Of Iron and Wheels...

What a fantastic Summer for popcorn films...! This Summer 2008 is truly going to be heralded by someone as the ultimate for action fans.
Hellboy 2, The Dark Knight, X-Files 2, Speed Racer, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Indiana Jones 4, wow.

Before I rant, I should say that two of these properties, Iron Man, and Speed Racer, are rediculously near and dear to my childhood... so to be fair, I should lack anything resembling objectivity in the following lines of text...

I still can't get my mind around how excellent Iron Man is and how Stark (Downey jr.) nailed it. I was encouraged by the casting, but was beyond comfortable with what I took as the inevitable disappointment of another dud from a comic premise that the executives simply wouldn't get. Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four, yes Spider-Man (which I mostly consider the McDonalds of action movies), all grossly undershot the mark. Nobody could have seen Hellboy and The Incredibles and turned out a movie like Fantastic Flop.

In contrast to IM, and to drive my point home, look at Speed Racer. I absolutely HATE to parrot critics of these films, but did the Waschshsshowski Brothers even see the original 60's cartoon? Were they fans? This is a property that could have been brilliantly pulled off in no less than 3 completely different directions, and yet we got nada. It actually has a plot of sorts (and one consistent with the source material), it is well cast, it very excellently sets up Racer X, it provides a peculiar team race accross the elements (which should have been awesome), and I did enjoy some moments, but I can safely say that I won't see this movie ever again. (!) The action is bizarrely unwatchable and as pointless as watching your kid brother play slot cars with himself. Did the bros even see the cartoon???

Was that really supposed to be SNAKE OILER from the CAR ACROBATIC TEAM???

In short, there is no way that IM could have turned out as great as it is, and there is no way that SR could have turned out as lame as it is. I'm baffled, but optimistic... it certainly appears that some of our savvy generation are getting their elements plugged into current media.