I have niece who loves Iron Man, in part because I think it's one of the first "grown up" movie her parents let her watch. Yes, her parents are those people who didn't own a television at all for years and then regulated their children's viewing strictly. I can't argue with it, as the girl was salutatorian this year and her only complaint is that she was wait-listed for MIT. Yet it means I've heard a lot about how great these movies are from someone who I love and who I try to not scar with witnessing drunken nerd arguments, which just make her realize how incredibly nerdy her uncle can be (she knows it anyways, she's from that Gen Y cool nerd generation, where they aren't nerds.)
I admit, I enjoyed Iron Man when I saw it, even got some pantswood when they played that snip of Suicidal Tendencies, happy that the sound track catered to middle-aged men.
Then they came out with two more of these "blockbusters" and all of them are heavily hyped. You can't miss the ads, you can't miss the PR planted interviews. I have friend who keeps suggesting we see the latest as it's still at the multiplex.
So three time now, I've watched the rounds of interviews with Stan Lee, revered as a comic book God, who is now a movie mogul super genius. That doesn't include the times Kevin Smith makes his tongue all pointy and crams it up.... I get it. OK, half the movie franchises out there came out of Stan Lee's brain-loins.
What pisses me off is his rehearsed story of how he came up with Iron Man. Yes, I understand that all successful people rehearse such stories, as they do dozens of interviews. I've just seen his a few times.
Yet here is my claim, one I haven't seen yet on the usual sites that compile lists of such things. It's most likely out there, but I have to say it.
Stan Lee is a bitch-ass thief and needs to admit it.
Point one.
Tony Stark is just a smarmy version of Batman. He's a billionaire inventor who uses his inventions to fight crime. Yeah yeah, nerd hordes about to stick me for saying Batman, when I actually should be referencing some prior billionaire crime fighter, I get it.
Point Two
What makes Iron Man is his gear. As point one makes clear, without that flying suit, Iron Man is basically just Batman, or Green Arrow, or whoever the Ur-text Millionaire playboy crime fighter is (the phantom?)
The gear is a direct rip off.
It's stolen, like a George Lucas Ewok. In 1960, Robert A. Heinlein came out with one of his four Hugo Award winning novels, Starship Troopers. Which just happens to be a novel of about future soldiers who spend their time killing aliens while dressed up in armored suits, which happen to do cool things like fly, shoot missiles, and have hand flamethrowers, etc... Basically a book about warfare if the military had such things.
Yet I digress.
So 1960 Heinlein wins a Hugo award.
1963 Stan Lee "invents" a man in a flying armored suit who is a billionaire crime fighting playboy.
2008 it's a giant movie franchise and Robert Heinlein gets no respect from the teens, because when they decided to make his book into the movie Starship Troopers in 1997, they cut out the armored flying suits in favor of beautiful people in space and adding in some subplot where Doogie Howser has an even bigger super brain. Blow your budget on CGI space ships (or maybe you're afraid of covering up the space teen throbs' faces) and you lose your opportunity to have everyone say "Didn't they make something like Ironman ten years ago?"
And Stan Lee won't even credit the man who;s idea he borrowed. Sure we all steal ideas, but you should at least be willing to acknowledge where you got the idea, even if you then spend ten minutes detailing why his idea merely inspired you.
Which is why Stan Lee is a bitch-ass thief.
OK, OK, I'll now shut up about it. Well till Orson Scott Card starts his press junket talking about where he got inspiration for Ender's Game, in which case I'll feel a need to start again by pointing out what that series owes to Starship Troopers.
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