Movie Mash-Up: Iron Man in the Iron Mask

1. Bad Movie – The Man in the Iron Mask (1998). I thought it was awful. The acting, especially John Malkovich’s soulful performance describing why he's lost faith in life, was horrendous. I know that most of the actors (Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gabriel Byrne, Gerard Depardieu) in this film are legends/greats/whatever but this movie was simply hard to watch . And the unforgivable sin – forcing the audience to see Gerard Depardieu’s naked butt which looks a great deal like the end of his nose magnified.

Basic Story – Twin heirs to the throne, imprisonment of the ‘nice’ one by the evil one including an iron mask so nobody will know there is a ‘nice’ twin, but the musketeers find out and plan to supplant evil Di Caprio with the nice DiCaprio since France is on the edge of revolution & a nice king could fix it all. Eventually, after all the hassle, the evil DiCaprio with his almost feminine beauty, decides it would actually be easier to kill his brother than keep him alive in an iron mask. Seems to me, if he was really pure evil, this would have been the first move but hey, I’m an engineer so I look for efficiency. Anyway, after a surprise paternity confession and miracle survival of an onslaught of musket fire, the nice DiCaprio becomes king, the evil one wears the mask and France never goes through a bloody revolution. This movie almost has a sci-fi twist already with an alternate history.

2. Science Fiction Movie – Iron Man

Basic Story – Tony Stark is Robert Downey Jr., a genius engineer who makes billions of dollars and bags big-toothed blond reporters (because engineers get all the hot blonds) while being nagged by Gwyneth Paltrow. Skip to the end of terrorist captivity and Tony has built a weaponized suit of armor and becomes Iron Man. There is corporate betrayals, new found love and appreciate for life and really cool special effects. In short, Iron Man = goooooood times.

2. New Movie – Iron Man in the Iron Mask

Keep the original Man in the Iron Mask story since it in itself is actually very good. (I know, who would’ve thought a man named Dumas could have produced something intelligent and enduring.) BUT, replace DiCaprio with Downey Jr. for less whining and more funny snarkiness and then when the good Downey Jr. is imprisoned, instead of just taking it, he creates the rest of an Iron Man suit, returns to Paris, throws his evil twin brother to the revolting peasants where he is torn to pieces. Then, Iron Man in the Iron Mask puts the fear into the whiny peasants before and the revolution is averted, thus bringing about the alternate timeline as in the original movie. Starts and ends the same but the middle two hours would be a lot more fun to watch.

Everything is better with Sci-Fi.

And for the four and a half people I know are reading this blog, I would just like to point out that this is my second submission for the movie mash-up vs the collective score of ZERO for all of you. I am disappointed.

Bring your game and your entry will become a blog post as long as the rules are observed. Submit entries to dan.spandexmonkey@gmail.com.