Iron man DVD (Review)

I’ve been looking forward to the utmost 2-disc edition of the Iron man DVD considering that it was announced in August. I think, though, that my anticipation backfired. My love for the motion picture hasn’t changed, but I found lots of of the special features weren’t as exciting as I had hoped.

DVD Choices
For me, the appeal of the film was the character, the man inside the suit, but that’s not the direction followed here. This was Marvel’s first in-house production after previous success licensing their characters to others. As a result, I’m guessing “control” was a big issue for them. keeping the focus on the costume and the technology — both in-film and effects-related — allows them to swap out creators regardless of the exceptional job director/actor Jon Favreau and star Robert Downey, Jr. did. (Reportedly, some crucial scenes were partially improvised. and there were rumors that marvel was announcing the 2010 date of the sequel film while stonewalling Favreau on salary talks.) That also fits with the standard attitude of superhero comic companies, where their properties are a lot more crucial than any given artist.

But that’s just my speculation. probably a lot more crucial to the makers of the DVD is this reason: fans of the comic tend to be tech-heads, because the character, a drunk rich man, is frankly, kind of an asshole (and never a lot more than recently, with the Civil war storyline). What’s left is the suit. So all this information on the look and feel of the costume, how it was created and built, must be ideal up their alley. a lot of of the extras focus on the production work, on what it took to get the motion picture to the screen.

The first Disc
The main disc consists of the motion picture and 11 deleted or extended scenes, my favorite of which is Rhodey driving a Porsche into the Iron Monger. I can see why they took it out, though — the resultant toppling of the big robot into a bus is kind of laugh-inducing. It’s neat to see how the rough effects in this scene don’t really match up, because it gives some hints as to how the process elements are assembled.

Also on the disc are various ads. “Armored Adventures” is a cartoon trailer for the animated series pertaining to Nicktoons in 2009, starring a teenage Tony. There are also previews: a tech-heavy version of a star trek teaser; the new Indiana Jones DVD; and the extraordinary Hulk DVD, both due later this month.

The reward Disc
The real meat is on the reward disc. Traditionally, with marvel movies, the second disc is the geek disc, and that’s never been a lot more true than here.

“I Am Iron Man” consists of seven featurettes about the making of the movie, mostly narrated by Favreau. There’s a ton of production information, especially about the look of the suit and the special effects, with plenty of credit scores to artist Adi Granov, who created the costume, and Stan Winston, whose studio built it. I was shocked to note that producer Peter Billingsley is the former child actor from A Christmas Story. (He also has a cameo role in the film itself as one of the Iron Monger’s pet scientists.)

I found all this information somewhat unnecessary; for me, it risked damaging the magic. devoted fans will eat up the way every detail of the film is covered in nearly two hours: all the different kinds of sweetening, visual effects, recoloring, performances, even sound mixing.

My favorite piece was “The Invincible Iron Man”, the comic-based documentary in six parts. noted writers and artists appear, including Gerry Conway, gene Colan, editor Tom Brevoort, John Romita, Jr., and Bob Layton. After talking about the character’s origin up until work in the 80s, the feature skips to the modern era. Warren Ellis talks for a good while about his Extremis relaunch of The Invincible Iron man in connection with Adi Granov, who is also included. a lot of everyone from the current era — Joe Casey, Joe Quesada, Dan and Charles Knauf, Patrick Zircher — appears, with the exception of Matt Fraction, whose new series was introduced to give the motion picture customers something to read that’s similar to the film.

Also left out is Denny O’Neil’s run covering the effects of alcoholism, including homelessness, probably because that would be a downer. I would have also been interested in hearing about Kurt Busiek’s reboot, overshadowed by his Avengers run at the time, because he brought back delighted and Pepper, who until then hadn’t been in the book for over a decade.

It was great to see Stan Lee, as expected, who talks about how Iron man had a lot more women readers, based on fan mail, than other marvel titles. He thinks “females”, as he calls them, really loved Iron man because the character was handsome, rich, and they wanted to mother him. Lee quotes them as thinking, “You’ll be ok, don’t worry about your heart, I’ll take care of you, and if you die, I’ll inherit all your money,” but then immediately says he didn’t indicatnull