Irony Man

A review of the Marvel Movie Iron Man (2008)

Paramount Pictures PG 13

Sometimes Hollywood gets it right and Christians just don’t get it. I was chatting with someone who should have known better, what with them being a church-going Christian and all, who was able to critique the new Iron Man movie starring Robert Downey, Jr. as playboy cum superhero Tony Stark. Their assessment of the movie was that it was kinda violent (it was) but that it should not have included as much sex and drinking in the life of the billionaire playboy.

Excuse me, but this is a modern version of a Prodigal Son story. If the prodigal has no sin to repent of, then we might as well skip it and go straight to the “Self-Righteous Older Brother” story. I think a lot of Christians would be far more comfortable with that one than the newly re-minted parable our Lord tells in Luke 15. I think the individual’s concern with portraying sinful people as truly sinful is typical evangelical antipathy to honest portrayals of Prodigal Son stories.

Ever since reading The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson alongside Run, Baby, Run by Nicky Cruz, two different books that told the same story from very different perspectives, I have noticed that Evangelicals seem disinclined to portray sin anywhere nearly as sinfully as the Bible does. The sinners themselves are brutally honest with what they have been saved from, as Nicky Cruz was in his autobiography. The preachers and Christian critics, however, seem to dance around the topic of sin and back away from describing it in terms even mildly suggestive of its utter depravity. Granted, the Luke 15 passage does not go into detail, but there are plenty of other stories in the Bible far more racy than Tony Stark’s casual dalliances or intemperate alcohol swilling.  The point is that we seem to quail when sinners are portrayed doing what they do naturally – sinning. I would hate to think what Christians would do if they ever saw an accurate biography of John Newton on the screen. If we cannot show sin as being exceeding sinful, then what does that say for our grace? It certainly would not be amazing. Newton wrote of being saved in a wretched state. Iron Man portrays at worst a greedy playboy hedonist with callous disregard for what happens to his products once they are sold. Hardly a vile, vicious wretch like Newton was. Yet some fundagelicals will fault the picture for portraying the untransformed Tony Stark as moderately wicked by society’s standards. Frankly, this could have been a tremendous plot point in its favor had Stark been more evil than he was with a more stunning transformation. Imagine the gospel message of a Steven King villain finding salvation in the redemptive power of Christ who saves from the guttermost to the uttermost.

But I digress. Iron Man is full of violence, but most of it is directed at the lead character and those he cares about. The movie opens with a scene where the billionaire playboy is demonstrating his latest weapon, the Jericho missile, and on his way back from the demonstration in an unnamed Middle Eastern Islamic country, he is abducted by terrorists who nearly kill him, ironically, (no pun intended) with Stark industries weapons.

The terrorists keep Stark locked in a cave for three months where he is supposed to be building a Jericho missile of their own, presumably because they cannot acquire one themselves, despite the fact that they seem to have every other gadget, gizmo, and weapon manufactured by Stark Industries cached in their mountain hideout. This is only one of the unexplained plot holes, but I have a feeling we will be getting more back story in the sequel (which already has a scheduled release date of April 30, 2010). What Stark does instead is create a suit of armor that he uses to escape thanks to flamethrowers and jet power.

However, the real plot hinges not on the special effects and cool gadgetry (although there was enough of that to satisfy my son) but on the transformation of Tony Stark from a womanizing, arrogant, weapons manufacturer to someone who wants to help humanity rather than harm it. To that end, he takes Stark industries out of the weapons business, much to the chagrin of his COO, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) and stockholders. This change of heart is more than a metaphor in the movie. In order to keep Stark alive after his capture, an imprisoned physician had implanted into Stark’s chest is a device, hooked up to a car battery that kept embedded shrapnel from piercing his heart. Stark, ever the engineer, creates a smaller power-producing implant that looks like a headlight that keeps his heart beating. This device becomes integral to the plot and shapes the story, proving that Tony Stark really does have a change of heart.

by Rick Presley