Lance
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jack3566Thoughts on Iron Man
(Slight spoilers)
The Iron Man movie’s underlying story is political–mainly about the Afghanistan operations and character Tony Stark’s company’s involvement in selling arms to both sides of the conflict. Americans and terrorists are both shooting each other with Stark Enterprise weapons.
Iron Man becomes a movie about some sort of moral sense to Tony Stark that his company’s under the table involvement must be stopped–but there is a two fold problem. Stark wants to stop making military weapons altogether, but at the same time the movie’s story implies that he just wants to stop underhanded sales of weapons to the terrorists. The plot itself is not very deep aside from this little bit of a political\moral “struggle”. I’d like to know people’s thoughts on it.
The movie itself was very well done. It definitely had the potential to be a shabby movie, but the pace of the film never slowed down like in Marvel and Sony’s Spider-Man series. I was really impressed with the directing–it alone is probably what turned the movie into a good one.
Filed under: Asia, Entertainment, Geopolitics, Media, Movies, News, Politics
Lance, I refuse to even begin to read this, for I will not have the supposed blockbuster of the year ruined for me in the slightest and won’t get see it until my son comes home from next week. You are evil, Sir! Pure evil! ;)
Oh come on, I left a “slight spoilers” for you!
well, I haven’t watched the movie yet.
but this post makes me wanna watch it!
nice post :)
One thing you have to realize is that Stark actually is a patriot. I think he realizes is that the weapons he creates don’t simply keep Americans safe, they just make his investors happy. So becuase his creations are going into the “wrong hands” (i.e. non-Americans), and because he realizes the company he represents is out of his control, he tries to refocus Stark Industries. That’s what forges the central conflict.
That itself does open new questions. For instance, why is it OK for Stark to have the ultimate weapon (his armor) and not OK for non-Americans to have it? Why should American or American individuals retain the military might? Such questions might ask too much of a Marvel superhero, but…there it is.
I thought this move raised a lot of interesting questions, although wisely without trying to put answers to them.
**SPOILERS**
The movie brings up a lot of issues to do with big business and the role that we allow it to play in our society. The bad guy’s habit of selling to both sides has historical precedent: Henry Ford, who was a great admirer of Hitler’s, sold tanks to the Nazis while America and Germany were at war. Stark tries to remake his company, but the board won’t let him because it would hurt profits, which calls to mind the fact that corporations are required by law to make as much money as they legally can for their shareholders. In other words, if doing the right thing hurts profits, it’s illegal.