I wonder what the reaction would be if somebody made a well-done superhero movie about, say, a billionaire Iraqi oil magnate who, at the start of the Occupation in Iraq, gets tortured and waterboarded by US neocons in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to give up the master codes to start his fleet of oil refineries or somesuch, then manages to escape, realizes that his previous profits from supplying oil to the West was completely amoral, and uses his superintelligence and vast wealth to create an invincible suit that allows him to fight his old business partner, who is becoming rich by literally fueling the villainous Project for a New American Century.

…Okay, fine, probably wouldn’t play too well in Iowa.

The irony is, of course, that even after waterboarding and torture Tony Stark did not do what they were asking. Which is just more proof that not only is torture repellent, it’s not particularly effective either.

Turse points out something really insidious. It’s not just that the movie gives the US government a free pass; it’s that they project the very things the US is guilty of in Afghanistan onto the supervillains.

The film Iron Man is replete with such reversals, starting with the obvious fact that, in Afghanistan, it is Americans who have imprisoned captured members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban (as well as untold innocents) in exceedingly grim conditions, not vice-versa. It is they who, like Tony Stark, have been subjected to the Bush administration’s signature “harsh interrogation technique.”

Waterboarding (in case like me you haven’t seen the movie yet).

While a few reviewers have offhandedly alluded to the eeriness of this screen choice, Iron Man has suffered no serious criticism for taking the imprisonment practices, and most infamous torture, of the Bush years and superimposing it onto America’s favorite evil-doers. Nor have critics generally thought to point out that, while, in the film, the nefarious Obadiah Stane, Stark’s right hand man, is a double-dealing arms dealer who is selling high-tech weapons systems to the terrorists in Afghanistan (and trying to kill Stark as well), two decades ago the U.S. government played just that role. For years, it sent advanced weapons systems — including Stinger missiles, one of the most high-tech weapons of that moment — to jihadis in Afghanistan so they could make war on one infidel superpower (the Soviet Union), before setting their sights on another (the United States). And while this took place way back in the 1980s, it shouldn’t be too hard for film critics to recall – since it was lionized in last year’s celebrated Tom Hanks film Charlie Wilson’s War.

The irony is just appalling. The whole article’s worth a read.

But half of me STILL REALLY thought the movie rawked.

OK, she could have been bitchier, and I’dve liked it if she had been, but she was much better than I expected.

zombie: Hey, half of me loved it too!! heh, I had the exact same thought about her shoes…and ya know, she’s far from the first actress to be running around in wildly inappropriate footgear, it was just reeeealllly noticable in this movie…wonder if Gwyneth Paltrow is a bit of a clutz or if she was deliberately stumbling more than your usual actress in that situation, and if no. 2, why?

I HATED the part with the reporter. I also had some issues with Pepper (if nothing more subtle, running on grated floors in stilletos?!), but I thought it was at least a vague shuffle in the right direction that she *didn’t* fall in love and ZOMG MARRY him in the end. She ALMOST fell for the glitz ‘n’ glamor that is Tony Stark at the benefit, but she totally PWNed him with the pull-back. I can only imagine that if he had actually returned with the dirty Martinis, she would verbally castrate him with all the ways he was completely wrong for her or any woman and how, if she had discovered radical feminism previously, she would’ve left his lazy ass, because no amount of money or pretty dresses is worth losing herself.

Alas, he ran off to be a hero and missed out on being Told.

Re: His age. If you think a 45 year old man can’t also be incredibly toddler-like, you haven’t met my 54 year old ex-step father, who has the emotional maturity of a bullfrog. The only problem I see there is people that smart are too socially inept* (and, I like to think, just too good to be willing) to use people in such a disgusting, degrading manner.

*This coming from one of those socially-inept gifted folks. No harm intended.

When Stark realized the driver was female, he didn’t hit on her so much as make fun of the idea that there is anything weird about a woman in a warzone, and then parody the hyper-sexualization of the culture by hitting on her.

I think if the director were trying for that message, he wouldn’t have to change a thing. Given that Stark can’t seem to meet a woman without trying to sleep with her, though, the scene plays out more as self-parody. Pity…

Esme – Having female characters be less important/central to the plot with less character development is an expression of the basic misogyny of our culture, not the specific misogyny of any particular movie, I think. Iron Man takes that cultural bias and runs the hell away with it to a ridiculous degree. Definitely not all superhero movies are like that…The League of Extraordinary Gentleman isn’t, for example. I agree that the X-Men isn’t either.

Sabrina – It didn’t bother me that she hopped into bed with Stark (though it was hard to imagine why–they made it clear that she was a rich girl, so she couldn’t have been impressed by that, and he was like waaaaaaay older, so her being overwhelmed by his hotness seemed unlikely, and man, that slice of sex scene–all I could think about his displayed technique was “hyperactive rabbit”). What bothered me was, how Pepper Potts called her “trash” the next morning for doing it, how it was portrayed as soooo cool that Stark treated the girl with utter discourtesy and contempt–what had she done to deserve that that he hadn’t done? and how Pepper validated that by slut-shaming the girl but kissing the man’s ass.

Violet – My mom and sister used to loooove Xena! Sure, it was campy, but it was tongue-in-cheek camp and Xena and Gabrielle rocked.