Hellboy II, Hancock, Wall-E, and other summer movies
I don't think I've posted a movie review in a while, and I haven't yet about the rash of summer movies I've been fortunate enough to attend this year, so here's a collected post about them (reverse chronological order):
Hellboy II -
I went into this one with low expectations, since I just never really got into Hellboy I for some reason. I appreciate Guillermo Del Toro's early works, and dig Ron Perlman in the part, and knew about the comic character, and read some of Mike Mignola's comic work back in the day, but the first movie didn't really compel me into watching it repeat times. In fact, even though I have the 3-disc edition, I have only seen the whole film once. That is VERY rare for me, almost unheard of especially for a superhero/comic film.
I wanted to watch it before Hellboy 2 came around, and failed at that, even!
So
toryadore and me end up theater-hopping (seriously, as if we're going to get a babysitter, drive and then pay $8+ to see ONE FILM?! If we can't see 2, we're simply gonna stay home and that seat isn't going to be making the theater money) from Hancock and Hellboy 2 worked out great, and we start watching the film and all of a sudden this deeply textured comic film starts revealing itself to us, and Del Toro's use of fantastical imagery actually WORKS!
It turns out that the Hellboy universe merged SO well with his dark-faerie vision, that each of them improved the other, unlike previous solo efforts.
(I know, Del Toro did the 1st one but it didn't seem to have his vision to it, and his previous films merged the dark/brutal with the fantastical/fairy, but those didn't work for me - Pan's Labyrinth was a mistake in many aspects IMO)
It's like the Hellboy universe tamed Del Toto's self-indulgent tendencies and kept him on track and the kid-friendly Hollywood franchise finally stopped him from brutalising his viewers with depressing, jarringly-vicious storylines he must have a predilection for, while he enriched the Hellboy universe with a brilliantly-imaginative tapestry of "what's-behind-that-wall", and makeup and dark fairy creatures and peering-thru-the-veil to see what's really underneath.
I mean, as that Troll Market scene unfolded, did anyone else think "I haven't seen a scene like thissince the Cantina Band in Star Wars"?
It was such a wonderful potpourri of imagery, creatures, and imagination, all the while the BRPD are investigating around and getting into fights amongst and the storyline keeps chugging along.
Did anyone else wish that Stardust (as wonderful as that movie was) would have done their Fairy Market more like the Troll Market?
Hellboy II was such a huge leap in quality over Hellboy I, I'd put it in my Top 10 of comicbook/superhero movies, and it would threaten the Top 5. I'll have to determine more on DVD viewings in the future to see where it stacks up over time.
Hancock -
Hancock was an enjoyable film, with a fantastic premise, that unfortunately keeps nagging at me every hour as to how they shit on the characters and storyline it presented.
The film plays everything close to the vest, not revealing much and relying on Will Smith's amazing star power to make the slow first act work mainly through humorous superpowered sociopathic behavior.
But as soon as the movie reveals what the story's all about, this nagging feeling goes through me like something's off. And on hindsight, piecing the history and characters together, it falls apart.
* I'm supposed to believe that in this media-saturated world, Hancock's past is unknown? Worse yet - people aren't even interested in his past? It's as important as idle dinner conversation? "Oh, really? You've been around for 80 years, and we never knew that?"
He may as well have been dropped from the hand of god into LA a year ago, as far as the movie is concerned.
* The movie suggests that Charlize Theron's wife character knows of Hancock in the first scene, and then it completely ignores that, until it is expeditious to the story to have her big reveal. Sorry, but knowing her true nature, her character CAN NOT be noncommittal about Hancock being around. She would either forbid her husband from doing his pet project, or she would say "Hey, honey - that's good that you're trying to help him out."
I have SO many problems with the movie treating her as a normal mom for 4/5ths of the movie, and then whipping around and contradiciting all her actions in the last part. She was married to this guy, body and soul moreso than any other human being can comprehend, for 1000s of years! Say it again - thousands of years.
Then - when he loses thousands of years of amazing memories (think about that loss for a second, that they never even touched on), she somehow abandons him and doesn;t think of any way to help him!
An anonymous note at the least, clueing him in on some stuff and helping him not be a sociopath or drunk for 80 years MIGHT better reflect her character's realistic actions. She would be eaten up inside every single time someone talked bad about him. It would not only be an attack on her True Love (tm), but it would be repudiating every selfless act that her kind every committed to help humankind. She would never stand for him wasting his powers and decades of his life - she said herself (in the end of the film, where the writers obviously didnt bother to inform the first act writers) that he among all of them was born to be a Hero (tm). Yeah, well if that was true, she wouldn't have let him piss away 80 years.
Speaking of which...
* I'm not an expert on this, but I don't think the human mind and spirit can do something like being drunk for 80 years. We're just not built that way, and I really doubt if amnesiac immortals would, either - he would have gotten sick of after a decade, and done other stuff. Sure, he could self-medicate in other ways, but once they let us know he was immortal and "woke up" 80 years ago, many aspects of his character simply don't work.
* Simple superficial observation - casting a black guy and a white woman as lovers going back to 3000 BC kinda harms suspension of disbelief. Mixed race couples were AFAIK so rare back then to be a scarlet letter - they couldn't integrate into ANY society historically until the late 20th century, America.
* Who were the "They" that she kept referring to?
Is there a cabal of people that try to kill them? Is it the inevitable Bad People (tm) that want to remove Heroes (tm) from the world? Are the bad people afraid of heroes "removing their power"? (as they intimated in one scene)
If so, why not put that onscreen - it would have taken 10 seconds, and then made the point to the viewer. Is that so much to ask for, that the creators use the elements and words they bothered scripting, and filming?
* Justin Bateman's dad character would have been NOTHING to the mom.
Sorry, but 8 years or so is a blink of her eye - she's had significant relationships with hundreds of people. What about this guy would have "truly made her happy for once".
* It's annoying when Hancock's powers go away at a story-convenient time, and no sooner. They had been "in close proximity" to one another for weeks, and then suddenly it hits him just so the movie can begin its 3rd act.
Further - how close is "too close" - they didn't seem to lose their powers when fighting each other, but when they are miles away (at the liquor store), the powers go away, only to come back when they get miles away when it's convenient for the plot to save them.
* In the end, they didn't resolve anything long-term - what is going to happen when the dad dies? Is Hancock going to stay away from her forever? They don't have to be together full-time - why can't they take vacations together or something in the future?
Agh - I could bring up problems with the story and character reactions all day - it wouldn't fix how the producers mangled a great premise just to cast Will Smith and make it into a summer movie.
I would be really interested in reading what this story started out like, because IMO they changed this script so radically that it lost its connections to the base premise.
Overall, I liked the movie and thought it was entertaining, but I'd put it pretty high up there on the "wasted great premises" meter.
It doesn't help that I have a roleplaying concept that uses a necromancer couple who carry their love into Undeath and the ages, so maybe I'm just not an average viewer for this movie's belatedly-revealed characters.
Wall-E :
Wall-E is an amazing film.
There is no doubt about that.
In fact, it may well be one of the highpoints of animation, alongside the heights of Fantasia - AFAIK, animators have been dreaming about a full-length Hollywood movie that solely uses animation and sound (no dialogue) to push the story along for decades.
And (other than the humans-on-spaceship denouement) they got it with Wall-E. And as an added bonus, it is amazingly well-received.
However, as a film (and not an avante-garde film-school test pilot), I think Wall-E is not quite up to par with the majority of their past successes.
It is better than Cars by a long mile, and even better than Bug's Life, but it doesn't reach Toy Story I/II, Finding Nemo, Monster's Inc, or even close to Incredibles territory. (I do reserve the right to watch and appreciate it on DVD to judge Wall-E fairly in this regard)
What Wall-E has over every other film (including Toy Story I, which was all new ground) is the experimental nature of it - they truly were in command of the whole repetoire of filmmaking with Wall-E, and it showed me they can do ANYthing on film.
Seriously, from dialog-less movie to simple shapes and sounds conveying emotional dialog to mind-blowing detail and realisticness (some shots looked like live action - even better (more real-looking) post-apocalyptic cityscapes than I Am Legend!) to 70's-era sci-fi to 8-bit title credits, PIXAR showed they can do anything they set their targets on.
What amazed/shocked me about Wall-E is that PIXAR somehow got this 21st century, jaded society to somehow buy into a 60's-70's era scifi storyline.
The solo man-out-of-time/space that encounters a different being and proceeds to be thrust into another society and affects change thru his unique perspective is almost hippy-like and AFAIK a staple of early/mid sci-fi themes. I thought they stopped making those kinds of films in Hollywood after Enemy Mine.
I'm surprised Wall-E didn't die thru his sacrifice, but of course in a family movie that wouldn't do - but that's what the classic version of this story would have had, make no mistake.
The wonderful thing about PIXAR and Wall-E's success is that it shows pencil-necked Hollywood bean-counters that an audience doesn't have to be treated like imbecilic short-attention-spanned plebians.
Truly, a wonderful film that showed be seen, appreciated, and enjoyed by as many open-minded people as possible.
Mummy 4 -
Thanks to Robert and Jennifer for the invite, we saw this at a real early prescreening (they SAID it was the first time the film was screened in the world). And damn, if the trailer doesn't look cool everytime I see it.
But overall, it was a disappointing movie, but very easy to watch and entertaining.
Maybe if I'm comparing it to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Mummy 2, it is a success (because it's better than both IMO). But it makes lots of mistakes in plot (which I dutifully documented on the feedback sheets we filled out) and in retrospect was a interesting experiment in combining Chinese Hollywood with American blockbuster.
See, it is my STRONG belief that this movie was made by Chinese interests. I believe they financed a nigh-abandoned Hollywood franchise, and decided to make it deliberately trying to appease 2 different markets. I have not heard this mentioned anywhere. I don't know if Rob Cohen (from Reign of Fire and X-files "fame"/infamy) actually made this film, or if he was just tangentially involved.
I'm pretty sure large aspects of this were filmed by Hong Kong directors, most certainly all the fight sequences. I'd guess there are large sections of this film that the actors recited the lines in 2 languages (at least). In fact, this movie may well be the first big example of an "American" franchise morphing to a more world-friendly format, so as to get more worldwide dollars. As I understand, there is much more increasing box office dollars available in other countries than in America - we're pretty tapped out. There's 10 times more growth in International box office, and this is a pretty savvy attempt by the producers to take advantage of this economy.
It wasn't a hideous attempt, and like I said it's better than the slap-the-audience-in-the-face-with-the-stupid-fish insults of Mummy 2.
I just hope they got rid of the stupid llama jokes in the final cut of the film.
Kung-Fu Panda -
This was a pleasant surprise.
Solid family film, with enough sequences to keep young kids attention (which is a delicate art to balance), yet a very rewarding-to-adults homage to older classic Hong Kong legends. I'm the last person to claim in-depth knowledge of Chop-Socky films, but from what I remember, this film had many very cool tip-of-the-caps to traditional Chinese films - in fact, I felt they did a better job than more in-your-face revivalists like Quentin Tarentino, who slavishly followed those classics with his subtle-as-a-sledgehammer directing.
Kung-Fu Panda was much more elegant and creative in their references, and I really appreciated that about the film. The end titles are a work of art, and many scenes reflected a in-control, calm spirit of a movie that I wasn't expecting from a (what could have been) farty-pants for-the-kids film.
And Jack Black even gave a more restrained performace (can you believe it?!) that was perfectly-suited to his comedic styles. The part had to be written specifically for him, because many aspects and lines would not have worked with anyone else. And it's not just because he was providing the voice for a panda - he really did restrain his schtick which usually is self-defeating since his over-the-top antics tend to destroy much sympathy or appreciation from an audience.
Chronicles of Narnia : Prince Caspian -
It's been awhile since we saw this, but as I remember it was a great addition to the wonderful Narnia franchise - it reveals more about the world, and deepens the characters and factions. I REALLY hope they are able to make as many of this series as they can bring to film. I was initially very worried, since I was afraid they'd wasted too much time immediately after Lion, Witch came out in doing the follow -up. Now I'm cautiously optimistic that more may be made (though the box office worries me - only $140 million so far (oh! $300 million worldwide - that's better)).
Iron Man -
I should've written about this when it came out, but years ago I figured this was the one superhero that I thought might not work - I mean, you've got an alcoholic playboy billionaire (who can relate to that?) who simply uses a suit of armor to get his powers from. He's not exactly a accessible hero.
But then they cast Robert Downey, Jr, got Jon Favreau (Zathura) to direct, and I was down with it as soon as I saw him blow up a tank while walking away.
This was one of the best superhero movies ever made, and if it wasn't for the others that came before being more important, it might be the best one (I REALLY value the earlier movies that make a niche possible).
So X-men is more important than Iron Man, but in almost every other way, Iron Man is a better film.
I really want to see this one again before it goes out of the theaters (still at Sunrise Mall!)
Hellboy II -
I went into this one with low expectations, since I just never really got into Hellboy I for some reason. I appreciate Guillermo Del Toro's early works, and dig Ron Perlman in the part, and knew about the comic character, and read some of Mike Mignola's comic work back in the day, but the first movie didn't really compel me into watching it repeat times. In fact, even though I have the 3-disc edition, I have only seen the whole film once. That is VERY rare for me, almost unheard of especially for a superhero/comic film.
I wanted to watch it before Hellboy 2 came around, and failed at that, even!
So
toryadore and me end up theater-hopping (seriously, as if we're going to get a babysitter, drive and then pay $8+ to see ONE FILM?! If we can't see 2, we're simply gonna stay home and that seat isn't going to be making the theater money) from Hancock and Hellboy 2 worked out great, and we start watching the film and all of a sudden this deeply textured comic film starts revealing itself to us, and Del Toro's use of fantastical imagery actually WORKS!
It turns out that the Hellboy universe merged SO well with his dark-faerie vision, that each of them improved the other, unlike previous solo efforts.
(I know, Del Toro did the 1st one but it didn't seem to have his vision to it, and his previous films merged the dark/brutal with the fantastical/fairy, but those didn't work for me - Pan's Labyrinth was a mistake in many aspects IMO)
It's like the Hellboy universe tamed Del Toto's self-indulgent tendencies and kept him on track and the kid-friendly Hollywood franchise finally stopped him from brutalising his viewers with depressing, jarringly-vicious storylines he must have a predilection for, while he enriched the Hellboy universe with a brilliantly-imaginative tapestry of "what's-behind-that-wall", and makeup and dark fairy creatures and peering-thru-the-veil to see what's really underneath.
I mean, as that Troll Market scene unfolded, did anyone else think "I haven't seen a scene like thissince the Cantina Band in Star Wars"?
It was such a wonderful potpourri of imagery, creatures, and imagination, all the while the BRPD are investigating around and getting into fights amongst and the storyline keeps chugging along.
Did anyone else wish that Stardust (as wonderful as that movie was) would have done their Fairy Market more like the Troll Market?
Hellboy II was such a huge leap in quality over Hellboy I, I'd put it in my Top 10 of comicbook/superhero movies, and it would threaten the Top 5. I'll have to determine more on DVD viewings in the future to see where it stacks up over time.
Hancock -
Hancock was an enjoyable film, with a fantastic premise, that unfortunately keeps nagging at me every hour as to how they shit on the characters and storyline it presented.
The film plays everything close to the vest, not revealing much and relying on Will Smith's amazing star power to make the slow first act work mainly through humorous superpowered sociopathic behavior.
But as soon as the movie reveals what the story's all about, this nagging feeling goes through me like something's off. And on hindsight, piecing the history and characters together, it falls apart.
* I'm supposed to believe that in this media-saturated world, Hancock's past is unknown? Worse yet - people aren't even interested in his past? It's as important as idle dinner conversation? "Oh, really? You've been around for 80 years, and we never knew that?"
He may as well have been dropped from the hand of god into LA a year ago, as far as the movie is concerned.
* The movie suggests that Charlize Theron's wife character knows of Hancock in the first scene, and then it completely ignores that, until it is expeditious to the story to have her big reveal. Sorry, but knowing her true nature, her character CAN NOT be noncommittal about Hancock being around. She would either forbid her husband from doing his pet project, or she would say "Hey, honey - that's good that you're trying to help him out."
I have SO many problems with the movie treating her as a normal mom for 4/5ths of the movie, and then whipping around and contradiciting all her actions in the last part. She was married to this guy, body and soul moreso than any other human being can comprehend, for 1000s of years! Say it again - thousands of years.
Then - when he loses thousands of years of amazing memories (think about that loss for a second, that they never even touched on), she somehow abandons him and doesn;t think of any way to help him!
An anonymous note at the least, clueing him in on some stuff and helping him not be a sociopath or drunk for 80 years MIGHT better reflect her character's realistic actions. She would be eaten up inside every single time someone talked bad about him. It would not only be an attack on her True Love (tm), but it would be repudiating every selfless act that her kind every committed to help humankind. She would never stand for him wasting his powers and decades of his life - she said herself (in the end of the film, where the writers obviously didnt bother to inform the first act writers) that he among all of them was born to be a Hero (tm). Yeah, well if that was true, she wouldn't have let him piss away 80 years.
Speaking of which...
* I'm not an expert on this, but I don't think the human mind and spirit can do something like being drunk for 80 years. We're just not built that way, and I really doubt if amnesiac immortals would, either - he would have gotten sick of after a decade, and done other stuff. Sure, he could self-medicate in other ways, but once they let us know he was immortal and "woke up" 80 years ago, many aspects of his character simply don't work.
* Simple superficial observation - casting a black guy and a white woman as lovers going back to 3000 BC kinda harms suspension of disbelief. Mixed race couples were AFAIK so rare back then to be a scarlet letter - they couldn't integrate into ANY society historically until the late 20th century, America.
* Who were the "They" that she kept referring to?
Is there a cabal of people that try to kill them? Is it the inevitable Bad People (tm) that want to remove Heroes (tm) from the world? Are the bad people afraid of heroes "removing their power"? (as they intimated in one scene)
If so, why not put that onscreen - it would have taken 10 seconds, and then made the point to the viewer. Is that so much to ask for, that the creators use the elements and words they bothered scripting, and filming?
* Justin Bateman's dad character would have been NOTHING to the mom.
Sorry, but 8 years or so is a blink of her eye - she's had significant relationships with hundreds of people. What about this guy would have "truly made her happy for once".
* It's annoying when Hancock's powers go away at a story-convenient time, and no sooner. They had been "in close proximity" to one another for weeks, and then suddenly it hits him just so the movie can begin its 3rd act.
Further - how close is "too close" - they didn't seem to lose their powers when fighting each other, but when they are miles away (at the liquor store), the powers go away, only to come back when they get miles away when it's convenient for the plot to save them.
* In the end, they didn't resolve anything long-term - what is going to happen when the dad dies? Is Hancock going to stay away from her forever? They don't have to be together full-time - why can't they take vacations together or something in the future?
Agh - I could bring up problems with the story and character reactions all day - it wouldn't fix how the producers mangled a great premise just to cast Will Smith and make it into a summer movie.
I would be really interested in reading what this story started out like, because IMO they changed this script so radically that it lost its connections to the base premise.
Overall, I liked the movie and thought it was entertaining, but I'd put it pretty high up there on the "wasted great premises" meter.
It doesn't help that I have a roleplaying concept that uses a necromancer couple who carry their love into Undeath and the ages, so maybe I'm just not an average viewer for this movie's belatedly-revealed characters.
Wall-E :
Wall-E is an amazing film.
There is no doubt about that.
In fact, it may well be one of the highpoints of animation, alongside the heights of Fantasia - AFAIK, animators have been dreaming about a full-length Hollywood movie that solely uses animation and sound (no dialogue) to push the story along for decades.
And (other than the humans-on-spaceship denouement) they got it with Wall-E. And as an added bonus, it is amazingly well-received.
However, as a film (and not an avante-garde film-school test pilot), I think Wall-E is not quite up to par with the majority of their past successes.
It is better than Cars by a long mile, and even better than Bug's Life, but it doesn't reach Toy Story I/II, Finding Nemo, Monster's Inc, or even close to Incredibles territory. (I do reserve the right to watch and appreciate it on DVD to judge Wall-E fairly in this regard)
What Wall-E has over every other film (including Toy Story I, which was all new ground) is the experimental nature of it - they truly were in command of the whole repetoire of filmmaking with Wall-E, and it showed me they can do ANYthing on film.
Seriously, from dialog-less movie to simple shapes and sounds conveying emotional dialog to mind-blowing detail and realisticness (some shots looked like live action - even better (more real-looking) post-apocalyptic cityscapes than I Am Legend!) to 70's-era sci-fi to 8-bit title credits, PIXAR showed they can do anything they set their targets on.
What amazed/shocked me about Wall-E is that PIXAR somehow got this 21st century, jaded society to somehow buy into a 60's-70's era scifi storyline.
The solo man-out-of-time/space that encounters a different being and proceeds to be thrust into another society and affects change thru his unique perspective is almost hippy-like and AFAIK a staple of early/mid sci-fi themes. I thought they stopped making those kinds of films in Hollywood after Enemy Mine.
I'm surprised Wall-E didn't die thru his sacrifice, but of course in a family movie that wouldn't do - but that's what the classic version of this story would have had, make no mistake.
The wonderful thing about PIXAR and Wall-E's success is that it shows pencil-necked Hollywood bean-counters that an audience doesn't have to be treated like imbecilic short-attention-spanned plebians.
Truly, a wonderful film that showed be seen, appreciated, and enjoyed by as many open-minded people as possible.
Mummy 4 -
Thanks to Robert and Jennifer for the invite, we saw this at a real early prescreening (they SAID it was the first time the film was screened in the world). And damn, if the trailer doesn't look cool everytime I see it.
But overall, it was a disappointing movie, but very easy to watch and entertaining.
Maybe if I'm comparing it to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Mummy 2, it is a success (because it's better than both IMO). But it makes lots of mistakes in plot (which I dutifully documented on the feedback sheets we filled out) and in retrospect was a interesting experiment in combining Chinese Hollywood with American blockbuster.
See, it is my STRONG belief that this movie was made by Chinese interests. I believe they financed a nigh-abandoned Hollywood franchise, and decided to make it deliberately trying to appease 2 different markets. I have not heard this mentioned anywhere. I don't know if Rob Cohen (from Reign of Fire and X-files "fame"/infamy) actually made this film, or if he was just tangentially involved.
I'm pretty sure large aspects of this were filmed by Hong Kong directors, most certainly all the fight sequences. I'd guess there are large sections of this film that the actors recited the lines in 2 languages (at least). In fact, this movie may well be the first big example of an "American" franchise morphing to a more world-friendly format, so as to get more worldwide dollars. As I understand, there is much more increasing box office dollars available in other countries than in America - we're pretty tapped out. There's 10 times more growth in International box office, and this is a pretty savvy attempt by the producers to take advantage of this economy.
It wasn't a hideous attempt, and like I said it's better than the slap-the-audience-in-the-face-with-the-stupid-fish insults of Mummy 2.
I just hope they got rid of the stupid llama jokes in the final cut of the film.
Kung-Fu Panda -
This was a pleasant surprise.
Solid family film, with enough sequences to keep young kids attention (which is a delicate art to balance), yet a very rewarding-to-adults homage to older classic Hong Kong legends. I'm the last person to claim in-depth knowledge of Chop-Socky films, but from what I remember, this film had many very cool tip-of-the-caps to traditional Chinese films - in fact, I felt they did a better job than more in-your-face revivalists like Quentin Tarentino, who slavishly followed those classics with his subtle-as-a-sledgehammer directing.
Kung-Fu Panda was much more elegant and creative in their references, and I really appreciated that about the film. The end titles are a work of art, and many scenes reflected a in-control, calm spirit of a movie that I wasn't expecting from a (what could have been) farty-pants for-the-kids film.
And Jack Black even gave a more restrained performace (can you believe it?!) that was perfectly-suited to his comedic styles. The part had to be written specifically for him, because many aspects and lines would not have worked with anyone else. And it's not just because he was providing the voice for a panda - he really did restrain his schtick which usually is self-defeating since his over-the-top antics tend to destroy much sympathy or appreciation from an audience.
Chronicles of Narnia : Prince Caspian -
It's been awhile since we saw this, but as I remember it was a great addition to the wonderful Narnia franchise - it reveals more about the world, and deepens the characters and factions. I REALLY hope they are able to make as many of this series as they can bring to film. I was initially very worried, since I was afraid they'd wasted too much time immediately after Lion, Witch came out in doing the follow -up. Now I'm cautiously optimistic that more may be made (though the box office worries me - only $140 million so far (oh! $300 million worldwide - that's better)).
Iron Man -
I should've written about this when it came out, but years ago I figured this was the one superhero that I thought might not work - I mean, you've got an alcoholic playboy billionaire (who can relate to that?) who simply uses a suit of armor to get his powers from. He's not exactly a accessible hero.
But then they cast Robert Downey, Jr, got Jon Favreau (Zathura) to direct, and I was down with it as soon as I saw him blow up a tank while walking away.
This was one of the best superhero movies ever made, and if it wasn't for the others that came before being more important, it might be the best one (I REALLY value the earlier movies that make a niche possible).
So X-men is more important than Iron Man, but in almost every other way, Iron Man is a better film.
I really want to see this one again before it goes out of the theaters (still at Sunrise Mall!)