Iron-onic Thoughts.

I caught Iron Man this week in the cheap theatre. Good movie. They did a good job updating the character's creation story to fit into the modern era while maintaining the basic shape of it. And the effects were well done, so you didn't spend much time thinking about them, which can be a problem with CGI at times.

If you were at all familiar with the backstory from the comics you could probably guess which way the Stane plotline was going to go. Of course you could have guessed it without that knowledge, as it was telegraphed a lot from early on.

Kudos to the producers for casting Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts. A lot of filmmakers would have gone for whoever the starlet du jour is. Instead they went with an actress in her thirties, which is appropriate for the character. Pepper is supposed to be Tony Stark's long serving assistant and confidant, and he's supposed to have an extended history with her. This is not the kind of thing that would be convincing with a younger actress in the part.

He's only seen briefly, but Stark's bodyguard Happy Hogan is also a character from the comic books. In the original '60s Iron Man stories there's a love triangle between Happy, Pepper, and Tony, with Pepper being attracted to Stark while not realising Happy wanted her. It will be interesting to see if this is dealt with in any way in future Iron Man big screen appearances.

If you saw it I hope you stayed all the way to the end of the credits. No, I'm not going to tell you the cool thing you missed if you didn't.