Iron Man (Blu-ray)

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He is the most selfless of superheroes, putting himself in harm's way, much like Batman, without any true superpowers. When his suit is crusted with ice from flying entirely too high into the atmosphere, the man Stark is faced with plummeting down to the surface, a fall he would never survive. There is a death wish of sorts as he pushes nearly to the breaking point. It fits with the character we come to know. He's never been told he can't do something and, if someone did have the gall to tell him "no," he'd go through with his plan anyway. There is no stopping this mortal man when he has a head full of steam.

Directed by Jon Favreau, there is no technical "pop" in the look of the film; it is quite pedestrian, from the directing to production design and cinematography. Though I wonder if this is really a bad thing or not. With the over-CGI of "Spider-Man 3" and wire reliance of "The Matrix" films, a simple, straightforward, and "working man" style would appear to be the best. That's how Favreau works, trading in fancy camera moves and shots screaming "look me at" for a simple, grounded design. Even in the battle scenes, of which there are precious few, no single shot stands out. Rather, the sum total of what happens on the screen is better than the parts.

I guess we need to talk about the actual plot now, right? Fairly standard comic book stuff here, from the origin story to a half-baked villain plot. If we are to compare this film--the first in a presumed franchise--to the initial volume of a comic series, the formula works in the same way. However, it doesn't have the pizazz of many other conflicts in the Marvel movie universe. Good guy versus bad guy, one on the side of the little man, the other concerned only with profit. With so little of the story devoted to the conflict, it is hard to get emotionally invested in it. The beef is of a corporate nature. How do you dramatize a fight between Microsoft and Apple? Quite simply, you don't. Yet this is where the script takes us.

I haven't even mentioned the supporting characters like Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), and Jim Rhodes (Terrance Howard). Potts, a personal assistant in the beginning, turns into Stark's girlfriend at the end, a harbinger of further development for her. And Howard…he also bides his time until (presumably) turning into War Machine at a later date. None are spectacular in their roles, content to have some fun in a big-budget summer film. But both ramp down their acting, leaving the scene chewing to Bridges. And the humanity to Downey, Jr.

But is "Iron Man" materially any better or worse than other première installments of comic-book films? Not really. The movie delivers on its promise of a blockbuster with fancy visuals, enough in-jokes directed at longtime comic book audiences, and a crowd-pleasing good time. Stark's transformation from man of war to man of peace comes a bit too quickly; Potts's flying right into the love interest role is tired, not to mention wholly expected; and the Iron Monger plotline feels half complete. Alas, those are the usual concerns with starting a brand-new franchise from the ground up.

So, does "Iron Man" succeed as a film? It does. As with most Marvel films, stick around for a post-credits scene foretelling the future of the character and perhaps another franchise.

Jason's film rating: 7/10

Video:
Paramount reproduce the 2.35:1 ratio, 1080p high-definition picture using a dual-layer BD50 and an MPEG-4 video codec. The best part about it is the realism of the colors, quite rich and true to life, never too bright and never too glossy. A natural film grain provides texture, and definition remains quite sharp in most scenes. I found the image a tad dark in some dimly lit shots, but it's a small quibble.

Audio:
The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 displays a wide front-channel stereo separation and more than sufficient surround activity. Most important, there is a well-balanced frequency response that is smooth and warm, sounding very natural and pleasing. The center channel anchors all the voices as it does with most modern movies, an unfortunate but necessary evil, I suppose. There is also a strong bass response, with a solid, if sometimes overeager, roar.

Oddly, though, just when the soundtrack should have exhibited its most-powerful impact during big action scenes, it tended to soften up and lose some of its punch, the dynamic range seeming to become constricted. Just to be sure I wasn't hearing things, I compared several passages to the regular Dolby Digital 5.1 track on the standard-def version of the movie, and, sure enough, the SD disc had the punchier sound.

After two days of fussing with the question and talking to equally perplexed fellow reviewers, I discovered that the problem was in the way my Onkyo 705 receiver was handling this particular disc's TrueHD audio output (although the receiver has never had a problem with any other TrueHD soundtracks, a multitude of them, in this regard). The TrueHD track on "Iron Man" was apparently triggering the receiver's dynamic-range compression function. There is a button on the remote for "Late Night" listening to change it back. However, not wanting to deal with the issue if it ever cropped up again, I changed my Panasonic BD50 player's output from bitstream to PCM, thereby letting the player decode the audio rather than the receiver.

Now, everything sounds fine. Indeed, "Iron Man" sounds great in TrueHD, with plenty of punch that I'm finally able to hear.

Extras:
Disc one of this Ultimate 2-Disc Blu-ray Edition contains the feature film and a number of featurettes, all of them in high definition. First up is the Blu-ray exclusive "Hall of Armor," wherein one can view the various armored suits used in the film from all possible angles and close-ups. Next is a forty-seven-minute series of featurettes titled "The Invincible Iron Man." It includes sections on "Origins," "Friends & Foes," "The Definitive Iron Man," "Demon in a Bottle," "Extremis and Beyond," and "Ultimate Iron Man." After that is a series of eleven deleted or extended scenes, about twenty-four minutes' worth. Even though the keep case says they're in high def, it's not the sharpest HD I've ever seen.

Disc one concludes with a BD-Live segment called "Iron Man IQ," if your player is Profile 2.0 compliant and connects to the Internet; fifteen scene selections; bookmarks; a guide to elapsed time; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Disc two, its extras also in high definition, begins with the huge documentary, "I Am Iron Man," 109 minutes long and divided into the following sections: "The Journey Begins," "The Suit That Makes the Iron Man," "The Walk of Destruction," "Grounded in Reality," "Beneath the Armor," "It's All in the Details," and "A Good Story, Well Told." These segments take you through the Stan Winston Company's special effects, through the sound stages and sets, through the film's tech, to the final editing and post production at Skywalker Ranch, and then to the film's première.

After that, you'll find "Wired: The Visual Effects of Iron Man," twenty-seven minutes on the CGI work in the film; a six-minute Robert Downey, Jr. screen test; "The Actor's Process," four minutes of rehearsal with Downey and Bridges; and "The Onion: Wildly Popular Iron Man Trailer to be Adapted into Full Length Film," two minutes and very cute. Things finish up with two international trailers, a theatrical trailer, and a teaser trailer, totaling about eight minutes; and image galleries for concept art, tech, unit photography, and posters.

The two discs come housed in a double Blu-ray keep case, further enclosed in a fancy, embossed slipcover. But here's the thing: the folks at Paramount pretty much force you to use the slipcover whether you want to or not. That's because there is nothing written on the front or back of the keep-case cover, just pictures of Robert Downey, Jr. and Iron Man. If you want to know what's on the discs or you want a title on the front, you'll have to go with the slipcover.

Parting Thoughts:
"Iron Man" is probably not the movie many people expected it to be. I mean, who would have thought that a superhero film would be more about character than action? It's all the better for it, though, and promotes repeat viewing. Additionally, in Blu-ray the visual effect is more natural and more realistic than a lot of such high-def productions, which usually go for razor-sharp detail and eye-popping hues. So, the movie is a double surprise and a double pleasure.

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