5-02-08, 10:21 am

Iron Man (PG) Directed by Jon Favreau

Original source: Morning Star

Marvel comics have a history of conscripting the help of superheroes during a war. They called up Captain America in 1941 to fight the nazis and Iron Man in 1963 to help them against the communists.

So, it shouldn't surprise anybody that the new film incarnation of Iron Man has his origins during the current conflict in Afghanistan, before he returns to the US to discover that he has a rival much closer to home.

Ironically, Captain America was awoken from suspended animation in 1953 to become 'Captain America, Commie Smasher!' and then again in an Iron Man episode in 1964, before getting his own series.

While not averse to any citizens being conscripted into the anti-nazi war, I have problems with all-American heroes volunteering to collaborate with the US military-industrial complex.

Not that any of this will concern the kids – they'll no doubt be attracted by the assorted goodies, not least insisting that their parents fork out for what Iron Man calls 'a real American cheeseburger.'

But the producers haven't forgotten the adult audience, featuring the indisputable talents of Robert Downey Jr. as the eponymous hero and Jeff Bridges excelling as his evil enemy.

Unlike Marvel's Spider Man, Iron Man doesn't hail from the working class, nor is he a self-made capitalist. His alter ego Tony Stark follows in the footsteps of his arms-manufacturing father Howard Stark.

Iron Man's creator Stan Lee insisted that Stark was inspired by Howard Hughes, because he's 'one of the most colourful men of our time – an inventor, an adventurer, a multimillionaire, a ladies' man and, finally, a nutcase.'

The possibility for extending the series was endless, but they begin with Stark the hedonist, only to set him up for a Damascene conversion into a selfless crusader for a world without war.

It opens with a US patrol in Afghanistan in which Stark is ambushed, shot and wakes up in a cave to discover that a fellow prisoner (Shaun Torb) has kept his heart alive using a car battery.

Apparently, it's a crude electromagnet designed to attract the slivers of shrapnel in his body from penetrating his heart, so extending the time for the ever inventive Stark to build a powerful pacemaker.

The irony is that he makes it from parts scavenged from captured Stark weaponry, before transforming some scrap iron into an armoured suit that enables him to escape and return to the US to proclaim his new purpose.

He shocks his father's former colleague Obadiah Stane (Bridges) and the other shareholders when he claims that Stark Industries should be turning swords into ploughshares and retires to his laboratory.

Techno-heads will probably love the way that he designs and makes his new flying suit with the aid of computer robots reminiscent of those featuring in the Picasso advert produced for Citroen.

In short, Stark creates Iron Man as a superhero determined to fight injustice, not least establish a vigilante group called SHIELD prepared to defend the American way.

Meanwhile, his former captors have collected up the remains of his costume and reassembled them to sell to Stane, who instantly sees that he can create his own metal monster if he gets Stark's power source.

Downey Jr has a history as a man haunted by demons and he has no problems producing a performance of a man struggling to change without going into overdrive method mode.

Ditto Bridges, with his shaven head and bushy frontier beard. Chewing on a cigar, he manages to convey the ruthlessness of the megalomaniac with dreams of an evil empire.

With Gywneth Paltrow as his loyal assistant Pepper Potts and Terrence Howard as his mate in the military Rhodey, Jon Favreau's Iron Man has called on the unrivalled CGI skills of Industrial Light and Magic to bring him to life.

Oddly, given that Iron Man's identity is kept secret in the early comics – he's described as Tony Stark's bodyguard – the franchise might have blown the chance to cash in by revealing the dual identities at the end.

What am I saying? They'll simply revamp the story again, as they have already done countless times before.

Let's just hope that they don't need to resurrect him to support a 'pre-emptive' strike on Iran.

From Morning Star