fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2011-06-03 12:11 am
some_stars) wrote2011-06-03 12:11 am
one year later
So the upstairs A/C is semi-broken, in that it circulates air but not cool air, so my bedroom is currently a terrible place to be from about 3 to 9 pm, so I wanted to be downstairs. But my computer is up here, of course, and the parental computer downstairs has a pretty uncomfortable chair and also none of my files, so I was looking for a movie to watch, and I found my still-unopened copy of Iron Man 2, and said what the hell. I figured my expectations were already rock-bottom from everyone's reviews, but at least people would be pretty and maybe I could use it for my imminent remaster of Dilaudid. (Don't watch that version, I made it on an old monitor that I didn't know was damaged and the technical problems are unbearable.)
People were pretty, and I'm pretty sure it's going in the remaster, although the vid's going to change--or rather, it's not going to change, so its meaning is going to change. The thing about Dilaudid is that I don't see it as an argument so much as a distillation. Everything in that vid is in the movie; I didn't have to recontextualize or transform anything. I just stripped away what wasn't relevant and the handful of things that were contradictory. And the sequel...well, as soon as I finished it, I put in the original to reassure myself that yes, it really was that good, I hadn't just been deluded and overenthusiastic at the time. Not that it's perfect by a long shot--none of its ideas are brilliant, few of them are new, and it doesn't take the new ones nearly as far as it should. But they're there, I could make my vid about how the story is a tragedy without having to vid against the text. And it was just so good--not genius, as I said, but it has an incredible consistency and attention to detail, and almost as importantly, it doesn't push any of those details too hard. There are few anvils in the writing, none in the acting. Tony's character is built up through a constant stream of small, often background moments.
I think the strongest element that worked in the original movie's favor was that it could end when it did. Watching the first twenty minutes of the sequel, I saw that the only way this could be a good movie would be if it ended horribly for everyone, and of course they weren't going to do that. Both because, for all that Iron Man was much more thoughtful than other superhero movies, I don't think anybody involved except possibly RDJ--only hypothesizing based on his performance, could be wishful thinking--wants to tell that story, and of course economically they never could. They need to set up the franchise, and they need another box-office topper. So I didn't really feel disappointment at almost anything that happened (except what they did to Christine Everhart, FUCK all y'all) because I was in "harvest for contrary vid" mode basically from the start. And there are a LOT of shots I can use in the vid, the basic argument of which will remain "Tony Stark: Downward Spiral With Massive Weapons, Everyone Is So Fucked" because I think that's a solid thesis. (I mean, there's also a fair chunk of robosexuality in there, but that's because come on, they were so asking for it.)
--although actually, to break out of the parenthetical, that was something else I disliked about the second movie, entirely apart from characterization and ideology and narrative/emotional coherence--the visuals were so much less wonderful. The technology in the first movie was consistently appealing and organic--every shot of some piece of tech, or Tony doing engineering, or computer interfaces, or the suit, it's all curves and circular/swooping motions, machines moving in organic ways and hands moving across machines, the wonderful sci-fi hologram interface that he manipulates by grabbing, pulling, pushing, squeezing, stretching, sliding himself right into it. I went off on some extended visual tangents in the vid that really should have been edited tighter, but I was just so entranced by how consistent the organic aesthetic was over the entire film. The sequel, of course, is missing that entirely. There are the requisite shots of big flashy technology and robots fighting each other and what have you, but there's no engineering porn, and there's no delight. What makes the whole concept so delightful is the fusion of suit and body, watching him build it around himself and step into it and be swallowed up, watching it move naturally like a person, that shot at the end of the first movie where his bare hand is sticking out of it.
Of course, there are very good reasons for the sequel to be less about engineering porn and more about clunkiness and tiredness and a total absence of inspiration. But none of that was very convincing, and they dismissed it apparently as soon as they could. So, not really a suitable replacement. And the rest was just...backing away from the core of the first movie that they'd already been pretty tenuous about, pushing the daddy-issues to the forefront and dousing it in cheap sentiment, poorly-integrated setup for the Avengers movie, total lack of attention to the plot either logical or emotional, it's all just a massive waste of money and talent.
The story--the real story, the story that made all the machines and explosions in the first movie so compelling--is Tony, and how he's a walking disaster in all these fascinating and attractive and incredibly dangerous ways. Iron Man was so great because the ending didn't eliminate, in fact suggested, the possibility that Tony's whole process of self-destruction, then hitting bottom and choosing a new kind of self-destruction based on obsessive guilt, then finally stabilizing, was only going to repeat itself bigger and bigger, because there's something deep in him that drives it and won't let him get past it. That's what Dilaudid is about (one of my favorite things about it, done unconsciously until the very end of editing, is that there are no clips of the fully-assembled inhabited suit from outside except two short catastrophic ones at the end, because it's not about the suit), and the "downward spiral" part of Iron Man 2 will offer many useful clips. As will the part where the robot army sent to kill him is terrorizing/killing hundreds of screaming extras. Now you say you love me, pretty soon you won't...
Incidentally I'm incredibly pissed to discover that not only are the boring nobody-cares featurettes and interviews on the Blu-Ray disc but not the DVD, so are the deleted scenes. I NEED THOSE. I've even got software that could rip them, if I had a Blu-Ray-capable drive, which I do not. Only a few of them are on Youtube and I've already seen one I absolutely must have--the cut scene from the party with the girl wearing the repulsor gloves, then falling and her legs around his neck, gloves hanging by his face. Must have.
Possibly summary for the remastered version: "He thinks it's a shield."
People were pretty, and I'm pretty sure it's going in the remaster, although the vid's going to change--or rather, it's not going to change, so its meaning is going to change. The thing about Dilaudid is that I don't see it as an argument so much as a distillation. Everything in that vid is in the movie; I didn't have to recontextualize or transform anything. I just stripped away what wasn't relevant and the handful of things that were contradictory. And the sequel...well, as soon as I finished it, I put in the original to reassure myself that yes, it really was that good, I hadn't just been deluded and overenthusiastic at the time. Not that it's perfect by a long shot--none of its ideas are brilliant, few of them are new, and it doesn't take the new ones nearly as far as it should. But they're there, I could make my vid about how the story is a tragedy without having to vid against the text. And it was just so good--not genius, as I said, but it has an incredible consistency and attention to detail, and almost as importantly, it doesn't push any of those details too hard. There are few anvils in the writing, none in the acting. Tony's character is built up through a constant stream of small, often background moments.
I think the strongest element that worked in the original movie's favor was that it could end when it did. Watching the first twenty minutes of the sequel, I saw that the only way this could be a good movie would be if it ended horribly for everyone, and of course they weren't going to do that. Both because, for all that Iron Man was much more thoughtful than other superhero movies, I don't think anybody involved except possibly RDJ--only hypothesizing based on his performance, could be wishful thinking--wants to tell that story, and of course economically they never could. They need to set up the franchise, and they need another box-office topper. So I didn't really feel disappointment at almost anything that happened (except what they did to Christine Everhart, FUCK all y'all) because I was in "harvest for contrary vid" mode basically from the start. And there are a LOT of shots I can use in the vid, the basic argument of which will remain "Tony Stark: Downward Spiral With Massive Weapons, Everyone Is So Fucked" because I think that's a solid thesis. (I mean, there's also a fair chunk of robosexuality in there, but that's because come on, they were so asking for it.)
--although actually, to break out of the parenthetical, that was something else I disliked about the second movie, entirely apart from characterization and ideology and narrative/emotional coherence--the visuals were so much less wonderful. The technology in the first movie was consistently appealing and organic--every shot of some piece of tech, or Tony doing engineering, or computer interfaces, or the suit, it's all curves and circular/swooping motions, machines moving in organic ways and hands moving across machines, the wonderful sci-fi hologram interface that he manipulates by grabbing, pulling, pushing, squeezing, stretching, sliding himself right into it. I went off on some extended visual tangents in the vid that really should have been edited tighter, but I was just so entranced by how consistent the organic aesthetic was over the entire film. The sequel, of course, is missing that entirely. There are the requisite shots of big flashy technology and robots fighting each other and what have you, but there's no engineering porn, and there's no delight. What makes the whole concept so delightful is the fusion of suit and body, watching him build it around himself and step into it and be swallowed up, watching it move naturally like a person, that shot at the end of the first movie where his bare hand is sticking out of it.
Of course, there are very good reasons for the sequel to be less about engineering porn and more about clunkiness and tiredness and a total absence of inspiration. But none of that was very convincing, and they dismissed it apparently as soon as they could. So, not really a suitable replacement. And the rest was just...backing away from the core of the first movie that they'd already been pretty tenuous about, pushing the daddy-issues to the forefront and dousing it in cheap sentiment, poorly-integrated setup for the Avengers movie, total lack of attention to the plot either logical or emotional, it's all just a massive waste of money and talent.
The story--the real story, the story that made all the machines and explosions in the first movie so compelling--is Tony, and how he's a walking disaster in all these fascinating and attractive and incredibly dangerous ways. Iron Man was so great because the ending didn't eliminate, in fact suggested, the possibility that Tony's whole process of self-destruction, then hitting bottom and choosing a new kind of self-destruction based on obsessive guilt, then finally stabilizing, was only going to repeat itself bigger and bigger, because there's something deep in him that drives it and won't let him get past it. That's what Dilaudid is about (one of my favorite things about it, done unconsciously until the very end of editing, is that there are no clips of the fully-assembled inhabited suit from outside except two short catastrophic ones at the end, because it's not about the suit), and the "downward spiral" part of Iron Man 2 will offer many useful clips. As will the part where the robot army sent to kill him is terrorizing/killing hundreds of screaming extras. Now you say you love me, pretty soon you won't...
Incidentally I'm incredibly pissed to discover that not only are the boring nobody-cares featurettes and interviews on the Blu-Ray disc but not the DVD, so are the deleted scenes. I NEED THOSE. I've even got software that could rip them, if I had a Blu-Ray-capable drive, which I do not. Only a few of them are on Youtube and I've already seen one I absolutely must have--the cut scene from the party with the girl wearing the repulsor gloves, then falling and her legs around his neck, gloves hanging by his face. Must have.
Possibly summary for the remastered version: "He thinks it's a shield."
no subject
This is exactly why I was hoping the second movie was going to end Empire Strikes Back style, with everything in ruins and people barely escaping alive. Thanks for putting it into words.