, sure, but he's how you make a good basic villain. His motivation is greed but he stands as a symbol of the military-industrial complex and he's just so damn vile. That's something that's kind of missing from the sequels, the villains there don't fully tie into any of the themes. And damn he's creepy. Seriously, that bit where he comes in while Pepper is finding those files on the computer and he starts talking to her, that's about as tense as Vulture and Peter in the car from Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Props to Jeff Bridged and props to Faran Tahir as well for taking a character who would've in any other movie been a one note terrorist and made him actually have some genuine character to him, short as his time in the movie was. I'd heard he'd improvised a good deal of his lines to keep the character from being too much of an awful stereotype, and he actually sells his scenes effectively. Like damn, this guy needs to be cast more, holy shit.
That being said, I did notice some minor quibbles. There's one moment after Tony is rescued and gives a press conference about shutting down the weapons division where he goes up to Rhodey while he's lecturing some cadets, and he makes a quite blatantly transphobic joke about Rhodey sleeping with a trans woman and saying "What was his name, was it Ivan?". Yeah, 2008 and all, but ugh...Speaking of Rhodey, I still demand a special edition replacing Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle in every scene. Cheadle is a much better Rhodey and I'm still mad at how underused he is in the MCU.
But still, my criticisms are minor. I think I rate this film a lot higher than I did previously. It's seriously so good.
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?Stane is also one of the big reasons why Iron Man 1 is better than its sequels by a good margin.
Sure, he may not have the complexity of Loki or Killmonger but he is very well-integrated into the narrative of the film and Tony's larger character arc. Tony's character development in the first film is centered on him becoming aware of how immoral his profession is and trying to find some purpose in his life by using his technological know-how to do something good and stop his company from supplying terrorists with weapons.
This puts him directly at odds with Stane, who is not only a symbol of the immorality and greed of the military-industrial complex, but also someone who Tony trusts and relies upon and so it has an impact when he not only betrays Tony, but was responsible for the events that turned him into Iron Man to begin with.
Also, Jeff Bridges' acting is seriously impressive given the relative simplicity of the material he's working with. He's extremely convincing and dominates every scene he's in.
Vanko and Killian suck balls compared to him. Vanko certainly had the building blocks of a good character, a good actor behind him, and a solid way to implement him to further Tony's character but in the end he feels like nothing more than a superfluous bad guy for Tony to fight after he resolves his daddy issues and stops self-destructing.
Killian we've gone on about before numerous times but beyond the whole mandarin thing and how underwhelming he is, he also feels completely disconnected from what's going on with Tony's story.
In addition, watching the film again I think a big part of the reason why Pepper continues to be an above-average love interest is two things. First, Paltrow and RDJ's interactions feel very spontaneous and authentic (moreso than many other romances of this nature), and secondly, Pepper actually saves Tony multiple times in multiple ways in the film. She keeps the old reactor without which Tony would have died, she gets the information that nails Stane as a murderer and terrorist backer, informs Coulson and by extension the government to have Stane arrested, and she assists Tony in taking out Stane in the final confrontation. The other films certainly mishandled her character a great deal but in Iron Man 1 she is easily one of the best superhero love interests around. That this was all from a film in 2008 is honestly kind of impressive since the standards were so much lower back then.
edited 15th Mar '18 9:01:06 PM by Draghinazzo
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Gonna quote Draghinazzo from when we were watching the movie but Pepper saved Tony's bacon ass several times over in several of the movies. There's numerous complaints to be levied for how she's handled in the movies but damn it Tony would be dead several times over if not for her.
edited 15th Mar '18 9:37:23 PM by AdricDePsycho
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?They will call her Assault Pepper and she will have her Extremis powers and will not explode.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersYeah, Tony hasn't killed any of the main villains of the movies he's been in, has he?
Pepper killed Stane and Killian, Vision killed Ultron, nobody killed Loki, Zemo, or Toomes, and Vanko was killed by... Vanko.
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Can she have an attack called Pepper Spray?
edited 15th Mar '18 9:55:19 PM by Anomalocaris20
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!![]()
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Hardly. Maybe with the bits after Tony attacks the terrorists in Yinsen's hometown but the second act is fairly tight. I've heard more complaints about the third act, really, which I guess I can see since it's where it goes kinda more cartoonish but for the most part it's still fairly tight.
Also, can't believe I didn't notice this until now but the scene of Stane chasing after Pepper after he gets into the Iron Monger suit is kind of reminiscent of part of the Hulk chasing Black Widow in the first Avengers. Probably coincidental but slight resemblance.
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?I remember seeing a neat clothing blog about MCU costuming that pointed out that Coulson's suit in this film is too big for him, giving him mild Obstructive Bureaucrat tones, while following films and shows that made him more heroic give him sharper suits.
It's just kind of boring between Tony breaking out and Stane getting in the Iron Monger suit. There's some funny parts, and some shots of Tony killing terrorists are cool, but aside from that, it's a snooze-fest. I cannot take a businessman seriously as a villain in Iron Man until he can actually threaten Iron Man. Same problem Thor had, though at least Thor had a decent fight against Shield agents.
Wasn't Tony operating on low power when he was fighting Ironmonger? Because he was using the old reactor?
Forever liveblogging the Avengers

Tony only built the turbines used to hold them in the sky. By definition, a killswitch would have dropped them into the Potomac.
But it would have done so with all of their weapons still armed and ready to fire at whatever's in their immediate vicinity if Hydra decides they want to go out spitefully. So I'm not quite sure this would strictly be an improvement over the original scenario.
edited 15th Mar '18 7:31:10 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.