Beautifully reinvigorated by Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), the transposition of ancient comic book superheroes on the screens, which has become one of the trump cards of the Hollywood blockbuster movie, has not stopped since then. After Spider-Man, Batman, Hulk, Hellboy, X-Men and other Watchmen, Iron Man is the latest franchise to date.
The steel creature, created on behalf of the publisher Marvel by Stan Lee (1922-2018), became a series star in its own right in 1968. After The Invincible Iron Man, an animated film released in 2007, the first feature film will be directed in 2008 by Jon Favreau – followed by Iron Man 2, in 2010, then by Iron Man 3, in 2013. The first part, broadcast on May 22, does not deserve the ironic darkness and the feeling of wonder that characterizes the vein.
The action is resolutely contemporary: Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr., excellent as usual), heir to an arms magnate and genius inventor, portrays a billionaire playboy, cynical and nationalist until the caricature. A private jet trip to Afghanistan, to present to the boys the latest missile out of its factories, will however change the situation.
Moral nobility
Captured by a group of merciless terrorists, he is seriously injured by shrapnel, which requires the grafting of a miniaturized generator on his chest, his heart hanging by a thread. Stark develops, in the cave where he is held prisoner, the first draft, artisanal, of a steel armor intended to later qualify his moult.
A colorful carnage later, back home, a new man was born. A man who knows that his own weapons are sold to terrorists, and who decides to put a spell on both of them, by manufacturing, in the greatest secrecy, armor with formidable technology and aesthetics.
Gleaming red steel of the carapace, yellow tapering of the eyes, bluish light of the generator on the chest, shooting star grace in flight, bruised heart and advanced armament in each joint, Iron Man, it must be admitted, does not miss of outfit in the contest of martial elegance and hybrid beauty that our friends the superheroes engage in, without admitting it.
Especially since this physical assumption is enhanced by the moral nobility of an individual who turns, out of ethical conscience, against the man he was and, a major anti-capitalist crime, against the production of his own company. Old Hollywood lesson on the true greatness of America. All of this is done very smoothly.
