6/11/2008 - Iron Man and Batman (3 Videos)

Before we get to the video, my review of the Iron Man movie: it rocks! And yes, the main reason why it rocks is because of the man who plays Tony Stark/Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr. There are maybe a handful of comic character roles that become intertwined with the actor playing those roles: Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Christopher Reeve as Superman, and now Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man. With these three characters, we know what gruff is, we know what nobility is, and with Tony Stark, we know what it means to be a playboy and yet a hero at the same time.

This is not to say that the other actors in Iron Man weren't excellent... they were. It was hard for me to imagine that the hero in Tron would make such a good villain, for example. And I can't wait to see Terrence Howard in the War Machine costume. The story and dialogue was top-notch, as well. I've heard elsewhere that Iron Man was the perfect superhero movie, and they may be right about that. The only valid criticism perhaps was that the end fight sequence was too short. But to me, that's like one grain of salt on the best cheesecake you ever had.

Now, many might say that Iron Man is a complete rip-off on Batman... and that's what these series of videos play off of. However, the core of the characters are complete opposites: Batman is a vigilante who masquerades as a playboy while Iron Man is a playboy who masquerades as a superhero. See? Who says there aren't original ideas in comic books?

3/5/2008 - Iron Man's Adventure

As I've said before, it has taken until this decade to translate Stan Lee's visions of superheroes and super powers to the big and small screen, and that's because the special effects have finally caught up because of computer graphics. The computer effects are mostly an aid to the real-life backdrops and actors on film, but sometimes you get purely digital presentation like the Pixar movies. While The Incredibles was cool, the superheroes weren't the well-established characters we know and love from the Marvel Universe. So what would a computer animated version of the Marvel heroes look like? This promotional video from Marvel gives us a good indication:



It's funny, I actually prefer the look of this Hulk to the ones from the 2003 movie and the upcoming movie. It really looks like a three-dimensional translation of what I see in the comic book!