Word: starks
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...This notion of self-made heroism is the theme of the first two blockbuster movies of the summer season. We saw it last weekend when Iron Man, the one where arms merchant Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) builds himself a heart, opened to $102 million at the domestic box office last weekend. Now comes Speed Racer, based on the '60s Japanese animated TV series, Mach GoGoGo. It's the new sound-and-light show from brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski, who in 1999 stamped the template for high-IQ effects entertainment with The Matrix. I don't think...
...rigger-in-chief is industry titan E.P. Arnold Royalton (Roger Allam, channeling Brit pundit Christopher Hitchens as his most pompestuous), who occupies the opposite pole of plutocracy from Tony Stark. Royalton doesn't make things; he crushes people, to attain "the unassailable might of money." Speed's victory would be one for the independent entrepreneurs (the Racers are literally a Mom-and-Pops outfit) over the-global industrial complex. Which is fine, except that the Wachowskis, backed by uber-producer Joel Silver and Warner Bros., are not exactly underdogs. Indeed, they need vast resources to mount the lavish spectacle they...
...Tony Stark tinkers in his lab to build a gadget that will keep him alive and a metal suit in which to house the artificial organ: the media dub him Iron Man. Speed Racer drives the car built by his dad to win the big rallies and in the process becomes one with his souped-up T180...
Zillionaire industrialist Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is a man without a heart--until he has to create a device to protect his own. Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) has a sweet gawkiness about him--until he gets behind a wheel. Not only do these heroes find the answers from within themselves, but they also build the solutions into themselves. The technology they create and maneuver helps them win because it's intrinsic: it's their heart, their brain...
...seem naive glorifying scientific innovation in an age of surface-to-air missiles (the kind Tony Stark's company manufactures in Iron Man) or exalting auto races at a time when many Americans have trouble paying for the gas that gets them to their jobs. But summer movies are parables, fairy tales that, for a couple of hours, let us dream while we're awake. And it's not the worst idea to have stories that both address our intimate relationship with machines and allow us to feel good about the connection. In fact, it's downright American...