Iron Man

[descrime]

I was flipping through the channels and caught part of the Iron Man movie. I do enjoy the Iron Man movies, but there is one section that I really dislike and that's when Iron Man goes to a village and takes out a bunch of terrorists.

Superheroes vs. supervillains - great.  But that scene is one man going in and cleaning up terrorists - and it's

Comments

[rigil_kent]

You missed the key component to that scene in Iron Man, I think: Terrorists who are using his weapons to harm innocents. These particular bad guys are essentially just a pit stop on his way to destroying the Jericho missile that the villains have obtained. I'd argue that there is also a component of revenge there as well - he recognized the leader guy on television, and the optics in his suit would have allowed him to pick out that bearded guy he left to the crowd, so he wanted some revenge for what they put him through earlier in the movie.

There's also this TV Trope called "Reed Richards is Useless" that covers the sort of complex issues you mentioned. Realistically, a world with a super-genius in it like this would be radically different - if they could construct a power suit or a dimenensional transporter, why not a cure for cancer or AIDS or something that obliterates famine. Etc. Etc.

[descrime]

I get why he did it in show, and I did like the movie. But the fact that he could take out a group of terrorists in a pit stop where that kind of operation would be a serious undertaking for the military--it's just, sometimes movies and books use real, serious problems and then provide quick, easy fixes to show how important and powerful their fictional characters are and I simply don't like that trope.

And I think it's just because the suit is so powerful and makes Tony so impervious to threats from common terrorists that it reads weird to me. I don't mind when Batman beats people up or lets people fall to their death, or when Kato killed people in the Green Hornet, because one gunshot could take them out too. In the real world, I would be all for using that technology, but in a movie it's supposed to show Tony taking the hero journey, but because he's not in any danger, it seems like cheating.

That, I guess, is my main problem. When you bring up a serious issue and then treat it cavalierly, it feels IMO to be cheating the

[descrime]

I guess that scene stands out for me because I don't feel that way about the rest of the movie. When he's fighting the tank or blowing up the missiles or evading the planes or anything else later. It's just that one scene.

And more than anything in Iron Man, I dislike Dr Who curing blood clots in a single drink.