Iron Man

What warm-blooded stock broker wouldn't love a movie starring a high-powered capitalist? Billionaire Tony Stark is a real American hero. He's a war profiteer who loves cars, gadgets, pussy, and fast food cheeseburgers. Best of all, like the best of capitalists, he's quite literally heartless! Milton Friedman must be saluting the flag from his fucking grave.

This movie begins with Tony Stark, a freedom-loving MIT graduate (unlike most of the Marxist pinko bastards that come out of Cambridge) showing off his company Stark Industries' (STK 75.51) newest missiles to the American government in the terrorist hotbed of Afghanistan. There's a couple badass explosions involved, and a few free market-haters get their asses kicked, but not before the Arabs manage to kidnap Stark and force him to build his Jericho missile for them. But instead of building it, he builds a motherfucking suit and beats the shit out of those Osama motherfuckers. Free Market: 1. Terrorism: 0!

The message here is clear: Tony Stark/Iron Man/America is the motherfucking pinnacle of techno-capitalist invention. If you want your kids to grow up big and rich, like me, pack 'em in the Hummer and take 'em to see this shit. In one scene, we see Iron Man save a bunch of starving Afghanis from a group of jihadi motherfuckers. Them A-rabs cheers him as he flies away. The subtext is obvious here, folks: America is the fucking Freedom-Giving Bomb-diggity. Paging Ayn Rand: Your vision is complete--Tony Stark IS Motherfucking Howard Roark, and he's not raping Dominique Francon. He's raping Terrorism.

And then when Tony Stark uses his American brilliance to invent his way out of the cave, defeating the terrorists, and goes back to America and the first thing he wants is a Burger King (BKC 26.88) cheeseburger, I was so full of goddamn patriotic pride and shit that I had to leave the theater to call my broker and tell him to buy 10,000 shares immediately.

Message: American CFOs like Howard Stark are motherfucking badass, ergo America is motherfucking badass, ergo the goddamn jihadi motherfuckers in Afghanistan can't live without our damn help. Those whateverastanis should be thankful they've got America on our side, lest Iron Man fly over and lay a smack down on their sorry asses. Really, Iron Man is just glorified symbolism for the American Military-Industrial complex, and hence a big fuck-you to pussyfooted multilateralists and isolationists like Eisenhower and Chomsky.

Now that I think about it, this is the kind of film I think I'd really like to see with Michael Bloomberg, or Ronald Reagan, or even Dick Cheney. I can just see the old bastard Cheney sobbing in ecstasy at the sight of a modern Halliburton Hero like Tony Stark kicking the collective Ass of the Enemies of the Free Market.

Next, we see the Stark Industries company takeover actualized with a physical battle between Stark and company CEO Obadiah Stane, dressed in full ass-kicking (American-mined) iron/titanium regalia. This is where the movie got a little too "moral transformationy" for my Rich Ass. Here, the CEO (Stane) attempts to off Stark from the board by trying to kill him, while Stark plays Mr. Passive Nonviolent. Hold on, Stane, real capitalists don't do it like that. We just smear our enemies in the tabloids and tempt them with paid hookers. Murder's a bit too much of a liability, especially when it's carried out in person by the guy who wants to off you. At the very least hire a hit man to do the job. Didn't he see Michael Clayton?

Rating: $$$$ 1/2 (4.5 USD / 5 USD)
Product Placement: Burger King, Audi, 7-11
Invest in: Burger King (BKC 26.88), Stark Industries (STK 75.51), Halliburton (HAL 45.89)