Hacker Cinema
Iron Man 2
2010 · Film · 124 min
Part of Iron Man Collection
Directed by Jon Favreau
AdventureActionScience Fiction
With the world now aware of his dual life as the armored superhero Iron Man, billionaire inventor Tony Stark faces pressure from the government, the press and the public to share his technology with the military. Unwilling to let go of his invention, Stark, with Pepper Potts and James 'Rhodey' Rhodes at his side, must forge new alliances – and confront powerful enemies.
2 positive8 negative26 neutralfrom 36 commenters
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36 comments on Hacker News
I'm trying to remember which Marvel capeslop movie it was where the kid gets a bunch of Oracle professional-grade computer hardware or something as a gift. Larry makes a cameo, of course. Maybe it was Iron Man 2?
Like, mate, if you want to be a superhero in real life, stop laying off thousands of people and working the remaining people ragged. That's all you gotta do.
The Iron Man thing… MCU Tony Stark wasn't as smart as he thought he was. He should've allowed surgeons to help with his heart immediately, rather than the entire B-plot of Iron Man 2; Iron Man 3's plot could've been averted in a whole bunch of ways if he'd been less arrogant and thoughtless, and also shows him as a loner unwilling to call for assistance despite (by this point) being allied with what passes for gods in the MCU; Ultron was his own hubris punching him in the face; the justification he gives for the Sokovia Accords was a stupid response to an act of self-defence that, sure, could've and should've been handled better, but it isn't like Stark himself was great at avoiding collateral damage during emergencies in the other films; his rage-fight against Barnes in Civil War, while understandable, was wildly unprofessional and a sign he was not a suitable person to be in possession of a one-man weapon system like the Iron Man suits have been shown to be; his tech gift to Peter Parker had wildly inadequate safety measures to be gifted to someone still in school, even if they had been to space.
Basically: yes, Musk is just like Stark. Half as smart as he thinks he is, has main-character syndrome and/or narcissism.
I like that he didn’t do any of those things. Like you are mixing up “Elon Musk the guy that spends 18 hours a day tweeting and retweeting various race grievances” and “Elon Musk as envisioned by Marvel Studios in 2010’s superhero film Iron Man 2”. None of the characters or events in that movie were real. That was all made up by writers so they could sell DVDs and 1/6th scale limited edition figurines.
You can reasonably imagine a movie that has negative brand value. In a ridiculous scenario, imagine if the first attempt at Iron Man 2 was 90 minutes of Robert Downey Jr engaged in hardcore sex and shouting racial slurs at people. Even if some people are interested in watching (or even buying) this, it should be clear that a studio has the right to destroy it.
The studio spent $100m to make this thing. Maybe a competing studio would like to buy it for $50m so they can destroy the MCU or whatever. But the studio considers the brand harm to be so great that there is no way that they'll sell it. Should the studio have to artificially reduce their expenses by $50m because of this potential buyer even though the studio in no way agreed to this price?
> Musk is so fascinated with figures such as Iron Man that he gave a tour of the SpaceX factory to the actor who plays him, Robert Downey Jr, and the film’s director, Jon Favreau.
Or, more straightforwardly, Musk gave them a tour because they gave him a cameo in Iron Man 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfiRd4Y5z_g
> While we should be thankful he has chosen to emulate Augustus instead of, say, Caligula, he is nonetheless aspiring toward the absolute power – and hairstyle – of a Roman dictator
Yes, they are authoritarians at heart.
> That's why he showed up alongside Tony Stark in Iron Man 2
So did fucking Larry Ellison lol. Wasn’t that movie basically an ad for Oracle.
Oh yeah, mainstream media really crapped on him.
That's why he showed up alongside Tony Stark in Iron Man 2 and was treated like a god on an episode of Big Bang Theory.
The media, for the most part, treated him gently until the Thai cave incident when people started to catch onto the idea that this "quirky genius" might be an asshole.
> That the protagonist is a woman doesn’t mean it’s for girls btw.
Yeah, I didn't really mean that the show is "for girls", but just that here was a new female-protagonist show. Ms. Marvel was fantastic, by the way (for many reasons).
I didn't notice the TV-14 on She Hulk at first, but did catch on pretty quick that the series leaned more mature. Still, the Avengers movies dropped all the overt sexual references after Iron Man 2 and became more "kiddie-friendly", so I find it odd (and frustrating) to have the maturity level vary within the same set of characters. That is my problem. In the other mega-franchise brands (Star Wars, Pixar, Disney) you know the maturity and sensibility to expect.
I mean, it wasn't a top-5 Marvel film, but it was fine. In the absence of the high points this series has given us, we wouldn't be complaining at all.
Well, I mean, SOME people would, because SOME people get upset whenever a woman gets out of what they see as her lane, but the rest of us wouldn't.
(My top 5, today: Black Panther; Ragnarok; Winter Soldier; Iron Man; Endgame. But the only ones I'd rate below a B are Thor 2, Iron Man 2 & 3, and Eternals.)
Tony Stark from the comic books was based on Howard Hughes. When they developed the character for film, they used Elon Musk as inspiration for the character. So you have it backwards, Elon was even in Iron Man 2. Most of his PR stunts make the news so I don't think Twitter makes much difference.
If anyone cares, I actually like a lot of the vaporwave/outrun/whatever it's called now stuff when coding.
I can listen to music with lyrics when I'm writing code, but not when I'm reading. So coding calls for metal or hip-hop for me most of the time, but reading usually demands synthwave, darkwave, horrowave, retrowave, classical, etc. If I'm sitting at my electronics bench working on hardware stuff, I particularly like to do the "put on a movie that I've seen so many times that I won't get drawn into paying attention to it" thing. Lately I've been using Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, Hackers, Sneakers, etc. for that.
I would comment as follows.
Iron Man - sort novel for setting marvel tone but mostly banal action movie
Iron Man 2 - banal action movie
Thor - banal action movie
Captain America: The First Avenger - particularly banal action movie
Marvel's The Avengers - banal action movie
Iron Man 3 - banal action movie, sort of interesting to see protagonist suffering PTSD anxiety from being a superhero
Thor: The Dark World - banal action movie
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - first interesting take. Patriotism is not the same as government obedience. Real fight choreography approaching a soft john wick.
Guardians of the Galaxy - Early rock and roll aesthetic pretty interesting
Avengers: Age of Ultron - banal action movie, perhaps mcu lowpoint
Ant-Man - superhero heist movie, literally deconstructs larger than life superhero tropes. I think thumbs up
Captain America: Civil War - by this point doing the mcu's own thing, which is novel, but probably not interesting outside
Doctor Strange - banal action movie
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - aesthetic still feels mostly fresh.
Spider-Man: Homecoming - super down to earth high school drama, frustrated working class villains suffering the fallout of superheroes, seems interesting to me
Thor: Ragnarok - great film, very genre savvy. Rare achievement to make godly strength brutes feel really engaging to watch. Taika Waititi is a genius.
Black Panther - pretty good. interesting aesthetic. directly addressing racial tensions.
Avengers: Infinity War & Endgame - Mostly fan service and not too surprising but honestly still novel.
Ant-Man and the Wasp - Ehhh I really don't remember
Captain Marvel - Beginning had some great hard sci fi imo. Thought the ending message of newly apotheosizied female not needing to prove herself to her evil male mentor was a solid take, whereas a classic "mano a mano" kind of showdown would be so typical of the genre
Spider-Man: Far From Home - Villain emphasizing themes of the power of deceptive media? heck yeah.
Wandavision - Really bizarre and interesting start. Unfortunately non-self-aware conclusion
Falcon and Winter Soldier - Active discussions of race and the problematic nature of superheroes being supremacists? Very good.
Loki - kind of a super cliche topic (time cops) that is also somehow really rare? eh.
honorable mentions for Logan and Deadpool for being just great; and the Amazing Spiderman for its excellent aesthetics despite terrible writing.
I have seen Iron Man 2, both Guardians of the Galaxy, the fist Captain America and the second Avengers movie. So it's actually five movies (one more than I thought).I might have seen part of the first Hulk on TV but I'm not entirely sure, could have been any of the other ones. I stand by my opinion.
When you consider that Hollywood produced movies like The Deer Hunter, Chinatown or even the first Jurassic Park if you want to talk about blockbusters (not the new ones they could be Marvel movies), it makes me a bit sad.
I mean, don't get me wrong. I enjoy going from McDonald's from time to time. Nothing like a bunch nuggets when you had too much to drink. I just don't go around pretending it's good food.
He didn't create that image on his own. He had a lot of help. He had a cameo in Iron Man 2 where Iron Man treated him as a peer!
(That scene, by the way, is a perfect example of why I hate superhero movies.)
The argument for piracy is always a mix between those who aren’t willing to pay for the media, and those who aren’t willing to put up with the limitations and restrictions of DRM.
Sometimes you can compromise with one side if the other is really good. Spotify is a good example, where it really is more convenient to pay $10 for every song you could ever think of.
On the other hand, there’s no similar buffet-style movie service that has more than 10% of the movies I want to watch.
It’s hard for someone to justify paying $60/month on the four streaming services (since the market is so fragmented) and still not able to watch Iron Man 2 (though 1 and 3 are there)
> Everyday guy or gal gets bestowed with or discovers powers of some sort and cut to blowing a bunch of stuff up.
That comes across the same way as if I said "all romance movies end up with a couple, who don't get along, and there's some obstacle in their romance, and then they discover love, and end with smooching- end credits with some sappy music."
Yes, the elements you pointed out are a predictable part of (many, but not all) super hero movies- but there's plenty of variation if you dig just a little bit deeper. Iron Man 2 has themes of substance abuse and trust, Black Panther questioned the roles of loyalty and honor in running a country... the recent Spiderman had themes of responsibility and whether it's okay to abdicate it...
> To my mind, there's little true creativity to movies anymore
And this sounds a lot like the patent office commissioner who said, about a century ago, "we should shut down the patent office, everything that can be invented already has been."
Yes, there's a lot of unoriginality in cinema, and also a lot of originality, and both of those statements have been true for about a century. Maybe you just need to take a break from cinema for a while, you're sounding burned out.
Something I've noticed in recent superhero movies is the idea that:
* For all the talk about "heart", superheroes are extraordinary by some aspect the rest of us can't expect to get
* Yet supervillains are often just normal people who got too pissed off. The villains in Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, Spider Man: Far From Home, Captain America: Civil War, Ant-Man, etc are just people that got ticked off.
We have to count on others to be superheroes, but we're all one bad day from becoming supervillains.
I think part of the problem is the massive success of the MCU. Before the MCU, superhero movies did not seem so homogeneous. There were plenty of flops, but more interesting experiments as well. Consider the weird artistic and tonal shifts between the 90s Batman movies.
The MCU is such a homogeneous set of films. None of them are actively bad like many of the DC movies, but they all blend together so that nothing sticks out or feels unique either. This is made explicit in how Disney exercised creative control over these movies to keep them from straying too far from the intended formula and feel[1].
[1] https://www.cinemablend.com/new/How-Iron-Man-2-Ruined-Jon-Favreau-Relationship-With-Marvel-20003.html
Superhero movies are mostly throwaway pop culture. No one is going to mention Iron Man 2 and Spiderman Reboot 4 in the same sentence as Goodfellas or Cape Fear in 30 years, to name a couple excellent Scorsese films. Honestly they won't even be mentioned at all, in any context.
That being said, I saw my first superhero movie in several years recently when I saw The Joker. That was a truly excellent film! I believe it was excellent because it was not throwaway pop culture but a disturbing character study based on dark source material that happened to be in the comic book universe. If more superhero movies were like that I would pay to see them.
I've made the observation previously that it's harder to tell the difference between CGI and Fake Actual than between CGI and Real.
The examples I gave previously are movies. The CGI of a bedroom in a movie doesn't look noticeably more fake _because_ all the actual "bedrooms" in movies are sets built by carpenters a few hours before filming. The "actual" bedroom lacks all the details of a real bedroom, so it doesn't surprise us when a CGI one does in a movie.
It's interesting to compare Dogme 95 films, a movie made strictly to those rules is using real spaces not sets - among many other constraints, and so it looks more "real". Of course you can't make Iron Man 2 or The Fast and the Furious this way, but a lot of other stuff _could_ be done under these rules if we wanted it to look like the real world.
I'll dispute one data point on that map: Xiaoshan, just across the Qiantang river from Hangzhou. I lived there from 2009-2010. When I moved there it had recently been renamed/rezoned into Xiaoshan District of Hangzhou city. So technically, Xiaoshan is not a city anymore. Also, despite an obvious wealth gap between new developments and "older" parts of southern Xiaoshan, the place was still _teeming_ with people as Chinese cities do. Xiaoshan had its own local and high-speed rail stations, too.
Let's paint a brief picture of this place for your procrastination pleasure ;) I’m excerpting a couple things from my journal, and this is the tip of the iceberg of what I experienced there.
What Xiaoshan is not: miles of high rises with no one there like other “ghost cities”. It is instead an old farming "city" with a new high-rises and pavement slowly taking over from the north. Central Xiaoshan is where the meld is happening. On the outskirts of Xiaoshan district, pockets of new developments and factories pepper farmlands like little islands. Joining them together was a network of new, large expressways with huge road-side billboards boasting the new “zhejiang high technology hub”. As one cabbie explained to me about 10 months into my stay, “15 years ago this entire place was rice fields”. He struggled to adapt to modern life so quickly, and knew he had to for his family. Another cabbie having a harder time adjusting actually called me a “white monster” and pleaded I don’t any marry locals or else I'll bring bad luck to their families.
The only time Xiaoshan felt "ghost" was on these outskirts of these “islands" where developments abruptly ended and turned into farmland that was scheduled to be converted soon. Roads suddenly disappeared. Storefronts and commercial buildings vanished. High rises gave way to farms and shanty towns that housed pockets of people living in extraordinarily poor conditions compared to what was half a mile away. People without reliable tap water and electricity, while I lived in a new high rise less than 2 miles away.
My old bosses thought it would be cheeky to house me in a new apartment building named after a famous US State. This building was actually a de-facto high-end local brothel on the edge of the central Xiaoshan “island”. Late night this place was a Chinese version of Animal House. I'll leave the details out here, but this building was lawless. Literally - the police handled _nothing_ that happened there and were probably paid to stay away.
The apartment building was also attached to a mega-mall that was mostly empty all the time. There was a spanking new digital projection movie theater with 500 seats, a huge KTV, a few struggling restaurants, every luxury brand store you can think of, and typical department store wares. Movie nights were interesting. The theater attendance was so low, I’d often be the only person in a theater with a 70 foot screen all to myself. Sometimes the staff would hang with me to watch movies b/c they had jack else to do. Foreign movies were censored in weird ways: I distinctly remember how the audio in Iron Man 2 would always mute the word "Russia". Every time Ivan Vanko's spoke in Russian, the Chinese subtitles would say he’s speaking Afghani - no mentioning of Russia/Russian allowed, apparently! I couldn’t read fast enough to know if the dialogue was translated correctly, though.
Among the “islands" between Xiaoshan and the river also lay fabric and electronics factories, and compounds for communities of the very wealthy. One of the best private schools in all of Zhejiang sat in the middle of a high rise neighbourhood of shiny, expensive new buildings. 15 minutes away, Cisco had a two tower office complex seemingly in the middle of nowhere full of people who lived nearby. Hop on the freeway, drive past Alibaba HQ (which employs thousands), take the bridge across the river, and you're dropped into downtown Hangzhou, which is still being altered to accomodate larger traffic flow. Xiaoshan was hardly ghost, but had pockets of activity. Sparse is probably what you would call Xiaoshan. Ride the bus from central Xiaoshan through these “islands” of factory workers and technology, and you see a very dramatic picture of China moving at full tilt.
Xiaoshan was developed very quickly and continues to do what "new" developments in China do: grow fast and grow big. Many of the "new rich" residents quickly moved to this district as it rose to escape crowded downdown. The local government is very focused on turning Hangzhou into a large metropolis similar in scope to Shanghai. They have a ton of land to work with still. If I ever go back one day, I’ll probably have trouble recognising the place. So no, Xiaoshan is hardly a ghost city.
Btw, the G20 next year will be in Hangzhou. Wouldn't be surprised if Xiaoshan shows up again soon!
Edit: cleaned up my writing a bit.
By vividness, I’m talking about the relative powers of various kinds media to impress us; e.g. that television is more vivid than radio, which is more vivid than writing. I wasn’t talking about the impressiveness of special effects specific to visual media. The idea is that since live-action media is more vivid than cartoons and comic books, it might be the case that either it is displacing better media for dealing with complex topics (e.g. books), or monopolizing a particular media that could be put to “better” uses (i.e. more art films and historical dramas)[1]. But, this isn’t a new argument, Neil Postman devoted an entire book to it 30 years ago [2].
Also, the word “nonsense” really wasn’t an appropriate rejoinder because I wasn’t making a deductive argument in the first place. Rather I was suggesting that there might be evidence that using increasingly more vivid media for ever more trivial things is a net harm to society.
[1] I say this as someone who is guilty of watching superhero movies almost exclusively (I even paid to see Iron Man 2 in the theater five times).
[2] https://www.google.com/?q=amusing%20ourselves%20to%20death#search_plus_one=form
Musk was indeed was an inspiration for the movies (and did a cameo on Iron Man 2) http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1984685_1984745_1985495,00.html
Of the points you make, I think point 1 is very interesting but I am not sure about it. I mean, they attempted with Google TV and it never took off. They've had Google Play Movies for a while but do you see any good films on there?
Regarding point 2, the data they have is valuable but do people like being advertised to?
Product placement in films is pretty nastily received though. Look at Iron Man 2 and the appearances of Oracle and Larry Ellison everywhere; it was not enjoyable. It didn't make me want to switch database providers. (I didn't notice that Elon Musk is in it too)
That's a silly statement. If it didn't break suspension of disbelief then it's because you didn't even realize it was CG! If you go to movies at all then I can all but guarantee you there are CG shots that you had no idea were CG.
Here's some super impressive CG from the first Captain America movie back in 2011. Crazy insane stuff they're doing it. And that's for a very, very extreme case. You better believe they are doing slick stuff in non-extreme cases! http://www.fxguide.com/featured/case-study-how-to-make-a-captain-america-wimp/
For Iron Man it's not quite the same because it's a suit but it's just as impressive. Since Iron Man 2 there is no full suit worn by an actor. There are no legs and at this point there are barely even arms. There's a chest piece and open mask face piece and that's about it. http://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/2198/how-are-the-iron-man-suit-scenes-filmed
In The Social Network there are a lot of scenes with the Winklevoss twins. Spoiler: They didn't use twin actors. They used two actors and CG'd the face of one onto the other body. No way in hell did you call this out on first viewing. (number 3) http://www.totalfilm.com/features/50-cgi-scenes-you-didn-t-notice/the-social-network-2010
"Iron Man originally used to be about fighting communism, now it is about fighting terrorism"
Uh? Let's look at the villains in the recent movies:
Iron Man 1: Terrorists, later revealed to be puppets of a corrupt American military contractor.
Iron Man 2: A Russian scientist with a personal grudge, later teams up with a corrupt American military contractor.
Iron Man 3: Terrorists, turn out to have been entirely made up by a corrupt American military contractor.
In every movie the real villain is a representative of the military-industrial complex. In two of the three, cutting-edge American military technology is publicly and embarrassingly subverted and used against American citizens. In the related Avengers movie, American military authorities order a nuclear attack on New York City.
There is a lot of American propoganda in American movies (oh God, Battleship), but Iron Man is a pretty poor example.
Since cutting the cord and going pure Netflix, I haven't seen a trailer since like, ever.
This has a profound impact. I know longer know or even care what's coming out, or what's impending on DVD release. I know there's a new Star Trek movie, and the Hobbit came out a bit back, but I'm no longer edge-of-my-seat excited to see this because I haven't been being bashed about by promos for months. I'll wait for it to appear on Netflix, or maybe the Redbox thing. I saw Iron Man 2 on Netflix, so I figure I'll get to see part 3 there too.
I'm hopeful that through Disney the series will get an awesome reboot. Look how good the Marvel Comics movies have been since the Disney acquisition in 2009.
(Iron Man 2, Captain America, The Avengers all awesome)
The problem with these rankings (assuming they are from IMDB) is that they are more friendly to contemporary, Internet-age movies and TV. Anything older than about 30 years is significantly down further in the list.
As an example, I can't imagine a world where 'The Avengers' is better than 'Schindler's List', 'Godfather, Part 2', or 'Pulp Fiction' (just 3 examples).
A few stupid entries: #1721 'I Love Lucy' - easily considered by critics as the best TV comedy of all time yet barely in the top 20% of all tv and movies? I can't even find the MASH TV show, only the movie. Pretty weird considering that it's considered the 2nd best TV comedy of all time. #74 'Seinfeld' - considered the 3rd best TV comedy of all time. The internet is more friendly to this one. #15 'Game of Thrones (TV)' - fanboys strike again, or they just really like irrelevant nudity[1].
#1636 'The Constant Gardener' - it is an abomination that this is here, it's lower ranked than 'Super Troopers' (#1626), 'Iron Man 2' (#1610), and 'Soul Surfer' (#1599), just to name a few.
[1] http://gawker.com/5902076/snl-explains-the-nudity-in-game-of-thrones
Elon Musk actually stated his idea for an electric jet in his cameo appearance on Iron Man 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuG2AVFB-g0
Musk was also the inspiration behind the characterisation of Robert Downey Jr in the Iron Man films.
"Still relevant"? What is threatening Netflix right now? Hulu maybe, I guess. If you really like TV shows, and paying to see ads.
I'm also an Amazon Prime member, but their streaming catalog is abysmal -- I mean, it borders on embarrassing. I check it every now and again when Amazon uses the home page to tell me all of the 'great' new content they've added, but going back to the Netflix comparison, by that benchmark, it doesn't even come close.
I've never run into an issue with them hiding content. I'm not sure to what you're referring. They didn't plaster Iron Man 2 all over the landing page when it became available?
You can more or less watch the views flood in on instantwatcher.com anytime a 'modern' movie is released on streaming. It shoots to the top right away, which makes me think that, for most people, finding the 'good' content is not an issue.
Funny you should say that, Jon Favreau has said that Elon Musk was the basis for much of the portrayal of Tony Stark in the Iron man films.
(He also has a cameo in Iron Man 2, and the SpaceX lab was used as a set).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk
I recommend a look at "circular polarization" for anyone that thought they understood polarization as the direction the light vibrates.
Take two pair of Real-3d glasses from the movie theater and try the different orientations (including front-front, front-back permutations). The vertical/horizontal model will not explain your observations. Hence, I know about circular polarization and had a confusing pre-movie experience at Iron Man 2.
Since they've just released a new client, and people always eagerly scan the plist's looking for nuggets of information, I think it's safe to assume that it won't be anything client related (sorry, no WiFi syncing or cloud storage). So it's almost certainly Store related.
It's interesting that Japan get a clock (no Australia, which is a bigger market). Just last week Japan got the ability to purchase & rent movies, and that this announcement comes so soon after is probably not a coincidence. So something with the store, and something to do with movies.
Making this big a deal of an announcement, so close to the holiday season, makes me think that it's also something that is intended to give people a reason to buy Apple hardware.
Side note: Back when AppleTV2 was unveiled, Jobs said that you would be able to rent movies "day and date" with DVD releases. That hasn't been true to this point - embarrassingly Iron Man 2 which he demonstrated on stage wasn't available for rental until the DVD had been out for some time.
So I'm going to go with better movie rentals - earlier availability (perhaps much earlier, for a premium), possibly bundled movies, possibly the removal of the stupid contractual stuff where some movies become unrentable due to TV deals and hampers the library.
I'm sure Apple would love to give lots of families a reason to buy themselves an Apple TV's for Christmas this year, particularly with Boxee/Google now pushing into that market.
Yeah, so did Larry Ellison.
Iron Man 2 gave me a new motivation for making my startup successful. "I want my startup to be successful so I can be in the movies some day!"
Wow, did you know Elon Musk has a cameo in Iron Man 2? I didn't either.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1228705/fullcredits
Elon Musk ... Himself