“That’s the coolest thing I have ever seen,” says the supposed
Air Force Colonel, Jim “Rhody” Rhodes (Terrence Howard) when he
gets his first glimpse of the magical suit of armor designed and
built by Superman — uh, that is Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) —
in Jon Favreau’s Iron Man. That about says it all. He
can’t really be an Air Force colonel as he has or (to be
charitable) is forced to pretend he has the heart and brain of a
pre-adolescent. And not a particularly mature pre-adolescent
either, but one who has just seen an artistically precocious chum
draw an outfit that will make him invulnerable to and invincible
over all of life’s perils on the cover of his math book. A child of
that age may be excused, perhaps, for assuming that the difference
between the cool drawing and the reality of such a suit is a matter
of ironing out a few details. But what is the excuse of the
grown-ups of mature years, some of whom write for conservative
publications, who have hailed this film as an example of fine
cinematic artistry?
You may remember Mr. Favreau from Swingers (1996),
which he wrote and played the lead in. It was about young men of
the '90s trying to copy the style of 1940s hipsters in order to
teach themselves — since there was no one else to teach them —
how to be grown-ups. When that movie came out, Mr. Favreau was 30.
Now that he’s over 40, he appears to have given up the attempt and
finally come to terms with his own eternal adolescence. Not that it
would be a matter for particular remark these days that a man of
chronologically mature years should still be playing with cartoon
figures and “cool” fantasy technology. But in Iron Man
such stuff, nowadays licensed as fit for adult viewers, comes
accompanied by a whole Bond-like adolescent fantasy of fabulous
wealth, endless gadgetry that always works as designed, and copious
opportunities for sexual congress supplied to our imaginary avatar
by numerous willing partners.
Also, let’s not forget our alter ego’s preternatural braininess.
It’s not enough for today’s kids-of-all-ages (as they used to say,
thinking it was a joke) to fantasize that they possess all the
money in the world and all the girls and games that that money can
buy. It’s not enough even when you throw in at least one girl, Miss
Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), who worships our idol and hers for
himself alone. Still something is wanting, and Iron Man
supplies it by making the male viewer’s stand-in a guy who can ace
all his math and science tests without even studying. Even DIY
heart surgery in a cave in Afghanistan is a simple matter for Tony
Stark, so it’s no surprise that he has few worries when he is
captured by Afghan rebels and ordered to produce for them a version
of his new super-weapon, the Jericho. He simply deceives them into
thinking he is doing their bidding while really building the
prototype of the super-suit — which then allows him to kill the
lot of them.
“What Favreau clearly wanted,” writes John Anderson in the
Washington Post, “was an adult [sic] comedy…with
superior hardware. And a plausible — yes, plausible — storyline,
about an arms dealer who sees the moral light, after being
captured, threatened and tortured by Arab extremists.” Yes,
plausible? No plausible! In fact the film’s politics are no more
“adult” than the rest of it. Tony’s experience among the
mujahideen has persuaded him that there is something wrong
with being “part of a system that is comfortable with zero
accountability.” Uh, Tony? You’re not part of a system but head of
a system. If you want accountability, what is to prevent you from
imposing it upon yourself? And to whom do you want to be
accountable anyway? Why blame the system for what you have been
doing voluntarily?
The answer is that it’s all just words designed to press the
industry’s — and, increasingly, the culture’s — buttons.
Hollywood can no longer frame a big-budget picture — or even,
probably, a small-budget one — without drawing on fashionable
Hollywood politics of a vaguely left-wing and pacifist sort. As in
other recent films (see, for instance The Manchurian
Candidate), the real bad guys are not the fanatics with the
explosive vests and the beheading videos. They may be the merely
robotic imperial storm troopers, but evil mastermind Darth Vader is
to be found among the wicked corporate types back home. This
assumption allows the film to erect an entire superstructure of
nonsense about how “arms merchants” are to blame for the wars waged
with their weapons.
Well, somebody has to be to blamed, right? Here’s Tony
explaining why, on returning from captivity with his self-designed
artificial heart, he is shutting down his company: “I saw young
Americans killed with the very weapons I had made to defend them.”
Yes, and so? What’s your point? What does the provenance of the
weapons have to do with anything? Does he suppose that if he hadn’t
made the weapons to defend them, there would have been no weapons
to kill them either? “I don’t want a body count to be my only
legacy,” he adds. But why would it be? Only if nothing were
accomplished by war except for the piling up of bodies. This is
patently untrue and an unlikely assumption even for a penitent arms
merchant to make. But then, once you’ve produced the Hollywood
bumper sticker — “War is not the answer” — why bother with
characterization any more than with serious analysis?
Such crypto-pacifism is also what leads to the romance of what
starts out, anyway, as a purely defensive weapon. Even with various
accretions of offensive, ray gun-like shooting devices, there is
visible beneath the gold and titanium exoskeleton the squishy
pacifist dream of being so smart that you won’t have to fight.
There is a feeble attempt near the end to hint once again at what
the critics have hailed as Tony Stark’s “dark side” as someone
remarks: “How ironic. In trying to rid the world of weapons, you
gave it its best one ever.” This reminds me of Homer Simpson’s line
from the episode where he hires a detective, Dexter Colt, to find
out all about Lisa: Lisa blinds Dexter Colt, ready to shoot Homer
for stiffing him on the expenses, with a laser-pointer. “How
ironic,” says Homer. “Now he’s blind after a lifetime of enjoying
being able to see.” The difference is that the writers for “The
Simpsons” were intending to be funny.
