www.canmag.com
It’s finally here! Iron Man has finally hit DVD and Blu-Ray shelves and it’s making quite a scene. A combination of great story line and amazing action sequences is a sure fire hit for Marvel. One thing that really worried me upon it’s release in theaters was that Iron Man was going to look abnormally fake and digitized. WRONG! In an interview posted on Crave Online, Jon Favreau talks about his decisions for Iron Man’s special effects. He explains that his plan was to use the CGI in way that “does not take you out of the movie”. He goes on to say that he doesn’t want to “[make] it look like you are watching somebody else play a video game.”
I whole heartedly believe that Favreau was right on the money. The amazing amount of special effects was enough to convey the comic-book power of Iron Man, but not too much to overpower the movie and make people believe that Robert Downey Jr. wasn’t really in a suit. Speaking of suits, Jon talks about how he needed to create a suit that wasn’t going to be clunky, but rather kept Iron Man’s agility and power.
My favorite parts of the special effects are in the really small details. For instance, there is an extended scene of Stark (Downey) putting on the completed Iron Man suit. It’s visually appealing if you like the small details. You can actually see all the tiny little cogs and pieces being assembled together around him and fitting together into one, almost seamless suit.
If you’re more into large special effects, then you’d probably love the fight scenes in the streets. Huge explosions, large titanium suits with missiles and jets and concrete! It’s very visually stimulating in the fact that everything looks as though there truly were two giant machines fighting in the streets and destroying everything BUT each other.
If you want an action packed movie, great story, amazing special effects or any combination of those, definitely grab Iron Man and drool over the amazing film that has already announced a sequel for 2010!
Just for you, one more amazingly entertaining scene from Iron Man, in stores now!
- Jeff
2 Comments
ha ha he he I’m giddy with fanboy excitement. If only new dvds weren’t $30 these days, I’m also a poor college student.
I’m into the visuals behind the Terminator-like, dedicated killing machine. The Starcraft II cinematic trailer has a really cool suit-up clip that suggests the character is incredibly inhumane (prisoner forced to fight) but equally dependent on the machine. There, the visuals explain the character without him even having to act. Iron Man, as a narrative, spends a lot of time on Downey’s character, sensitive but thinking. In this way, the visuals were only adding to the machine character. The example would be when he is suiting up– the suit is complex, weaponized, and specialized to be dynamic. When either the man or machine aspect faces an enemy, a surprise ability always flashes out of his shoulder, which is the essence of Iron Man: looks generic, but has a solution to everything. This lack of specific design is a kind of cheat on the 3d-modelers part because anything they want can suddenly appear! He might as well resemble a swiss army kife. Oh wait. He’s red and shiny.