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.
