Orang Besi

Awesome! Finally, a film where the resident engineer gets to be a superhero. Normally, if they ever bother to depict engineers in one of the main roles, it would inevitably be one of a sidekick, or someone who supplies the hero with the requisite technology to blow things up. But, in this Marvel of a movie, the uber engineer gets to play superhero and save dozens of Afghan kids and a hot chick in the process.

But there was one scene in the movie that clearly shows that Robert Downey is not a real engineer. Nobody cleans a soldering iron by dabbing it onto a wet sponge like he did in the film. That just cools the iron without removing any residue, which is bad. We swipe the iron tip across the sponge in order to remove any excess solder. But it’s a tiny error, which will go unnoticed by 99.9% of the film goers.

I’d like to point out that much of the technology featured in the film, already exists today, at least in the labs. The idea of a powered exoskeleton is nothing new. Same goes for the computer interface. Jet packs have also enjoyed some limited success. The only possible snag, as illustrated in the movie, is the power source. Until the day that we have desktop fusion reactors, I don’t think that there’s anything that can produce 3GW/s of power. That’s technically enough power to go back to the future, twice each second.

I have an affinity for flawed heroes that have a shining heart (in this case, his heart quite literally emits light). Robert Downey Jr is the perfect actor, as he carries off the quirky, flawed superhero complex to the maximum. I’m only a little worried about the sequel, where they intend to explore Tony Stark’s descent into alcoholism. Robert Downey has already got troubles with drugs. I hope that they serve him lots of tea in the sequel instead of real alcohol.

Spoiler
And yes, there is definitely going to be a sequel. Not only that, there are going to be a couple of spin-offs. For those of you who bothered to stay till after the end credits, you would have witnessed a scene between Robert Downey and Samuel L. Jackson, who says something like: “I’m the boss of SHIELD and I’d like to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative”.

The next two movies that I’m looking forward to are: Indiana Jones and Batman. This is going to be a happy summer for me!