Iron Man ain't a great movie, but it's got the best acting of any superhero flick.
You trippin', son. If "Unbreakable" doesn't count, I'd give that one to V for Vendetta. Unbreakable counts, though.
Honkey please. V for Vendetta starred a guy reciting poetry behind a mask. Maybe there are
some standards by which that constitutes good acting, but they're not the ones I'm applying. I haven't seen Unbreakable in years (I liked it a lot when I saw it), but is it that hard to get Bruce Willis to not emote, and for Samuel L. Jackson to be wild-eyed and menacing? My impression was a movie that leaned a lot more on mystery and menace than on character.
I'm gonna let
Jim Henley speak for me here:
I read in a primer on improv recently about a director who liked to point at your partner on stage – you are an actor for the length of this anecdote – and tell you, “Your work is over there!” Meaning, your partner. Pay attention to him.
When critics and viewers say, correctly, that Iron Man is the best-acted superhero movie yet, that’s what they’re talking about.
The cast is uniformly good, and uniformly attentive to each other. Take Terrence Howard’s effort at Jim Rhodes, the Air-Force liaison. Howard’s a big-deal star, but as Rhodes he’s totally in the moment at all times. He doesn’t just play off Robert Downey Jr. like a dutiful supporting actor should, he’s wrapped up in his fellow officers and subordinates in the various control rooms. His transformation from upbraiding Tony like a bellicose Jiminy Cricket early in their charter flight to Afghanistan to drunken cameraderie with him later in the same flight has as its unity his selfless focus on Downey. Jeff Bridges makes Obadiah Stane work by completely underselling his jealousy of his business partner. Bridges gives Stane the relaxed self-assurance of rich white guys everywhere. He hates Tony Stark and wants him dead, but life is good! And Gwyneth Paltrow and Downey have some wonderful rallies of emotion and body language. Paltrow’s Pepper Potts orients her entire life around her boss, but no man is a hero to his valet, so she puts across her condescension with her loyalty. We understand how much professional pride she has in being seen as the one who does not sleep with her boss. Downey is the star, but Stark is a seducer, and Stark works, like a good actor, by riveting his attention on you. He’s only a tyrant to his robots. (At least two different characters utter the line “I’m not Tony Stark.”)
I'd quibble with some details (wasn't as high on Howard) but he nails the main point. The main actors do a great job of playing off each other and implying their characters' relationships and histories together. They create an impression of being long-time colleagues in just a few scenes, which is no mean trick.
I love it when a film pulls that off well, and it's a big part of why I like the movies I like (Casablanca, Jaws, Ghostbusters, Breaking Away, The Thin Man). Notice how much better the parts of Hellboy 2 are where the team is dealing with each other than when the elves are on screen.
