Re-Creata-Tino - IRON MAN

So many people watch movies, it's really become one of America's favorite past times. Since certain occurrences have urged people to stay home and stay indoors, rather than driving to a different location to cram in with a bunch of strangers and pay for overpriced popcorn while contracting something you might not get at home, movies at home have become a staple.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY WARNING

Now, there's something to be said for original creators of such excellent works of art. The whole "idea" or "creation" of any fictional work or character is protected by what is called "intellectual property rights" and i'm not here to step on them, or break them at all. I know what fan fiction is, been involved in that to some degree for a while, and here's the difference.

FAN FICTION: You can write whatever you want about an intellectual property owned by anyone else, but you cannot make money off of it. You can't sell it. You can't advertise it as your own. Anything you come up with in that fan fiction, actually becomes the property of the original intellectual property owner. So, if you write a story about Iron Man using a dildo cannon as his latest and greatest Mark-DiLdO then, technically, Marvel, and now Disney, could take that idea and run with it, and there's nothing you can do. This INCLUDES other works of art you include in your own story so... beware, beware, and oh yeah, BEWARE.

Now, with respect to what I'm about to do here. I'm not writing FAN FICTION. I'm not going to write something beginning to end, or re-write the movie, no. I'm going to pick out specific pieces and parts of the movie and give you my honest assessment of what needed to be BETTER, and then I'll tell you how I might make it BETTER. And yeah, to a certain extent, if Marvel/Disney decides to take my ideas, so be it.

IRON MAN, The Beginning: The entire beginning of the movie is so spot on, so awesome, I wouldn't really change much about it, except that, for a military demonstration with air cover and STARK controlled, or at least arranged, fighter jets in the sky, nobody saw enemy insurgents with STARK industries weaponry creeping up on their six? I would have at least put a little snippet in the beginning about how Tony is having issues with his cell reception, the phone call being a bit garbled, nothing too much, and the fighter pilots remarking that their systems are a bit wonky, but Tony pushes them to conduct the Jericho testing, and the demonstration goes off without a hitch, AND THEN, he gets attacked, injured, and captured.

Another quick thing is that, the whole time Tony Stark was captured and forced to build the Jericho weapon for The Ten Rings, (Now knowing what the Ten Rings are, and what they describe, in accordance with Shang Chi,) it seems a bit funny that the leader of the Ten Rings would want a weapon like Jericho, or that he would go to such lengths to get it, rather than just... Oh, I don't know... BUYING IT! We all know the Ten Rings have money. Thousands of years of money. So... Maybe, explain just a bit more? You can work in a rouge cell looking to show their worth to the Ten Rings, without actually being part? Something like that.

I also understand this was an early Marvel movie, before Disney bought them, and they weren't on the "money is no obstacle" budget just yet. I like the low budget beginning, the way Tony has to use common every day tools we all know like, a hammer, a blow torch, an anvil. However, another thing I need to point out is that, low grade steel isn't bullet proof. Ugh, movies are movies, they're not real life, I know. I just watched a movie with bullets flying everywhere and only the bad guys get shot, over and over and over again. Movies, and acting, are about making people BELIEVE, which IRON MAN is excellent at doing. The flame thrower that almost doesn't work. The little rocket Tony's suit has, the way the arm gets caught in the stone wall. The way the suit literally falls apart in flight. Excellent realism. Excellent. It could have used a single line or two about the metal, how Tony used a liner from the missiles he took apart to make it bullet proof... something like that. He also should have used a part of the frontal optic shield off the missiles, melted it down and made it a thin bulletproof glass shield for his eyes, inside the helmet.

So, Tony escapes, he trudges across the dessert while his captors deal with the entire place on fire and burning. Good. Great even. Tony comes back to America, eats a burger, and starts shaking things up. He starts designing his next suit, and things progress at a rapid and very thought out pace. His interaction with Pepper Potts, his reminiscing about what dad would have done, all of that is excellent. Iron Man was put together in a way that was very cohesive and each scene meshed with the next in a super nice fashion.

After Tony gets the suit made and finishes his testing, it's time for the field test. Live Fire Testing. Iron Man lands in a village called Gulmira where the Ten Rings are committing genocide. executing people and he gives them an ass whooping. I love that part of the movie. He frees the people, and then he faces off against a tank that has hit him with a round, right in the face! This is an excellent show of how incredibly tough the Iron Man suit really is, but... it didn't detect that a tank had him locked in it's sights, or radar? Again, it's a small thing, and anti-aircraft cannons can be mounted on tanks. There should have been a split second warning for Tony before he gets hit, and then a smoke trail from the top of the tank where an anti-aircraft cannon was mounted. Clearly the audience is meant to think he was hit with a tank round to the face, and if he was, a second round to chest would be nothing, but he studiously avoids the second shot.

I think Iron Man taking the second tank round in the chest would have been bad ass, and then, he fires a little missile that hits the tank and then.... silence. Then Boom! So... again, a small thing but, how is the round working? Is it penetrating the tank armor? That happens pretty much faster than you can comprehend. A delayed blast? Why? A dud? Nah. Too real. LOL. It was great for something different in the movie, to build anticipation, but... if it were like a real anti-tank round, the projectile would have hit, penetrated, and then a little boom, and then full on raging fire exploding out of every orifice of the tank as the insides are burned to cinders. Fuel tanks exploding, weapons racks exploding, multiple explosions, and so loud they'd make Iron Man cringe.

Well, Iron Man then starts getting shot at, and he flies up, locks on the Jericho Missiles... the same ones he did NOT make for the Ten Rings, and destroys them. I guess they ended up buying them from Obadiah Stank. Oh, sorry, I mean Stane. I love calling him Stank. Anyways.

So, with Tony thwarting the Ten Rings, he continues until Stane decides he's had enough. He tries to take the company from Tony but he only wrestles control of it out of his hands. Good, good. Tony isn't cut off completely.

Now, things progress quickly. Stane takes over, or disables the head of the Ten Rings, who knows exactly what the power dynamic is there exactly. Stane later on does the same thing to Tony, disabling him, and takes his arc-reactor from his chest. Stane leaves, Tony get's his old arc-reactor from the trophy case, and puts it in without dying first. Bravo. Nicely done.

Stane takes the arc-reactor and powers up Iron Monger with it. Rhodey finds Tony on the floor. They need to get to Pepper. Pepper, who has found out Obidiah's secret, has Agent Coulson with her, and heads to the arc-reactor building. Too late. Iron Monger is fully functional already. They cut back to Tony and Rhodey, who is just now seeing the Iron Man suit and thinks it's soo cool. And then, as Iron Man flies off, he looks at the silver suit Tony is making. We assume that is War Machine, but it could be a beginning design for any one of his suits.

Knowing Terrence Howard got cut from Iron Man 2, and so forth, that scene is even more poignant, but back then, it showed promise and anticipation. I'm divided on whether I think a failed attempt by Rhodey to use the War Machine suit would have been cool or not.

I want to say no, it would have shown Rhodey was a back door dealing sneaky little thief, but then again, in Iron Man 2, that's exactly what happens. He comes to confront Tony with the intent to take the Iron Man suit from him, and then settles for War Machine, giving it to the big G, and really puts a hamper on their relationship. But that's another review!

Back to the end! So, Iron Monger powers up, chases Pepper through the arc-reactor building, almost catching her, and she escapes. He goes through the under part of the building, busts out of the ground in front of her, almost kills her, but Tony arrives and hits him, taking both of then down, through, and through some more, until they pop out on a lower expressway filled with cars. This part of the movie is fantastic. Action filled, non-stop, showing off everything that each suit can do... but not... not really.

See, Tony's suit is being powered by the Mark-1 arc-reactor that originally just kept metal fragments out of his heart and powered the Mark-1 suit made in a cave. As Tony's onboard computer tells him, that reactor was never designed to power sustained flight. By the time Tony arrives to engage Stane, his suit is down to just 19%.

As the fight ensues, Stark and Stane trade punches and words, each showing the other how they are more ingenious, or capable, etc. It basically comes down to a "my _____ is bigger than your _____" but in this situation, the blanks are suits, and bigger is not always better. In the end, the icing situation and a lack of testing becomes Stane's downfall, allowing Tony with a inferior arc-reactor, yet, a much better designed suit, to temporarily disable him.

Not to let a little thing like de-icing end a movie, the climactic end involves Iron Man letting his guard down, taking off his left glove, and opening his helmet, only to get sucker punched by Stane. Stane's suit is much stronger, and more heavily armored than Tony's and in the end, it comes down to, not the suit, but the man in the suit. When it comes to Iron Man, that is the entire premise of his existence. Who is Iron Man? Is it the suit? Is it the man in the suit? The answer is simple. Both. One does not exist without the other.

Now, should I put a spoiler alert here? If you haven't seen the movie, then you must be living under a rock, OR, it's just not your type of movie! Imagine that! I've never seen... uh... a lot of John Wayne westerns. I haven't had a chance. So there's my excuse. Still watching early episodes of Endeavor and Red Dwarf, and apparently I've got a lot of ways to go. But, back to IRON MAN. Spoiler. Iron Man wins. But he wins with his brain, not with his suit.

In the end, Pepper overloads the arc-reactor, sending out a huge blast of electricity, not just an EMP (for those who do not know, an EMP is an Electro-Magnetic Pulse). An EMP is, in a sense, a huge wave of magnetism, generated by a blast. Any conductor moving in a magnetic field, induces electrical current. Yup. Moving a paperclip over a magnet produces electrical current. In this way, an EMP, moves a super magnetic wave which, as it passes and influences conductive material, creates an electrical current. This is why an EMP blast fries electronics, especially sensitive electronics. The wave, reverses electrical flow, or just overloads it, and blows everything. There's more to it than just that, but I'm not getting into the science any more than that.

So, Stane doesn't just have his suit get fried, he get's fried like a chicken nugget. After that, he falls into the arc-reactor building, through the roof, and into the reactor itself, which explodes and brings down most of the building. Tony Stark is still on the roof, and Pepper has made it safely outside to safety.

In the end, Tony Stark reveals to the press at a briefing covering the incidents at the arc-reactor building, etc. That he is, in fact, Iron Man. The movie ends. Its a great ending to a great movie, and aside from the little things I mentioned, this movie is really one of the best movies ever put together.

My Re-Creata-Tino of Iron Man 2, and Iron Man 3 are going to be much more in depth because, well... as a lot of people have mentioned, Iron Man 2 was not as good as Iron Man, and in a lot of ways did not live up to everyone's expectations. Iron Man 3 was... for a lack of better words, a complete S-Show. A lot of people liked that, but there was a LOT of room for improvement.

If you like what you read, give me a like. Please subscribe. Please share links to my stuff if you like it, and if you must, give me a tip. My name is Kerry Williams, father, small business owner, husband and maniac. I currently have three novels in the works, never had anything published, but I plan on rocking this world while I'm here.

"I'm not done, I've only just begun." - Kerry Williams