I must say I'm kind of tickled that they use Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" in the trailer for Jon Favreau's Robert-Downey-Jr.-starring blockbuster comic book adaptation Iron Man.
It's funny, because, among other things, Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" has nothing to do with Tony Stark or any such thing. Black Sabbath grew up in Birmingham, England, an area so poor that comic books did not exist therein. Have you ever listened to the lyrics of "Iron Man"? No, of course not. Not many people have. The then-almost-ten-year-old son of a friend did once, or rather, many times, until he got the gist of it. The song's story line is kind of like that of Bowie's "Space Oddity," only in this version Major Tom returns to DESTROY THE WORLD!!! Or something. Actually, the movie the song's lyrics most vividly evoke is H.G. Lewis' Monster A-Go-Go, in which a returning-from-space astronaut, hideously mutated, breaks up some teen dance parties. I dunno. The Wikipedia entry on it is of the impression that it's much more complicated.
The point is, Sabbath's "Iron Man" is so irrelevant to the matter at hand that they might as well include Eric Dolphy's "Iron Man" on the soundtrack to the film proper as well.
There's no video of Dolphy doing "Iron Man," so this'll do. Can't you just see Chris Rock playing Dolphy in a biopic? Damn, where's Spike Lee's number...
I suppose it's too much to hope that this song, not to mention the immortal line, "Just a goddamn job," turn up in Speed Racer...
Glenn, thought you might be interested in this lengthy but fun investigation over at Brainiac
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/
about this very song/movie/comic connection
Posted by: Nathaniel R | April 08, 2008 at 03:15 PM
From the Wikipedia entry:
"The song is about a person who travels into the future and witnesses the apocalypse. On his way back, he gets caught in a magnetic field and is turned to iron. When he tries to warn the world about the apocalypse, they cannot hear him for he is made of iron..."
Oh, what a sad little fable.
Posted by: bill | April 08, 2008 at 03:58 PM
You're our hero for posting that Eric Dolphy clip. Few things in the world have ever been that beautiful.
Posted by: Luke Kaven | April 08, 2008 at 06:13 PM
You're our hero for posting that "Racer-X" clip. Few things in the world have ever been that beautiful.
Posted by: Spoon | April 08, 2008 at 09:05 PM
Glenn, your description of Ozzy's Birmingham as "an area so poor that comic books did not exist" nearly made me spit the lovely hot tea I just sipped all over my computer!
Birmingham is one of the UK's major cities, and if I'm not mistaken, it's officially the UK's second city after London. They had comic books (maybe not Iron Man, but still), and also electricity, soap, and clothes.
As for the use of the song in the Iron Man trailer, the reason - surely even above the fact that the titles are the same - is because it's amazing and works unbelievably well. They wouldn't have used it otherwise.
Posted by: Owain Wilson | April 09, 2008 at 06:07 AM
Sorry Owain—my delivery of the Birmingham crack was delivered with too straight a rhetorical face, I suppose, as I didn't mean for it to be taken even vaguely seriously. As W.C. Fields once said, "I was only fooling and pretending."
As for how the song works in the trailer, I agree with you, up to a point. The distorted narration bit of the song—"I am Iron Man!"—is a bit tonally off, given the combo of glib and kick-ass! the rest of the trailer's going for...
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | April 09, 2008 at 09:12 AM
Sorry, Glenn. I should have known you were joking. I've got a miserable cold, so that's my excuse.
Anyway, I totally agree that the "I am Iron Man!" bit in the trailer is totally wrong. In fact, it's shit. But apart from that, it's all spot on. It made me break out into a huge smile the first time I saw it, and I didn't even know the song was called Iron Man! That's because I'm from Swansea, Wales, which is such a desperate place we have never heard music or seen sunlight.
Posted by: Owain Wilson | April 09, 2008 at 10:02 AM
I was surprised they had the guts to use that song in the trailer, because it seems way too obvious. It does work, though.
Posted by: bill | April 09, 2008 at 10:13 AM
I'm the author of the half-joshing, half-serious Brainiac item exploring the secret origins of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man." I offer no opinion on whether the song belongs on the movie's soundtrack; Glenn is no doubt right that the glib aspect of the movie doesn't jibe with the heavy metal songs they're shoehorning in there.
Anyway, I just wanted to comment that "Iron Man" comics were indeed available and popular in English cities in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One of the images I posted to Brainiac is a 1969 collection of the English comics magazine Fantastic; the cover features some very odd drawings of Iron Man.
The item is here:
http://tinyurl.com/32yuxr
Posted by: Josh Glenn | April 11, 2008 at 08:36 AM
Just noticed that I got the words "Josh" and "Glenn" into the first graf of my post. Not on purpose!
Posted by: Josh Glenn | April 11, 2008 at 08:37 AM