News You Can Bruise for 2008 July 4

Permalink [Comments] (2) Fri Jul 04 2008 15:55 "He said to take any rug in the house.":

I. Saw. Iron. Man. with Sumana. It was pretty fun. Sumana was hoping I would be blown away, and it was probably the best superhero movie I could hope to see, but I don't really like superheroes or movies made about them. If you go to Kris's old video where he figures out the exact dates he collected Iron Man back issues, that was the opposite of my childhood. It was like the childhood of someone whose religious parents forbad comic books as Satanic, except my parents weren't like that. I thought there was something wrong with comic books on my own.

I've grown up and I no longer think there's anything wrong with comic books per se, but I find superhero comics ridiculous. Super-inventor Tony Stark basically invents cold fusion and his first priority is to use it to power his robot exoskeleton so he can beat up terrorists. That logic may work in four colors in the 1960s, or even in a stylized format today, but it doesn't hold up well in a live-action movie. Now, they actually did a good job of depicting someone for whom that would be the first priority, but nobody else in the movie tried to present alternate possibilities.

Anyway, Jeff Bridges is always fun, and after the movie we went to the comic book shop and spent a total of $17.76 on comic books. Happy Fourth!

film

Comments:

Posted by Kris Straub at Sun Jul 06 2008 23:38

I went back and read some Iron Man comics after the movie. They're really stupid and hard to read. But once in a while there was a writer who got it right, and Iron Man was the thinking man's superhero. It was why I was disappointed with the punch-'em-up big fight in the movie; Iron Man was more about figuring out how to use what he had to solve a problem.

Also the technology was more quaint in the comic book -- Tony Stark used a new kind of transistor to power his clunky suit and keep shrapnel out of his heart. The fusion thing did seem like overkill.

Posted by Leonard at Tue Jul 08 2008 09:28

I think we can agree: robots fighting == TOTALLY LAME.

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