Sandy recently sent out an e-mail listing ten reasons he hated the recent Iron Man movie. Obviously he could have saved time by distilling them down to but one, “Because I’m a big, damn Communist.” Indeed, whilst going out to dinner with him last summer, as he blathered on and on about how much he had simply adored the then recently released Brendon Frasier version of Journey to the Center of the Earth, I’m pretty sure he was wearing one of those Che Guevera T-shirts and a beret.
Despite this, Sandy’s views are always worth listening to—barring, perhaps, his clearly irrational love of Journey to the Center of the Earth—so I thought I’d post his remarks here, and respond to them. This is meant to be a conversation, folks, so feel free to chip in your two cents in the message section below.
I really liked the movie myself, although it’s not a great cinematic achievement like The Dark Knight. Still, I’m a Marvel guy through and through, and I have to say, this was the best movie of a Marvel character ever, in my opinion. (Spider-Man II was pretty close, though.) The Hulk movie that followed was good, but not great. Meanwhile, if they pull off the Captain America and Avengers movies, well, I’ve little doubt those will be the greatest things I’ll ever see. In any case, that establishes where I’m coming from.
Anyway, on to Sandy’s note. I’ll break it down into separate posts, so as to milk this beyond all reason allow each point to be argued by the community at large:
“When Iron Man came out, I went to see it in the theaters with my son. After about 40 minutes, the theater’s power went out and they let us go with a rain check (which I foolishly wasted on Journey to the Center of the Earth the next week).*
Well I finally saw Iron Man in all its glory now that it is on DVD and post-movie, I realized that I spent much of the viewing complaining about stuff in the film. Here is a brief summary.
1) Robert Downey Jr. does a piss-poor job of playing a genius IMO. Ken brought this to my attention in a way, when he remarked in a letter to me that Patrick McGoohan & Peter Cushing were both able to project “raw intelligence” onto the screen, which is a powerful statement. Downey does not have this facility.”
[*Sandy clearly felt that using his rain check on one of his myriad viewings of JttCotE was “wasted” because he should have been supporting the film more strongly by actually buying his ticket. This is why he returned to the lobby and bought a fresh ticket each time he sat through the movie six times in a row one Saturday.]This is probably the assertion that will prove most controversial. Most people, myself included, felt Downey WAS Tony Stark, to the proverbial T. However, I can sort of see what Sandy is getting at here. It’s true, Downey does not have that knack of projecting great intelligence onto his characters, certainly not to the extent that McGoohan or Cushing (or Andre Brauer or Robbie Coltrane or Jeremy Brett or Hugh Laurie—mostly TV actors,* note, because working in close-up all the time probably fits this sort of talent).
[*Also mostly Brits, sad to say.]The thing is, though, that the Stark presented here is less Edison than Michelangelo, not a technocrat but an artist swimming in nearly superhuman inspiration. Think of the foolish, undisciplined Mozart from Amadeus and you’ve got Downey’s Stark fairly well nailed, at least as things start. Indeed, since the ’80s nearly soul-destroying alcoholism has been another Stark trademark, which again is something that Downey, sadly, brings to the table. In any case, Downey’s previously has played genius artists, such as Chaplin, and I think he plays this version of Stark, a completely valid one, perfectly.
For my money, the only great “thinking” actor who might have played Stark as well might have been the young Orson Welles, because he also, like Downey, himself embodied many of the character traits that sums Stark up.
