Sandy Petersen hates Iron Man Part 2

Updated on January 14, 2009 By Ken Begg 12 Comments

2) From the moment Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) appears onstage, I was inwardly pleading that they wouldn’t do the Super Obvious Thing and make him the bad guy. Or at least if he DID turn out to be the bad guy, it was for some halfway acceptable reason. Nope. Yay Hollywood. Man, just ONCE I’d like to see a movie where the “surprise betrayal” is actually a surprise.

Can’t really argue about this one, although I don’t think it was meant to be a “surprise” in any but the most rudimentary sense. Bridges was also clearly destined to be the villain under the Murder, She Wrote rule, which posits that the highest ranked ‘guest’ star will be the murderer. Indeed, Irom Man is the rare (unique?) movie where the best part of the film is the origin stuff, here a highlight rather than just exposition to get past.

In the Batman films (save the Nolan ones) and Spider-Man III, a regular problem was having entirely too many characters and sub-plots running around. Iron Man is a hero not really that well known to the public, meaning that more of the film has to be dedicated to explaining who everyone is. That leaves a smaller part of the film for the ‘plot’ stuff, and thus it was fairly smart, I thought, to not overly complicate things. Stark was woken up by the realization that his weapons were being used by America’s enemies, so it made sense to make the villain a traitor in his organization. As well, corporate intrigue has been a common element in the comic. Admittedly, it would have been more surprising to make that villain Pepper, but I’m sure the fanboys would have been annoyed.

In any case, it looks like the next movie features Iron Man’s mechanized Soviet (?) foes, Crimson Dynamo and Titanium Man, one in the person of Mickey Rourke. So the villain stuff should be much stronger in the next chapter.

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  • BeckoningChasm

    I agree with this, though it was fun to see Bridges play such a really evil guy. However, his motivation was severly lacking–like he just woke up one morning and decided “Hey I’m evil.”

    OT: Ricardo Montalban and Patrick McGooghan, man. Two sad items of news.

  • ahriman64

    To be honest though you’d be pretty ticked off as well if some teenage super genius took over the company you were running.

  • Plissken79

    At least the first Iron Man gave Bridges a few lines that showed he had been chaffing for years under Stark’s leadership of Stark Industries, so there is a bit of motivation.

    Good to see Crimson Dynamo emerging for Iron Man 2, updating him from a Soviet to Russian villian should not be hard, but when is the Mandarin going to turn up? Are they saving him for the Avengers film?

  • Sandy Petersen

    The movie actually presented us with three different villains – the Afghan terrorist, the vaguely eastern-european terrorist, and Jeff Bridges.

    Maybe I’m not familiar enough with the whole Iron Man backstory for some of the stuff here to resonate with me. I admit I read little of him, even as a kid. I was unaware that corporate shenanigans were a huge part of it, for instance.

    But surely the Iron Man movie should appeal to people like me too, who are only peripherally aware of the Iron Man mythos.

    I didn’t list “things I liked”, since this was an attack piece, but I agree that the origin stuff was crackerjack. Except for the parts of it I’m going to complain about in the next couple articles.

    And oh yes, it was SOOOOO obvious that the guy who helped Iron Man in the cave was (a) going to die and (b) had already lost his family. Duh. Go Hollywood, master of the non-surprise.

    One final remark – the workers must be made aware of their own power, their own strength. Armed revolution is a fundamentally democratic act – a manifestation of the will of the people.

  • Sandy Petersen

    My preceding remark about the “three villains” was with reference to Ken’s comment that the plot needs to be nice and simple, because there was so much backstory. I know Ken really likes those simple straightforward plots. Like Witch’s Curse, for instance.

  • ZDykstra

    Actually, I was unaware that the titanium man’s name was mentioned in regards to this movie. To tell the truth the Crimson Dynamo and would be rather redundant as they are markedly similar characters. I was under the impression that the secondary villain was corrupt business mogul, Justin Hammer.
    My guess is that the plot of the movie would follow the “Demon in a Bottle” storyline, with Hammer standing in for the now deceased Stane.
    Now, as for the predictability of Yinseng’s death; it was probably unavoidable. The character exists in the 1960’s origin story and suffers the same fate. The writers just did the best they could with that one while still remaining remarkably close to the origin as written by Stan Lee.

  • Sandy–Yes, but in Witch’s Curse, everything ties together perfectly.

    There are multiple villains in Iron Man, but really, Stone’s the main one. The others are more to get the plot going than anything else. Rather than spending a lot of the film watching the villains plot together, Bridges comes in and sort of officially takes over the antagonist role.

    The Mandarin could still pop up in the next film, but I imagine that even if the Avengers movies is huge, they’ll make another Iron Man after that.

  • Sandy Petersen

    Well one of the few Iron Man stories I did read as a kid was his origin, and I do agree that the new origin was quite true to the original. Though I do miss the “giant sumo wrestler” Viet Cong general. Remember kids, ALL oriental things are native to ALL asian nations.

    For a long time though Iron Man tries to fool you that the subsidiary villains matter. You follow their plots, listen to them rant, etc.

    Sadly I have no idea who the Mandarin is. If he’s a Red Chinese agent though, I wonder if modern Hollywood will find itself capable of portraying someone working for the liberal, freethinking government of modern China as a villain. Maybe they’ll make him an evil rebel Tibetan.

  • Mandarin was a full-blown Fu Manchu analogue (no way in Hell that makes the screen) with ten power rings–force, heat, freezing, etc.–that I think were alien in origin. Maybe a parody of Green Lantern’s origin? Don’t know. Anyway, that’s presumably the inspiration for the whole “Ten Rings” thing in the movie.

    I give this movie a pass on the multiple villains thing because the Mandarin analogue is folded into the obligatory origin story and then more or less moved offstage until he becomes the main villain in another film. It will actually be hard to judge Iron Man completely until we see it with the following chapters, since I assume they are meant to be a trilogy. (Which might be why Favreau seems slightly grumpy about the interceding Avengers film.)

  • Ken-

    This is a little OT, but keep an eye on Russell Crowe. He’s most definitely beginning to channel Richard Burton. I’m dead serious.

  • Plissken79

    Good description of the Mandarin, Ken, he was also a metaphor for Communism in the original comics (although the character lost his priveleged position in China with Mao’s victory in 1949).

    I can understand saving him for the third Iron Man film, but it is hard to see how one can do a film series on Tony Stark without him. Sandy, the Mandarin is for Iron Man what the Joker is for Batman or the Green Goblin for Spiderman

  • Grumpy

    Indeed, Irom Man is the rare (unique?) movie where the best part of the film is the origin stuff, here a highlight rather than just exposition to get past.

    Not rare is the opinion that Spider-Man goes soft in its second half, after Peter becomes a crimefighter. For that matter, Batman Begins is nothing but “origin stuff.”