. . . my favorite part was his relationship with his robots.
I wasn't very enthused about this initially, but all the massive squee on my reading list had me more optimistic. Alas, apparently I'm the only person in the world who was bored by this, but bored I was.
The only, only thing that surprised me? Was that Jeff Bridges' character wasn't revealed to have killed Stark's parents. That's it.
My other impressions can be summed up as "what these people need is a honky" [1] and "appeal of the lawless elite" [2].
But I really did like the robots.
[1] A.K.A. the white savior genre, in which a non-white society exists solely to open the eyes of a white guy—up to and including the noble self-sacrifice of a non-white person in his service—and then be partly saved by the white guy to demonstrate his transformation. Because, you know, it's all about the white guys (more).
[2] A.K.A. extrajudicial violence is bad, except when it's wielded by people we like, and then we can have our cake and eat it too—err, condemn violence while reveling in it (more).
[The icon is an acknowledgement that I am not above the appeal of this.]
Trailers: The Dark Knight looks really awesome. I may even watch the first one all the way through as prep (saw the end on hotel TV once and wasn't impressed). New Indiana Jones, I just don't know, but I'm willing to be convinced. The Incredible Hulk . . . well, on one hand, Edward Norton, but on the other, Liv Tyler, so . . .
ETA: oh, yes, there is an extra scene after the credits, but the credits are so long and the scene is so short that I can't recommend staying for it.
Somehow, though, I enjoyed the heck out of its shininess. I think part of what made it enjoyable for me was that I could, in my head, imagine Tony's moral consciousness arc going up further than the film took it. It was problems + the fact that the morality of the main protag wasn't static that made the problems (sexism, ethnocentrism, elitism) workable. (I walked out of the theater thinking that Stane had a point about the hypocrisy of Tony's anti-weapon response being to make the biggest, baddest weapon ever and I wanted to write fic inspired by that quote “The poor object to being governed badly. The rich object to being governed at all.”) For that reason, I'm not sure I'll enjoy the next film, where they will have no doubt established their status quo and behave as if, now that Tony's had an epiphany, everything he does is mostly right.
Or that he's a drunkard who can't handle the responsibility, and someone else has to wear the suit for him.