Posts from ‘Iron Man’
The Iron Man Mark I armour collects dust
I haven’t done an illustration purely for myself and the fun of it in quite a few weeks now (not counting the lunch scribbles) so tonight in order to loosen up I just started sketching out an illustration I’ve had in my head for a while.
I’m a little obsessed with the idea that Tony Stark generally keeps his old armour and displays it in his work station. I mean the classic Stark too not the movie one or the current incarnation. I think I read a semi recent comic which had Tony purging the memory on an armour before he melted it down which I found horrifying.
The Iron Man Mark I armour hangs in the corner gathering dust
In actuality the Mark I armour was actually re-purposed by Stark after he realised that he didn’t really look all that heroic in the grey hulking armour. He sprayed it with the gold layer to show the Golden Avenger look that I actually quite like.
I’m going to assume though that he built more than one even in those early days, maybe this is all that remains of the absolute first armour that he wore to save his life. I also assume that for some of the armours when they were retired they were probably fairly badly damaged, the golden armour for instance was quite damaged if I recall correctly before being replace by the red and gold armour that most people are familiar with. So when we see the hall of armours they really should be in pretty sad conditions.
It was something covered in the film Iron Man 2 because the Mark III armour that was damaged by Iron Monger is in the background with the scrape marks all over it which is a detail I appreciated (despite being slightly wrong considering the helmet was crushed and the helmet is clearly the one that was battle damaged from his earlier incursion when he was shot down…)
I included the ink line illustration stage and a different scan because the scanner messes with the colours and definition – I’m much happier with it in real life than the digital scans.
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- The Iron Man Mark I armour hangs in the corner gathering dust
Okay I know I’ve banged on about the Iron Man 2 soundtrack for a bit, I thought it odd that it would be a “best of” collection for AC/DC but figured that if they went for a a full on heavy metal AC/DC soundtrack for the film that would be an interesting choice and why not since AC/DC music kicks ass.
Well I’ve seen Iron Man 2 now and I can tell you that the Iron Man 2 soundtrack is complete and utter bullshit from a soundtrack point of view.
First of all, the film features one AC/DC song during the actual film (Shoot to Thrill) and then another one during the credits (Highway to Hell). So two AC/DC songs from the official soundtrack make it into the film. The rest of the songs aren’t actually featured, Thunderstruck (which I guess Marvel will save for Thor… I’m kidding) featured in a couple of the trailers but there were no other songs from the soundtrack in the film.
Now this is some 80′s bullshit.
I thought we’d be pretty much past the whole “Music featured in or inspired by” crap just to label a CD with a movie image. But the kicker here is that this music isn’t even inspired by the film!?!? Even War Machine Which you could imagine wasn’t (I don’t think) written with the character in mind.
What makes it worse though is that there is other music featured in the movie apart from the woeful score. There is a Queen song featuring DJ AM and a couple more that I honestly can’t recall but also can’t find online anywhere either.
A note about the score, it’s a different guy this time round and all the theme music from the first has been dumped which I think is a mistake. Also there may have been more incidental AC/DC music throughout the film, I didn’t pick up on it though and I doubt it but happy to be wrong.
That’s probably all I’ve got on Iron Man 2 now, I’ve vented now and I’m sure there are going to be plenty who completely disagree with me and love it.
I’m sure part three is going to be great!!
Honestly.
I’ve been waiting on Iron Man 2 ever since the credits rolled on Iron Man 1.
It’s an event film for me. I’ve been with this character for twenty something years now and when the first film came out it showed the world what I and my fellow shellheads already knew. Iron Man is awesome.
So after watching the first film and thinking about the sequel I became aware of what appeared to be the rule of Marvel in films.
The second film is better than the first.
It’s certainly true of Spider-Man, Hulk, some argue that Blade 2 is superior, X-Men 2, Fantastic Four 2 and I can’t imagine that Ghost Rider 2 is going to be worse than Ghost Rider 1. X-Men and Spider-Man also expands upon the rule suggesting that the third film is worse than the first two.
Iron Man 2 then is the exception to the rule. It’s nowhere near as good as the first Iron Man on pretty much every level. I’m going to break down my reaction into dot points because my brain hurts too much with disappointment (I may be exaggerating how bad this is as I am disappointed but I doubt it).
The bad…
- the script is some of the worst rubbish I’ve heard come out of the even the poorest written comic books
- the plot is stupid and wastes the groundwork put together in the first film and the best of the Iron Man comic series
- the music is a joke considering the soundtrack (I’ve got a whole post coming dedicated to this)
- The Black Widow puts female comic book characters well back into the 80s
- Samuel L Jackson figured that acting is no longer required and just walks through his admittedly poorly written dialogue
- His eye patch doesn’t fit well and his costume looks stupid especially in the daytime (though comic book accurate)
- The science in the film is bad, no I mean super bad, no I mean Superman putting the Great Wall of China back together with his eyes bad. If Stark had pulled out a sonic screwdriver to fix a bunch of stuff I would not have raised an eyebrow.
- Whiplash is a stupid character that no one ever really liked in the first place and it makes no sense that he wasn’t the Crimson Dynamo
- I don’t believe that Mickey Rourke is a super genius. Makes Nicole Kidman as a brain surgeon look believable. I need to clarify here too, I like Rourke and his inclusion could have been great but it wasn’t.
- Really stupid plot… I mentioned that already right? Think Transformers 2 stupid.
- The stinger at the end of the credits is so underwhelming it’s really annoying – yet people are getting really excited over it.
- The complete misuse of Tony Stark’s alcohol problem (I can’t be more specific).
- The boss fight is essentially the same as the first one.
The good…
- The cast is great, I mean they are really a good looking cast on paper and on screen, they’re charming and they do their absolute best with what they have to work with. There are a couple of exceptions, Sam Jackson as already mentioned and Scarlett Johansson.
- It generally looks pretty cool though not as good as the first one
- War Machine is kind of cool
- Stark’s hair was pretty neat and his suits (clothing suits no armour) were very nice
- The briefcase armour is badass but poorly executed in the film
I’m actually having trouble thinking up nice things about the film, I love the character and will buy this on Blu-ray but then I also bought Terminator 4 solely on the fact that I think it ‘looks good’.
One last thing about the film and it’s just a little annoying thing but there were whole chunks of the film where I knew what was going to happen because I saw it in the trailers. Plus it was distracting when what seemed to be great lines in the trailer were dropped from the film and replaced with other scenes.
People are still going to love Iron Man 2 because there are people out there who LOVE Transformers 2 and whilst I don’t understand it I’m happy that they get something out it and don’t think any less of them.
In the end I just wanted something much better.
