Questions about Iron Man Sequel

[beamjockey]

Now that I have seen Iron Man 2: The Re-Ironing, I realize that I have a lot of questions about it. All involve spoilers.

Some of my confusion may derive from having seen it at the new Hollywood Palms Cinema in Naperville, Illinois. It's a cinema-restaurant where you are brought food and drink during the film. It has theme-park decor and you sit on swivel chairs or barstools at a table.

I enjoy this place but it takes some getting used to; a waitress would materialize, and ask us questions, so at several points during the movie my attention was diverted from Iron Man et al. Nor could I ask my wife what I missed, since her attention was on the waitress at those same moments.

So if you find my confusion derives from momentary inattention, please do not judge me harshly.

1. Why couldn't Justin Hammer, a wealthy schemer who has billion-dollar contracts and a squad of thugs who can spring somebody from prison, obtain a particular cockatoo from an apartment in Russia? Seems it would be easy for him. Does this just set up the bird-conflict scenes later on? If so, it's idiot-plotting. Also, what happens to the original bird?

2. If Ivan Vanko can cut off phone lines and jam cellphone signals at the Stark Expo site, and totally control the suit Col. Rhodes is wearing, why doesn't he kill the suit's voice channel, which allows Rhodes to warn Iron Man of attacks?

3. In the same sequence, how come Pepper's cellphone works?

4. Dad encoded the secret of a completely new element in the geometry of the Expo pavilions? And expected Tony to figure it out?

Really?

Why didn't he just write it down?

5. Why haven't SHIELD's scientists synthesized this new element? Nick Fury seems to know about it. And they've had 36 years to work on the stuff in Dad's footlocker.

6. Did I miss the setup that explained the silver suit Rhodes wears? He goes to a room where there's a collection of earlier versions of Iron Man suits. Is this simply the N-1th model? Does it have any other significance?

7. When Tony Stark decides to leave house arrest and go get some fresh strawberries, where is the SHIELD agent who has sternly pledged to keep him on the premises? This might be covered in a later line of dialogue when he's saying goodbye, but there's no explanation (like a scene in which he's called away).

8. Did Nick Fury smoke any cigars in this movie? He's not just any guy in an eyepatch. He's not Nick Fury without a cigar!

For some reason, the frequent mentions of Iron Man to which I have been exposed in the past few months have invariably triggered the theme from the animated Spiderman TV show in my head. This may have been reinforced by the innovative re-use of this song in the Simpsons movie a few years ago. I'm not complaining-- it would be far worse to have the theme to the Grantray-Lawrence Iron Man cartoon as an earworm. Come to think of it, all five of the 1966 Marvel Super Heroes cartoons had annoying theme songs.

Speaking of songs, I noted Richard Sherman's name in the song credits. He's half of a songwriting team heard on the soundrack of innumerable Disney movies. He turns up in Iron Man because the story revolves around a decades-old World's Fair-like theme park (for which the site of the 1964 New York World's Fair stands in, nicely) and the old fair needed a Disney-style theme.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The silver N-1th model figured prominently in the first movie. There's a scene in which Rhodes (played by a different actor) looks longingly at it and is obviously yearning to take it for a spin.

[davidkevin.livejournal.com]

"You belong,
You belong,
You belong,
You belong to
The Merry Marvel Marching Society!

"March along,
March along,
March along to
The song of
The Merry Marvel Marching Society!"


There! That ought to make you hate me for the next several years...!

[avram]

I don't think Ultimate Nick Fury (that is, the version of Fury from the Ultimate continuity) smokes a cigar.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I don't know what the Ultimate continuity is (though no doubt I could pick it up from reading Wikipedia, and I may).

I'm not a regular comic book reader, and never have been.

If I encounter a pile of comic books, however-- say if I'm over at your house-- I will happily devour them.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

But I do have an Eighties reprint of the Steranko Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. stories.

[avram]

A decade back Marvel launched a new imprint, called Ultimate, which was an attempt to attract new readers by giving them rebooted versions of classic characters without decades of past continuity to have to dig through. The Ultimate version of Nick Fury was modeled on Samuel Jackson (with the actor's permission).

I think I may have tossed my Ultimate books when I moved back to Brooklyn. Which is just as well, since if you were over at my place and reading comics, there's several years' worth of reading material that I'd recommend ahead of the Ultimate stuff.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

S.H.I.E.L.D. is itself a reboot of Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos (not "commandoes?"), with all the Howling Commandoes twenty years older and working as secret agents.

Wikipedia indicates that Ultimate Samuel L. Jackson Nick Fury still fought in World War II without explaining how a ninetysomething guy can still be employed as an action hero. (I understand that Capt. America has a suspended-animation excuse.) It's probably better if I don't ask.

[izzylobo.livejournal.com]

The original Nick Fury was exposed to the Infinity Formula during WWII, which retarded his aging process (he's physically aged maybe a decade or so since).

In the Ultimate-verse, Nick was an (unwitting) guinea pig for the Super-Soldier program (called Project Rebirth). The program was apparently partially successful - Ulitmate-Nick got some super-strength and speed (although not to Cap's levels in that universe), and his aging has been significantly slowed down (even more than main-universe Nick Fury).

Of course, nobody knows if all of this has anything at all to do with the movie Nick Fury.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Huh. I'd have expected that something like an explanation for how a guy could not have aged much since the 1940s was exactly the sort of thing they'd ditch for the Ultimate continuity.

[madtechie2718.livejournal.com]

But did you stay all the way through the credits for the mini-promo for what looks to be the next movie?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I already said I stayed at least through the songwriting credits. So you can guess the answer to this question.

[madtechie2718.livejournal.com]

I guess so, then - can't remember how long after the song credits we had to wait before the promo came up.

It seemed to be a looong time, several times we almost headed out to eat but in the end stayed on long enough, though we were the only people to do so.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

What surprises me, Bill, is that you didn't even mention that Tony built a Cyclotron in his basement (YES, cyclotron, I love the word so I'm using it, suck it). Course he is Tony Stark. The only person you probably wouldn't think twice about this would be Reed Richards, but that's another story.

There has been a lot of buzz on the Disney boards about the films of Howard Stark. People forget, though, Walt didn't invent that sort of presentation. It was very common place in the late 50's/early 60's but still. Especially given Walt's involvement with the '64 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, NY so the nod to Walt was certainly in someone's mind.

[erik]

1: I think the point they were trying to make wasn't that he couldn't get the right bird, it's that he didn't pay enough attention to the details to make sure he did. He expects everyone to have the same motivations that he has (see also at the end when the cops are taking him away and he assumes it's a strategic move by Pepper to get a business rival out of the way), which is why his interaction with Vanko is doomed; the bird is only a small part of that failure.

2/3: Vanko cut off the phone lines at Hammer headquarters, not at the pavilion.

4: Nowhere is it said that the geometry of the pavilion etc. is the only place the secret is stored. It could be that the pavilion thing was meant to be an in-joke between dad and son, but then son became a dissolute playboy and dad lost confidence in him and never gave him the whole scoop.

5: In the previous film it is established that Tony Stark is smarter than your average bear. Papa Stark says himself that he doesn't have the technology in 1954 to do what needs to be done; it's likely that the S.H.I.E.L.D. scientists don't either even today, or are approaching it from the wrong angle or both.

7: the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent was tasked with making sure Stark went over everything in the footlocker. Stark did that, and clearly got the message, so he wasn't really the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent's problem anymore.

[min8ive.livejournal.com]

"a waitress would materialize, and ask us questions, so at several points during the movie my attention was diverted from Iron Man et al."

Wow, that sounds annoying, definitely a Bad Idea for a movie. I remember when they opened, I thought it sounded like a fun date concept, but was too expensive to actually try. Thanks for saving me a ton of money. :-)

[ericcoleman]

I think that the answer to most of your questions is ... it's a comic book movie.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I suspect some of the particular stupidity about the "new element" element may have something to do with wanting Marvel fans to recognise what that element is but not actually naming it or doing anything unambiguous because of it being mentioned by name in the X-Men movies; I do not know whether Fox might thereby have some claim to the specific name such that Marvel Studios might have issues with using it.