The critics this summer have been an enigma to me. Before going to see Iron Man, I noticed that it had an unbelievable 93% rating on Rottentomatoes dot com. This, I confidently assured myself, should be the best superhero movie ever made! Look at all of that critical acclaim! I was deluding myself. While every facet of the film was polished to a mirror shine, as I walked out of the theater, I found myself... ambivalent. I started unconsciously nit-picking certainly elements of the film... the shitty, phoned in soundtrack, Terrence Howard's weak voice (and I loved him in "Hustle and Flow"!), Gwyneth Paltrow's uneven performance. Things that, while somewhat detracting from the film shouldn't affect the overall sense of satisfaction I felt from watching it. But the damage was done. Perhaps it was the overwhelmingly positive critical reception... the hyping and promoting on various websites I frequent. Somehow it couldn't possibly meet the bar that had been set.Now that I've got my original ambivalent reaction out of the way, lets look at one thing that Iron Man got right: for one, it has a very finely tuned balance between it's superhero origin narrative, and a solid sense of spectacle. It doesn't only have one or the other, it has a very crowd-pleasing, critic appeasing blend of these two elements, and that's what has made it a success. Robert Downey Jr. is Tony Stark, and ILM did a real awesome job on the special effects. So really, unless you're a basement dwelling, scum-sucking aintitcoolnews talkbacker, you should be able to realize the success of Iron Man, as it pertains to this balancing act of Narrative and Spectacle.
It's what cinema is all about, it's about taking you out of your normal, everyday life and infusing it with concentrated suspense, romance, action, adventure, or comedy. The best films please you on the visual, purely aesthetic platform of film while engaging your mind with wit, subtext, and other things that intellectuals like to blabber about. This is why Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" is by far my favorite film that I have seen to this date. Real, vibrant cinema is about the ideal marriage of visual entertainment and storytelling. They live off each other, and if one outstrips the other, the whole suffers.
Adam has proposed that critics have panned "Speed Racer" in the same way they derided "Pirates of the Carribean 3: the World's End". He proposed that critics panned POTC3 because the film was a meandering mess, unredeemed by it's well-tuned audio-visual experience. They panned it because the movie did not live up to the promise of the first film, and the fact that it did not improve upon the second film, which was a somewhat bloated, confused CGI-fest. POTC3 didn't have a point. If we're talking about Narrative vs. Spectacle, it's a failure. No matter how impressive your 2 million dollar shot of a pirate ship exploding is, it isn't worth squat if the audience doesn't care about any of the characters or the plot. In the end, it's ridiculous to think that ILM special effects and a Hanz Zimmer score (he's as practiced as James Horner at cannibalizing his past efforts) are redeeming values. These qualities alone make a good popcorn film, but not what I would deem good cinema.
Adam is correct in asserting is that critics have unfairly panned "Speed Racer". I've seen this one twice now, both times in IMAX. Critics hated it because they couldn't get past the ground-breaking visual effects and childish sense of play that make this seem like a real-life anime-cartoon. If Adam gets to see this film (and I dearly wish him and every reader of this blog to see it before it leaves IMAX screens), he'd realise that not only have critics been unfair, but that he is (happily) mistaken in thinking (through the views of misled critics) that Speed Racer is a purely visual spectacle, or lacking "a good story". The Wachowskis have achieved quite a feat, because they made a real family film. There is heart here. There are morals to teach to the youngsters who are going to love the racing segments. I don't know why, but the critics have mistakenly ignored on the great, avant-guarde examples of Narrative-Visual cinematic art ever achieved.
We, as the film-going public, have mis-treated this film. I enjoyed it much more than Iron Man, and tons more than POTC3. If you have any sort of inner child which is not covered with the sickly burlap of cynicism, go and see this film now and realize how wrong the critics have been, and how utterly crazy the Wachowskis were to attempt to make this film.
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