With Iron Man interest at an all-time high, Marvel decided to shovel out this crap just before the actual Iron Man movie everyone wants to see opens, in a bid to make a quick buck. But dont be taken in - this movie is an absolute mess from start to finish. A bad guy with advanced biotech armour that outclasses Tony Starks Iron Man armour, attacks the launch of a SHIELD/Stark Enterprises surveillance satellite, causing hundreds of deaths including Tonys best friend, Jim Rhodes aka War Machine. In the most confusing and contrived of sequences, Tony becomes a fugitive from SHIELD as Nick Fury sends out wave after wave of advanced weaponry to hunt down Iron Man. Meanwhile Tony tracks down Technovore only to discover its a far more dangerous construct than he imagined - but will he able to stop it and save the world? This movie gets so much wrong so quickly and so often its hard to know where to begin with its faults. The opening scene is a good indicator of the films IQ level - Tony and Rhodey are in their armour flying about a rocky landscape racing one another like theyre kids on their first big wheels. Tony taunts and insults Rhodey until Rhodey decides to throw Tony into a mountain who responds by blasting him in the face with his repulsor cannon. Haha, um... roughhousing I suppose? Its such a weird sequence. Its like watching a pillow fight start off fun and then seeing the violence escalate until someones lying in a pool of blood unconscious. But theyre best friends. Right. After Technovore attacks the satellite (which is called Howard. I know its named after Tonys dad but its just a dumb name for a satellite especially at the end when theyre trying to sound dramatic - look out for the Howard! - and succeeded in making me laugh instead), Tony barely survives the attack and is the sole witness to this new threat so Fury asks him to stay on the helicarrier where he can be protected and they can gather information on this new enemy. But Tony is impatient so he flies off and Fury decides to send fighter jets after him, firing missiles and machine guns at Tony, then scores of mandroids, and finally Hawkeye and Black Widow after him. So much for protecting the only witness, eh Nick? This mega-dumb setup of Tony as a fugitive lasts for 60 out of 84 minutes of the movie and its resolution only underlines how pointless it all was. The villain Technovore should really change his name to Ambien, because he put me to sleep every time he was on screen. When hes not fighting, hes sat in a pure white room with a comatose-looking girl reading from the most boring book in the world while they both speak monotonously and vaguely about making the world better. When Iron Man catches up with him, Technovore has a monologue that lasts about 5 minutes but feels an hour long and at the end of it, you remember nothing about what was said. When a movie has a lot of dialogue - and for a superhero movie, there is a lot of talking here - most of it expositional, and after the movie the viewer still has very basic questions about the plot and the characters? Thats a sign that its a bad movie. Theres a crucial scene in the movie with a baffling conclusion thats never explained. A character repeatedly pops up and seems important but theyre not even named! I was wondering what the purpose of that character was and its never explained in the movie. Things happen seemingly at random and for no reason, motivations are, and remain, sketchy throughout. This film is so confusing because there are so many plot holes and the actions of the characters are questionable at best - if any of them thought for a moment itd be a different, and better, movie. The one good part was the 10 minutes that Frank Castle aka The Punisher showed up and theres some good action between him, Iron Man, Hawkeye and Black Widow. Frank is played by Norman Reedus (Daryl on AMCs The Walking Dead) who does a good job and doesnt go full Eastwood as I was expecting - though there is a little Dirty Harry in there somewhere. But his character design was very poor - the huge collar on his jacket was stupid and his longish hair made him look too young and too much like Dwight from Sin City (Clive Owens character). But the worst character design is Black Widow, whose cleavage looked like it was going to pop out all the time and SHIELD would have to release a wardrobe malfunction press release.
This is Japanese anime which I dont have a problem with and its pretty good here, though if youre a fan of anime youre not going to be impressed with what is pretty average animation. The CGI is a bit naff too - most of the flight sequences seem to conveniently take place over miles and miles of barren, rocky landscapes with the occasional mountain and ravine, so the level of detail is very low. At times it feels like the 21st century version of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon where the backgrounds just cycle through repeatedly. Also, I dont know what it is about anime but the final showdown involves tentacles! Theres more but if I had to list everything that was wrong with this movie itd take longer than the running time of the movie itself! This is the worst thing Ive seen Iron Man in by far, whether its comics, movies, or TV shows and, though its a mere 84 minutes, it feels longer because theres so little story here and Marvel have just stretched it to make it feature length. Marvel may be way ahead of DC with their live action films but DC still produce far, far better animated movies than Marvel, and Rise of Technovore is another example of Marvels failure in getting a firm handle on their animated releases quality. Rise of the Technovore - for the Iron Man fan with insomnia!
Iron Man: Rise of Technovore is out now on DVD and blu-ray