Ironman: Fairy Tales For The Guys

Much against my will and better judgment, I saw the movie “Ironman” a few weeks back and was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed it, because it was very much like the fairy tales I read as a child. I’ve come to realize, after seeing guy movies like the Star Wars, War of the Worlds, and now Ironman, that these movies are essentially fairy tales for men who never grow up, which pretty much implies all men on earth.

Tony Stark is a brilliant inventor and business mogul who is the envy of every man on the planet, for he gets to make a ton of money by inventing destructive missiles that he sells to an obliging government. While on a trip to Afghanistan to sell missiles to the troops stationed there he gets kidnapped by terrorists who try to force him to make him a brand new missile system for them as well. Oh, and incidentally, amidst this fracas, our hero has lost his heart (literally, not metaphorically) and is kept alive by a battery that uses magnetic forces to keep the shrapnel from his arteries. All straightforward so far? Good, because now the story gets really complicated.

With the help of a scientist who is also held hostage by the gang, Sparks develops a big hulk-like costume with advanced powers linked to his artificial heart, so that whoever wears it can launch himself into space and make a thorough nuisance of himself. All this while the idiot terrorists are thinking that he is diligently making missiles for them. With the help of his costume, Sparks becomes Iron Man and launches himself away from the terrorist hideout and gets back to civilization, where he announces that he will henceforth stop making war weapons, and spends all his energies on making a second Ironman costume, in flashy red, which he wears to rescue a bunch of people under attack by the same bad terrorists in Afghanistan. This new costume is even more powerful and can carry him high into the stratosphere.

Spoiler Alert.

But there is a twist in the tale. Sparks is double-crossed by an associate who steals the costume and tries to gain hegemony over the entire planet. After some complicated situations, Sparks and the double-crosser face-off and everything ends well. Through all of this there is Gwyneth Paltrow as Sparks’ super-efficient assistant-cum-girlfriend Pepper whose slim elegance recalls Wodehouse’s description of what Euclid would have whispered to a friend on beholding the very slim and very tall Horace Davenport, “Don't look now but this chap coming along illustrates exactly what I was telling you about a straight line having length without breadth”.

Ironman was incredibly entertaining, but what I want to know is, where were the Fairy Godmother, the Gnome, Puss-in-Boots and the Big Black Witch? If you can have men in red costumes launching themselves into space with the help of artificial hearts, you might as well have witches with brooms powered by radioactive fissile material that activates at a click of a button.

News Flash: Joseph Fiennes likely to be indicted for monopolistic practices and fashion offenses

(From time to time, I will be helpfully covering important news items that have been completely missed by the mainstream media, obsessed as they are with non-issues such as the oil situation and global politics)

It is rumored that the European Union is planning to move against Joseph Fiennes for anti-competitive practices in monopolizing all the leading roles in Elizabethan Age movies. Let’s see, in ‘Shakespeare in love’, he plays a very sexy Shakespeare - there’s just no way bald old Shakespeare looked like the gorgeous hunk that Fiennes is. In ‘Elizabeth’, he is ambitious rake Robert Dudley, wooing the unsure-of-herself Elizabeth while having a wife tucked away in the country. In ‘The Merchant of Venice’, he plays Bassanio, whose wooing of the Lady Portia sends his buddy Antonio into the clutches of moneylender Shylock with disastrous consequences. To do full justice to these roles, Fiennes wore frilly shorts, long sleeves, multi-colored tights, carefully styled stubble, black eyeliner and what I suspect to be pale orange lipstick.

It is also reliably learnt that Fiennes is being indicted by the Fashion Police of several countries for offenses related to the simultaneous wearing of tights and (arguably) orange lipstick. However, he is receiving enormous support from the League of Smitten Women, which has vowed to defend him to the end. “Joseph puts sexy back into Shakespeare, give the man a break”, say the girls. My sentiments, exactly.

Shakespeare Comedies & Bollywood Movies: The Hidden Connection

No one would ever accuse Bollywood movies of being even remotely Shakespearean, but no one would be right. There are enormous similarities between Shakespeare’s comedies and Bollywood movies. Until a few years back, it was mandatory for at least 50% of Hindi movies made in any given year to inflict on the populations of the Indian Sub-Continent, the Middle East and any other place on the planet inhabited by people with a fondness for Hindi movies, a set of identical twins separated at birth.

The original inspiration for the identical twin themes in Hindi cinema comes no doubt from Shakespeare, who used identical twins liberally in his comedies. In “The Comedy of Errors” there is not one, but two sets of identical twins. Antipholus and his twin Antipholus have been separated at birth in a storm. Their attendants, another pair of identical twins called Dromio, are likewise separated. Antipholus I, Dromio I and Daddy live in Syracuse while Antipholus II, Dromio II & Mummy live in Ephesus, though Mummy is not in contact with her sons. There are many contrived and allegedly hilarious situations involving the two Antipholii and Dromii before the play meanders to its happy ending.

A Comedy of Errors was probably the most hare-brained plot from the Elizabethan Age down to the late 20^th Century, until the release of the iconic Bollywood movie “Judwa”, featuring only one set of identical twins (why this parsimony?). This movie was bad even by the glorious standards of Bollywood twin movies. Judwa has an interesting twist on the whole twin bonding thing. When twin A, for example gets beaten up by the bad guys, Twin B feels it, and vice versa. Shakespeare didn’t think of that one.

Another of Shakespeare’s plays, Twelfth Night, involves identical twins Sebastian and Viola, one girl and one boy, who absurdly get mistaken for each other. The beautiful Lady Olivia falls in love with Viola (dressed as a man) and ends up marrying Sebastian. Viola is in love with the Duke Orsino, who is originally in love with Olivia, and believes Viola to be a boy and therefore does not pay her much attention. In the end all the knots are untangled and everyone lives happily ever after. The absurdity of the play would have made any Hindi movie director of the 1970s or 1980s green with envy.

It is surprising that no Shakespearean scholar has ever studied this connection between Bollywood and Shakespeare. In Bollywood, shameless plagiarism is referred to as “inspiration”, and Bollywood directors draw extensive inspiration from a multitude of sources, including Hollywood movies, Turkish pop, classical music, rock, Hong Kong martial arts – often all at the same time, However the link to Shakespeare is not as well known, even though I’d reckon that Shakespearean comedies were probably one of the greatest influences on Bollywood, spawning a whole genre of idiotic movies with themes involving identical twins. Ah Shakespeare, Shakespeare, what hast thou wrought?