(As a manga otaku, not a comic otaku, I will still endeavor to reflect on connections and disconnections from the canon of comics, even those as complex as DC and Marvel’s)
Iron Man is not my favorite Marvel superhero, though I can appreciate his position as a technologically progressive guy. Though I’m admittedly more right brained and artistically minded, I can say that progression of machines, computers and technology is important, when done with the right intent. Iron Man also reminds me a bit of S.T.R.I.P.E. from Justice League; a somewhat middle aged guy piloting a mecha to fight bad guys. Except Tony Stark’s notably rich and also a womanizer. Not to mention his alcoholism that comes up in the comics and the live action movies I think. Anyway, onto synopsis.
We start in China, where the friend of Tony Stark, James Rhodes (who will become War Machine in other adaptations), is helping the Chinese government raise the ancient city of the Mandarin. But he’s also being attacked by the Jade Dragons, who don’t want it to be raised, for reasons they’ll reveal later. Rhodes’ plane delivering the last of the liquid steel they need to raise the city is attacked. Rhodes calls Tony Stark (who is in the hot tub with a woman suspiciously similar in appearance to Pepper Potts, though it’s just a coincidence more likely) about his supposedly shipping weapons to help Rhodes’ crew defend themselves, but Tony denies he authorized it. Tony promises he’ll fly to China to settle these things, but in the meantime travels to the main building of Stark Enterprises to a company meeting that he’s late for. He’s told in somewhat extensive terms that he has been relieved of his duties and his division scrapped. His objection to his father (the chairman) is met with quick dismissal as we shift scenes again. Rhodes is beginning the raising of the city by vibrating liquid steel and then letting it solidify so that the city is stuck over a thick layer of solid steel. But the Jade Dragons attack and kill all the workers, capturing Rhodes as well, motivating Tony to fly out immediately. Rhodes is told he is merely bait to draw Tony Stark to China. Tony’s tank taking him to the ruins is attacked and Tony taken to the Jade Dragon’s hideout. He is critically injured in the attack and Rhodes seeks to help him. We also learn about a woman in the Jade Dragons with a certain responsibility that we are not told about in detail, but we do find that it obligates her to stay with the group. And we find that with the Mandarin’s city raised above ground, four elemental guardians: water, air, fire and earth, have been summoned from statues and they go to search for something. Tony’s father is told that the company is in danger because of Stark weapons being associated with Chinese radicals and that he must make a decision to protect the company’s reputation. Tony awakens to find he is nearly dead but saved by both a monk in the Jade Dragons keeping him alive before Rhodes arrived and his medically adept friend who developed a machine that kept shrapnel from piercing his heart. Li Mei is introduced to Tony, the same woman who had some important destiny from before. She muses on the past on a bridge, rejected by her father because she was not his son and apparently unworthy for the destiny she possesses. The four warriors find the first ring and continue their search elsewhere. Tony is told that he has fulfilled a prophecy that foretells that when the ancient city is raised above ground that the Mandarin’s servants, the four elementals, will seek the 5 bands of the underworld to resurrect him, otherwise known as rings. The monk is then killed by the Jade Dragon’s leader, Wong Chu, after Tony’s initial refusal to help him reverse what he did. Tony and Rhodes then secretly build a prototype mecha as well as try to soften the fiber steel that raised the city (not really). He then asks Li Mei why she is with the group and she tells him of her yet unspecified duty passed down through her family and that she is the only one left alive. Tony reflects on his connection to her disappointment from her father. The elementals find the second ring as the scene then shifts to Rhodes distracting Wong Chu while Tony gets into the mecha suit. Wong Chu is killed by Li Mei and Tony saves Rhodes and Li Mei, leaving with just Rhodes as Li Mei insists that she must stay behind. One of the Jade Dragons points out part of the prophecy to Li Mei stating that an Iron Knight will face the Mandarin, Li Mei ambivalent as to whether she believes Tony is that Iron Knight. Tony and Rhodes return home to find they are under arrest for giving weapons to the Jade Dragons, sold out by Tony’s father, but they manage to escape in a bulletproof car. Li Mei takes the remaining Jade Dragons to the Mandarin’s city and all of the members are killed. Li Mei, the only survivor, is confronted by a shadowy dragon. Tony and Rhodes manage to contact Pepper, Tony’s secretary, and get her to distract the agents searching the building long enough so Tony can get into his office. He reveals a secret area in his office where he tells Rhodes he needs his help in using the various mecha he’s designed so he can find the rest of the rings. Rhodes reluctantly accepts and Tony follows the elementals to the location of the third ring underwater. He fights them, managing to destroy the fire elemental, but the other three defeating him and escaping with the third ring. Tony returns and confronts his father about selling him out, the two unable to come to any agreement. He leaves in frustration and returns to the secret office area, found out by one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in the building. Pepper distracts the guard pursuing him, giving Tony the chance to seal himself in the room, also getting arrested in the process. Rhodes also gets himself captured to give Tony the opportunity to find the fourth ring which is hidden in a volcano. Fighting the elementals again, Tony destroys the water and air elementals, but the earth elemental escapes with the ring after trouncing the volcano suit (surprisingly similar in appearance to the Iron Man suit we know today). Tony is forced to return home on his own since the suit was damaged beyond repair. Li Mei meets with Tony outside Stark Building, Tony calling his father who warns him away from asking him for help. He gets into the jet where he had the original mecha stowed away and flies back to China. The earth elemental summons an army of stone soldiers, Tony flying in to fight him and defeating him after a new idea occurs to him. He retrieves the rings, finding that the fifth ring is the band around Li Mei’s arm and that her destiny is to resurrect Mandarin as his last descendant. Li Mei denies that she has any purpose outside of bringing Mandarin back to life and goes into the palace as the stone army is brought to life and attacks him. Tony fights off the army and Li Mei is put through the procedure of resurrecting the Mandarin, each ring a step in the sequence. After defeating the army, Tony fights the fifth elemental, a giant dragon which he defeats with another unique solution. Li Mei is taken over by the Mandarin’s spirit and made his puppet to fight the Iron Knight, Tony. They fight briefly and Tony is beaten nearly senseless as he tries to draw Li Mei’s mind back out of the trance she is in. Li Mei resists the Mandarin’s control, pulling off each of the rings and sending him back to the grave. Li Mei, her sacrifice made, dies and Tony is left alone to mourn her. Tony regains control of the company by having purchased 51% of the shares. He promotes Rhodes to Chief Engineer for his Advanced Technologies division and gives control of the company to his father, who fires the entire board and reacquaints himself with Tony as the film ends with a pan out to the two Stark towers.
The 5 main characters are all well done, even if Li Mei is an original creation for this particular adaptation of Iron Man into film form. Tony Stark is the same, a womanizer, smooth talker and business savvy to boot. And he’s got guts to take on elemental monsters that could no doubt tear him to pieces if they had the chance. James Rhodes, Tony’s friend and business aide, is important as well, though not in the vein of becoming his partner in crime, but assisting him nonetheless even if he sometimes feels like he is unappreciated by Tony as an equal. Virginia “Pepper” Potts is technically a secondary character even in this film, only assisting Tony indirectly with getting him into the building and helping him regain control of the company in the end. But her relationship with him as a secretary and overall maternal figure in place of his deceased mother does solidify her importance to shaping Tony’s character. Tony’s father Howard Stark is decidedly minor, but reflects an important theme I’ll get to later their relationship and roots in the company. Li Mei is the other character, an unintentional antagonist in the end and a good contrast for the other theme of the film in her confrontation and eventual rejection of her consigned fate to be the empty vessel for the Mandarin’s return.
Two main themes run through the film, the narrative quest of Tony confronting the evil Mandarin’s elemental guardians being the main plot, the themes resulting from character conflicts and interactions. Tony’s relationship with his father is the less important of the two since one can see it eventually being resolved anyway, since we learn that the death of Howard’s wife, Tony’s mother, was an event that affected them both deeply. Tony’s feelings of betrayal by his father as well as his father’s strong influence in the company reinforce Tony’s potential inferiority complex in regards to pushing himself to improve the company from his father’s initial plans of a military company. With his development of the exo-suits, he hopes to change the company from a military weapons company to a technological company with contracts to explore various locations. The second theme is Li Mei’s feelings of being chained to her destiny being countered by Tony’s insistence that she is not bound to it. While she denies this throughout, she eventually overcomes it through what appears to be a romantic interest in Tony, though possibly she is just motivated by his passion and sincere concern for her as a person and not for any relation she has to the Mandarin. Tony doesn’t have as much of a relation to Li Mei in this way except as it relates back to his father issues, his father speaking as if he wanted Tony to keep the company as one that sells weapons, Tony influenced by his late mother to be somewhat pacifist. In this way, his issues with the destiny bestowed on him by his father are a pittance compared to Li Mei’s continuing a lineage that hopes to resurrect the Mandarin but also being shunned by her father for what was probably his fault to begin with (since women cannot help but contribute X chromosomes to a child, only men able to affect whether the child is male/female). She also helps the Jade Dragons, who keep her around for incentive to stop her if need be, I imagine, which puts the emphasis again on her divided loyalties.
I cannot say the movie conformed to my expectations for continuity with the comics, but the route they take is good, even with potentially questionable events, such as Tony’s suits managing to take multiple blows from the elementals, which are supposed to be more supernatural entities. Not to mention the especially punishing beating he takes from the earth elemental, but the idea persists as in the comics that Iron Man represents technology, while the Mandarin represents magic. Even if the Mandarin is not a real enemy in his own right, his presence in the film really strikes me as reflecting his eponymous role as Iron Man’s main nemesis. The subtle romance potentials are mostly unimportant, except for the ending scene with Li Mei kissing Tony before she dies, which I am ill equipped to really understand apart from a tragic romance that never came to be. An overall rating would be 5 out of 5 again, but recommendation would be a low 60%, since Iron Man is a treasured Marvel icon and the significant changes here, especially reducing the Mandarin’s rings to 5, one of them actually an armband, would sorely disappoint many a comic book fan of the mechanical suited warrior. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.
