What better place than the vast temple of Mammon men refer to as London’s Westfield shopping centre to settle in and check out a movie about a billionaire show-off. Make no mistake, Iron Man 2 is all about the bling.
Unfortunately, it isn’t really about anything else.
Where the first movie gave us a former hellraiser as a cocky, likeable..er..hellraiser, here we get to see all the bits we hate about rich guys like that. All the dazzle, all the showing off -in short, all the style over substance…
News wandering in from the depths of Variety this morning that king of 90’s geek-dom Joss Whedon is Marvel’s go-to guy for the upcoming big screen Avengers Movie. At first this sounded like internet rhubarb based on Whedon’s involvement in the on-again, off-again Wonder Woman project, but the Dollhouse director himself spoke up yesterday, claiming he was ‘wrapping up a deal’ with Marvel to tackle their biggest hitters.
Based on the classic Lee/Kirby strip, “The Avengers!” sees Captain America, Thor and Iron Man teaming up, and early script news reports that they’ll be following the comic to a tee by taking down none other than the rampaging Hulk. The house of ideas also took the prescient step of signing up the leading actors of those properties to a multi picture deal, meaning “The Avengers” would star Robert Downey Jr. (as Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Hemsworth (Thor) and Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury).While Smoochy himself, Ed Norton may also return as the Hulk.
It looks like script writer Zak Penn has been catching up on Marvel’s recent Avenger’s reboot “The Ultimates”, tying the continuity more closely into that timeline than the original Marvel universe (Earth 616 to us fanboys), but Whedon, who also wrote several issues of the company’s “Astonishing X-Men” series, is sure to want to give the screenplay a workover.
While Whedon has shown he’s got the writing chops for the gig, “Serenity” remains his sole big-screen directing credit – do you think he’s ready to tackle such a mega-budget action piece?
In the words of sometime Iron Man helper-outer Luke ‘Power Man’ Cage; “Sweet Christmas!” A couple of lovely new one sheets from the house of ideas just in with the addition of Scarlet Johanssen’s ridiculously sexy Black Widow – and we thought we couldn’t get any more excited about Iron Man 2!
Writer Mark Millar may be following fellow comic book illuminati Warren Ellis down the path toward self-referential hell, but if you’re unfamiliar with his unique take on four-colour heroics, or indeed have only encountered him through the medium of the ultra-watered-down ‘Wanted’ before (An Evil Loom! What the hell were they thinking…) then you’re in for a fantastic ride….
