Movie Review: Iron Man

It's been a very mecha-ish last couple of weeks for me. Today it's Iron Man which I saw last Saturday in a pretty classy theater I might add. As I said before in a much earlier blog post about the release of the Iron Man trailer I have been waiting for this movie since I was a child. Iron Man is my favorite super hero and it's been a torturous time waiting for him to get his turn on the big silver screen. The wait is finally over, so did the movie disappoint?

Two words: HELL NO!

I have to say there have been a lot of bad comic book movies. Some are good movies but poor adaptations and others are good adaptations but poor movies. Iron Man somehow manages to be both. Iron Man is the first effort by the brand new Marvel Studios and they were of course very respectful of the source material, something I was really afraid that they wouldn't be. Iron Man's origins have been messed with a lot over the past but the movie stays very close to Stan Lee's original origin except it moves it from the Vietnam War to a more contemporary Afghanistan location in order to avoid making the film a period piece.
In any case everybody who knows Iron Man knows what happens at the beginning. Billionaire industrialist and weapons designer Anthony or rather Tony Stark takes a little trip to a war zone to show off his newest weapons. To make a long story short he's wounded with shrapnel to the chest, has his life saved by a fellow man of science named Yinsen who helps construct an electromagnet that keeps the shrapnel from digging deeper into Tony's wounded heart, and Stark builds a big bad suit of powered armor that he uses to make his escape.
The movie focuses on business rival, in this case business parter, Obidiah Stane as the villain. When Tony returns from the middle east after finding out that people have been using his own weapons against the US army he's ticked and decides to take matters into his own hands. He announces that he's done building weapons and his company takes a sharp drop in the stock market, something Stane doesn't like very much. Tony builds a new and much more advanced suit of armor and returns to the middle east to get rid of the weapons he created while Stane gets his hands on the prototype Iron Man designs. I don't want to say much more since I've spoiled enough already. Go out and see the movie for yourself.Robert Downey Jr. is the perfect Iron Man as he plays the most amazing lovable asshole any human being could create. The man simply is Tony Stark and he's gone through similar trials and tribulations in his real life as Stark did in his comic book one. His chemistry with Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts is ripped almost exactly as it should be from the comic book. Stane could've used a little more developing but as it is Jeff Bridges plays an excellent manipulative and bad ass villain.
Some people complain that there isn't enough action but the superb story telling and comedic elements make up for it. I'm inclined to agree but the action that is there is incredible. The suits look real and almost as if they stepped down from the comic pages and onto the screen. The action is easy to follow and thrilling to watch as well. I for one am glad that the movie isn't a CGI fest. There's a lot of special effects that aren't CGI and they also look fantastic and really make the movie feel that much more real.The actors have all signed on for three films (The next one scheduled for 2010) and with hints and promises of the Mandarin and War Machine you better believe I'm looking forward to them. If they're any bit as good as this first effort then look out for the next few movies from Marvel Studios as well including a new Hulk, Captain America, Thor and of course when they all join together in The Avengers.

10 out of 10: If you ever liked a single comic book movie go see this one now. I may be biased a little though, just a little.

Movie Review: Riki-Oh, The Story of Ricky

It's been a few years now since I first saw this movie, but I recently bought it on DVD to show to a few of my friends. That's the thing about this movie, it's one thing to talk about it, but another thing to actually see it. The over-the top violence, the corny special effects, the absolutely hilarious English dubbing and the fact that the story makes absolutely no sense in the first place all make this movie completely unique and unbelievable.

Riki-Oh, literally meaning "King of Strength" was originally based on a corny Japanese manga that all but plagiarized the more popular Fist of the North Star in attempt to hitch a quick ride on its success. It was later franchised into two forgettable anime OVAs and the live action movie we're here to talk about today.

If you're a fan of cult classics like Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series or you just love corny, campy movies, old kung-fu movies or just movies with excessive violence and nonsensical plots then stop reading right now. This movie was crafted especially for you and you should go out and buy it this instant.

The movie follows our hero, Riki Ho, who has recently been imprisoned in the future, or rather "The year 2000," where prison systems have apparently become corporate sponsored and they're corrupt and producing opium and crap. Throughout the entire movie you don't often see prisoner's being locked up, they seem to have all sorts of weapons available to them somehow, and each wing of the prison is run by four leaders called "The gang of four."

Riki goes about defending the smaller and weaker prisoners and the Assistant Warden, a fat man with a metal claw arm and a glass eye that he keeps mints in, decides Riki is a trouble maker for shaking up the status quo and sics the gang of four on him. As this goes on Riki discovers the opium plot and lots of people get their heads crushed or disemboweled as Riki displays his martial arts skills and the strength of twenty men. At the end, just like a video game, Riki fights the Warden, an older gentlemen that transforms into an Incredible Hulk like monster as his final boss before breaking a hole in the prison wall and escaping as if he couldn't do that in the first place.

I can't even begin to describe the level of violence going on or how much of it even though it's obvious that rubber dummies are being destroyed and not actual people. The English dubbing makes things even worse, for example the gang of four are named Oscar, Rogan, Tarzan, and Brandon. Really now, Brandon? At least he's the most useless one. In standard video game cliche each one of these gang members has their own special ability, Oscar being balanced, Rogan being fast (and gay considering it's a male character with a female actor), Tarzan being a massive muscle-man that crushes people's heads (A clip that used to be featured on the Daily Show) and Brandon... well Brandon throws knitting needles attached to strings.

The story itself even without the dubbing is completely illogical, giving Riki practically no motivation for most of his actions except for introducing minor characters only to kill them a minute later and make Riki flip out and act as if his best friend was murdered. Like I said earlier other than prisoners killing each other the prison is more like a summer camp than a damned prison with inept guards and super powerful prisoners who could probably escape whenever they feel like it. Instead of just killing Riki with sustained machine gun fire (normal guns won't work he already took five bullets to the chest without any ill effects) they use very James Bond style tricks and traps that he foils every time with brute strength that they're well aware he possesses.

Let me just some of some of the things in this movie: A man cuts out his intestines and strangles the hero with them, a dog gets kicked in half, the hero is forced to eat razor blades and spits them into someone else's face, someone's back is skinned so they can hang his tattoo on the wall, a man is uppercutting in the neck and the fist comes out of his mouth. A fat man is punched through the gut causing everything to spill out, a man is shot with a gun that inflates him and makes him explode, the hero ties his own tendons together in his arm that is practically cut off and it's magically fixed and you know what I think that's enough you should be getting the picture by now.

Riki-Oh is just... well there's just nothing else quite like it. It's also the first non-pornographic movie in Hong Kong to receive the equivalent of an X rating in the United States. It more than deserves to be a cult classic despite still being relatively unknown, but I guess that's one of the things I like about it. If you're still curious a complete story synopsis with some great animated gifs can be found here at I-Mockery.com but I'm hoping someone is already sold.

"I am Iron Man"

So after years of waiting my favorite super-hero is finally going to make it to the big screen in May. The Iron Man teaser trailer was just released earlier this week you can see it at Apple or MTV if you don't have Quicktime.

I have to say I wasn't expecting much going into this but I'm pretty impressed. Hollywood has already proven to me with the fun popcorn movie that is Transformers that they're not entirely incapable of churning out decent, if not mindless, action films based on well loved franchises but this really took me by surprise since I haven't really been following the movie news and didn't know they were this close to a trailer. Also, I wasn't expecting them to actually play Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" which has nothing to do with the Marvel hero, though that's never a bad thing.

First of all, Iron Man will be the first movie that Marvel produces in house. I suppose this is a good thing, Marvel doesn't have to answer to a higher power when writing the script. Earlier this year they came out with an animated Iron Man movie as a part of their animation line which also produced the half-decent Ultimate Avengers movies but I was pretty unhappy with how they handled Iron Man in that. They almost entirely changed his background and completely ruined the Mandarin which I won't get into but I wanted to mention it because from what I can tell from the trailer and other news sources, this movie will be a lot truer to Iron Man's roots and will even feature one of my personal favorite Iron Man villains. I was shocked and excited that Obidiah Stane, AKA the Iron Monger would be the villain in this movie over Mandarin because although he played a part in one of the greatest Iron Man story arcs ever that was back in the 80's and not many new fans that jumped onto the Iron Man boat with Extremis and Civil War have never even heard of him. Unfortunately most of Iron Man's villains are like that, his rogue's gallery is pretty weak and has always been one of the negative aspects of the comic. In any case the industrialist competitor Stane is an exception and this means we'll have an Iron Man vs. Iron Monger fight at the end of the movie which is something I've dreamed of for years. They couldn't pick a better story arc to make a movie about even though it's been said that they've chosen not to explore Tony Stark's alcoholism until a possible sequel.

One thing I was really pleased with was the armor designs. The original armor looks crappy and hobbled together like it's supposed to, the Iron Monger looks big and ugly like he's supposed to, and the current Iron Man armor looks like it's just flown right out of the comics as opposed to worrying early rumors that they'd be using an armor that looked like the one from Ultimate Iron Man. Robert Downey Jr. is also perfect for the role of Tony Stark, he's got the age and the wit, and the asshole nature to pull off an awesome and very convincing stark. Director Jon Favreau is really paying attention to detail and I've heard nothing but positive reactions from fan communities like Advanced Iron and even 4chan's /co/ who hates Iron Man (and rightfully so) since his character has been completely destroyed by the way he was written as a villain for Marvel's Civil War, though a recent encounter with Thor will hopefully help turn him around.

In other news, Robotech will be seeing a big screen adaption by Spider-Man's Tobey Maguire who wants to play the hero Rick Hunter. Macross fans are up-in-arms about this though really not much more is known about the film. It seems like an attempt at cashing in on Transformers to me though I personally have no complaints.