Pentagon Blockbuster: Iron Man

If you like Marvel Comic, Iron Man could be an entertaining movie for you. It has full action, high-tech show off, heroic scenes and, you might not like it, propaganda about stereotypical evil Asians so US must use 'necessary action' to deal with it.

It's easily understood according to American (Bush administration) campaign about with-us-or-against-us counter terrorism obsession. It's not first time Hollywood portrayed Asians in negative ways, there have been so many times, countless, actually.

For example, high award-nominated movie The Deer Hunter in 1978. The Deer Hunter which took home 4 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Then, and since, however, the movie has been ridiculed by antiwar critics for the way it turned history on its head in its use of reversed iconic images that seemingly placed all guilt for death and destruction in Vietnam on America's enemies.

Most famously, it appropriated a then-unforgettable Pulitzer prize-winning photo of Lt. Colonel Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam's national police chief, executing an unarmed, bound prisoner during the Tet Offensive with a point blank pistol shot to the head. In the film, however, it was the evil enemy which made American prisoners do the same to themselves as they were forced to play Russian Roulette for the amusement of their sadistic Vietnamese captors. That was something that had no basis in reality.

No need to mention some Rambo series, some James Bond series, parody Hot Shots series and many other series and single movies.

Iron Man starts on Afghanistan Battleground. A convoy of equipped-armor Humvees carrying an ultra-rich man, Tony Stark, ambushed by Taliban Militias. Since Tony is not only a businessman but also engineer who can design and make weapon, he is forced to make a deadly weapon for Taliban.

What happen next, you can guess. Instead of giving the weapon to Taliban, he slaughters his captors and back to US, offers help to authorities to destroy Taliban with his prototype super-suit he built at Afghanistan cave. You can guess the rest of story after it. It's an easy plot.

Iron Man full of such reversals The Deer Hunter had, beginning with the obvious fact that, in Afghanistan, it is Americans who have imprisoned captured members of Al Qaeda, Taliban and many innocents sold by North Alliance in exceedingly grim conditions, not vice-versa. Again, how Evil Asians on Hollywood movies.

In reality, US military has been deeply involved in Hollywood industry since Silent Era. But now the temporary arrangements of the past have changed into a full-time, sitting on a floor in a Los Angeles office building. The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and the Department of Defense itself has established entertainment liaison offices to ensure that Hollywood makes movies the military way.

It's a mutualism. Military grants access to high-tech and unavailable gears. As return is usually the right to alter or shape scripts to suit their needs, propaganda as Pentagon's agendas. It's like, don't bother to read military journals to get to know its latest equipments, just see some movies.

Interesting to see what Roger Ebert wrote:

The world needs another comic book movie like it needs another Bush administration, but if we must have one more (and the Evil Marketing Geniuses at Marvel MegaIndustries will do their utmost to ensure that we always will), "Iron Man" is a swell one to have. Not only is it a good comic book movie (smart and stupid, stirring and silly, intimate and spectacular), it's winning enough to engage even those who've never cared much for comic books or the movies they spawn. Like me.

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