Iron Man gets a lot of heat these days. Comic fans, vociferously critical of storylines that don’t put Tony Stark in the most heroic light (see: entire run-up to and duration of the Civil War “event”, elements of his current directorship of S.H.E.I.L.D.) seem to fail to grasp the beautiful ambiguity and dark turns the character takes. So Iron Man has made some compromises and bad decisions – so have some of William Shakespeare’s most memorable characters. Our poster child for gray-area morality’s regret over the series of events that lead to Captain America’s assassination and subsequent confession that it “wasn’t worth it” make for an all-too-human character that is vastly more readable than the X-Men, Hulks, She-Hulks, Punishers and myriad other spandex-clad and super-powered protagonists of the Marvel universe.
Regardless of this, fans who fail to grasp the subtleties of the story (or just plain don’t like it) needn’t moan about Iron Man any more. Whatever may be happening in his funnybooks at the moment, if the new Iron Man trailer does not deceive, I’d say the 2008 movie will have the explosive force of 5000 metric tons of fuck yes.
I don’t want to risk hyperbole by proclaiming that watching Iron Man out-race fighter jets is the coolest thing ever… but yeah, it really is.
