(if you haven’t seen the film, this could ruin it for you)
I saw Iron Man again last night and came away with some new thoughts:
The ending SUCKS. Ok, maybe “sucks” is a bit strong, but it is not up to the standard of the rest of the movie. Let’s look at it: Here’s a movie where the main character is one of the smartest people on the planet (or ever) and is so smart that he’s been able to develop a suit based on an energy source that nobody else can get working – not even the best scientists. So now there’s another bad-version of Iron Man in a bigger suit who apparently can do all the same things that the good one can. How does this epic battle end up? How does this super-genius who throughout the movie was able to be clever and outsmart the villian? It ends with two Iron Men who can’t get hurt punching each other in the face and slamming each other into walls. Sometimes this apparently hurts. Other times, they get right up. Nobody knows why. Then to kill the bad guy, Iron Man tells Pepper to blow up the building and just hope he survives. Now that’s a good idea.
Some movies are great because of their endings:
- The Sting
- The Sixth Sense
- The Usual Suspects
- Rocky
Some movies are great through and through and have endings that match their great stories:
- The Shawshank Redemption
- Se7en
- Hoosiers
For a movie that is good throughout, the ending is not up to snuff for the rest of the film.
Also, i have issues with the bad Iron Man. For instance, how does bad Iron Man survive the icing? One minute he’s falling to the earth covered in ice, the next he’s recovered. How can the bad Iron Man move so well? He’s not in a suit like Robert DJ but rather he’s sitting in a seat with levers. I don’t think you could conduct hand to hand combat easily in that. Also, much of the movie showed Robert DJ practicing how to fly and move and tinkering the suit. Jeff Bridges did zero of that. He just plugged the arc reactor in and knew how to do everything immediately.
All in all, the ending let down the rest of the movie for me. It was all so buttoned-up with the exception of that duel. I’ve heard people say that Iron Man is a great movie. Not in my book.
