Iron Man is a great fucking movie

This wasn’t ever supposed to be a blog where a movie review would be written. So I’m not going to write one. Instead, I want to admire Iron Man as a brilliant symphony of marketing. This movie left me in awe at the height to which the sciences of product placement and good ole propaganda have been elevated by smart practitioners empowered by the kind of money it takes to make and release a big movie these days, and gifted with so empathic an understanding of the Gen-X male psyche as they obviously are.

Look at me. I’m gushing.

I think I could spend the next few hours writing about this film. But, some of that, would veer, I’m afraid, beyond the realm of marketing and into a much more personal disclosure than I promised myself I’d let myself commit to what’s supposed to be a serious blog, lol.

Product Placement

Bravo Audi of America and Dell. I would kill to have been a fly on the wall when these deals were being struck. I have never seen so masterful an integration of sub-text and BRAND. I felt like someone was winking at me and saying “Ain’t this cool” each time I saw the DELL brand juxtaposed with military iconography. I never remember thinking this before, but DELL is a very American company. Well done.

Where DELL went for an eerie sort of “We have lunch with the Bushes” type meta-message, Audi, instead, was all visceral and tongue-in-cheek. The car Robert Downey Junior drives when he’s not testing the limits of the atmosphere in his Iron Man suit, is an Audi. It’s not a gorgeous car, but it is the vehicular counterpart of the angular Iron suit that gives the movie’s anti-hero all his power. But the most memorable display of the Audi brand in the movie is when, amidst a whirlwind of screeching tires and glass-shattering impacts, a respectable Audi sedan deploys its brakes and stops mere inches from Iron Man’s destructive shin. The young, cute, double-income-with-kids family inside all sigh a collective sigh and seem to say “Boy, that was a close one, Uh-merika!” A message of safety in a storm of metal. Brilliant.

Propaganda

This is not a casual use of the word propaganda. This movie pushes a number of extremely heavy messages, whose objectives go far beyond giving rise to consumer revenue events.

Dell computers were only a tiny portion of the arsenal of fetishable hardware possessed by the American military I saw represented in the film. There were planes and cannons enough, and of such exquisite design, to stir the little boy inside every male in the audience. IronMan was a 2-hour commercial for the spoils of enlistment. It’s interesting, also, that no particular branch of the military seemed to steal the show. You never heard the word “Marine”, for once. So, it seemed that the AirForce and the Army could also take you places where patriotic glory is conferred.

It should first of all be said that Tony Stark owes all his wealth to Uncle Sam, and closer to the point, to the Department of Defense. And, from beginning to end, that is a relationship that serves him well and loyally. All the time, I kept waiting for the betraying conspirator to come from somewhere close to where his paychecks for the latest anti-terrorist missiles were being signed. I kept waiting for racism and xenophobia and greed to rear their ugly heads among the uniformed ranks. But, it never happened. Corruption and war-mongering, instead, take the form of Stark’s partner and mentor “Obediah” (sp?), played brilliantly by Jeff Bridges. In the desert, the bad guys wear durkas and lust for WMDs. In Washington, they wear suits and put profit before patriotism. Okay, got it.

Yes, sir. America kicks ass in this film, and not in some irrelevant jungle, but right in the mountains of Pakistan, where we know confirmedly evil actually dwells. I wouldn’t have thought it possible to produce a scene where the bad guys get flame-throwered with zero moral ambiguity. But IronMan found the formula — technology versus beards and turbans and sand. There’s a certain Heisenbergian dilemma here, since Iron Man is definitely imparting a message and perpetuating a perception, but it’s also a mirror of truth on the unfortunate reality that our capacity to stomach the death of people of certain races shifts like the seasons.

Making things go boom in the desert is only one side of the system that’s keeping America safe. There’s a “homeland” element, too, and in the movie its embodiment is a mild-mannered G-Man who works for an agency whose acronym is S.H.I.E.L.D. In a post-9/11 world we understand that the power vested in a guy like Agent Coulson (played by the unimpeachably-chinned Clark Gregg) is that he could get you strip-searched in Disneyland. But, another facet of that same power is that he could assure your safe passage under almost any circumstances.

Agent Coulson is the kind of guy whose friendship Robert Downey could have used a few years ago when it seemed he was getting arrested for possession of Cocaine every weekend. It’s really great that Robert Downey made it through those dark times and into this film. I feel personal gratitude for his success in the role, since I think he makes a great ad for men in their early 40’s with a past. It’s clear now, that he is as great as Tony Curtis. And, just in time! I think the Orlando Bloom types have had a good run and run their course. I’m absolutely convinced that it is in the best interests of all that we hold dear that men of experience and somewhat diminished handsomeness should occupy the summit of sexual desirability once again.