Cyrus Reviews the Extras on "Iron Man: Ultimate 2-Disc Edition"

Do I really have to tell you how I felt about “Iron Man”? While “The Dark Knight” is a superb brooding and dark crime drama of a superhero movie with the best villain in recent memory, “Iron Man” is a bright, colorful and funny action film that's got the best hero. Robert Downey Jr brings his A-game to playing Tony Stark and he is fully three-quarters of the reason why “Iron Man” is so tits. Anyway, if you read Spill, you KNOW how we loved this so let’s go right into the only reason for writing a review of the new “Iron Man: Ultimate Two-Disc Edition”...the extras.

The movie is just the movie, no director's cut waiting for you here I'm afraid. Frankly I’m surprised since some of the stuff left on the cutting room floor would have added to the film in a positive way, but what do I know? I’m sitting here in just my jogging shorts (not that I actually jog in them) eating cheerios and writing out the best parts of the four or so hours I spent watching the bonus stuff on a superhero movie. Clearly, somewhere in my life I took a wrong turn.

THE EXTRAS:

I’m just gonna start here by giving a big thank you to whoever realized that subtitles rule and added them to ALL the extras. You are on my Christmas Card list.

Deleted Scenes/Extended Scenes

What’s not to like about more stripper stewardesses? Plus, looks like James Rhodes gets to join the mile-high club twice at the same time. Tony himself gets a FOUR-way started at the Dubai party before sneaking off to go be Iron Man. Lots more stuff showing Rhodes and his loyal friendship to Tony that I really liked and wish could have been left in. Also an extended death scene for Obadiah would have balanced the uneven ending out nicely.

“Iron Man: Armored Adventures”

A very VERY short look at the new animated series to be on Nicolodeon. Meh. Looks like Teen Iron Man.

“I am Iron Man”

Here’s the Boar's Head Roast Beef in the extra disk sandwich: 1 hour and 48 minutes of documentary about the making of the film which is EXHAUSTIVE with details. This is Marvel Comics’ first independently produced film and they must have wanted to save every last detail for posterity. That said, they didn’t just slap this together, it feels more like somebody's labor of love. Here’s the highlights:

-The suit in the film was designed primarily from artist Adi Granov’s conception of it in the “Extremis” run he drew with Warren Ellis's script. He also came on board for the movie as a consultant.

-A board room meeting with Joe Quesada, Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Millar, etc….I geeked a little.

-Robert Downey Jr is the biggest ham on the planet. All the footage with him is consistently funny and is worth the price of the set alone. He describes his own geekiness by saying he wants to cry even when he’s watching C.H.U.D. he loves movies so much. He even knows what C.H.U.D. stands for. One of us...One of us...One of us...He is outspokenly a movie geek past the point of self-control about it. Guess that’s better than booze.

-All these guys are so obviously having a fabu time. Damn, I want to be part of making a superhero movie. These peeps KNOW they’re doing something special.

-Jon Favreau cast this like it was an indie film and the quality of performances reflects that. As great as the effects and action are, it's the actors who make this shine which is something that would be nice if more studio heads clued in on.

-There was a scene that was cut with Tony being told by Jarvis that he had a thousand or so voice messages from when he got back from his incarceration in the desert. It didn’t have this added bit during the deleted scenes section, but in the version we see in the documentary, Jarvis says “...including 3 messages from The Mandarin.” That character, for those who don’t know, in the comics is Iron Man’s quintessential villain and was originally slated to be so in the film but it is never openly discussed why it was changed; presumably they couldn't figure out how to play him without him coming across like a racist caricature like Fu Manchu. According to Jeff Bridges, when he was originally cast, he wasn’t gonna get to become Iron Monger (or the Crimson Dynamo as some people keep saying during the footage included which is weird because in the comics the Crimson Dynamo was always a Russian super-agent of some sort or another) but something changed.

-Some quickies: Jeff Bridges on shaving his head, Stan Lee on being surrounded by hotties, the tiny comics details they snuck in, how painful it was to destroy the beautiful cars Tony Stark owns, watching Jon Favreau shrink drastically in size as the production goes on, and more than you can shake a repulsor beam at.

“The Invincible Iron Man”

This is the inevitable second documentary about the history of the character in comics which clocks in at a not unwieldy 47 minutes. Outside of his role in “The Avengers” I never really followed the Iron Man comics that closely so this was educational for me. You can’t help but feel while watching it that they're focusing on specific things because they’ll probably come up in the next movie.

A big surprise was that Stan Lee says he created Iron Man as a dare to himself. He wanted to see if he could create a character that was a representative of, the very unpopular in the 60’s, military-industrial complex and make him successful. Apparently he won that bet. Surprisingly, he also says that Iron Man is the most popular character Marvel ever had with women. Is “Iron Man” a date movie? Next up, Tony Stark dates Carrie Bradshaw. Who knew?

I didn’t realize that the current Iron Man book is being written by Carnivàle creator Daniel Knauf and his son. So...just throwing that out there for those few of you still crazy about that canceled HBO series.

“Wired: The Visual Effects of Iron Man”

Jon Favreau decided early on that he was going to use practical effects rather than CG whenever possible and you can really tell the difference. Of course, there is no way to do a movie of this kind without using CG so they integrated them in a new fashion to get the best of both worlds. He was so cautious about doing it properly that he did a lot of the motion capture himself. Or maybe he just wanted to be Iron Man for awhile. Either way.

The highlight here was a dissection of the suit’s H.U.D. displays and what they all mean. I want my Mac to do this. Now. Where's the widget I can download for that. I would have had this review done a week ago. I love computers.

“Robert Downey Jr Screen Tests”

Downey improvs as Tony Stark and tells goat fucking jokes. What else do you need to know?

“The Actor’s Process”

Downey and Bridges rehearsing in an actor’s workshop but not really sure why they included it.

“The Onion’s Story on the Trailer being adapted into a film”

This was one of the funnier things in recent memory from the uneven Onion News Network, a story about the popular Iron Man trailer being controversially adapted into a feature film. It is filled with lolz and win.

“Galleries”

Concept art, tech stuff, set photos, and the posters. Wheeee. I think if anyone ever actually looks at this stuff more than once, the world ceases to exist. Or something. It'll never happen so we'll never know.

“Easter Egg”

You knew SOMETHING was gonna be hidden. In this case, on the first disc go to the “special features” and under the ‘previews’ option is a little thingee you can click on that’ll bring you to a short sequence between Stan Lee and Downey that’s good for a chuckle, but it seems to me that the Onion bit would have been the more ideal one to leave as a hidden bonus.

So that’s it. The whole shebang. Kit and kaboodle. The whole enchilada. And many other cliches that say the same thing. There are a variety of different packaging options available depending on where you pick this up. I’m told by Leon (who cares more about such things than I do) that Target has the best one, a flip up pack of Iron Man’s head. So now the only thing you have to ask yourself yet is, WHICH version are you going to go out and pick up.

Seriously, though if I come to your house and I don't see a copy of this on your shelf, we're over.

Iron Man (Two-Disc Special Collectors' Edition)