Word: favreau
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Maybe it's just a coincidence, but the first two big movies of the summer season are about men fusing with their machines. And instead of being conquered or corrupted by their ambitions, the new machine men triumph. The implicit message of Jon Favreau's Iron Man, which earned more than $100 million in its opening weekend, and of Larry and Andy Wachowski's Speed Racer is that we've dwelled too long in the crypts of antiscientific dystopia. We live in an age of sophisticated machines. They do much of our work for us; we spend most...
...beginning of Iron Man - directed by Jon Favreau from a script by Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway - Tony Stark is nearly a cartoon villain, though he's drawn in the bold, confident strokes worthy of a '60s Marvel Comic cover by Jack Kirby. He has a Mephistophelean goatee and a glint in his eyes that suggests this former boy wonder is a genius at wasting his genius. He's a devoted practitioner of pride, lust and avarice, to name the fanciest of your deadly sins. This is a man who has got it all: wealth, power...
...real treat is for grownups, who get a beguiling character study behind and above the special effects. Favreau - who directed the best Will Ferrell comedy (Elf) and an agreeably mature fantasy (Zathura: A Space Adventure), and before that wrote and starred in Swingers, maybe the sharpest buddy comedy of the '90s - knows that, when making a big movie, you do not leave your I.Q. at the soundstage door; you bend your gifts in different directions. He lends Iron Man the unobtrusive speed and precision of classic comedy. An actor before he was a director, he's not content...
...this one anyway, knows that there's an American style - best displayed in the big, smart, kid-friendly epic - that few other cinemas even aspire to, and none can touch. When it works, as it does here, it rekindles even a cynic's movie love. So cheers to Downey, Favreau and the Iron Man production company. They don't call it Marvel for nothing...
...Favreau lobbied to cast Downey as Stark, Iron Man's alter ego, when Marvel Studios and Paramount Pictures wondered if a younger actor with a blander past would be a smarter marketing choice for a potential franchise. In Iron Man, Stark's convoy of humvees is attacked following a weapons demonstration. Insurgents hold him captive in a cave and demand that he build them a devastating weapon. Instead, Stark builds himself a suit of armor with a new sense of purpose. "Tony Stark goes through a bit of a moral reawakening in this movie," Favreau says-a character arc that...