Review: Iron Man 3

It wasn't as bad as Iron Man 2 (2010) but not quite up to the original Iron Man (2008) film. Of course, it's trying to tell a more complicated story than the original film and it's trying to show us the humanity of Tony Stark. So who is Iron Man: man or machine...or both?

That's really the main question this film is asking and trying to answer, which is why we don't see Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) in his armor for most of the film. However, when this movie finally gets rolling, we have armor up the wazoo!

But first things first.

The movie starts in the dark with Stark's narration, "A wise man once said: we make our own demons." This is important but you don't realize it right away. I'll get to that.

Stark decides to start his story on New Year's Eve 1999 in Bern, Switzerland. He's trying to get a brilliant research scientist named Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall) into bed for a one-night stand and all she wants to do is talk about her latest experiment in reprogramming the human brain to amplify a person's ability to self-repair dramatically. Tony seems too drunk to notice or care, but he's brilliant enough to not let that stop him, either in his quest to get her into the sack (which he does) or to help her with her technical problem (which he also does, but we don't find out until later).

OK, she's interested in bedding Tony too, after they get rid of the overly attentive Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau). Tony's also promised to meet with the newly minted inventor of AIM (that's right, Advanced Idea Mechanics...the bad guys) Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce with a really bad haircut and a hopelessly fan boy attitude in the 1999 sequence) on the roof of the hotel, but that was a total lie. Booze and sex drive Tony Stark at this point in his life.

All this is to set the stage for the present where we pick up the loose threads left dangling on the morning of January 1st, 2000.

As a nice homage to the first film, we get to see the brief appearance of a very beloved character (at least to me) in the opening few minutes of the 1999 sequence. Watch for him.

Shift to the present or close to it: the Christmas season 2012 (presumably). Happy has been upgraded to Chief of Security at Stark International, Pepper is handling the day to day running of the empire, and Tony...Tony's a mess.

He has been ever since the end of The Avengers (2012), but then again, escorting a live nuke into another dimension and almost getting stranded there, and then, having gotten back out, almost falling to his death, all have a way of negatively impacting a person. In Tony's case, he's prone to panic attacks (they don't last long enough to qualify as anxiety attacks).

Pepper's moved into the Malibu mansion with him, but that only helps a little. Night after night he can hardly sleep and he spends most of his time building a wide variety of super-powered armor prototypes. The latest is Mark 42, which on command, will leap into the air in pieces and slap themselves onto Tony's body (it's not a perfect process).

But then he finds something to focus on besides the past, his anxiety, and his uncertainty. The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley). The Mandarin seems to have it in for America in general and the American President in particular. So much so that he needs to blow up lots of American stuff, including the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

Long story short, the formerly dweeby Aldrich (with a much better haircut and tons more confidence) visits Pepper at SI to pitch "his" technology for hacking into the human brain to enhance healing and performance (sound familiar). Pepper turns it down since it can all too easily be weaponized (something SI doesn't do anymore). Security Chief Hogan gets suspicious of Aldrich and his henchman Savin (James Badge Dale) and follows them to the aforementioned Chinese Theatre...

...where he discovers how the Mandarin blows up things...not with bombs but with genetically altered people...

...and ends up in a coma (don't worry, he gets better by the end of the movie).

This is where it becomes personal for Tony and he challenges the Mandarin on TV to a duel, giving out his home address (as if the entire world could miss that giant half factory/half work of art in Malibu hanging over the Pacific).

Big mistake. The long missing Maya Hansen shows up "coincidentally" to warn Tony about her boss as Pepper is trying to convince Tony to get out of the mansion...just minutes before three of the Mandarin's helicopters blows the whole thing into the ocean.  Tony "armorizes" Pepper just long enough for her to get Maya and herself out of harm's way, then pulls the armor onto himself just in time to go into the water with his house.

So begins Tony Stark's armorless journey to discover who the Mandarin is and the secret behind exploding people.

Cute relationship between Tony (AKA "the Mechanic") and eight-year old Harley Keener (Ty Simpkins). Nice and heartwarming, even though Tony is still a dick at heart. The relationship does buy Tony time to start unraveling the mystery and he makes a number of surprising discoveries.

Most aren't all that surprising to the audience but one came at me out of left field. I loved what Kingsley did with Trevor. I had no idea it would turn out this way but in retrospect, it was brilliant. It goes completely off canon which is probably good, since you can't do The Mandarin the way he originally appeared in the 1960s Marvel comic books. The Mandarin in the comics was actually a throwback to the 1930s pulp fiction stories and comic strips and in no way could that "Fu Manchu" character type ever play in the 21st century. Nice twist and kudos to the writers.

I was disappointed that the armored suits, including James Rhodes's (Don Cheadle) seemed to be taken out so easily by the "Lava people." Even though Rhodes inside Iron Patriot (the War Machine armor with a Captain America paint job) was taken by surprise, once Rhodes regained consciousness, none of the armor's toys were put into play to get him out of his mess. The best he could do was eject himself out of the armor and run like hell.

In fact, Rhodes was a far more effective fighter without the suit than he was in it. He could totally kick ass with nothing besides a sidearm and lots of athletic skill, which is how he manages to rescue the President.

Tony manages to do derring do, including saving about a dozen people in free fall who were forcibly blown out of a crippled Air Force One, but finally it's Rhodes who saves the Pres and it's Pepper who defeats the real bad guy and saves Tony's ass (never mind that she came just that close to buying the farm herself).

Good Stuff

What they did with the Mandarin. Ben Kingsley puts in a surprising performance once Tony comes face to face with who he thinks is the mastermind behind the international terrorist organization AIM.

The finale where thirty or forty remotely controlled suits of armor are all flying around fighting the bad guys. JARVIS is the main hero here, although Tony shows masterful coordination at getting into and out of different suits of armor literally on the fly. Pretty good for a guy who has panic attacks with very little provocation.

For once, the female lead saves the day. She kind of blows it by immediately being shocked at how violent she could be (having just blown the bad guy into millions of superheated pieces).

Tony finally gets rid of all of the shrapnel around his heart, eliminating the need for an electromagnet in his chest powered by a mini-arc reactor.

He blows up his armored suits. All of them. It's a way for Tony to grow up and realize that he is he hero behind Iron Man, not a bunch of technology.

Bad Stuff

For a guy who has panic attacks when you just mention "New York," he can do lots and lots of really risky, heroic stuff that should either have put him in a fetal position or sent him to an emergency room. Even without his armor, he's leaping  thirty feet to come down on precarious perches, dodging flying debris, explosions and one really super-heated and pissed off bad guy. If he was that prone to debilitating anxiety, she should have ended up dead.

The film seemed uneven. Yes, I know the point was to show Tony outside his armor and what he could and needed to do without depending on "the suit," but the name of the movie is "Iron Man," not "The Adventures of Tony Stark."

The armor was shockingly ineffective against a crew of super villains whose only real power was getting hot enough to melt metal and exploding. I can see where that could catch you by surprise the first time, but once you expect it, the armor and all its gadgets should just kick ass. I think the film makers tried too hard to make their "man over machine" point.

The worst disappointment though has to go to the after ending credits scene. Normally these scenes are meant to show secrets into the next Marvel films, little surprises, teasing easter eggs. This time it was a cheesy joke between Stark and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo). Totally not worth wasting seven minutes of my life sitting through the end of film credits. This is where we see that Tony's narration is part of a dialogue with Banner.

The movie is watchable. It leaves us with the feeling that Tony has outgrown Iron Man and is leaving the armor behind along with his blown up and sunken Malibu mansion (guess he's moving to New York). If I didn't know Downey had signed on to do two more Marvel films, I would have interpreted this movie's ending the way The Dark Knight Rises (2012) ended. Batman dies so Bruce Wayne can live.

I had thought that the after end credits "teaser" might have been used to introduce Ant Man (2015) or at least his alter ego Henry Pym. No such luck (unless he was in the scene but too small to see).

Yeah, I'll watch this movie again, but not until it's out on DVD. It was a nice ride, but not a fully satisfying one. The Avengers is still top of the heap of super hero movies...at least until I see Man of Steel (2013) next Sunday and then review it.

Finally, The Avengers!

Warning. This film has been out long enough for me to not worry about revealing spoilers, which I do freely in my review. If you are one of the few people who haven't seen it yet, just keep in mind, I hold nothing back.

I'm probably one of the last people on the planet to see The Avengers (2012). Usually even a very popular film and especially one so "hyped" as this one has been contains a few flaws, but frankly, I couldn't find any. The Avengers just rocked.

I actually wasn't worried about the action sequences because the Marvel films know how to do action. I was worried about continuity, plot holes, and an imbalance in characterization. It's tough to get that many different lead characters into one film and not favor just one or two. The various Star Trek: The Next Generation films such as Star Trek: First Contact (1996) carry this flaw. Typically Picard and Data take the lead and all of the other characters play second fiddle.

I was worried that, in the case of the Avengers, Tony Stark/Iron Man (played by Robert Downey, Jr.) would dominate the screen since he seems to be the strongest personality. Fortunately, I was wrong. I was wrong, happily wrong, about a lot of things.

Of all of the Marvel films about each of these individual heroes, I'd have to say the Avengers was the strongest of them all.

I only saw the film a few hours ago, so I'm still trying to put the experience back together again in my head. The film is long (official running time 143 minutes) and there's almost no let up in the action. Even when a scene involves more dialog, there's usually a lot going on with various verbal gags and it's tough to keep up with all of the changes.

I was worried about teamwork between the actors and having their roles "compete" with one another, but at only happened within the context of their characters. It stands to reason that as strong individualists, it would be difficult to get Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, the Black Widow, and Hawkeye to merge as a unified fighting team and this is exactly how it was played. They fought more among each other during the first half of the film than they did against their primary antagonist Loki. Of course Hawkeye was off the hero list for the first half of the film, having been compromised by Loki, but Jeremy Renner still played him as a brilliant tactician in addition to his role as archer/assassin. He very nearly brings down SHIELD's flying headquarters (literally).

The film also showcased Natasha Romanoff's (played by the beautiful and talented Scarlett Johansson) vulnerable side, which never meant that any part of her was weak. However she got to be human in this film. The relationship between her and Barton/Hawkeye was explained with relative brevity but enough that it was satisfying. I'm glad that the Black Widow and Hawkeye were played as both strong, skilled, and highly intelligent. The original relationship between them in the early 1960s Tales of Suspense comic books (which first featured Iron Man before he got his own title) was highly unbalanced, with her as the femme fatale Soviet spy and him as the angry, misguided, not particularly bright, but still heroic archer. It really didn't work as a romance. The only thing here that I wasn't convinced about was that Johansson's Black Widow was actually Russian. She's like an American spy who happened to know Russian but who was best as kicking ass.

In spite of or maybe even because of his role as the classic "good guy" hero, Captain America emerged as the leader of the Avengers. No mean feat given the dominance Downey brings to the role of Stark/Iron Man. By the time the main battle with the "army from hell" begins in New York City, you can believe it when Cap starts giving orders and everyone lets him take the lead. I was afraid the film makers wouldn't "get it" and ignore this very vital part of Cap's involvement with the Avengers in the comic books, but amazingly, Hollywood got it right.

Thor's appearance caught me a little by surprise at first since, with Bifrost having been destroyed at the climax of the Thor (2011) film, he was effectively trapped in Asgard. However, a short bit of dialog between Thor and Loki and the problem was solved and without seeming too quick and cheap. From that point on, the God of Thunder was present and accounted for as part of the "Avengers initiative." However, if there was a single hero in the film who I didn't connect to quite as well as the others, I'd have to say it was Thor. I don't know exactly way. His whole "this planet is under my protection" role didn't quite "make it" with me for some reason.

Speaking of gods, I rather liked that the film makers allowed Captain America to retain a faith in God. It was only expressed in a single line of dialog, but it's completely consistent with who Steve Rogers would be given that he is an American raised in the 1920s and 30s. Being flash frozen for 70 years and reanimated in the 21st century wouldn't automatically turn him into a politically correct, culturally consistent icon of our morally relativistic world. The conversation between Cap and Phil Coulson confirmed that now, more than ever, we need a basic, foundational hero like Captain America. We may think we've gained a lot since the middle of the 20th century, but we've lost a lot, too.

The Hulk. Mark Ruffalo played both Bruce Banner and (wearing a motion capture suit) the Incredible Hulk. Of the three versions of the Hulk in film, Ang Lee's miserable failure (2003), the subsequent Incredible Hulk (2008), and his current incarnation in the Avengers' film, Ruffalo's Banner/Hulk is the best. That's saying a lot since Edward Norton is a brilliant actor who throws just about everything into not only his characters, but the films they appear in (to the point of continually rewriting/reinventing the films), but Ruffalo brought his vision of both Banner and the Hulk into the Avengers.

I remember reading that during the filming of the "Hulk" scenes in the Incredible Hulk TV series (1978-1982), Bixby refused to watch those sequences because he wanted to be able to react as Banner with true surprise and shock at the aftermath of the destruction caused by the Hulk. Obviously, Ruffalo chose a different path and it really works. Even the Hulk's face resembles Ruffalo's and you can see the personality that is shared between Banner and the Hulk. This is especially important when the Hulk is expected to act as part of the team since otherwise, he's just a mindless engine of destruction. However, Ruffalo plays the Hulk as both exceptionally dangerous to his allies while also somehow accepting them as his allies (although the Black Widow didn't fare so well in her first encounter with the Hulk and even Thor didn't escape the Hulk's "grudge" during the battle in New York).

It was just slightly overly sentimental when Agent Phil Coulson ended up playing the part of "the gipper." I understood that his death was to be the final inspiration that brings the Avengers together as a team (although only Tony, Steve, and Natasha would have been aware of it), but it did represent a small weakness in how the film was developed. It's only just a little schmaltzy though and was only a tiny blip of an issue in an otherwise overwhelmingly brilliant film.

I do have to give actor Clark Gregg (Coulson) his due. Often overlooked as a bit of comedy relief in the other Marvel films, he was truly "badass" when facing down Loki single-handedly, with only an experimental weapon he had no idea would even work. It was almost unfair that he had to die, but once he's gone, you suddenly realize how much you loved him.

Tom Hiddleston continues to be amazing in the role of Loki. He is wonderfully evil but with an apparent "monkey on his back" which is particularly noticeable in the beginning of the film. Who did give him his army anywhere and what sort of deal did he make in exchange for the technology of the tesseract and rule over Earth? We don't find out until the end of the film (past the credits) and if you weren't a Marvel comic book fan from the 1970s or later, you'd have no idea of what the scene really meant or why that big, ugly guy smiled at the mention of "death."

Loki lives on to fight another day, but it took the Hulk to bring him down in a scene that had the audience cheering.

So much happened in The Avengers so fast that I know I missed a great deal. This is one of those films that you have to see again and again, not only to keep the adrenaline rush going, but to try and catch all of the subtle details that you couldn't possibly have picked up on during a single viewing.

If by some miracle, you haven't seen this movie yet, I can't recommend it highly enough. Most films are never quite as good as the previews and trailers make them seem, but The Avengers was even better. It's a super hero classic.

Addendum: I know I didn't mention Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, but this review is long enough. If you want to find out more, see the movie.

Superhero Role Models, Part I

Today's media superheroes -- including Batman in The Dark Knight and the Hulk in Planet Hulk -- as well as the ''slacker'' characters often portrayed in TV shows and movies offer boys poor role models, says a University of Massachusetts professor who polled hundreds of boys up to age 18 to find out their favorites.

The poll results suggest boys hear two ways to be masculine, says researcher Sharon Lamb, EdD, distinguished professor of mental health at the University of Massachusetts-Boston, who presented the findings Sunday at the American Psychological Association's annual meeting in San Diego.

"One was the superhero image, created as someone who shows their masculinity through power over other people, through exploiting women, showing their wealth, and through sarcasm and superiority," she says.

Superheroes: Bad Role Models for Boys?

Superheroes, in the modern sense, have been around for over 70 years (Superman made his debut in Action Comics in June 1938). Every once in awhile, some expert or authority decides to criticize comic book and movie heroes as bad "role models" for the youth of our country/the world. On the other hand, if they were always good role models, they'd probably be pretty boring and nobody would read their comics or want to make movies about them (the Amazing, Spectacular Dali Lama!).

I thought I'd perform my own analysis because I grew up on comic books and have a love for their classic incarnations. It would be too difficult and time consuming (and my time is precious) to go through all the different permutations the various heroes have endured over the decades, so I'll try to stick as close to their original personas as I can. Remember, nothing's perfect, including heroes and this review.

Superman. I figured I'd start with the superhero. As far as role models go, you'd think he'd be the best. He's basically a boy scout in a cape, paying equal attention to saving the President's plane from crashing and saving a cat stuck up in a tree (citing the 1978 Superman film). He was originally an American role model (..."truth, justice, and the American way"), at least in the 1950s, but political correctness has resulted in expanding his role to be more "universal".

The dark side of this role model is that he isn't that universal. He was created in 1938 to appeal to the likely readership of the day, which were 12 year old white boys. Forget it if you were a girl or a person of color. Even his Jewish origins (Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster were both Jewish and modeled Superman on the concept of the Golem, a large, anthropomorphic being who overwhelmed problems with shear might and had the word "truth", in Hebrew, on his forehead) were obliterated to make him attractive to the majority of American kids in the depression era.

Superman does teach that you can have great power and manage it responsibly, never using it for your own gratification (like most of us would do in real life) by peaking through Lana Lang's bra when she's 15 year old (and what high school guy hasn't thought of the advantages of X-ray vision?) or conquering the world just for giggles.

He loves his mother, married his girlfriend, holds down a steady job and regardless of whether he's Superman or Clark, is always someone you can depend upon. On the role model scale, Superman gets an A+.

Iron Man. Originally, in the early 1960s, Tony Stark was a rich, handsome, millionaire playboy who just happened to make weapons for the military. One day, while strolling through Vietnam, he's injured mortally, captured by the bad guys, and in order to escape, has to invent Iron Man, to free himself and save his life...literally. The film version starring Robert Downey Jr, is pretty close to the original as far as origin stories go, except they make Tony much less clean cut, and more of a spoiled brat. The process of becoming Iron Man tempers him and redeems him from his "lost" image, though he doesn't exactly get a personality transplant.

Tony does learn that, dying with the most toys doesn't mean you win and what life really means is saving those people who you hurt, even if you didn't mean to. He's beat (or is in the continual process of beating) alcoholism and repeatedly puts his life on the line, risking a fatal heart attack every time he puts on the Iron Man armor, in order to help others. Joining the Avengers means he's learned to be a team player. Yeah, he's a thrill seeker and it's an emotional power surge just to be Iron Man, but he's a better person than he was before. No, not perfect by a long shot, but with just enough flaws to keep him interesting.

Iron Man comes in on the role model scale as a C+.

Spider-Man. Originally a shy and very smart teenager who could never make it with the cool kids and was always picked on. He got to live out every kid nerd dream by becoming physically powerful enough to pound the bullies, which is more or less what Peter Parker did back in the early 1960s. No, he didn't beat Flash Thompson to a pulp, but he did tell everyone to go take a flying leap into the toilet and, instead of immediately using his powers to become a hero, became a TV star. He probably would have gone on in that direction, having loyalty only to his aunt and uncle, except that his arrogance cost his uncle his life. That's what turned Peter around, but his life is hardly enviable.

Spider-Man is sort of the comic book world's version of a dog's chew toy. He always has one problem or another to overcome, but his shining virtue is, no matter how much he wants to give up on everyone and everything, he hangs in there, probably more for guilt's sake than anything else, but out of great suffering comes great perseverance, to twist a classic phrase.

As a role model, he gets his revenge on being bullied by beating up the bad guys and sending them to jail. OK, ok, he really does love his aunt, has girlfriends, but they either die or divorce him, gets mad at the world half the time, but manages to recover to do the right thing in the end. In some ways, he's the most "human" guy in this review so far. Stan Lee created a number of superheroes back in the day to break the mold of the "perfect person" hero, and it worked. Spider-Man was the poster child of this new hero...the guy the rest of us could relate to. Role model? Maybe not a perfect one, but Peter is a role model we can understand.

Spider-Man gets a B+ on the role model scale.

Last but not least (for this entry) Green Lantern. Hal Jordan was originally one of the most perfect of the perfect heroes. In fact, to get the power ring, you had to be. The qualifications were to be completely honest and completely fearless. That lets him out of being a politician right from the start. If Superman was the boy scout of heroes, Green Lantern was the police officer, but in the best possible sense. As he develops into the 1970s, we discover that Hal's "cop on the beat" take on life also makes him perfectly inflexible and his sense of "right and wrong" is absolute. Oliver Queen (Green Arrow) buddies up with him for awhile to teach him that life has infinite shades of gray.

Actually, you can't blame Hal too much. His bosses, the Guardians of the Galaxy (Universe...whatever) are just as inflexible and Hal has to teach them a few lessons, too.

Reinvented, Hal was a cocky, self-assured test pilot with a chip on his shoulder, put there by his old man who was even more "perfect". In the reinvented version, Hal gets the power ring but also a DUI and has to work off both, one in jail and the other taking humility lessons from master Green Lantern Sinestro, ultimately having to overcome his obsession over himself in order to take on the corrupt "perfect" Sinestro and take his place (eventually) as the galaxy's greatest ring bearer (OK, this side of Frodo).

As far as "super cop" goes, he makes a great role model, but like Superman, his clean cut white guy image made him pretty dated and unrelatable beyond a certain demographic.

These days, he isn't infinitely honest or fearless, but to use the ring, he does have to become the type of hero the ring demands. He's had his dark moments...like becoming Parallax and destroying everything to try and recreate the perfect world (that seems to be a reoccurring theme in his life), but goes through a series of salvational experiences and eventually is the Green Lantern again.

Green Lantern gets a B- on the role model scale, and given the fact that he's killed a lot of people (like the universe), that's generous.

I could go on and on, but this is an analysis that could be taken through a series of blog posts. My ratings are pretty arbitrary, but are superheroes really meant to be role models or are they strictly entertainment? Do kids really try to become like the people they read about in comic books or maybe the comic book heroes are becoming more like us?

A Human Heart and Courage

A cyborg is a cybernetic organism (i.e. an organism that has both artificial and natural systems). The term was coined in 1960 when Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline used it in an article about the advantages of self-regulating human-machine systems in outer space. -Wikipedia

Cyborgs, or people who have had some portion of their body replaced with an electronic or mechanical device, have long been the delegated to the realm of science fiction. When most of you think of such a thing, the image of Borgs from Star Trek probably is the first thing you consider. However, just a few days ago, I read the news story Man goes home with 'Total Artificial Heart'. I'm certainly not comparing 43-year-old Charles Okeke to Borgs by any means, but we seem to have come to the point where we can extend the life and abilities of human beings using cybernetic methods.

A quick run through of the history of Cyborgs in fiction reveals that the concept has been with us for a long time. Edward Page Mitchell's short story The Ablest Man in the World was published in 1879 and recounts the tale of a man who has a computer implanted into this head, turning him into a genius.

Prior to the Borgs, the most famous television cyborg was probably the polyester-wearing Six Million Dollar Man, a series launched in the early 1970s with Lee Majors in the starring role of a man with bionic limbs and an artifical eye (based on the somewhat more "realistic" novel Cyborg written by aeronautics and aviation expert Martin Caidin).

Cyborgs in science fiction novels are very plentiful and one of my favorite stories was written by Frederik Pohl in 1976 and called Man Plus. The story is about a man named Roger Torraway who, in order to be better enabled to explore Mars and prepare for human colonization, has his human body systematically replaced with with a completely artificial body. The novel is primarily an illustration of Torraway's struggle and journey from man to machine as he watches his "humanity" seem to disappear. What horror would a person go through as his living flesh is replaced by metal, wires, and circuits?

I've previously blogged about a couple of comic book cyborgs, namely the Doom Patrol's Robotman and the Teen Titan's Cyborg who both had major parts of their entire bodies replaced by machine parts, with, in Cliff Steele's case, only the human brain remaining (a la Donovan's Brain).

Lest we forget, the science fiction/horror film genre has produced four Terminator movies, thanks to environmentalist film maker James Cameron (now best known for the current hit movie Avatar). While the Arnold Schwarzenegger terminator is the most "bionic" of the cyborgs in the first three films, the character Marcus Wright in the fourth film Terminator Salvation (2009) is the only one who started out as a human being and was turned into a cyborg, with his human heart still intact, by Cyberdyne, programmed without his awareness to hunt down John Connor's father Kyle Reese while Reese was still in his teens. Although Wright was a convicted murder, executed for his crimes in 2003 (in fiction) just before Judgment Day, he develops a conscience and discovers his humanity at the same time he is struggling with the realization that he is a cyborg. Is he machine or is he still a person? The film's climax provides the answer.

That brings us back to the real world and the present time and how the field of prosthetics has entered into the world of bionics. A man, confined to a hospital bed for years, now goes home with an entirely synthetic heart. Reports from Popular Mechanics, ubergizmo and Wired.com (and many other print and online publications) detail artificial arms and hands that not only extend a person's strength and mobility, but tactile senses as well. Even beyond the replacement of damaged or missing limbs and organs, the military has actively pursued the development of a wearable exoskeleton to enhance the strength and mobility of soldiers in the field.

Are Cyborgs and Iron Man suits really that far out anymore?

What does this mean for our humanity? While no one will question that the person with an artificial limb or pacemaker is still completely human, will we ever reach a point in our cybernetic organism technology where a person will physically be more machine than living flesh and blood? Even if that becomes the case, is our humanity really at risk?

Having no personal experience with having prosthetic limbs, I can't speak with authority, but having a lot of experience being human, I have to say that a person is more than flesh, blood, and skin. What makes us human, for better or for worse, is that thing we can't really tie to our physicalness: personality, spirit, and dare I say it, "the soul". Sure, all that can potentially be tied into manifestations of the brain, we still can't escape the dilemna of the ghost in the machine; the sense of ourselves we can't directly tie into any function we can map in the human brain. That's the shadow realm where our humanity; our personhood resides.

When I was reading Charles Okeke's story, I imagined the fear I'd feel, walking out of the hospital and going home, trusting my life to a machine implanted in my chest that's powered by a device I'm wearing like a backpack. Yet I take my human heart for granted all the time and never worry about a sudden heart attack. If I had an artificial heart and two bionic legs, would I still feel human? Note, I didn't ask "would I still be human?" because I know in abstract, I would be.

How I'd feel, on the other hand, is what has been explored in fiction from Caidin's Steve Austin to Pohl's Roger Torraway. At the end of both novels, both men realize they are still men, and it's not their mechanical parts that defines them. Even the best of us tend to turn away or at least find it necessary to suppress the urge, when we see a person with a missing limb or some other form of disfigurement. Yet these people are...people, regardless if there is naked space where an arm used to be or a bionic replacement.

The people who should question their humanity aren't the ones with mechanical body parts but those of us who cringe or shudder, even subconsciously, when we see someone who has such replacements. I'm not nobel. I'm writing this because it's an issue I have, but at least I recognize it as a fault that is my own. If we can advance our technology to the level where we can return mobility and even life to people who have suffered catastrophic illnesses and accidents, we indeeed need to do so. Just because someone doesn't look like us, doesn't mean they're not the same as us. No more prejudice and bigotry, please.

One of my favorite quotes was written by the late Archie Goodwin in issue number 2 of the 1968 Iron Man comic book series titled "Enter the Demolisher". A rival industrialist named Cord, who was driven to bankruptcy by Stark, builds a robot called the Demolisher to defeat Stark's greatest creation: Iron Man. Cord wants to have the Demolisher defeat Iron Man, and bring him to Cord's factory, where Cord can then film how his own creation has defeated Stark's much vaunted super-armor.

While the robot does indeed bring a near-helpless Iron Man to it's programmed destination, Cord doesn't count on his daughter showing up, trying to convince her father to abandon his mad plan, or the fact that the robot, damaged in the fight, has gone out of Cord's control and is running on an internal program that includes killing Iron Man at all costs, even if it has to go through Cord's daughter to do it.

In the final moments of the fight, Tony shields the young girl's body with his own armored form as the robot fires a heat beam at her. Iron Man is helpless to fight back, since making any move will expose Cord's daughter to the deadly beam, killing her instantly. As the back of Tony's armor begins to melt, Cord himself, realizing that the only thing standing between his daughter and death is the man he had hoped to destroy, hits a vulnerable spot on the damaged Destroyer with a metal rod, distracting it just long enough for Iron Man to turn and strike back. Tony risks a fatal heart attack as his power levels continue to plummet, by attacking the robot with all his remaining strength, defeating his mechanical opponent, saving the life of Cord's daughter as well as his own.

Although he saves the girl's life, Cord himself is fatally injured. As he looks up at his daughter and the man in armor, his final words reflect his realization that no machine can replace or enhance Iron Man's essential powers; the abilities that count for more in this world than what any machine can produce:

..a human heart...and courage.

Thank you, Mr. Goodwin for the reminder that it's not the armor or the mechanics that matter most...it's our humanity.

Addendum: Oh crap! When I wrote this yesterday, I didn't think about the danger from software corruption and computer viruses to humans with advanced prosthetic devices. Mark Gasson, senior research fellow at the University of Reading's School of Systems Engineering has. Outlined in the article Scientist infects himself with computer virus. Hackers will someday soon literally be able to cripple and kill human beings with a computer virus.

Underneath the Mask

It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me. -Wayne (as Batman)

You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for. -Ray Bradbury

Who am I? The person you see here isn't all that there is. This is a place where I can be all of the things people don't want me to be and I can say all the things people don't want me to say. I speak cynically but proceed hopefully. The rest of me lies elsewhere.

The above paragraph encloses the words I choose to define myself on my blog, yet as the quote from Batman Begins (2005) shows, it's behavior that defines a person, not anything they may be under the skin, or the mask.

I talk about masks on this blog. What is it that people see when they look at us, our face or our mask? Are we always transparent to our family, friends, and acquaintances, or do we put on a mask for their sakes or for our own? Chances are the latter. According to social role theory:

This is the principle that men and women behave differently in social situations and take different roles, due to the expectations that society puts upon them...

Wikipedia defines a role as:

...a set of connected behaviors, rights and obligations as conceptualized by actors in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continously changing behavior and may have a given individual social status or social position. It is vital to both functionalist and interactionist understandings of society.

Bruce Wayne took on the persona of Batman, not just to be something scary to the bad guys, but because as Bruce Wayne, he couldn't create the impact on his environment that was required to achieve his goals. Clark Kent took on the role of Superman in order to be able to compartmentalize the different ways he needed to express himself, with Clark as the "normal" human persona where he lives his day-to-day life, and Superman as the demonstration of his need and duty to use all of his abilities in the service of humanity.

While you and I are not such dramatic or nobel beings (at least for the most part), we too take on different roles, different masks, depending on the situation and circumstance.

I once had a police officer ask me why he was a confident public speaker while in uniform but such a total klutz at speaking to audiences when in plain clothes. The answer was immediately obvious to me and should be to you if you've been following along with my theme of Masks.

While our masks or our roles are built in for the most part, we do choose to use them or not use them. An extreme example is the character of House on the TV show of the same name, who will say and do just about anything that comes into his head without regard for social norms and expectation. He often reaps the consequences, but not as much as the rest of us might. I guess that's one of the benefits of being (at least in fiction) one of the world's top medical diagnotic experts. People have to put up with you.

Of course, the rest of us don't have to be accepted by anyone. There are those people who feel they should put up with you, regardless of your behavior, but they're usually family and beyond a certain point, even they will push you aside. Even if they do accept you after some completely amazing social gaffe, they are likely never to let you forget what you've done and how they suffered terribly as they "stuck by you" through the mess you caused. So much for "forgive and forget". Even if you're forgiven (provisionally), people, unlike elephants, never forget.

But if you dig around the edges of our social masks, isn't it really cowardace that keeps us hiding who we really are? Is it actually our behavior that defines us when we behave in a way that others expect, rather than the way we want? Are we sacrificing ourselves for the welfare of others or just making sure they'll keep being our acquaintances and friends (and family) by doing what they want and expect?

If the latter is true, then most of us are cowards most of the time. I fall into that category as well, which is why I maintain this blog, so I can write about what I want without the social barrier of my mask.

In the Star Trek: the Next Generation episode Masks it was indeed the masks that defined the characters. The story goes like this:

While the Enterprise makes an astronomical study of a 87 million year old rogue comet, it discovers a ship-like construction, possibly the nucleus, which contains alien artifacts constituting the 'archive' of an Ancient culture. From then on the aliens take over, 'possessing' Data's positronic network to give him several of their personalities, including the talkative Ehad and the feared queen Musaka. Alas they also transform matter and even genetics aboard, so as to turn the ship into a city their style. Picard resolves to stop that by understanding and playing the key alien characters. -Masks Plot Summary

Captain Picard resolves the problem and banishes the Masaka personality dominating Data by donning a mask and posing as Masaka's consort and counterpart Korgano, but it's the mask of Korgano that defines him so that he's no longer seen as Picard (who Masaka/Data would not be influenced by).

Another way then, to look at our social masks is as a means to be able to behave in necessary ways. If what we do, rather than who we are, is our true defining attribute, then the masks we wear are the costuming or armor we need in order to express that behavior.

We learn most of our masks as we grow up. Everytime children display "inappropriate" behavior, their parents (or some adult) usually says "No!" Hearing "no" enough times and really wanting to hear "yes", we modify our behavior, regardless of our internal desires, to elicit that "yes". In other words, we start making masks.

Our masks aren't perfect, because people aren't perfectly socially compliant. We don't always defer our internal wants and needs in the service of social requirements and occasionally, that causes pain and anguish. If the mask cracks or even shatters, we have to perform damage control, get out the paste and clay, form the mask again, or construct a new one.

However, I don't think of masks as cowardance. Sure, people say "honesty is the best policy", but "excessive honesty" comes at a high social price. That price isn't paid just by the individual but by everyone around him or her who's hurt by the "unmasking".

How many people would become vulnerable to Superman's enemies if Clark were to tell the world of his Kryptonian origins? Who would get hurt if Batman were to unmask? Who gets hurt if we unmask ourselves, even if we think it's in secret?

Life is a balance between our "secret" and "true" identities. No one survives or at least survives well by completely and totally suppressing their personal wants and needs, but unlike toddlers, we don't have the privilege of saying and doing everything we want all the time, expecting our "parents" to save us from the consequences.

The masks are necessary. The masks are important. If what we do defines us, then we need the masks in order to fulfill the definition. The Tony Stark of the movies blurred the lines between mask and face when he said "I am Iron Man" at the climax of the first Iron Man film, yet Stark and Iron Man remain separate "personas", each appearing when a particular role needs to be fulfilled.

That's probably the most real-to-life depiction of a super hero relative to us. We don't literally change identities (for the most part) when we take on a role. People still know who we are, regardless of the mask we happen to be wearing at the time, yet we can only behave as the situation requires when we wear the "matching" mask. Tony wears his Iron Man mask when he's battling some armored or robotic foe, but dons his "Tony mask" when dazzling an audience with his wit or trying to seduce a woman (the latter would be hard to do encased head to toe in a titanium alloy shell).

I sometimes don't like the demands of the mask, but I probably am still having trouble balancing the inner and outer person. I suspect we all encounter that issue from time to time. The masks aren't bad, as long as we don't let them rule us. It's how we manage our roles that defines us, giving us the ability to do what we need to do and what we must do when we are called upon.

Why did I write this today?

You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for. -Ray Bradbury

Before Iron Man: Rocketman!

Before Iron Man, before Captain Proton, before The Rocketeer, there was Rocketman!

OK, this is lighter than my usual fare, but with all the Iron Man 2 frenzy in the news just now, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look back in time, to see some of the other heroes that lent their image and talents to the creation of Tony Stark's armored alter ego.

Iron Man made his comic book debut in March 1963 in Tales of Suspense issue 39. Marvel was still coming out of its monster/mystery/horror phase and old shellhead had to share the spotlight with a second story, completely unrelated to the super hero genre, and would continue to do so for a number of issues, until Tales of Suspense shifted to featuring Captain America as the other feature.

I want to take a look further back in time though, and then work forward. Most people reading this probably have no idea who or what Rocketman is, or rather, who he was. Unless you're over 50 or are a student of film history, you won't remember or know about the old movie serials. These were mini-films, usually shown before the main movie in theatres during the 1940s and 50s. They were shown episodically each week, encouraging audiences, especially young audiences, to visit the theatre weekly to see the next episode.

Typically, they were cheaply made, with poor special effects, writing, and acting, but were filled with adventure, excitement, and mystery. They almost always ended on a "cliffhanger" (sometimes literally), with the hero or heroine in desperate peril at the final frame. To see if they made it out of their jam, you had to come back next week, shell out 25 to 50 cents (movies were cheap back then) and see what happened. They always had happy endings of course, and were the fabric of many future adventure films. In fact, if you pay close attention the next time you watch Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark, you'll be able to see the scenes that were homage pieces to the serial cliffhangers.

Rocketman started out in the serial King of the Rocketman in 1949, followed by the serial features Radar Men from the Moon (1952), Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952), and Commando Cody, Sky Marshall of the Universe (1953).

If Rocketman's appearance seems familiar, you are probably associating him with the 1991 film The Rocketter, which was based on the 1982 limited comic series by the same name, masterfully written and illustrated by the late Dave Stevens.

You may also notice the resemblance to the Captain Proton character of Tom Paris's holodeck fantasies if you are a fan of the Star Trek: Voyager TV show. Paris (and actor Robert Duncan McNeill) played the role to its finest level of camp, but unfortunately, some "real" danger almost always interrupted Tom's "holo pursuits".

While today's Iron Man bears only a slight resemblance to Rocketman, usually because of the helmet/full-face covering, Stark, in his armor, are among the latest (in film , anyway) inheritors to the scientist-dons-invention-costume-to-become-hero legacy of the Rocketman-like characters. The Iron Man films, and really any film made with modern technology and production values, are infinitely superior to all of the old Rocketman serial adventures, but it never hurts to take a look at where today's heroes came from.

Our generation didn't create adventure, we just get to enjoy the campy, pulp fiction foundation on which it’s built. At the risk of surrendering to some of that camp, "Go Rocketman go!"