By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
trailering
Alice In Wonderland – A bit more stuff… a bit more story… not much of a leap though. I expected bigger fingerprints from Rich Ross. Helena Bonham Carter does more and does it well. And Alice as Joan of Arc is the biggest new offering, appealing to young girls. Oh, that Rich Ross is tricky.
Disney’s earlier version had to be pulled from 16mm distribution because it was getting stolen for the $20 deposit too often. The stoners will be waiting for this blu-ray more eagerly than they do the Domino’s delivery dude.
Iron Man 2 – Bigger suit. Can Robert Downey, Jr being a smart aleck and the promise of not just one more suit, but two drive this one to big numbers? Yeah. It’s a sequel.
They did “second suit” the first time out. Last time, the bigger suit baddie was bald. This time, he has dreads. Innovative.
I don’t really know what I think from this trailer. Rourke looks comical, but isn’t actually funny in the trailer. Cheadle in the second suit is interesting, but no sense of what kind of character choice putting on the suit is. The only interesting thing to me in Starks’ relationship with Pepper is that if she ever gives in, one of them is going to be hanging from straps and getting penetrated by something electronic… probably her doing it to him… powerful men and all… but that’ll wait for the fifth movie, rated R and in 4D.
The most interesting idea, as was started and lost in the first film, is privatized military.
But this trailer will work well for the first film’s loving audience.
Oy to the vey, David Poland. Oy to the vey.
Jesus. That’s weird, Poland. That’s where your mind goes when watching the trailer?
Stolen from 16mm distribution?
Huh?
And who said Rourke was playing comical? The voice-over followed by the shot of him effortlessly cutting an entire race car in half hardly seems like they’re setting him up as a joke.
PS — The second suit? Not a bad guy. Nor sold as one in the trailer.
I thought Rourke looks terrifying.
Is Poland the only guy anywhere who never came around on Iron Man?
I liked it but didn’t think it was anything special.
Drew, I don’t think DP was saying Rourke was playing comical…just that he looks goofy. I think he looked okay.
I agree with Telemachos on the first one. It was fine enough, and I liked it, but with all of the spooge on people’s computer screens you’d think it was some amazing movie. It’s not really, and if I never saw it again I wouldn’t care.
The “Iron Man” trailer kicked ass but I think adding AC/DC to any trailer will make it kick ass. But seriously, it looks like as much fun as the first and for first trailers/teasers, that one is pitch perfect. But Rourke does look like a tranny and that Russian accent sounded like someone doing a Russian accent.
Drew, you need to come around more. Seriously, anyone that’s not that, please come around more. It makes things better.
And the 16mm distribution remark would be referring to Disney’s animated version. The stoners were stealing them, says DP.
DP, I agree that the Iron Man trailer will work for everyone who liked the first movie — including myself. Having said that, did anyone else think: “What the fu%k is Mickey Rourke’s character saying?”
How does that make it thru all stages of the trailer-making process without somebody saying: “Hey is anyone else concerned that the villain sounds like a incomprehensible mumbling Boris Badenov?”
The actual construction of the Iron Man 2 trailer was superb. Biggest Opening Weekend Ever? You know Paramount wants it.
That said, yes, Mickey Rourke looks (and sounds!) re – Goddamn! – dick – u – less. The parrot he had as apart of his negotiations even made an appearance. Ugh.
Sam Rockwell’s character is still remaining a bit of a mystery, and the cadre of EVIL ROBOTS is promising.
Why, exactly, are they calling this Alice in Wonderland? It looks to be taking the Hook route plot-wise, so why not a different name?
Alice looks exactly how I would expect a Tim Burton Alice to look like. And that’s disappointing.
Still, hope for the best.
JOHANSSON POWER = IM2 is already instantly better than the first. Which was decent enough but didn’t seem to have the thrill of mania behind it, something even Punisher War Zone managed.
Impossible not to like Favreau or Downey or Bridges, but the first Iron Man seems kind of… pleasantly middle-of-the-road, a la the first Spider-Man.
I do kinda wish they’d paid Terrence Howard, because say what you will, which his ever-weirder real-life personality and crazy Method quirks in “Fighting,” that dude’s more of a live-wire madman than reined-in, vaguely-rakish Downey Jr.
IRON MAN really didn’t treat me as well on repeat viewings as that first time. Origin stories have become pretty tiresome. Whatever my criticisms of SHERLOCK HOLMES, at least it wasn’t that.
Part two should be better, as long as the multiple antagonists and sidekicks don’t make it a BATMAN AND ROBIN-style clusterf**k.
Though B&R is pretty awesomely cheesy.
Multiple antagonists? Shit, BATMAN BEGINS is practically sacrosanct to geeks, and that thing has a new rotate-o-villain roughly every 22.5 minutes of its runtime.
Rothchild, I never came around on Iron Man. I thought DP hit the nail on the head. It was lazily written and without any dramatic interest. RDJ clowning around was not enough to save it.
VAST minority opinion: BATMAN AND ROBIN > BATMAN BEGINS.
Nolan only hit his stride with DARK KNIGHT.
The problem for me is that Iron Man has set itself apart from the rest of the spandex brigade through hardware – while the others sneak around and display their skills with fisticuffs, Iron Man simply blows up anything in a 50 mile radius.
So when faced with someone who appears to be armed with electrified skipping ropes, for the other superheroes you’ve been primed to expect some form of hand-to-hand combat. Except… this is Iron Man who can fire missiles at opponents from miles away.
Mickey Rourke doesn’t look menacing. He’s obviously human, largely unarmored, and looks like he has a 6ft reach. He looks like he could be handled by a security guard with a .38, let alone someone armed with what is effectively a personal tank.
Rather enjoyed first Iron Man. Trailer continues that fun. Although I think it went for one beat too many at the end with Don Cheadle masking up. Could they not have put it somewhere else? The use of AC/DC is fun.
Anyway, what I find interesting in relation to what David said was something that the first film did in fact drop oh, so discreetly: privatization of the military. They seem to have taken it a step further with this and ramping it into militarized entertainment: that Stark Expo bit with Downey in the tux and the fireworks and the dancing girls… reminded me flat out of American Idol et al.
And then the fade to Mickey Rooskie intent on destroying not only Stark but the American way of entertainment, eh sorry, life.
I’ll still probably see it though.
Mulitple villains are okay as long as they serve the story…Batman Begins works because it’s not about the villain the way the previous ones were…it’s about Batman. And one is a crime lord who’s defeated right away, one is a henchman to the main villain, and then the main villain. It works in a way that even having two like in Batman Forever doesn’t work.
Does anyone think Tommy Lee Jones saw The Dark Knight and then thought back to his horrible, embarassing performance? I even sort of liked that movie, but they should have let Carrey be funny and Jones should have been the scary one. Fucking horrible.
I love in this Iron Man series that for once everyone knows who the hero is, and he glories in it. That’s pretty different, not having the secret identity. Wish they came up with a different idea than more robot suits though. Kind of been there done that.
I think a lot of superhero movies really need to start with origin stories though. The only one that didn’t that I can think of was the first Batman, and even that was when he was pretty new and was at that point only a street legend.
Dead on about Tommy Lee Jones Perm. Watching his performance makes me uncomfortable because it’s so bad.
Iron Man worked, plain and simple. I have seen enough comic movies that have not to know a good one when I see it. Iron Man 2 looks to be more of the same and that is perfect. Iron Man’s 318 million doemstic gross is quite a haul. I’m not sure if Iron Man 2 can claw back there, but it will gross 200 million without breaking a sweat. That’s not bad, the best of the X movies grossed $234.
Batman Begins works because each of the five (!) villains is more or less held offscreen until the previous antagonist is dealt with. Thus, the film is always Batman vs. one specific villain at a time. And since most of the villains are played by character actors and not big stars, they are used as much or as little the movie demands (it helps that all of the villains basically want different things).
Big Perm is right, I’ll never understand why they (be it Jones or Schumacher) chose to play Harvey Dent as a second-rate Joker knock-off. The problem is that Ed Nygma was appropriately nutty, but there was no contrast because Dent was just as over-the-top. Heck, I’d argue that Jim Carrey’s Riddler was actually a less cooky, more creepy character, as his persona gets loonier as the film progresses, rather than starting the picture at ’11’.
As for the Iron Man 2 trailer, I agree that Rourke’s Russian accent is a little goofy and that his presence is a little lacking for the major villain in the second film of a major franchise. But that gives hope that this sequel will be focused more on Stark than the antagonist(s). One of the things I did like about Spider-Man 2 was that the villain was basically there as an occasional punching bag in the midst of a very Peter Parker-centric story (however, telling that story with Doc Ock, the Spider-Man equivalent of The Joker, was a terrible mistake).
But, I do like that the film seems to be addressing my biggest carps with the first film: A) Stark ended the film as the same selfish jerk that he was in the beginning, just with different motives. B) If Stark magically decided that his weapons were a bane to the world, he’s got some karma to correct. The idea of a villain targeting the Stark family for the sins of the father seems like an ideal way to deal with both of these issues. Heck, the sequel that deals with said stuff may make the second film play better, since we know what’s coming later on. We’ll see.
If you take Downey out of Iron Man, what you got left is basically a Brett Ratner movie.
Agree with everybody who says “Iron Man” loses a bit on multiple viewings. Have had the OPPOSITE experience, bizarrely enough, with “The Incredible Hulk,” which – once I got more accustomed to CG-Hulk – I thought was a pretty solid comic book flick.
That said, between “Iron Man 2” and “Inception,” I just can’t wait for next summer’s movies, something I really couldn’t say about this past summer’s (I’m in that micro-minority that thought “Star Trek” played like an “SNL” sketch 🙂
Crow is right. Iron Man is fine, but it’s only Downey’s amazing charisma that makes it really worth watching. And he’s going to do the same for Sherlock Holmes. And of course Jude Law will help out too, and he’s especially good when he gets a chance to do character roles and not look pretty (Gigolo Joe, the killer in that boring Tom Hanks movie, fuck what was that called).
And Scott is on with Carrey in Batman…when Carrey tones down the comedy and plays it creepy, he’s so much better than Jones. There’s that one line where he looks into a video camera and says something, and I remember thinking that was great. They could have really had something there if they toned down the neon, toned Carrey down a bit and took out the big comedy moments, told Jones to stop acting like a retard, and got Keaton back.
I think Schumacher talked about Jones in Batman once, saying he’d never work with Jones again. So, I think maybe he got steamrolled.
“VAST minority opinion: BATMAN AND ROBIN > BATMAN BEGINS.”
LYT, you are so goofy!
Tommy Lee is truly awful in B&R, loud and cackling. But then the whole movie is awful, loud and cackling.
And why in the world does every superhero film need 3-5 extra heroes and villains? It just dilutes it all.
The Carrey line when he looks in the camera is “Isn’t it about time… someone put you in your place.” It’s a terrifically creepy moment, especially as he’s just murdered someone.
Funny that the conversation has lumped Schumacher’s 2 Bat-flicks into one amorphous film.
Tommy Lee wasn’t in B&R.
Both are pretty bad of course, but in relative terms, Batman Forever is a classic compared to B&R.
Yeah Scott, that’s the line! That was a terrific line reading by Carrey, and if they had pitched the whole movie like that…fun and a little over the top but not Carrey dancing around with cartoon sound effects…it would have been a great movie.
Carrey just needs someone to kick his ass and make him behave. He would have been an excellent villain in that Lemony Snicket movie but he kept abandoning the character so he could be “funny.”
I think of both as one long bad movie I guess — th I think Clooney is the perfect Bruce Wayne. Carrey woulda been the perfect Riddler had he not been encouraged to pretend like he was in the 60’s tv show.
I remember loving Batman Forever all except for Jones, but it looks worse and worse each time…I did love the casting of Kilmer as Batman, though, and think in the right hands he’d have been the best one.
BATMAN AND ROBIN, however, is the Adam West TV show on steroids, even down to casting Mr. Freeze with a teutonic actor. I seem to recall West being quoted at the time as saying they finally did it right.
BATMAN BEGINS was when it occurred to me that I’m getting really sick of origin stories. Same problem as Ang Lee’s HULK — it takes an hour to explain a backstory that everyone knows already. PLus, for all its getting back to the character, it makes the same two major mistakes of the Burton/Schumacher films: Batman blithely gives away his secret identity to his girlfriend, and allows the villain to die.
As for Iron Man and armored villains — that’s pretty much how the comic is, seems to me — many of the villains are armored characters. Mandarin is a notable exception, but also tough to do in a “real world” superhero movie.
Funny that between IM2’s armored characters, and Holmes with his boxing, that some folks are seemingly irritated that they are actually drawing from the source material. The nerve!
Let’s see how they handle Tony Stark’s alcoholism.
LYT, but Nolan’s films dont kill all the badguys. And in a ballsy move, kills the girlfriend in the last one.
I think Nolan had to do the Batman origin because it was a different spin. I didn’t really have an issue with it. And as for Iron Man, most mainstream people are not familar with Iron Man like they are with Bats and Supes (and even Hulk).
Add me to the list of Iron Man is swell, but nothing incredibly special. Some well-delivered one liners. A smart aleck protagonist that’t not based on revenge who’s a gear head who makes the ultimate sports car. I get it.
I hope the sequel is fun. They sure got some good actors in it but there are FOUR WORDS that have me very skeptical: SCREENPLAY BY JUSTIN THEROUX.
I just hope IM2 isn’t as by-the-numbers as the first.
I don’t read the source material for Iron Man so I don’t care if they draw from it or not…but it seems very samey-samey to me. Evil guy in suit in the first movie, MORE evil guys in similar suits this time. There’s no other villain they could use who was a little different? It’s just a bunch of Iron Men in the comics?
Clooney was an okay Bruce Wayne, but he was the worst Batman. HORRIBLE Batman. I know that Shumacher hobbled him by making the movie campy, but good night.
Uh…. Perm…. The other armored guy isn’t a baddie. That’s the guy without the suit….
As for the comics, the villains are generally other guys in suits, or magical (the traditional arch-villain being a Sorcerer called The Mandarin), and Favreau seems pretty anti-supernatural.
Oh, yeah, and for as big a Clooney fan as I am….. his Batman was awful. I liked his Wayne, possibly more than any other, but that was the sole thing that movie got even in the vicinity of “right”.
Rourke is wearing a stripped down version of the Iron Man suit, complete with glowing chest. It’s another suit.
And then that one shot has Iron Man and his similarly suited buddy fighting fifty other bad guy Iron Men (more suits).
“LYT, but Nolan’s films dont kill all the badguys.”
Nor did Batman Forever…or even Returns, if you count Catwoman as a villain. But “I’m not going to kill you, but I don’t have to save you” is nonetheless a cop-out, IMO. Plus the whole Scarecrow thing — Batman just finds an antidote for his gas, and now he’s almost immediately no threat at all.
“And in a ballsy move, kills the girlfriend in the last one.”
I have no bad words for The Dark Knight (save wanting Gotham to look a bit more gothic, but that’s a very minor issue). In a way, that does redeem Begins a bit for me, though I still hate the way he just blatantly reveals it.
“Rourke is wearing a stripped down version of the Iron Man suit, complete with glowing chest. It’s another suit.”
A shirtless man in jeans with shoulder straps and a chest piece is a suit of armor…..m’kay.
So you’d say it’s not at all based on the suit, that it’s not robotic and doesn’t make the guy superpowered and doesn’t have the glowing chest like the Iron Man suit? I guess you’re right they’re not at all similar.
Do you also figure that in the movie Rourke doesn’t build his outfit based on the Stark technology? hey just happen to both have glowing chests?
And there’s still the 50 other bad guy Iron Men they’re blasting.
“So you’d say it’s not at all based on the suit, that it’s not robotic and doesn’t make the guy superpowered and doesn’t have the glowing chest like the Iron Man suit? I guess you’re right they’re not at all similar.
Do you also figure that in the movie Rourke doesn’t build his outfit based on the Stark technology? hey just happen to both have glowing chests?”
Er….no…. I didn’t say ANY of that. Not a single one. Eloquent, if over the top, example of the straw man argument, though.
Yeah, he has the chest piece, based on Stark’s design. And he’s got powers. I just said it’s not an armored suit. I’m surprised you feel the need to argue this point, given he’s half naked. The chest piece is the power supply – if he were carrying a car battery, he wouldn’t be wearing a Buick, either.
I know you’re used to going ’round with IO, but that doesn’t mean you need to have to go into hyperbolic overdrive any time someone disagrees with you.
As for the 50 other bad guys…. I thought they were robots. Splitting hairs, perhaps, but that’s my take.
It works well on all the repeated viewings for me. Groupthink is so awesome, but luckily Iron Man plays. IT JUST PLAYS! So take care, comb all of your hair, and there.
If I were using hyperbole I’d say that there were a MILLION other Iron Men in that last shot, story.
Jeez, I swear that internet people are so particular and anal. So let’s say this:
“While Rourke is not in an exact Iron Man suit, in my opinion I get a sense of deja vu seeing as the villain of the piece, as in the first, is using technology based on Stark’s Iron Man design. While Rourke is not wearing a full robot outfit, his apparatus (not actual armor with robot mask) is undeniably meant to be evocative of the original Iron Man outfit. Thus, another tech-based villain with special strength and robot powers, even though he is shirtless. Furthermore, to point of order, I would prefer a villain not based on the tech of Stark’s Iron Man outfit, like perhaps a wizard.”
But Perm, I think the general point is that he’s not ARMORED, even though the may be augmented. If the premise is “hightech characters shooting projectiles at each other” he looks like he’d lose to someone armed with a bow and arrow. There’s nothing to stop sharp sticks from giving the guy problems, let alone hypersonic explosive warheads.
It’s like one of those Superman sequences where they have to contrive a way for him to lose his power so the villain is seen as a halfway credible threat. Here they have to come up with a way for Ironman to duke it out with Mr Skipping Rope instead of blasting him with missiles from the other side of the continent.
Having said that, changing the premise (such as your suggestion of having a wizard as a villain) would work.
Isn’t another one of Iron Man’s enemies a dragon of some kind? Or am I getting that confused?
I’m surprised there’s all this talk about problems with Batman movies and nobody’s brought up the single worst thing about Batman Begins: Katie Holmes.
That’s pretty much been the achilles heel of all the Batman movies – the love interest. Why they keep trying to shoehorn a female lead into a story about a guy whose first love will always be lingering around on rooftops is beyond me.
At best you get a “women in refrigerators” plot device like The Dark Knight. At worst you get ridiculous character breakers like how he reveals his secret identity again and again and again like in the 90’s movies. Feel free to reverse those two depending on how offensive you find refrigerated tropes.
“Isn’t another one of Iron Man’s enemies a dragon of some kind? Or am I getting that confused?”
You refer, I presume, to Fin Fang Foom. Good luck getting the masses not to LOL at that.
I actually liked the Dawes character in Batman Begins, specifically because she wasn’t there primarily as a love interest. She was Wayne’s moral compass, the person who taught him about compassion, mercy, etc. In essence, she was the Leslie Thompkins of the Nolan Batman universe. And I rather disliked how she was neutered in The Dark Knight, forced to primarily the romantic interest, a prize to be battled over between two strong men and then (as Foamy correctly stated) a ‘woman in refrigerator’.
You refer, I presume, to Fin Fang Foom. Good luck getting the masses not to LOL at that.
They should go for the gusto and use the Nextwave version of the character
Re: Shumacher Batman. He sold WB, literally, that Returns bombed because the audience only knows and wants Adam West Batman. He finally admitted to it around Tigerland, IIRC. So whatever choices were made, he made alone, which is why I think he should have been put out to pasture even though I dig most of his 90’s work.
Re: Iron Man 2. This is all a re-working of a storyline known as “Armor Wars”. Stark’s IM tech ends up being traded and swapped among allies and enemies and his answer is to take them all down. So Rourke’s Whiplash is an amalgalm of two or three IM villains – Whiplash, Crimson Dynamo and Titanium Man. Rockwell is playing the Stark Doppleganger while Cheadle as War Machine is the IM answer…and hoping for a spin-off.
The problem with Fav’s approach is by limiting his villains to tech-based, the story outlines become incredibly repetitive. You couldn’t go with Crimson Dynamo or Titanium Man because the action scenes would have been identical to the first film. He won’t directly deal with Mandarin as a villain because Marvel is full of wusses, terrified at drawing analogies. “A Chinese villain? Can we open in China? Will people think it’s Sinophobic? Jingoistic?” I’m not sure if the character will be foreshadowed like the first film because I’m no longer banking on a third. RDJ will be shuffled to the Avengers project by then, which matters more to Disney.
” It was lazily written and without any dramatic interest. RDJ clowning around was not enough to save it.”
Save it? What, it made something like half a billion worldwide? It didn’t need “saving”… the majority of folks who watched it enjoyed it.. just because you didn’t like it doesn’t make it a bad film… it just means you didn’t like it…
Repeat viewings haven’t diminished my love for the film at all..
“The Incredible Hulk” improved slightly for me, except for scenes with the Hulk in them.. that CG I just can’t get my mind around… looks fake to me every shot…
“Jeez, I swear that internet people are so particular and anal. ”
You exemplify this amazingly well, given that you are so bent out of shape for me pointing out a simple, obvious fact.
“But Perm, I think the general point is that he’s not ARMORED, even though the may be augmented.”
BINGO!
I don’t see what was so difficult about this idea.
But due, you’re missing missing missing missing missing missing missing the general point I’m making, even still. I’m not bent out of shape as much as I think you’re being sort of willfully obtuse. Also, I’m willing tobet that, since the trailer makes it look like you see Rourke in hsi getup the first time Stark meets him, in the end he’ll be in a full suit. No more glowing chests!
Like, Iron Man seems to be ready to suffer the Mision Impossible problem, where in every movie the villain was a traitorous IM agent. But wait, would say storymark, in the second movie he was an EX-IM agent, so it’s a completely and totally different thing entirely. Then I would disagree.
Martin S is right…this is Armor Wars time. Repetitve stories. I’m going to guess at this one. Rourke shows up in his apparatus and kicks Stark’s ass. Stark responds by building some new gizmos to fight him. Rourke gets a full suit. Iron Man needs help so he gets his buddy a suit, and they fight the other Iron Men. Then they take on Rourke who is in his super suit full of missiles and shit, and it’s bigger and badder then our heroes. You can move the order of those scenes around if need be.
I wouldn’t even mind a different tech, like robots…but they’re all Stark based, and not even storymark can say they aren’t since everyone has the same glowing chest.
So anyway, there’s really a dragon in Iron Man comics? Ha ha, I’d like to see THAT!
And now about Batman, because while I really could care less about Iron Man, Batman and I have got each other’s BACK.
I also hate the fucking romantic interests. Especially the first, the Vicki Vale scenes were poison.
And as Martin said, I figured Schumacher was really a booster for making the Batman movies campy. He always talked like it was his idea. And WB was dumb enough to fall for it…and the proof was in Returns. The first was HUGE. The second was less so. Why? Because it was being weirder and campier. People wanted the serious Batman. I can’t believe they thought otherwise.
“But wait, would say storymark, in the second movie he was an EX-IM agent,”
Once again, I am AMAZED that you’re calling me anal….
Here, if it makes you feel better – Yes, they’re all exactly the same. Feel better?
Sheesh, unpucker Perm.
I do feel better now.
Perm – Re: Returns. If you haven’t read the “Batman 2” draft, (Hamm IIRC), is much better than Returns. Feels like a continuation to the first. When Burton decided he wanted to make a B/W film in color, WB should have known they were DOA. No better framework for an action film than German Expressionism…
Batman Returns is my favorite of the ’89-’97 batch.
Re: Rourke. I’ve never thought about him donning a Crimson Dynamo suit later in the film. That makes perfect sense.
Jeff – Returns is not a bad film, it’s just so incredibly bizarre for a sequel. Always makes me wonder if Burton wasn’t purposely trying to get removed from the property.
I don’t think so. It’s not like he couldn’t have tunerd down the sequel. It’s just that the first was so sucessful that he could do whatever he wanted, and the second one is definitely a more Burtony film. And people like Burton’s style…but not with Batman. I’m sure in his own way Burton thought the sequel was even better and people would love it more than the first. I would be interested in reading the Hamm sequel script.
I don’t know about Cimson Dynamo or anything from the Iron Man books, but I can place a bet that there is a 000000000000000000000.2% chance that, after battling hordes of evil Iron Men and now it’s time to take out the main villain, Rourke is still going to be standing around in s&m gear with no shirt on.
There was one redeeming Vicki Vale scene in the first Batman – the one where she wakes up in the middle of the night to find Bruce Wayne doing vertical situps.
One of the best character sequences I’ve seen in any superhero movie. You understand perfectly how driven this guy is right there.