Iron Man has always been one of my favorite Marvel characters. A rich, suave, arrogant playboy who builds robot suits that fire missiles. How cool is that?
This outing is the origin story of Iron Man. In the comics, Tony Stark, a gun runner in Vietnam hits a landmine, injures his heart, gets captured, builds a pacemaker to survive and in doing so, builds a robot costume to escape.
The directors felt this was a little dated. In the film, Stark is attacked in modern-day China (where he is excavating an ancient city), injures his heart, builds a pacemaker to survive and builds a robot suit to escape. I like the update. If this took place in Vietnam it would make the film very dated.
Also, they updated the villain, The Mandarin. In the comics he is a guy with magic rings who pretends to be an ancient Chinese Emperor. In the film he IS the ancient Chinese Emperor who sold his soul to some evil demons and returned wreak his wrath once more. Again, the update is much cooler than the original.
Overall I really liked the film. The voice acting is very well done. The story is engaging. The animation is a nice combination of hand painted and CGI. It’s another well done straight-to-DVD for this team.
Here is my favorite screenshot:
In the final fight, the love interest gets all her clothes blown off! “Thankfully” the magical mist always keeps her privates covered.
On the DVD:
There is a nice “making of” documentary.
There is a nice history of all of Iron Man’s suits.
The best is the entire opening scene to the next Marvel/Lionsgate endeavor: Dr. Strange. It looks really bad ass!
Final Analysis:
This is another solid effort from this team. I love the Marvel universe and if these DVD’s continue at the quality of the first three I will be very pleased.
Rent this DVD.
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