The Invincible Iron Man

In 2007, Marvel was busy making its first live-action Iron Man movie. So to prepare for this — and capitalize on any potential popularity — Marvel decided to discontinue its burgeoning Ultimate Avengers franchise, and instead tell the origin of Iron Man. Unfortunately, it is difficult to say whether this movie can serve as an actual prequel to Ultimate Avengers. The animation style is exactly the same, and Marc Worden reprises his role as Iron Man, but that's about where the similarities stop. It is also worth noting that many people consider this to be the worst Marvel animated movie ever, and I just might agree with that. So without further ado, here is my review of The Invincible Iron Man, directed by Patrick Archibald and Jay Oliva, and starring Gwendoline Yeo as Iron Man's girlfriend, Li Mei, and Rodney Saulsberry as his trusty sidekick, Rhodey.

Since this is such an awful movie that would have scored less than a zero, I'm not going to bother with recording my point deductions. Instead, I'll just give you my laundry list of complaints about this film. I don't mean to be negative — I truly wanted to like this movie — but it just sucked so bad. My first complaint is Tony Stark's voice. Marc Worden was serviceable as Iron Man in the Ultimate Avengers movies, but he also didn't have very many lines in them. Here, he is given very lengthy monologues, and is required to run the whole gamut of emotions. He's supposed to be a charming womanizer, a suave businessman, an emotionally-distressed friend, an injured prisoner, and a heartbroken superhero. Unfortunately, Worden used the exact same tone of voice to convey all those emotions. He talks the exact same way to the woman in the hot tub as he does to his father in the board meeting. He is not charming, emotive, or relatable. And this is a major problem when he's talking nonstop through the whole movie.

But a probably even bigger complaint is the inclusion of magic and the supernatural into this Iron Man origin story. Iron Man is one of Marvel's most realistic, scientific-based heroes. Why throw all that away by making him fight magical demons? It does not fit at all, and it especially doesn't fit when we see a prophecy that shows an "Iron Knight" defeating the Mandarin. Seriously? And to make matters even worse, all these demons were CGI, and it was painfully obvious. They didn't interact with their environment correctly, and just looked overall awful. It was also jarring when they would switch from CGI to standard animation whenever Iron Man had to punch one of them. On a whole, the action sequences in this movie was terrible, especially compared to the Ultimate Avengers movies.

Another extremely disappointing fact of this movie is that Iron Man's classic red-and-gold suit is only seen briefly in this movie. To recap the plot briefly, Tony Stark gets captured while trying to save Rhodey, who was captured while on an archeological dig in China. Tony's heart gets destroyed in this attack, and his captors want him and Rhodey to build some device to re-bury the lost city they just uncovered. Instead, Tony makes a big clunky Iron Man suit to escape. Turns out he has already made a ton of Iron Man suits, so it was easy for him to do it in captivity. He also finds out that the city they unearthed has unleashed four elemental demons, bent on resurrecting the Mandarin by collecting his five (not ten) rings. A wise old monk gave Tony a map of the rings, so he decides to find them before the demons do. The first ring is at the bottom of the ocean, so he heads there in an ugly yellow underwater suit. The second ring is in a volcano, and this is where he dons the classic red-and-gold suit. But then for the final battle, he wears another ugly and boring gray suit. The cover of the DVD shows the Iron Man suit we all know and love. So why then did we only get a couple of minutes in the whole movie in that suit?

This movie also fails at telling a compelling Iron Man origin story. Let's compare this to the live-action version. In that movie, Tony was a selfish, obnoxious weapons dealer, who was nearly killed by his own weapons while selfishly selling more weapons. This experience teaches him to rethink his life and try to undo all the damage he caused, beginning by escaping with a suit powered by the same device that keeps him alive. He started the movie as a jerk, but ended it as a hero. Now in this movie, Tony does not go on a journey like this at all. He's already a great hero before his accident. He staunchly opposes the weapons his dad's company is selling, and he only gets in trouble for wasting company money on goodwill missions and his secret stash of Iron Man suits. We get a quick scene of him in a hot tub with a girl, but that hardly makes him a jerk. Especially when he drops everything to try to save Rhodey. So to surmise, Tony Stark already was a hero before this movie started. He already had tons of suits, and was doing everything in his power to make the world a better place. The only thing new that happened to him was getting his heart blown apart, but that's hardly an essential characteristic in this movie. It might as well have been a small scar on his cheek. So really, all this movie boils down to is a random adventure for Iron Man against ancient Chinese demons — something he should never be concerned with.

Now let's talk about how this movie fails to connect to the Ultimate Avengers movies. When we first see Tony Stark in Ultimate Avengers, it is implied that he is in complete control of his company. But in this movie, he didn't own his company until the very end, then he promptly handed control of it over to his dad, even though he was at odds with his dad the whole time and it seemed like he was pretty corrupt. Whatever. I guess Howard Stark eventually died or just handed control back to Tony at some point. We also replaced Jarvis with Pepper Potts in this movie, which seemed like a complete waste of time since Pepper acted exactly like Jarvis. And it brings up the question: Where was Jarvis in this movie and/or where was Pepper in the Ultimate Avengers movies? I could make up excuses for both, but I shouldn't have to. We also see some S.H.I.E.L.D. agents running around in this movie, but there is no reference to Nick Fury or any other superheroes for that matter. I wish this movie would've taken place after Ultimate Avengers 2, with Iron Man's story told through flashbacks. They still could've made this an Iron Man adventure, while showing some brief scenes of him talking with the other Avengers. That way Marvel would've been able to keep building on their nice animated movie continuity, and it probably would've forced this movie to be a bit more grounded.

And when I say this movie needed to be grounded, I mean it was as out there as it possibly could have been. Like past Jupiter. The ending sequence made absolutely no sense. I would almost like somebody to explain it all for me, but that would require me to live through it one more time. Here's what I caught.  Li Mei, Iron Man's default girlfriend, acted like she wanted to stop the Mandarin through the whole movie. She also spends a lot of time crying and complaining about her destiny, but she never elaborates on it. Until the very end, when it's too late. Iron Man gathered up four of the five rings and gave them to her, because that's what he was supposed to do. But it turns out Li Mei was actually the Mandarin's sole-surviving descendant, destined to revive the Mandarin. It also turns out that the fifth ring conveniently happened to be the bracelet she'd been wearing all movie. I guess ancient Chinese overlords didn't know the difference between rings and bracelets.

So anyway, Li Mei revives the Mandarin, which somehow requires her to become naked and surrounded by a giant ethereal form of the Mandarin, which conveniently creates enough clouds and shadows to cover her naughty bits. It's also really hard to tell if she's controlling the giant Mandarin or vice versa, because the larger Mandarin body sometimes mimics Li's actions, but also picks her up at times and orders her to kill Iron Man. It's all very strange, and probably best to not worry about it. Naturally we know Iron Man is going to win this fight — he is the hero, after all — but how do you think he does it? Does he use his incredible scientific mind to find a solution? Did he create some technological wonder for this sort of occasion? No. He beats the Mandarin by shouting (or coming as close to shouting as Marc Worden can), "You are Li Mei!" over and over again. This somehow gets through to her emotionally, and she … beats the Mandarin? I don't know. All I know is the giant ghost thing disappeared and for some reason Li Mei also died. Whatever. I'm just glad it's over know.

One complaint I had about both the Ultimate Avengers movies was the short running time. Seventy minutes was just not enough to get through their big stories and large casts. This movie was given 83 minutes to tell a story with a smaller cast and what should have been a simpler story. Instead we got a bare bones Iron Man origin and spent way too much time in China and dealing with stuff I don't care about as an Iron Man fan. This movie just dragged on forever and ever and failed to impress or entertain me even once. Well, at least we have the live-action movies.

Final score: 0