Saturday, March 17, 2012

Iron Man 2 Again

From facebook:
We watched Iron Man 2 again last night. The movie does not work, but the two trade show scenes -- Tony Stark opening the Stark expo and Justin Hammer introducing his company's new line of war robots -- are both lots of fun in an utterly awful way. Mickey Rourke did just fine as the Russian thug/scientist Ivan Venko, and I liked the grit and poverty of the Russian scenes, a good contrast to Tony and Justin's lives. I liked the song that ran behind the ending credits, all about the future is now. It had a fine 50s-60s peppy corporate sound, like "Better living through electricity" and "Progress is our most important product." The movie of Tony's dad also has a fine period flavor and makes a nice contrast with the present. Tony's dad could talk about technology and business producing a better tomorrow. Justin Hammer can only talk about killing, killing, killing. So, the movie tells us, American capitalism used to talk about dreams of the future. Now, it's about repulsive displays of wealth and glitz, and it's about killing.

I remember watching movies in the 1960s and trying to decode them. What did they say about our society? What were people in Hollywood and maybe in the audience thinking? And now I am doing it again.

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