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"Next time, baby." YES PLEASE.
So as of this evening I am no longer among the unwashed masses who have not yet seen the Iron Man movie. Reactions:
1. YAY PEPPER POTTS. (Why? Here's why.) Also, I am impressed that she was able to outrun Iron Monger while wearing stiletto heels. But I really, really could have done without the "taking out the trash" line in reference to Christine.
2. I was all annoyed at Christine in the beginning of the movie, but she redeemed herself - and the writers redeemed themselves - later. Like, twice. That was awesome.
3. The Last Unicorn permanently ruined Jeff Bridges for me, so I kept imagining that Prince Lir was inside the Iron Monger suit, and that made me LOL.
4. Happy needed more screentime.
5. NEXT TIME WAR MACHINE PLZ KTHX. Tell me, how much more awesome would our universe be if we had a Marvel movie superhero played by Terrence Howard? A lot more awesome.
6. Can somebody please explain to me by what Deus ex Machina Tony doesn't die in the end? How the heck did he survive that?!
7. GODDAMMIT JAPAN. I pay twenty freakin' US dollars to see a movie and you cut off the scene after the ending credits and this is not the first time that this has happened. Thank God for Youtube.
8. Okay, I know that superhero movies - particularly superhero movies that involve robots and flying exoskeletons and handheld nuclear reactors and such - are going to contain implausible science. I'm willing to suspend a lot of my disbelief when I watch these movies. However, there was one instance of questionable science that just made me laugh uncontrollably. It's the part where Pepper is watching the video of the terrorists on Stane's computer, and she types in the command "TRANSLATE," and all of a sudden the terrorists are speaking English! Oh my god. That was just TOO funny.
9. Whitewashed Yinsen BOOOOOOOO.
EDIT: Okay, according to Wikipedia, the film version of Yinsen is supposed to be Afghan. Is "Yinsen" an acceptable Afghan name? I have no idea.
I suppose it's nice that the film has at least one important Afghan character that's not a terrorist. But I really had no idea that he was supposed to be Afghan. I mean, Wikipedia had to tell me. When I was watching the movie, at first I thought he was some random German dude. And then he said that his name was Yinsen. And I was all like "Holy crap that's Yinsen?!" Yeah.
EDIT AGAIN: Okay, apparently due to idiot friends and a cell phone snafu, I missed the part of the movie where Yinsen said that he was from Gulmira. So I guess in the movie it was explained that he was Afghan. All right.
So I guess this is the part where I'm showing my ass to everyone, since I saw a dude with pale skin who was NOT Chinese, as I had expected him to be, and my brain automatically defaulted him to "white." Mea culpa.
However, this does add more to my list of nitpicks about the movie, namely: One of the few good Afghan characters, not to mention the only one who's "educated" and one of only two who can speak English, is played by an extremely pale-skinned actor. There's a lot that's skeevy about that. There's also some residual skeeviness from the assumption that Persians/Arabs/Afghans/Middle Eastern Ethnicities are interchangeable, since a Persian actor was cast to play an Afghan character. That's not quite as bad as casting Chinese women to play the lead roles in a movie about Japanese women (*cough* Memoirs of a Geisha *cough*) but it's not all that great, either.
All of the evil terrorist characters are much darker-skinned, and all of the other innocent Gulmira civilians that we see are also much darker-skinned. The only pale-skinned Afghan character is "good" and "super smart" and speaks a jillion languages. Ugh.
Also, according to the comments here, "Yinsen" is not kosher as an Afghan name.
EDIT THE THIRD: A very scathing and very true critique of the film. Except that I strongly disagree with the OP's interpretation of Christine. She didn't come across as a jilted or vengeful to me at all. I read her more as someone who had compromised her morals, regretted it once she saw Tony's true colors (i.e. him kicking her out of his house by proxy), and then getting her act together and pursuing him as a serious journalist again. And I don't recall her bringing up her night with Stark during either of her two later appearances. But, anyway. At least I wasn't the only one picking up on how much Yinsen was "othered" compared to the other Afghan characters in the film.
1. YAY PEPPER POTTS. (Why? Here's why.) Also, I am impressed that she was able to outrun Iron Monger while wearing stiletto heels. But I really, really could have done without the "taking out the trash" line in reference to Christine.
2. I was all annoyed at Christine in the beginning of the movie, but she redeemed herself - and the writers redeemed themselves - later. Like, twice. That was awesome.
3. The Last Unicorn permanently ruined Jeff Bridges for me, so I kept imagining that Prince Lir was inside the Iron Monger suit, and that made me LOL.
4. Happy needed more screentime.
5. NEXT TIME WAR MACHINE PLZ KTHX. Tell me, how much more awesome would our universe be if we had a Marvel movie superhero played by Terrence Howard? A lot more awesome.
6. Can somebody please explain to me by what Deus ex Machina Tony doesn't die in the end? How the heck did he survive that?!
7. GODDAMMIT JAPAN. I pay twenty freakin' US dollars to see a movie and you cut off the scene after the ending credits and this is not the first time that this has happened. Thank God for Youtube.
8. Okay, I know that superhero movies - particularly superhero movies that involve robots and flying exoskeletons and handheld nuclear reactors and such - are going to contain implausible science. I'm willing to suspend a lot of my disbelief when I watch these movies. However, there was one instance of questionable science that just made me laugh uncontrollably. It's the part where Pepper is watching the video of the terrorists on Stane's computer, and she types in the command "TRANSLATE," and all of a sudden the terrorists are speaking English! Oh my god. That was just TOO funny.
9. Whitewashed Yinsen BOOOOOOOO.
EDIT: Okay, according to Wikipedia, the film version of Yinsen is supposed to be Afghan. Is "Yinsen" an acceptable Afghan name? I have no idea.
I suppose it's nice that the film has at least one important Afghan character that's not a terrorist. But I really had no idea that he was supposed to be Afghan. I mean, Wikipedia had to tell me. When I was watching the movie, at first I thought he was some random German dude. And then he said that his name was Yinsen. And I was all like "Holy crap that's Yinsen?!" Yeah.
EDIT AGAIN: Okay, apparently due to idiot friends and a cell phone snafu, I missed the part of the movie where Yinsen said that he was from Gulmira. So I guess in the movie it was explained that he was Afghan. All right.
So I guess this is the part where I'm showing my ass to everyone, since I saw a dude with pale skin who was NOT Chinese, as I had expected him to be, and my brain automatically defaulted him to "white." Mea culpa.
However, this does add more to my list of nitpicks about the movie, namely: One of the few good Afghan characters, not to mention the only one who's "educated" and one of only two who can speak English, is played by an extremely pale-skinned actor. There's a lot that's skeevy about that. There's also some residual skeeviness from the assumption that Persians/Arabs/Afghans/Middle Eastern Ethnicities are interchangeable, since a Persian actor was cast to play an Afghan character. That's not quite as bad as casting Chinese women to play the lead roles in a movie about Japanese women (*cough* Memoirs of a Geisha *cough*) but it's not all that great, either.
All of the evil terrorist characters are much darker-skinned, and all of the other innocent Gulmira civilians that we see are also much darker-skinned. The only pale-skinned Afghan character is "good" and "super smart" and speaks a jillion languages. Ugh.
Also, according to the comments here, "Yinsen" is not kosher as an Afghan name.
EDIT THE THIRD: A very scathing and very true critique of the film. Except that I strongly disagree with the OP's interpretation of Christine. She didn't come across as a jilted or vengeful to me at all. I read her more as someone who had compromised her morals, regretted it once she saw Tony's true colors (i.e. him kicking her out of his house by proxy), and then getting her act together and pursuing him as a serious journalist again. And I don't recall her bringing up her night with Stark during either of her two later appearances. But, anyway. At least I wasn't the only one picking up on how much Yinsen was "othered" compared to the other Afghan characters in the film.
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Although, apparently there is a population of Central Asian/Mongolian descent, so perhaps one of them could have the name Yinsen...
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I absolutely didn't see any Southwest Asian/Mid-Eastern looks on him. All I saw was a guy who was significantly paler than Tony Stark, who was bald (hence I had no hair to judge by), and who had the exact same nose, eyes, and cheekbones that I'm used to seeing on people of white European descent. Now that I'm snooping around IMDB it turns out that the actor is of Persian descent, so I do feel kind of stupid that my brain defaulted him to white.
As for German, well, his accent sounded identical to the accents of some of the native German speakers that I know. Again, there's no good reason for any of these assumptions, my brain was just trying to fill in perceived gaps of information.
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Poor vaguely ethnic Yinsen (I mistook him for German at first as well) was my least favourite part of the movie because not only did he die just to save Tony Stark, he also lived pretty much just to save Tony Stark - was there any reason for him to even exist except to perform that surgery on Stark?
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I also enjoyed that they were so careful about an ethnically diverse group of terrorists by including nationalities that the US isn't super fond of, like Russians, Hungarians, Turks (and maybe Pakistanis?).
Also, I totally didn't realize that was Jeff Bridges until the closing credits. "Who is that guy and why does he look vaguely familiar??"
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Now I will stop squeeing.
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-lol- Glad to know I wasn't the only one distracted by
Prince LirJeff Bridges... XDAnd ya gotta love Terrence's little nod to War Machine there at the end.
"Next time, baby."
<333
Glad you were able to see the secret ending on YouTube. SAM JACKSON IS NICK FURY THIS IS SO FREAKING AWESOME.
"Avengers" initiative, hell yeah. :D
I wanna know who's gonna play the Wasp. o_o