"The Invincible Iron Man"

Review by Heckler King

An ancient evil Mandarin will rise, his elemental henchmen will overrun the earth, his clay soldiers will slaughter the innocent, unless they can be stopped by… the Invincible Iron Man!

Tony Stark/Iron Man (Marc Worden)
James “Rhodey” Rhodes (Rodney Saulsberry)
Li Mei (Gwendolyn Yeo)
Wong Chu (James Sie)
Pepper Potts (Elisa Gabrielli)
Howard Stark (John McCook)
The Mandarin (Fred Tatasciore)

Year: 2007
Censorship Rating: PG-13 for some violence and mild adult themes

Things open with credits spliced over shots of hammers pounding and saws whirring. Fitting for Iron Man, huh? Our film proper begins with some Chinese folks working at an excavation of an ancient temple. One fellow cleaning up an ancient statue is freaked out when the statue starts to whisper ominously. He’s so freaked out he isn’t immediately hospitalized when he falls at least twenty feet off the scaffolding he’s on, either. He runs away screaming, “The Mandarin!”

A beefy black man, James “Rhodey” Rhodes, sees this happening before he is approached by several men about the status of the project. The project involves Stark Enterprises trying to raise an ancient, underground palace to the surface, but things are weeks behind schedule because of a terrorist brotherhood named the Jade Dragons who keep raiding the site trying to scare off the crew. Right then they strike again, blowing up a delivery helicopter with bazookas. I’m presuming some of those workers lying in the background aren’t just sleeping. Rhodey calls his boss, Tony Stark.

Tony is in the middle of an amorous encounter when Rhodey calls. They argue a little bit about the Jade Dragons and how guns were somehow snuck into their latest shipment of supplies even though Tony doesn’t want his people carrying weapons around or the Dragons will just get even more violent. If they’re bombing helicopters I’d say they’re willing to get pretty violent already. Tony promises to come down himself to supervise things. For the moment, he flies to a board meeting where we’re introduced to his prim but supportive secretary, Pepper Potts.

An Officious Board Member chews out Tony for how lightly he takes his responsibilities, including the project in China which is being underwritten by the company without board approval. Tony counters that the project has led to contracts with the Chinese government worth twenty times what they’ve spent. OBM goes on that Tony’s also spent half a bill on some “secret project” (how secret is it if they know it exists?). Tony again counters this harsh judgment by saying that all the board has done is get in his way when he built the company up from nothing and made all of them “indecently rich.” Nonetheless, because his kind is only good for making life difficult for free-wheeling geniuses no matter how much good they do, OBM proposes that Tony be relieved of his responsibilities. “You want my father to run this company?” Tony asks, aghast. “Because he will, right into the ground!”

In China, Rhodey is putting the finishing touches on the plan to raise the ancient city. It’s more complicated than this, but it looks like it basically involves a series of gigantic balloons planted below the city inflating and pushing it to the surface. Against all odds, the buildings rise up in pristine condition. Around the perimeter we see the Jade Dragons massing for an attack. The boss, Wong Chu, has a spat with a girl, Li Mei, who refuses to take innocent lives. He says that anyone involved with raising that temple is not innocent. Although Li Mei doesn’t look like she likes it, she arms herself and leaves with the others.

One of the project chiefs tells Rhodey about the Mandarin, the owner of the sunken city, who ruled “the darkest, most violent of dynasties. Hundreds of thousands died under his brutal reign.” Some, like the Jade Dragons, are afraid that raising the city is “inviting history to repeat itself.” (HK’s Aside: The tyrannical overlord is just called…“The Mandarin”? I’m sorry, it’s just that in most fantasy I’m familiar with, legendary evil despots are usually given more blood-curdling nicknames.) Right then the Dragons mount an all-out attack. Things blow up and people die by the truckload. Li Mei runs into Rhodey, but hesitates long enough for him to knock her out, only to be cold-cocked by Wong Chu. Pepper tells Tony about the attack and he catches the next flight over. Wong Chu tells Rhodey that he really wants Tony.

Tony arrives in China and drives to the site in a fleet of tanks (he went from not wanting to provoke the Dragons to not taking chances in a hurry, didn’t he? And yet he’ll display the same “weapons are icky” attitude again later). They’re intercepted by the Dragons and a fierce battle breaks out. Tony is pinned underneath rubble before blacking out. He comes to and finds a Buddhist monk tending to his wounds. “He will live… for the moment,” the monk reports to Wong Chu, who threatens the monk with death if Tony kicks off. Rhodey juryrigs an iron lung-like machine for his boss.

At the ancient city, four CGI warriors come to life at the corners of the Mandarin’s statue - fire, wind, stone and water (rather than fire, water, earth, wood and metal). A Jade Dragon guarding the city calls Chu and tells him the “elementals” have begun their “quest for the rings.” Something horrible kills the guard offscreen.

We cut to Tony’s father, Howard (but I’m just going to call him dad), talking to an attorney, and we see that while dad might not have approved of how lightly his son treated life, Tony’s still his boy when attorney tells him to leave Tony to his horrific fate. The Chinese government, we’re told, is also wondering how weapons manufactured by Stark Enterprises ended up in the hands of radicals like the Jade Dragons, and attorney advises Howard to let them lay the blame on Tony or the board members will throw him to the wolves too.

Tony wakes up and sees what’s become of him, and manages to hit it off with Li Mei. Tony and Rhodey start to streamline his life support equipment. Li Mei flashes back to a hateful meeting with her father, who refused to recognize her as his family and said that her life wasn’t hers, but to serve “a greater purpose” when “the Mandarin rises.” Attention is called to a bracelet she wears. In London, the elementals smash their way into a cavern below the city and find a hand jutting out of the earth with a glowing ring on one finger.

Tony is soon up and about with a much smaller apparatus lodged in his chest. The monk tells him of a prophecy about the Mandarin rising from the dead when the elementals find his “bands of the underworld.” The bands were stolen by monks who were the first Jade Dragons, the first people who sought to prevent the Mandarin from reviving. The monk gives Tony a map of where the rings are hidden. Chu demands that Tony find a way to sink the city again and blows the monk’s brains out to show he’s not kidding. Chu gives him a week.

We begin a montage where Tony and Rhodey work on their make-ancient-city-sink-again gizmo, although they moonlight by inventing something with exoskeletal arms. Li Mei tells Tony about her responsibility, but nothing more than we already knew. The elementals find the second ring in a mountain cave.

Chu comes and tells our boys to demonstrate their machine. Rhodey distracts Chu with a line of bull while Tony does something secret. Chu realizes he’s being played and pulls a gun on Rhodey, but Li Mei shoots Chu herself. More Jade Dragons come in but before they can finish what Chu started Tony comes out in his real secret project, a suit of CGI battle armor. Somewhat crude yet very effective, he makes short work of the Dragons trying to impede his escape (since Tony’s the good guy I presume the guys he blasts around aren’t lethally impeded). Tony and Rhodey soon escape, reluctantly leaving an adamant Li Mei behind, which makes little sense as we’ll later learn. One of the Dragons wonders if Tony’s escape might not be for the best; we learn the rest of the prophecy, that an “iron knight” will rise up and do battle with the Mandarin. Li Mei refuses to accept that could mean Tony. See, the prophecy doesn’t say the iron knight wins… [UnSub's aside: which brings up the age-old problems with prophecies - they are just too vague. It's like fortune tellers wanted to be known for their skills, but didn't want to be too specific just in case they were wrong! "I see a Mandarin and an Iron Knight, who will fight and the winner will be *cough*cough* and I'm off to bed, night all..."

At the airport, SHIELD agents show up and immediately try to arrest Tony for arms dealing to the Jade Dragons (HK’s Aside: Yes, it’s the same organization as UnSub’s “Nick Fury” review, and given the competence on display I wouldn’t be surprised to learn this happens in the same universe). Seeing his dad, Tony thinks he’s being set up. He gets the jump on one agent, climbs into one of their cars and peels away with Rhodey (Things I Learned*: Secret agents leave the keys in the ignition).

*Things I Learned copyright Andrew Borntreger.

Back in China, the surviving Jade Dragons are planning a raid to blow up the temple before the Mandarin can be revived. One is worried about the fifth elemental, and well he might be. The Jade Dragons are slaughtered one by one by it offscreen. Li Mei, because of her heritage, is the only one to be spared.

While hiding out from the cops, Tony sees a map of locations the elementals have struck in a newspaper and from the map the monk gave him, starts wondering if there might be something to the prophecy after all. He calls Pepper on her cell phone and asks her to get him into his office, which she does by putting on a completely transparent act of Tony calling her from the lobby which fools the SHIELD agents swarming the office. I am so glad they aren’t a real agency. I’m embarrassed for them in every scene they’re in. With SHIELD thrown off their trail for the moment Tony and Rhodey enter a door behind a modern art mural on his office wall and we see what his secret project is: a high-tech ops center filled with power suits for all occasions. Rhodey is angry Tony didn’t trust him with this secret until now, but the situation is defused (whew) when Tony reiterates how much he needs Rhodey’s help. Tony dons an aquatic suit and leaves to head off the elementals from getting the next ring (there’s an order? Convenient).

Our baddies arrive over the ocean. They whip up a tornado that blows the water away from a sunken temple and freeze the edges to keep the water out while they look around. They find the ring being worn by a meditating monk, but take it (finger and all!) away from him, and his body disintegrates. As they’re about to leave Tony busts through the frozen wall, but he’s apparently still field testing his suits because when he attacks the recoil from his own weapon kicks him back into a building and knocks the wind out of him. The elementals knock him around for a while and while Tony manages to counterattack and kill the fire one (who had no business being down there in the first place), the others mash his suit up and leave him to drown in the rapidly flooding temple. I don’t want to shock you, but Tony makes it out just in the nick of time.

At home base Tony angrily blames himself for setting the Mandarin’s resurrection in motion, and angrily blames his father for making things even worse. Rhodey asks, “You’re not gonna do something stupid, are you?” To which Tony replies, “Absolutely.” Tony storms into his father’s office (how did he get in there without being arrested about six times over? Plus if making things better is the goal here, wouldn’t keeping the elementals from getting the next ring be a better first step?). Tony slaps him with the blame for selling him out to SHIELD to save the company from being black-marked. They have a clash over ideals; dad snuck weapons into shipments for the dig because he was afraid of what the radicals would do if the crew couldn’t defend themselves, Tony didn’t want any because he didn’t want to escalate the conflict. Dad says military contracts are what made the company, Tony counters military contracts are only what got the company started. Dad angrily says Tony is just like his mother, and fills up with guilt as Tony stomps out. A SHIELD agent sees Tony and arrests Pepper for aiding a fugitive when she “accidentally” trips him with her desk lamp.

Tony gets ready to blast off to the location of the fourth ring in the heart of a volcano, but SHIELD is guarding the launch exit from his workshop. Rhodey gets himself arrested too distracting them while Tony takes off in a regular Iron Man suit. Unfortunately for him, the elementals are already there (see what I mean?) and have found the ring. He attacks but one Iron Man is a poor match for three mystical warriors and gets trashed again until he tricks water into killing wind and drags water into the lava.

Tony tries to slug it out with earth, who proves to be the toughest nut of the bunch and beats the motor oil out of Tony, but in the confusion Ol' Shellhead managed to palm the fourth ring and makes his getaway. Back at the front of Stark Tower Tony meets Li Mei, who pleads him to give her the ring because the last elemental will seek it out at any cost. Tony refuses, but decides to try and destroy the Mandarin’s tomb to see if that puts an end to the madness. He tries to call dad to sneak him into the building because his last suit was totally wrecked, but Tony realizes that his dad wasn’t alone and was really warning him not to come up. Then Tony has a light bulb moment, and Li Mei helps him beat up two slow-to-react SHIELD guards and steal a plane containing the armor he used to escape the Jade Dragons. Why wouldn’t SHIELD have seized the armor? Because then Tony would have had to go to the final confrontation with the bad guys as Business Casual Man. They take off for what I presume will be the final showdown.

At the Mandarin’s tomb, the earth elemental unearths an army of clay soldiers before Tony tackles him. Earth grabs him but Tony flies them both into the air and blasts him to gravel at last. Tony entrusts Li Mei with the rings, but she finally tells Tony her secret: her job wasn’t to stop the Mandarin, but to “ensure his return.” Her bracelet, representing I don't know what, is revealed to be the final ring. She has a thing for Tony, it seems, and she was the one who set him up to be arrested to keep him out of harm’s way. He refuses to leave and she tearfully tells him, “Then you will die” as the clay soldiers come to life and attack. Li Mei enters the tomb (watch for the doors to just disappear as they open) while Tony takes down the clay army over several minutes. Li Mei opens the Mandarin’s coffin and the rings raise his ghost, which possesses her. For some reason this involves burning all her clothes off (relax, boys. PG-13, remember?).

Tony finishes off the clay soldiers only to be attacked by that fifth elemental, a CGI dragon. He tries slaying it the old fashioned way with a handy sword, but this gets him smashed against a truck. He feeds it a canister of I guess is that super-balloony stuff they used to excavate the city, which expands inside the dragon’s stomach and kills it by inflation. All the guardians taken care of, Tony finally makes his way into the tomb. He finds Li Mei sitting naked in a lake of black stuff with floating skeletons. A twenty-foot image of the Mandarin floats over her, hiding her naughty bits as she uses the power of the rings to fling him around. While she does Tony pleads with her to fight it (seems she could have done before getting herself in this mess. See Comments).

I don’t want to shock you, but Li Mei gets control of herself and tears off the rings, and the Mandarin’s ghost disappears. She thanks Tony for saving her, and he responses in kind. They kiss, and I guess Li Mei croaks from being naked in a pool full of corpses.

We cut to another Stark Enterprises board meeting where Tony appears before the board and the officious guy who wanted him canned before toadies up, saying he’s glad the Chinese government cleared him of all charges but nervously adds he suspects Tony of being the one who bought up so much stock the board doesn’t have controlling interest anymore. He’s correct, and as Tony now owns the company he institutes a few changes, like putting Rhodey in charge of the “advanced technologies” division, and turning control over the company over to his dad, who’s “always seen this as a father-son enterprise.” Okay, let’s see. Mandarin and all his flunkies are defeated, Rhodey is rewarded for his unwavering loyalty, Tony and dad have reconciled, we just need the officious board members to get theirs. Dad ties up the last dangling thread by firing all the directors. Take that, corporate bigshots! The movie closes as Tony and dad exchange smiles and we cut away to a view of the building.

If there was ever a movie I wanted to like but just couldn’t, I’m sad to say it would have to be “The Invincible Iron Man.” Despite the things Marvel has had him up to lately, I’ve always thought the character was cool. Sort of like Batman but willing to take on bigger prey than muggers without Superman and Green Lantern covering his backside. Like too many movies I’ve seen, though, “Invincible Iron Man” sacrifices all logic to see itself through and takes the easy way out whenever it can.

Consider this: Li Mei is still alive. She’s part of Wong Chu’s organization, which is dedicated to keeping the Mandarin from rising at any cost, including murder, and it’s pretty clear he’s aware of her destiny to be the Mandarin’s medium. There’s no reason he wouldn’t have blown a hole through her before the movie even starts. Being a Jade Dragon, you’d also think Li Mei doesn’t want to submit to the Mandarin, but she just takes her medicine when the time comes. They completely dance around the issue of why she’s allowed to survive and why she sticks around, hoping nobody notices. Unfortunately, noticing things is exactly what reviewers are supposed to do.

For another example, look at the four elementals. Maybe I’m the stupid one, but the bad guy’s from China, maybe his otherworldly underlings would be based on the elements of nature from Chinese mysticism. The dragon counted as one, by the way, meaning there was room in the script to do the five Chinese elements. What about Tony confronting his father which leads to a friend getting busted? What did that serve? I’ve seen superheroes with worse priorities and control of their emotions (I don’t think I need to embarrass their creators by saying who), but this is still pretty bad.

Remember filmmakers: logic and coherence might be a pain, but try to get by without them and you’re buying yourself a ticket to obscurity.

Things are similar to Iron Man’s comic book origin with a few things changed here and there for the format and the times. The Mandarin of the comics was a Chinese nobleman who lost his standing to communism and got his powers from rings taken from the engine of an alien spaceship. Wong Chu wasn’t the head of an organization dedicated to stopping the Mandarin; Chu captured Tony because he wanted him to build a super-weapon to use against the American pig-dogs.

If you don’t mind asking yourself a lot of questions that won’t have answers, this movie is palatable.

If they’d spent more time ironing out the script, the chances for a sequel would look better.

Date of review: 11 August 2008