Last night I checked out the Iron Man movie. It is just as fantastic as it was meant to be, but that’s just my initial reaction. We’ll see how I feel in a couple days. Ah, hell. I’ll still probably love it.

About a month back, I read through Peter David’s novelization, so I got the gist of how good this would be. Like Spider-Man 3, it was based on an earlier or fuller version of the movie before scenes got cut or, in the case of this movie, replaced. Spider-Man 3 was about character-building scenes getting cut for the sake of time and allowing more focus on Mary Jane’s constant whining. With Iron Man, most of the scenes were cut for time, or in other cases, to totally fuck over Terrance Howard as Jim Rhodes. The poor guy gets devoured by editing. According to interviews, in return for their involvement in the film, the Air Force insisted on having control of the character and refused some of his character actions. That explains that.

It’s also worth noting that director Favreau was into improvisation, which does alter a couple scenes here and there on the dialogue side of things..

This is going to be filled with spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want to know about the scene where Titanium Man beats up an army of ballerinas, go make yourself a sandwich. Or go see the movie. You’d be glad you did.

– Even though Rhodes is in the same vehicle as Stark in the opening drive through Afghanistan, they are still traveling in the same group. When the ambush happens, Rhodes is at the scene fighting back and telling Tony to stay down. Although he isn’t successful in saving Tony, due to the hit-and-run aspect of the terrorist attack, Rhodes isn’t killed.

– During the gambling sequence there’s a separate part where Tony takes three million dollars he has accumulated over the night and bets it on black in roulette despite Rhodes’ gut feeling that he should go with red. The casino employee taking care of the table is afraid that it’s too high of a bet, but his superior gives him the okay. Other gamblers go with Tony’s instincts, but Rhodes was right and Tony loses the three million. Tony, Rhodes and Hogan leave together after that.

– When reporter Christine Everhart wakes up and runs into JARVIS, Pepper explains to her that JARVIS stands for “Just A Really Very Intelligent System”. When Christine leaves with her laundry in hand, Pepper informs her to pull down the back of her shirt, which was riding up and showing a little more of Christine’s backside than she would have wanted. Less about Christine being a bitch to Pepper and more about Pepper owning the scene.

– With Tony and Rhodes drunk on the plane, there’s a bit where they get into a bit of an argument over how predictable Rhodes is when inebriated and how he seems to rant about the same topics over and over again. Rhodes gets fed up and says he’d rather be in the company of the plane’s pilot, especially since he’s impressed with the pilot’s skill. Tony invites Rhodes to go hang out with the pilot, seeing as how they have the same personality anyway. Rhodes goes into the cockpit and finds the plane being piloted by some kind of robot/computer thing. Angry at the insinuation, he storms back to Tony and says, “That’s funny.”

Acting shocked, Tony responds, “You can tell?”

– The cave section of the movie got a lot of stuff cut, which I suppose isn’t so much of a bad thing. While that part of the movie wasn’t bad, it definitely shouldn’t have been any longer. We see more of Yinsen here, showing that despite his situation, he insists on shaving regularly and cleaning his clothes because looking like an animal is one step away from acting like one. When Tony initially refuses to build the Jericho missile, it’s because Yinsen has told him to. Then Yinsen yells at him for refusing as a way to get in the good graces of the terrorists.

There’s more stuff about fooling the terrorists, especially the ones on surveillance. When asking for parts for the missile, Tony asks for a washing machine. Other than the comedy factor, nothing is done with this. At one point the heavier terrorist stops in and picks up his laundry, as done by Yinsen.

Another thing is a bit of a subplot relating to a Mets watch one of the soldiers from the opening scene was wearing. Tony notices that one of the terrorists has stolen the watch from the kid. It’s the same guy who accidentally shoots himself in the head. After that happens, Iron Man just stomps down on the guy’s wrist and destroys the watch. I doubt this was actually filmed.

They aren’t outright referred to as the Ten Rings, but their flag is described as ten rings linked together.

– Rhodes is told by his superiors not to handle the situation with Tony’s disappearance himself, especially when more time passes. When speaking to Pepper on the phone about Tony’s whereabouts, she acts extremely emotional about it.

Later on, Happy Hogan comes to Rhodes and asks him to do more about finding Tony. Rhodes asks if Pepper asked Happy to confront him like this, to which Happy says yes and no. Pepper didn’t give any orders, but she’s so broken up about this whole situation that Happy felt he needed to do something. This hints at the Happy/Pepper relationship. Leave it to Favreau to drop his only real scene from the movie.

– Upon discovering Tony in the desert, Rhodes freaks out over the chest device and thinks it’s a bomb. Before Rhodes can try and take it apart, Tony tells him to stop. It’s not a bomb, but a reminder.

– When asking for a cheeseburger and a press conference, Tony also mentions that he wants a hot blond. This ties into another cut moment from the party where Pepper lets Tony know that she is not a cheeseburger.

– There is a scene about Tony going over the specs for the new chest piece with JARVIS, but nothing is lost from its absence.

– Tony and Pepper giving Agent Coulson the slip happens a lot more often to the point that it’s an annoying running gag. Usually one of the two is in the middle of a major situation and have to just toss him aside for later.

– During the Mark II testing, there is no ice build-up scene. Iron Man gets so lost in himself while flying upwards that JARVIS steps in and shuts off his power for his own good. Probably better that they changed it.

– As Stane visits Tony with a box of pizza, the tone is very different. There is no tension and the two seem to get along very well. There’s a definite fatherly vibe from Stane, who champions most of Tony’s ideas. Tony brings up his meeting with Rhodes – the one where he outright refused to help him and instead tried to push him back towards weapon-making – and Stane sides with Tony. He even mentions that Jim Rhodes is “part of the war machine”.

In this scene there is a part where Stane pours a scotch for each of them. Tony hesitates and then decides to refuse, surprising Stane.

– During the Air Force vs. Iron Man sequence, Tony doesn’t tell Rhodes over the phone that it’s him. Instead, Rhodes figures it out himself. When he does so, he lets out a huge yell of, “Son of a bitch!” which gets the confused attention of those around him.

– Here is the biggest change in the movie. An entire chunk of it was changed over, most likely due to the Air Force’s say so. It starts with the part where Tony starts using his repulsors on everything in his workshop while in a rage over the Ten Rings’ shenanigans. Pepper comes in, obviously mad at being stood up at the party, but Tony pays that no mind. He tells her to throw a party and his beach house ASAP. Pepper devolves back into assistant mode and prepares it, though confused at his actions.

This party is where the Ghostface Killa cameo was meant to happen. He plays a tycoon who meets Tony and says, “Tony, you never said – what’s the big occasion?”

“Ever known me to need one?”

The tycoon laughs it off and Tony moves on. He gets together with a couple drunk women and brings them to his room. He tells them to get started without him and sneaks off with his briefcase. He unpacks the armor and flies off, all while the guests are distracted by a fireworks display.

The next couple segments are more or less the same until the Air Force situation.

After Iron Man saves the pilot and releases his parachute, the remaining plane is still ordered to go after him. It succeeds in nailing him with a missile. Iron Man somehow escapes and barely gets back home alive.

Pepper has not only found no sign of the boss, but the two women he was with say he never joined them. Pepper searches the grounds for Tony, but finds nothing. She drifts off for a bit, only to be awakened by a huge crash. She runs upstairs and finds Iron Man in a chair, burnt and dented to all hell with the helmet off. Tony’s bleeding, holding a glass of alcohol in his hand and shaking so much that the liquid can barely stay in the glass. Before passing out, he pleads with Pepper for help.

Rhodes goes to see if Tony is okay, leading to some major tension between he and Pepper. They blame each other for what happened, including a line where Pepper tells Rhodes, “You want to see him? Fine. See what you’ve done to him.”

When Rhodes does see Tony, he tells him that he’s figured out he’s Iron Man, but he understands what he was trying to do. They have a heart-to-heart talk, where Tony apologizes for never thanking him for saving his life. Rhodes adds that he’s saved his life twice.

Tony recuperates and we get the scene where he asks Pepper to go on his hacking mission. Her refusal due to fear Tony might kill himself is more appreciated in this version of the story, considering how close he really did come to it.

I suppose this was all taken out because the Air Force wasn’t in love with the idea of being deemed antagonists that blindly go after a popular hero. In fact, that later scene of Rhodes convincing them not to interfere in the Iron Man vs. Iron Monger fight, thereby redeeming them for attacking in the first place, doesn’t exist here.

– When Raza, the terrorist with the burned face, meets up with Stane, there are more allusions to the Mandarin.

“You paid us trinkets to kill a prince. An insult to me, and the man whose ring I wear.”

“I think it’s best we don’t get him involved in this.”

After paralyzing Raza, Stane then removes his ring and pockets it for himself. There is no follow-up to this.

– A flashback is depicted of Pepper meeting Tony for the first time. She was a secretary or something of the sort that noticed the numbers were off on a project. When telling her boss, she was told she was wrong by default. Pushing the subject got her fired, so she stormed into Tony’s office and yelled about how his numbers were screwy. Security came in to remove her and she warned them, quite unconvincingly, that she had pepper spray.

Tony reviewed her claims and found that he did in fact screw up. He called off his guards and apologized to the fired secretary. He rehired her as his personal assistant, since she’s such a horrible liar and wouldn’t simply kiss up to him on a constant basis. He gave her the nickname Pepper, due to her comical pepper spray threat. I highly doubt this was even meant to be filmed in the first place, considering the placement in the story is really suspect.

– There’s a plot hole in the movie that you may have noticed. Pepper leaves Stane’s office and hooks up with Agent Coulson. By the time she gets around to calling Tony, something REALLY important and urgent, Stane has had enough time to drive to his home and sneak in.

That’s because in the original version, Coulson isn’t as friendly. He forcibly confronts her, sick of being ignored for so long. SHIELD doesn’t know about Tony Stark’s superhero escapades. They believe that the terrorists may have brainwashed him, which is why he’s so out of character since coming back. Pepper has the SHIELD guys go through the downloaded information she stole from Stane to convince them, then finally gets a chance to give Tony a call. She isn’t very happy with Coulson and SHIELD, knowing that by tying her up with all of this, Stane was able to attack Tony.

– The scene where Stane yells at the one engineer for not being able to make the Iron Monger armor fully operational is cut off in the movie. Once Stane gets the idea to steal Tony’s chest device, he calms down and becomes the faux nice guy we’ve seen for the first 2/3 of the movie. He tells the worker to go home and that there would be no worries.

– Stane paralyzing Tony isn’t so much of a ninja sneak attack like it is in the movie. Stane comes to Tony’s place with another pizza and tries to talk things over with him. He gives his resignation, admitting that it isn’t his company to run. When Pepper tries to call, Stane convinces him to deal with that later, as their conversation is far more important. He asks for Tony’s blessing and handshake so that they can leave on good terms, only to use his paralyzing device on him.

– The War Machine blue balls scene is different. Once Iron Man flies off, Rhodes picks up the Mark II helmet and tries to put it on. It doesn’t fit, causing him to mutter, “Damn,” and instead go for the car. Not nearly as badass as what we got in the movie.

– The fight with Iron Monger has its differences. When he holds the station wagon over his head, Iron Man tells him that this is between the two of them. Innocents shouldn’t get involved.

Stane responds, “People are always going to die, Tony. Part of the chess game.”

Since there was no ice build-up scene earlier, there’s no callback to it. Here, it’s Rhodey who temporarily saves the day. He drives Tony’s car into Iron Monger’s leg at full speed, which somehow causes Iron Monger to accidentally blow up a bus. The explosion makes it seem for the moment that Iron Monger is destroyed.

Iron Man is angry at Rhodes for destroying his prized car while Rhodes is angry at the lack of a “thank you”.

When the generator knocks out the power to the Iron Monger armor, Stane doesn’t immediately fall to his death. He gets enough time for last words.

“I guess this is a draw. The genie is out of the bottle. We’ve done our part. We’ve brought a great gift to the world and now it is time to go. That is the law of nature, Tony.”

The roof gives way and Stane dies. Iron Man responds, “And that is the law of gravity.”

– Speaking of the generator, that is one of the better changes. In the movie, it’s used mainly as a last resort weapon to destroy Iron Monger. That’s cool.

In the book, the generator is busted up and it’s going to explode, taking out the surrounding city. Pepper has to disarm it with Tony’s directions. Rather than fight Iron Monger, Iron Man is more trying to just get him out of the way so he can save everyone from the big explosion. The big column of light that defeats Iron Monger is simply a side-effect of Pepper pressing the red button at the right time. That’s lame.

– At my job, we received three different Iron Man novelizations. There’s the regular version that I read, a teen version and a kids version. Out of curiosity, I read the latter two’s final scenes. Instead of the press conference, they both end with the final meeting between Tony and Pepper. Since Pepper’s already told off Tony for standing her up at the party, she brings up that night as the time she made a brief error in judgment that will never happen again. When she leaves, Tony smirks, as if to say, “Yeah, right.”

The Peter David version is different here, having Tony feeling regretful and depressed after she leaves. Take that as you will.

That’s about it, from what my memory churns out. How is it that Iron Man makes for one of the better live action superhero movies and Invincible Iron Man is one of the worst animated superhero movies? Maybe that’s an article for another day.

Speaking of other articles for other days, I suppose I’ll probably be doing this same thing with the Incredible Hulk novelization. Considering how much political yammering was going on with that production, I’m sure there’ll probably be about 50 pages worth of changes for me to talk about.

Similar Posts:

• Iron Man 2: The Deleted Scenes
• Review: Peter David’s Iron Man Movie Novelization FIGHTS! and FIGHTS! with Repulsor Rays!
• The Iron Man 2 Novelization: Whips, Widows and War Machines
• Tony Stark? Meet Tony Starks.
• Guest Article: A.o.D. Loves Iron Man Like Tony Loves the Women

Posted in comic books, Deleted Scenes, Lists by Gavok |