‘Iron Man’ succeeds as entertainment and modern parable

For as often we have associated Jon Favreau’s spectacular “Iron Man” with the song of the same name (primarily thanks to the trailers and, in its final form, during the end credits), how often do we consider that Black Sabbath was actually singing about a tragic villain? A man turned to steel in an ill-defined quest for the greater good who ends up killing “the people he once saved.” At what point must you acknowledge that fact?

“Iron Man” does it right off the bat: it’s a wonderful popcorn flick, no doubt, and represents the first time in a while that I’ve been eager to embrace the summer blockbuster season—but it’s also one of the very few films to brilliantly illustrate comic book superheroes as modern-day Greek tragedy. Simply reeking with hubris, hipper-than-thou industrialist Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is in Afghanistan to demonstrate his latest missile technology to American troops when a terrorist organization descends on his unit and takes him prisoner. The terrorists are indirectly furnished by Stark’s sizeable weapons division, as it happens, and orders that he rebuild his latest product—lest they tamper with the device now keeping bits of shrapnel from entering his aorta. However, instead of building the missile, he builds himself a new heart and a suit of armor, escapes his captors, and decides to parlay his new ideas into work as a superhero.

It’s a deceptively simple plotline, really: the story of a man who realizes that he’s responsible for swaths of death and destruction and tries to belatedly atone for his misdeeds. The only problem is that Stark is a such slave to technology that he’s unable to function in any role beyond that of a weapons manufacturer—completely at the mercy of a progress bar and even averse to normal human desires. The only real physical interaction he has with his secretary/crush Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) throughout the film is when she reaches into his chest cavity to replace his artificial heart. Therefore, the only way that he’s able to stand up and do some good is by becoming a living bomb, a superhero-by-necessity, and destroying everything in sight—which manages to save, but ultimately only serves to offer more fuel for the enemy.

It’s a handy metaphor for those who invade unfamiliar situations with the best of intentions, however ill-advised it may be, only to be flabbergasted when it all comes back to bite them in the ass. (Even when the modern precedent is impossible to ignore, but there’s a certain universality to the situation—the character’s comic book origin, circa 1964, originally took place in Vietnam.) At the end of the road, the enemy is ourselves in an almost literal sense: the terrorists get a hold of Tony’s original suit and hand it over to his conniving business partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges, relishing in the role), who upgrades it and becomes the villainous Iron Monger. You can’t just see the resulting battle as a simple round of superhero antics when the topic of chickens coming home to roost looms so closely to the action.

If “Iron Man” has any discernable flaws, it’s that it’s too often willing to settle for an identity as the first film in a budding franchise. I don’t mind that action scenes are relatively few and far between—the set-pieces featured here certainly give you your money’s worth, and the pleasant stretches of time between them allow Robert Downey Jr.’s easygoing charm to really build on the character. But there’s always a feeling that the film is pulling its punches somehow, as if it’s afraid of using up its best ideas before the sequel comes around. It’s never more noticeable than when Tony’s military compatriot Jim Rhodes (Terrence Howard) looks back at an early prototype of the Iron Man suit and mutters “maybe next time.” Of course, comic fans will know that Rhodes later becomes fellow superhero War Machine; so there’s your plot for “Iron Man 2,” right there. Maybe it’s a little too cute, but make no mistake that I’ll be first in line when that finally hits theaters.