journal features

movie review - Iron Man

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Airplane, 2010.12.30

I was put off by the trailers for this movie, then more so by the incredible success of it. So it was somewhat reluctantly that I watched this on a flight between Tokyo and Vancouver. I've never been able to sleep on planes and I was something of a captive audience. The movie centers around an unlikable "billionaire genius" who makes weapons for sale to the Pentagon. Along the way he's captured and held hostage in Afghanistan. Now with a chest full of shrapnel, he's being kept alive by a rudimentary machine powered by a car battery. Using nothing more than what's lying around the place he constructs a new power cell that's small enough to fit into the cavity in his chest (which doesn't kill him) and then improves that power cell to the point that it can power a suit with weaponry, which he again constructs out of what's available.

He fights his way out, then has to claw his way back into control of the weapons giant that he formerly ran.

All the while, we're supposed to work past the fact that we don't resonate with the egomaniacal "hero" and somehow care. I didn't.

Not recommended. (Which won't matter, everyone and their dog will wind up seeing this.)

rand()m quote

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.