By Scott Brown and Brian Raftery
With Iron Man blitzing the box office – and Indiana Jones, Batman and Mulder and Scully waiting in the wings – this may be the greatest summer movie season on record for super- excitable, super-opinionated, superannuated fanboys like Wired writers Scott Brown and Brian Raftery.
Each Monday, Brown and Raftery will fire up their IM clients and do a tag-team critique of a new movie. Sort of like Siskel and Ebert, but nerdier and funnier. Like Statler and Waldorf but, you know, non-Muppet.
This week, Brown (Statler76) and Raftery (Waldorf75) debate the finer points of Hollywood's latest dork offering, Iron Man.
Statler76: so... iron man... i loved this movie. but i must say...and this is not a PROBLEM... but iron man flies like a girl.
Waldorf75: he is a bit dainty. It's all in the wrists!
Waldorf75:: so did you have an comic-fan love of iron man when you were younger? because i did not
Statler76: nope. i went into this almost completely iron man ignorant
Statler76: i knew he was a drunk and wore a nice suit
Statler76: but that could be almost anyone above 14th st.
Statler76: what did you think of warzone milieu? any moments of ick?
Waldorf75: it didn't strike me as "true lies"-style offensive. but it's definitely a mixed message:
Waldorf75: on one hand, War is Bad!
Waldorf75: on the other, war looks awesome! It has flame throwers!
Statler76: and weirdly, they even call out that ambivalence.
Statler76: like when big, bad obadiah stane tells stark, "you tried to end war by creating the greatest weapon ever, you dope!"
Waldorf75: it doesn't help that the aforementioned line sounds like it's delivered by the cookie monster
Waldorf75: jeff bridges' character can build a giant suit, but can't get a good mic? he needs skype
Statler76: that showdown's the movie's weakest point.
Waldorf75: yeah, but bridges avoided the nick nolte way-too-method path from "the hulk." i like my marvel villains oscar-nominated, bearded and subtle
Statler76: nolte smash subtle!
Statler76: then nolte drink brake fluid, pass out in Chipotle
Waldorf75: I'll take Bridges. "You may be Iron Man, but I am Tucker! I am a man, and I had a dream!!"
Statler76: know what's weird? there's a still shot from Tucker montaged into Iron Man
Waldorf75: i know how you know that:
Waldorf75: because, like me and all the other nerds, you sat through the whole end credits
Statler76: worth it! Although at this point, samuel l jackson showing up in any movie today is the equivalent of a truman capote cameo in the 60s
Statler76: he's not an actor–more of an autopen signature.
Waldorf75: this movie could have really been different had it been made when it was originally developed, like, 70 years ago
Waldorf75: i think at one point it was a george cukor film with spencer tracy
Waldorf75:: called 'That Rusty, Lusty Fightin' Yank' or something
Statler76: katherine hepburn in power armor: now I'm fightin' a yank! If you know what I mean! Do you know what I mean?
Waldorf75: no. all I know is, this movie would not have worked with tom cruise. imagine if he'd gone through with developing it.
Statler76: by xenu, it would've been self-serious and daddy-issued to the point of system failure
Statler76: whereas downey reminds me more of michael keaton in batman: loose and funny, with just the right amount of contempt for himself and what he's doing. thank god for jon favreau, letting him get away with it.
Waldorf75: i wish daredevil had been more like that favreau was in it, lest we forget. but he must have learned his lessons from the DD debacle.
Statler76: what? Don't do CG sequences based on motion-captured Redvines?
Waldorf75:> haha. well, that. And: fanboys are going to hate all the crowd-pleasing camp, and the mass audiences are going to zone out during the super-serious myth-building stuff from the comics. so go straight down the middle
Statler76: if they can pull off hulk the same way, Marvel will buy Viacom next year. if the edward norton hulk redo hits big, i feel like they could actually pull off an avengers movie...
Statler76: imagine that set: Jackson, downey AND ed norton? hell, why not throw nolte into that personality mix. he can be ant man.
Waldorf75: poor ant-man. i picked up a spider man-hulk-antman book the other day.
Statler76: and?.
Waldorf75: and i was like, "oh, cool! Ant-man! he... still controls ants"
Statler76: I think favreau could even make ant-man work. maybe cast sean penn.
Waldorf75: favreau: he makes nerds and neophytes happy! he can do anything! get that man an immigration bill to pass!
Statler76: i think we've found obama's running mate.
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