As my passive-aggressively brief review of Iron Man the other day may have indicated, I've about had my fill of talking about superhero movies, because I increasingly find discussion of these films (if not the films themselves) to be nothing more than acts of self-validation by nerds seeking to wash away the sins of their insular, socially disreputable hobby in the cleansing waters of Big Money and Beautiful People. Particularly insofar as these movies tend to be seen as "better" the more "seriously" they treat their subjects I have less than no use for the prevailing inter-nerd critical discourse on them and resent feeling obligated to write about them simply because they are nerd-oriented product and I am a nerd.

That said, it's nice to see people recognizing that what makes Iron Man a good movie was that it's fun rather than some hamfisted attempt at constructing modern myths. To me it's fun in a fairly conventional way. It's well-acted--Terrence Howard's drunken explanation of why he's proud to be an airman is one of the best character moments I've seen at the movies all year, and I saw There Will Be Blood at the movies this year; meanwhile, like everyone else says, I'd go see a Robert Downey Jr./Tony Stark movie even without the superhero armor. The action set pieces are exciting and the wish fulfillment is pretty kick-ass because it acknowledges problems before overcoming them--from "the icing problem" to that unbelievable sequence where Iron Man's armor automatically targets only the terrorists in a human-shield situation). The dialogue is funny--it's kind of like a whole movie constructed of director Jon Favreau's Foggy Nelson scenes from Daredevil.

I suppose most importantly, every single thing they do with the Iron Man concept should make the writers of his comics for the past few years hang their heads in shame. "He's just been a guy in a suit of armor for decades, we have to bring him into the 21st century by giving him a technoorganic virus and making him see through satellites and talk about the transformative power of cellphone technology." Fuck you! "He's a futurist and a surveillance-state metaphor and he's going to beat up the World War II hero and dick over Spider-Man because of The War On Terror or something." Fuck you too! Folks, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the idea of a rich playboy genius who builds a suit of armor in which to fuck bad guys up. If you think that there is, there's something wrong with you, and this movie proves it. God bless it for that.

Anyway as I said it's a fun movie and I'm certainly glad I saw it; it's in my top tier of superhero movies. But also as I said it's fun in a fairly conventional way. There's really nothing in it that subverts the constraints of mainstream movie making--certainly nothing like Jack Nicholson's weirder-the-more-I-think-about-it gay-pimp-dadaist-vaudeville Joker and Anton Furst's art direction in Tim Burton's first Batman movie, or even the outsized romance-violence-angst of the much maligned Daredevil and Spider-Man 3. (The closest it comes is the hilarious mechanized voices of Jeff Bridges and RDJ during the climactic fight scene.) To me there's something a little depressing about superhero art that strips away the total fucking bizarreness of your average superhero comic, your DC Universe #0's and what-have-you--that bizarreness is the only thing keeping art as incredibly corporate as American mainstream superheroes from slipping into the analysis-defying mercenary dreariness of "The New Mainstream" and that sort of entertainment-product. Iron Man is too sharp and too buoyant for that, fortunately.

Speed Racer, meanwhile...I really don't get the critical reaction to it. For starters it didn't feel too long to me. I actually got antsier during Iron Man. The race/drama/race/drama/race/drama structure felt pretty easygoing to me. Nor did I feel bludgeoned to death by its relentless brightness and fastness. I didn't feel bludgeoned at all! Again, that up-and-down structure kept it from being relentless in the first place. And I certainly don't get the comparison of the crowd scenes to Nazi propaganda. It's not even a "hmm, I can see that" award ceremony at the end of Star Wars type situation--that shit is simply not there. The idea that it's one of the worst movies ever? Completely baffling.

I thought it was beautiful to look at, and frequently funny--especially when Spritle and Chim-Chim were around (yes, that's right!). I thought Emile Hirsch was a real disappointment, with that doughy expressionless face and mumbly voice and beady eyes that marks the leading man in this the Tobey Maguire Age, but everybody else was pretty fabulous. Matthew Fox's clipped inflection was a scream, John Goodman (completing the takeover of this summer's popcorn movies by Big Lebowski alums started by Bridges in Iron Man) was like every lovable uncle you've ever had. Man oh man, Christina Ricci, arch your eyebrow my way! And I'd totally buy Susan Sarandon's pancake recipe, youknowwhatI'msayin'??? I even liked Bad Guy Inexplicably Not Played By Tim Curry, despite the fact that he was inexplicably not played by Tim Curry. I did wish that the visuals allowed for more weight to be given to the cars so that we could truly feel their velocity--I think the decision to show so much lateral movement and fishtailing during each race interrupted what could have been a really unstoppable display of forward momentum--but the colors and "moves" of the cars (which reminded me of the "styles" of a kung-fu-movie fighter or Immortal Iron Fist Immortal Weapon) made up for it. Overall it seemed like a fan-freaking-tastic movie for kids, like the podrace sequence from The Phantom Menace freed from the shackles of pseudo-realism and allowed to run wild, with the occasional ninja and weird British gangster thrown in.

But again I found myself weighing my enjoyment of the film against my antipathy toward the critical establishment's discussion of it. What an astounding display of aesthetic conservatism we've seen from mainstream reviewers of this film, once again equating technical proficiency with soullessness as they now have done with everything from 300 to Children of Men to No Country for Old Men, and equating video-game influences with arrested adolescence (as if adolescence were a bad thing!), and equating any kind of celebration of skill and proficiency within the film with fascism, and treating the Wachowski Brothers (admittedly not the most sympathetic characters) like angry gods paying back some hero's hubris. All because this movie is ostentatiously weird, the anti-Iron Man. We need new critics, basically. To start, here's Jog and Jon Hastings and Ken Lowery and Ken Lowery again. Go!

Posted by Sean T. Collins at 9:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (2)