It's my favorite time of year: summer movie season! My husband and I love few things more than a summer blockbuster. This year, to ensure that we didn't miss a spectacular moment and yet had a smooth decision making process, we each gave numerical ratings to the hottest upcoming movies and tallied up the averages in an Excel spreadsheet. (Um, have I mentioned recently that we're nerds?) Then last night we left the kids with the babysitter and headed off to see Iron Man.While Iron Man was not a great movie, it was an entertaining action flick with a wonderful addiction subtext. I felt the weight of its not-greatness when I had to step out to take a call from the babysitter on something fairly inconsequential (where to find a DVD my son wanted to watch), and found I was not torn apart that I was missing those two minutes. I wasn't afraid that something thrilling was going to happen in my absence or that I was going to miss some key component of the (deliciously simplistic) plot. But I walked out happy and had a good discussion on the car ride home, which I count as an overall success in the world of summer movie fun.
During the course of the movie, Tony Stark (Iron Man's alter ego, played by Robert Downey Jr.) spends most of the time that he's not working on or thinking about his engineering projects (primarily the Iron Man suit) drinking alcohol and hitting on or having sex with women. The first time he takes his Iron Man suit out for a spin around the skies of Malibu, he pushes the limits and nearly kills himself. His response is to whoop with joy and exclaim that he has to do that again. Mark and I turned to each other at that point in the movie, and Mark said, "Total addict." To which I responded, "Oh, yeah. Totally." Of course, after that high, Stark heads out to a party, to, um, drink and hit on women.
Stark also has an assistant, Pepper Potts (played by Gwyneth Paltrow), who takes care of (and generally anticipates) his every need, from doing dry cleaning for the women he has sex with to hacking into weapons manufacturing computer systems. The relationship between the two is a beautiful portrayal of a codependent/addict relationship: he does his crazy addict thing and she takes care of the details, cleans up the messes and worries about him. Both Downey (who has his own real life experience with addiction) and Paltrow play out these roles beautifully.
After the movie, Mark and I disagreed about how intentional the addiction subtext was. After all, addiction is never brought up in the movie, and not even implied in the ways one typically sees (e.g. falling down drunkenness). It was Mark's opinion that the addiction subtext couldn't have been as well done as it was if it were simply operating unintentionally based on stereotypical behavior. But it was my opinion that the aim was to portray a rich, self-centered, hedonistic playboy (there was even a direct nod to Hugh Hefner) and that the movie makers (like most people) didn't equate self-centered, hedonistic playboy with addict. (Yes, I think Hugh Hefner is a huge addict.) I believe that the codependent and addict personalities are so prevalent and distinctive that we all recognize them without knowing them for what they are.
Of course, Mark and I come to the superhero subset of action movies from a different viewpoint. I come in with few preconceptions, armed only with my life experience and whatever superhero lore has eked into the culture at large (which, in the case of Iron Man, was nothing). Mark, on the other hand, is a comic book geek, who knows what the characters and villains are supposed to look like. He comes into movies like this with a certain level of secret extra knowledge. So Mark pointed out: "It's well known that Stark is an alcoholic." (Well known, of course, to everyone with a closet full of boxes upon boxes of comic books, not to those of us who never heard of Iron Man before the first trailer for the movie.)
But Mark and I agreed that the subtlety with which the addiction was framed means that either it was done skillfully by folks who would recognize those subtleties or it was done by folks who intended to leave the alcoholism out, but portray the playboy, and accidentally hit upon the characteristics or an addict anyway. If it were done by folks without a knowledge of addiction, who were intentionally trying to portray addiction, Stark would have been flying his Iron Man suit clearly drunk out of his mind. And let's face it, sex addiction is still so far out of the public mind that no one sets out to portray sex addiction without having someone actually say the words "sex addict."
We also agreed that Robert Downey Jr., who is the star of two separate blockbusters this summer and is not exhibiting his former train-wreck, bottoming out behavior, must be working his program. Yay, Robert Downey Jr.! Sobriety looks hot on you.
Now see what happens when nerds get into recovery and go to the movies? I can't wait to review Hancock.* Will Smith as an alcoholic superhero? Be still my beating codie heart! Things are going to get steamy!
Next week: Speed Racer. And while the Racers are clearly dysfunctional (the eldest son ran away from home and the youngest smuggles into car trunks with his pet monkey?), I'm going to see that one purely for the kick ass special effects.
*In rereading a post by the Discovering Alcoholic about Hancock, I found that I ought to have known Iron Man was an alcoholic. Apparently alcoholic superhero doesn't stick in my mind unless you add "Will Smith" to it.
11 comments: