Well, again…this seems the least implausibe thing to me. The entire concept is fiction, ehe? It’s funny to nitpick something like the fact the tank round missed (hell, we are talking about a Russian T-72 that has been in the hands of Afghani rebels or some such for gods know how many years firing at a man sized target…it would be more implausible if it actually hit something! ) when all that other stuff is happening, ehe?
Anyway, hopefully none of this is considered spoiler material as it’s all in the previews (and I’ve seen this scene on TV actually)…
It wasn’t really a T-72, but a rebuilt platform on a T-72 chassis and cupola, using a new main gun designed by the same company that, 300 years from now, will develop the phaser bolt that can be dodged as well.
Actually, [The real limiting factor in a powered exoskeleton indented for use in field combat is . . .
As discussed in [url=http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=279802]this old CS thread.](]you can.[/url)
Yeh . . . So you’ve got your “arc reactor” as a black-box power source, but where are you getting your reaction mass?! I don’t see no rocket-fuel tanks on that suit!
Probably. There is a scene where they hold a guy’s head down on an anvil and are questioning him while getting ready to shove a red hot coal into his mouth. It seemed like a a really horrible way to go to me, but I’m weak little girly with an active imagination and empathy for secondary characters.
Now that we’ve started the nit-picking, I’ve got one. When Tony is replacing his little glowie reactor power source thingie and has Pepper helping him, he tells her not to pull the wire completely out. She does anyway and out pops the electromagnet, the whole reason for the power source and the one thing keeping the shrapnel from advancing to his heart. He doesn’t replace the electromagnet and just inserts the new power source. Of all the things in this movie that require suspension of disbelief, this is the one that made me go, “WTF?”
For me it was when Tony was first working on the flight controls in the Mark II suit in his garage and asks it to go to 3% power…and promptly smashes into the roof at about 10 gees then crashes to the floor from about 15 feet up…and then shakes his head and walks away. I was thinking ‘yeah, right!’ at the time.
The dodging tank rounds and flying about, deflecting bullets with one arm and shrugging off RPG rounds…I didn’t bat an eye for any of that stuff to be honest. Even the making of advanced power sources in a cave in Afghanistan didn’t really phase me much…
Maybe you missed Happy. He was the character Jon Favreau played – Tony’s limo driver. Maybe he’ll have more to do in the sequels than drive and buy cheeseburgers, but he was there.
Just got back from seeing it. Fun popcorn movie, even my wife liked it and she’s not real keen for “everything blows up” movies. The dialog was really awesome in spots. The plot was a mish-mash, but not horrid by any means.
Tony spent far too much time making that suit – they could have dispensed with that in about 3 scenes or less – Tony designing stuff on the computer, show us the CAD model and him tinkering with it; intercut to something else, return to Tony assembling something; intercut again, return to Tony entering the suit and doing his flying thing. Time has clearly passed, Tony has the suit, and we can get on with the story. Somewhere in there the “Tony has a heart” scene happens.
(I didn’t spoiler the above because I didn’t think it spoiled any important plot points – who wouldn’t know that the movie includes Downy’s character building a metal suit?)
OK, gotta do the guitar geekage: what were the two guitars parked in Tony’s house? I thought I saw a Telecaster and a Gibson semi-hollow, but the cutaways on the latter didn’t look typical to me.
But also after Tony has his big conversion. If he’d come back totally catatonic, Stane wouldn’t have been as mad.
And…I’ve heard thirdhand that there’s a glimpse of a familiar-looking shield somewhere in Tony’s house. Yesno?
Second time around, you may not have as much patience with the movie. You start to realise that it shares the EXACT SAME TEMPLATE as the first Spider-Man movie.
I have no real problems with the science of the movie… Stark built a miniature Arc-Reactor that can power his suit. Were it to be instead, say, a miniature diesel engine, then of course, you’d be wondering about fuel and such like, but for all we know, arc-reactor run on sweat.
What I would have prefered, though, were if the arc-reactor was powered by Starks Heartbeat. So that Stark needed it to stay alive, instead of getting corrective surgery to remove the shrapnel the second he arrived home. It should have been that the second the arc reactor was removed, Stark would be killed by the shrapnel. That way, the suit was perpetually powered by Stark’s beating heart. Need heartbeat? Need reactor. Need reactor? Need heartbeat.
It just would have meant that Stark and only Stark could be Iron Man. As it is, anyone could put on the suit, as long as they had an Arc reactor powering it.
Man, that’s a terrible idea. It runs right into the problem you mention if the suit had been diesel powered: we know what diesel is, and how it works, and we’d be able to tell that a suit that can fly faster than a jet and shoot lasers out of its hands isn’t going to work off of diesel fuel. Similarly, we know how powerful a heartbeat is, and there’s no way anyone would buy that a heartbeat could power a suit of armor like that. It’d be the “humans as batteries” thing from The Matrix all over again, except a thousand times more implausible.
Well, the threat of the suit technology falling into the wrong hands is sort of central to the plot of the movie, particularly the third act, where, y’know, the suit technology falls into the wrong hands and Tony and Stane have the big climactic fight. If the reactor could only be powered by Tony’s heartbeat, how does Stane get his suit?
I’d buy it, well, as much as I bought anything else. the arc would be as powerful as a heartbeat, it would just be kept, eh, ticking by the heart. Like a perpetual motion machine. Science isn’t my strong point. Heartbeat powers arc, arc powers suit. Arc also powers magnet, which keeps shrapnel from heart. Remove arc, shrapnel kills tony. Right now, there’s no real reason that Stark can’t have corrective surgery to remove his badass chestpiece, and still be Iron Man just by having an arc wired to the suit.
Again, my problem with the movie is just that; right now, anyone can be Iron Man. I wish the Iron Monger could have been powered some other way.
If we’re into asking silly nitpicky stuff, doesn’t Stark’s house have an alarm or anything? Even if I give allowance to people using the front door (maybe he just didn’t set the alarm), you’d think using the energy beam thingie to blow out all the lab’s glass walls would cause some sort of alarm. What kind of cheap high tech lab was that?
Is there a reason why you wouldn’t cover the power source for your metal suit? Maybe there is and they just didn’t explore it in the movie but having your engine be a big glowing target in the middle of the suit’s chest seems like a bad idea to me.
Silly nitpick but I chuckled at the idea of some warlord wanting a high tech missile essentially blacksmithed with hammer and tongs in a cave. I’m pretty sure those things are machined to precise specs for a reason
I don’t care if I did twist an ankle in those shoes - I want them. Besides - I think shoes make a dang fine weapon - remember Single White Female? Granted, it wouldn’t stop anything that Iron Man et al were throwing at me - but then - umm - Pepper was never dressed in armor to begin with.
Besides - I just want the shoes dang it. wipes drool and dreams
) when all that other stuff is happening, ehe?
