THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN (2007)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological, sociological*

Everyone knows that the 2008 IRON MAN proved to be not only the dark horse that came in first, but the initiator of an entire "Marvel Cinematic Universe." The various animated OAVs that came out before and after the live-action movies didn't make up any sort of consistent universe, and most of them were forgettable, though I found the DOCTOR STRANGE video superior to the Cumberbatch film.

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN was probably completed while the 2008 IRON MAN was finishing up production. But though the scriptwriters probably had access to some or all of the live-action film's storyline, the only strong likeness is that INVINCIBLE duplicates the film's characterization of Tony Stark, prior to his taking up the superhero mantle. Tony, despite being a scientific polymath, is also an irrepressible ladies' man, with INVINCIBLE even suggesting outright sexual intercourse. Also duplicated is the characterization of Tony's secretary Pepper Potts, who loves him and is sardonically jealous of his hookups. But everything else is changed, both from the original comics and the MCU version.

The 1960s comic-book Iron Man sustains injuries while issuing new munitions to American troops in Vietnam. The 2008 adaptation advances the military setting to Afghanistan, but with the same outcome for the hero. In order to deal with both his life-threatening wounds and with his tyrannical captors, Tony invents the armored suit that leads to his becoming Iron Man. But INVINCIBLE avoids the military angle completely, except to state early-on that Stark Industries was a munitions industry under Tony's father Howard but converted to more humanitarian activities thanks to Tony's genius. The sense of the son having exceeded the father is here the root of estrangement between them, whereas the conflicts of the same characters in the live-action series is vague and unsatisfying.

The crucible in which Iron Man is formed does still take place in "The Orient," however. The live-action series never got the character of The Mandarin right, choosing to view him only as a facile Fu Manchu knockoff. Yet to be sure, the comic-book Mandarin didn't fulfill his potential. There was at most the suggestion that the villain represented the tyranny of the pre-industrial world, while his opponent symbolized the rise of rational democracy. Ironically, INVINCIBLE does a better job with the Mandarin character by keeping him largely offstage-- which was actually the case with the prose version of Fu Manchu.         

Tony Stark's rational, scientific view of life is shaken when he uses his tech-genius (with the aid of chief engineer James Rhodes) to unearth the palace of The Mandarin, a mass-murdering emperor from the prehistoric era of China. Tony's archeologists and engineers are challenged by a dissident group, the Jade Dragons, who in part duplicate the function of the Vietnamese troops who captured Comics-Tony. The inventor flies to China, gets near-fatally wounded by the Dragons, and is pressed into their service-- but principally to consign the unearthed palace back to the depths of the earth. One of the Dragons, the beauteous Li Mei, seems willing to help Tony and Rhodes, possibly because she like Tony has had conflicts with a paternal unit. Even she doesn't suspect that the charming genius has long had the idea of Iron Man armor in mind for a long time, and he uses it to escape. However, in contrast to the other versions, Tony gets back to America and faces a frame-up by political schemers-- and then must return to the Orient to banish the evil he unleashed there.

Both the animated action and the dialogue are far better than most such OAVs. As mentioned, the Mandarin is kept mostly offstage, while Iron Man engages in combat with various super-powered pawns of the evil emperor, including a giant dragon given no name in the script, but obviously modeled upon a Marvel Comics monster, name of "Fin Fang Foom." Li Mei's destiny turns out to be implicated with the Mandarin's recrudescence, which follows through on the parallel of Tony's conflicts with his father. To be sure, the being called The Mandarin is only "on stage" for a few minutes, with a handful of lines voiced by Fred Tatasciore. Yet the sense of the villain's pervasive menace is far more compelling, as I said, than in any previous adaptation, and in most of the original comics. Since the two live-action IRON MAN movies that followed the 2008 flick weren't all that great, maybe the MCU would have done better to have emulated the better aspects of INVINCIBLE.