The Invincible Iron Man

I find it a little difficult to review The Invincible Iron Man, primarily because I've just seen the movie which was absolutely brilliant. Given that I have already watched The Ultimate Avengers and the voice of Tony Stark did not particularly impress me I was going into this movie with a slight caution...

First up, the villain of this movie is the Mandarin, which is a tough character to get across well in this modern age. The Marvel Encyclopedia gives his occupation as "criminal mastermind" and informs us he is currently residing in his castle "thinking up new plans for world conquest" - nice gig if you can get it. He was great when he was a super villain with ten alien rings (that shot blasts of ice and fire and...god only knows what the other eight do) that didn't need to actually obey the rules of the physical world, but in today's modern age there has to be a dash of reality thrown into the mix. The movie accomplished this by making him the head of a terrorist organisation called the Ten Rings, linking nicely to the character. This animated movie recognises the same limitations and as such limits the Mandarin to having only five rings. That said the Mandarin still doesn't have to obey the physical world. In actual fact the Mandarin is now a historical figure that legend has it will return when his five elementals (fire, water, wind and earth...and dragon apparently) obtain the five rings. Legend also has it that he will fight an iron knight, which is not a terrible set up to our hero's arrival.

Unlike most versions of Iron Man, in this movie Tony Stark is not the head of Stark International - that is in fact a board with Howard Stark as the chair of the board. Tony has a division that investigates new technology but it is shut down for a variety of reasons including the fact that Tony is working on his own secret project...wonder what that could be. When James Rhodes' team get taken by the Jade Dragons, Tony goes after him in tanks and the rest is history. What's nice is that on their return to America, Rhodey finds out that Stark has been working on Iron Man for some time, and we get to see a large variety of Iron Man suits, all based on designs from the past, present and Ultimate.
One thing that is interesting, and mirrors the live action movie, is that Iron Man himself doesn't actually save the day. In the movie it is Tony and Pepper activating a veritable EMP that saves the day, and the same happens here (though Pepper is arrested and so doesn't actually make it). Here, Iron Man destroys the five elementals, but it is Tony who manages to defeat the reincarnated Mandarin (oh big surprise, he did get resurrected, like you didn't see that coming), by talking his new vessal into remembering herself. Sadly Tony ends up all alone as his new love dies in his arms after defeating the Mandarin.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would but I still don't think this quite hits the movie heights.

"B+"