[picapp align=”center” wrap=”false” link=”term=iron+man&iid=8764690″ src=”4/b/2/4/Iron_Man_2_f15c.jpg?adImageId=12859394&imageId=8764690″ width=”380″ height=”301″ /]I took my teenagers out to the movies last night. We all assumed Iron Man may be worth the price of the ticket.

We were wrong.

While my young ones did not have quite the distaste for the movie as I did, all of us thought that the movie left more than a lot to be desired.  All four of us were in agreement that the “final battle with the bad guy” was a complete disappointment.  It didn’t even meet the gratuitously violent, hero is almost dead but saves himself by his own ingenuity/strength with an “unexpected” twist low standard.  It is a rarity all four of us agree on anything, so I am positive the climax was lame.

I could waste a lot of words but suffice it to say the whole of the movie was like the kid in middle school who exulted in being annoying, but knew you couldn’t do anything about it, so the child was annoying for the sake of being annoying over and over and over and over and over again.  I left the theater wondering who I was supposed to dislike more, the self-aggrandizing, hyper-arrogant superhero or his over-the-top whiny (yes WHINY) adversary.

Two things are of real concern to me regarding this wildly popular movie:

First, Iron Man, is referenced in the movie as the penultimate true AMERICAN.  If I desired to advance the stereotypical worldview of Americans being narcissistic, amoral, rebellious, violent, greedy, wasteful, haughty people governed by a thoroughly corrupt government, I would copy this film and send it to everyone on the planet.

Second, the superhero is presented as an individual of incredible talent, intelligence and vice.  He is counterbalanced by a female of equal intelligence, evident talent, and no obvious vice.  The movie viewer is expected to approve of the “super-male’s” equal (the woman) excusing the male’s repeatedly vile behavior and ignoring his flaunted sexual promiscuity in order to be willfully waiting for him to make a half-hearted commitment to her because he “remembers” to save her in the day of trouble.  Pathetic and pitiable is such a scene.  It would have been far more fitting for the final act of movie violence to be the quasi-heroine tossing the hero-cad off the roof as he suavely attempted to make his advance.  He was in no manner her peer.  It was not to be had, however, so we witnessed “wierd” kissing instead (“wierd” not my word but the hero’s own scripted term).  It is ok, we are left to assume, because he is a hero-man and thus worth her attention and desire.   

Regurgitation and refunds are in order.