Irony Man: Why Action Scenes Are Hurting Superhero Movies
The idea that you have to sit through mediocre "character development" to get to the combat fireworks is common to action films, but the first two "Iron Man"s inverted the genre's traditional appeal: viewers slogged through unexceptional set-pieces to watch Downey be a smart-ass, enabled by capable actors on the same comic page. That was a semi-happy accident, a result of the movies moving into production without a locked script, as multiple actors confirmed; the resulting improv sessions wore their spontaneity transparently. The action sequences had to be figured out before-hand — CGI takes time — but they're the least memorable components of the first two installments.
This method of construction isn't unfamiliar: when Jackie Chan made "Police Story" in 1985, he conceived his desired martial arts sequences first, then had the screenwriter come up with a framework that could plausibly get him from one to another. Same process, different outcome: in the "Iron Man"'s, you came for the comedy and put up with the action filler. With the exception of Jeff Bridges strapping on his gigantic-robot-villain suit at the end of the first film and Mickey Rourke causing racetrack havoc at the start of the second, it's hard for me to remember any significant mayhem from the first two installments; the showdowns basically look like outtakes from "The Rocketeer."
That's no longer the case in "Iron Man 3," whose plot that functions in ways that a screenwriting teacher would approve: there's a prologue establishing ("planting") characters that'll re-emerge as villains, a first act establishing Tony "Iron Man" Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is suffering from post-"Avengers" anxiety attacks (a challenge to be overcome, though it's forgotten halfway through), and a midway plot twist that simultaneously changes everything you thought about the villain while still keeping the movie on course towards an orgy of third-act CGI gasoline explosions and neatly resolved plot arcs.
This isn't to say that the first two films are an unqualified triumph (or that this new installment is suffocatingly mapped-out), but their comic sequences are surprisingly loose and delightful for overbudgeted superhero movies. Christian Bale's Batman has angst, Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man has some really serious anxiety issues (so his tentative delivery suggests), but Robert Downey Jr.'s topspin on every piece of dialogue is predictable without lapsing into diminishing returns. The memory I hold onto from "Iron Man 2" is Downey and co-star Don Cheadle killing time until the ultra-big final showdown by cracking wise about who's the big gun (Downey: "You have a big gun. You are not 'the big gun.'") This isn't exactly Howard Hawks, but it's closer to "Hatari!" than anything in recent tentpole history: narrative in the back, party up front.
It's worth noting that this unintentional jaggedness went beyond production or elements director Jon Favreau could control. Mickey Rourke, for example, said that his "Iron Man 2" villain was conspicuously absent from much of the movie in which he's ostensibly a major threat because "Favreau didn't call the shots" and Marvel Comics cut his part. There's no reason not to believe Rourke, since big summer blockbusters tend to work on a committee-times-ten basis. Accidental messiness is a welcome by-product of production turmoil, at least if you're one of the perverse few who (like me) enjoys "Spider-Man 3," in which Sam Raimi channelled his frustration with a top-heavy third installment spiraling out of control by shooting bizarro musical numbers or James Franco painting, resulting in an incoherent work with endearingly inexplicably moments attributable only to eccentric humanity.
This weirdness is a double-edged sword. "Spider-Man 3" and "Iron Man 2" are frustrated works that could have, at one time, hung together as coherent dramas, but instead come off as a series of comic tangents interrupted by obligatory, grudgingly executed action sequences. "Iron Man 2" went so poorly that Favreau simply didn't return for another directorial round, but he returns to reprise his role as Tony Stark's former bodyguard Happy Hogan. The big joke here is that Happy's now in charge of security at Stark Industries, and he's constantly worried about threats to everyone's safety. The human element "in human resources is our biggest weakness," he says, and he's not joking, a statement that could double as the studio's own nightmares about the franchise: Downey's too distinctive a performer to replace (though Cheadle replaced Terrence Howard without too many complaints), but apparently Favreau can be swapped out no problem.
[People who are way too worried about SPOILERS for things that happen in the first 20 minutes may want to check out at this point.] Happy's subsequently seriously injured in an explosion and rendered catatonic for the bulk of the narrative — as neat an in-joke as any about being forced to watch someone else take control of the franchise he helped build. (Tony's nightmares about New York work as a similar in-joke, in which the centerpiece of one franchise is tormented by memories of anchoring a totally different blockbuster.) Where former actor Favreau was good with helping organize riffing and keeping a potentially unwieldy production on track, new co-writer/director Shane Black melds the particular sense of humor he established himself with in "Lethal Weapon" and "The Last Boy Scout" with a firm sense of structural cause-and-effect.
The trade-off is that the film, eventually, has to shut up and explode: the now-planned-out riffing of the first half ceases as the generic action setpieces take over. (The first two are memorable, the rest increasingly watery; the finale's really close to that of the recent "A-Team" movie, which isn't a good thing.) These are the breaks: you can have unplanned human spontaneity without memorable action sequences, or you can have too many of the latter and too little of the former.
