The ultimate male power one-man-show, Iron Man is less successful as political allegory than as sexual fantasia. Its most exhilarating moments are essentially pornographic: gadget porn, war porn, rehab porn (you don’t have to see the thing to know that the spiritual rehabilitation for the protagonist is supported subtextually by the actual rehabilitation of the actor who plays him), and porn porn. Each incarnation of Tony Stark’s super suit is sexier than the last, with the final model’s lovingly CGIed streamlined curves simultaneously suggesting hardness and touchability. Better still are the countless close-ups of Robert Downey Jr inside this metal womb, his face fixed in concentrated ecstasy as his hands ejaculate fire. Oh, whoops–spoiler alert.
But of course, there’s no sex in this movie at all, beyond a cartoonish scene involving a minor character early in the film which really only exists in order to set up Gwyneth Paltrow’s one great joke. Paltrow, apparently drawing warmth from her strawberry blonde highlights, plays Tony Stark’s assistant/love interest Pepper Pots, and she never gets to consummate the constant sexual tension that she shares with her boss. Ultimately, that’s as it should be, because this isn’t a movie about sex as an extension of romance––this is a movie about the sublimation of sex into the battle for power.
Yes, Iron Man eventually, single-handedly kicks terrorist ass, but it’s less an attempt to restore global order than a single score setting, a personal revenge. His real political battle happens at home. The final third of Iron Man, which consensus seems to suggest is the least satisfying, is given over to Stark’s battle with business partner Obediah Stane (Jeff Bridges). Stark’s weapons, designed purely with American global dominance in mind, have been getting into the hands of our enemies, and Tony wants to put a stop to it. Stane is like, “Uh, do you know what that would do to our bottom line?” But contrary to some interpretations, Iron Man is not against the proliferation of weapons at all. It’s against a morally bankrupt culture of accumulation which puts the greediest of Us in cahoots with the most evil of Them.
And ultimately, the answer to combating Them is for Us to reestablish the link between mechanized killing and the body. Iron Man is never exactly anti-military, but it isn’t shy about pointing up the U.S. military’s impotence, especially in a number of scenes where commanders helplessly sit behind computer monitors, watching a conflict unfold outside of their control. Iron Man singlehandedly dispose of an insurgency that seems to have sprung up under the military’s nose but remains out of their control, and his technology allows him to do so with enviable speed and efficiency. There’s an amazing amount of propaganda in this film against the idea of unmanned weapons, of lives being taken by machines without a connection to a human fighting for recognizable values and taking personal responsibility.
Others have noted a contradiction between Stark’s post-reformation insistence that his company stop selling weapons, and the fact that he proceeds to spend the rest of the film crafting The Greatest Weapon of Them All. But this contradiction is beautifully resolved in the film’s final scene, in which Stark, under his breath, describes his own iron-clad might as “fantastic.” He’s moved from CEO to worker, from beneficiary of the mechanized chain that produces the spoils of war to a single man capable of waging wars on his own, in absolute opposition to the morality-by-committee that’s sullied his name. This is terrifying, and fittingly, Stark doesn’t take this responsibility lightly––he’s completely in awe of it.
Downey’s delivery of a line like this–both one-liner joke and philosophical statement of purpose––has been commented on much, and is worthy of comment, But this is also a spectacularly physical performance, and there are moments where it has more in common with certain Gene Kelly solo numbers than any superhero movie I’ve ever seen. There’s a lot in Iron Man that doesn’t exactly work––most glaringly, it has trouble building momentum across three acts that are wildly disparate in narrative purpose and tone––but watching Downey act, by himself save for the company of holograms and machines, is absolutely awe inspiring.
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