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George Lucas, Creator It’s hard to define exactly why Indy has remained so popular for so long. I’d love to claim that we had the formula for success hidden away somewhere, but that’s not the case. We were just making movies that we wanted to see, and we were having fun doing it. Raiders was designed to be entertaining. Of course, all movies try to be entertaining on one level or another, but with Raiders, entertainment was our explicit focus and sole objective. We wanted to make a rollercoaster ride that harked back to the serials of the 1930s - something big, fast and fun.

Indy captured the classic duality of a modern hero: the “secret identity”. Dr Henry Jones Jr is really just a regular guy – a mild-mannered college professor by day, wearing glasses and tweed coats. But he also has an ability to transform into a rugged, globetrotting adventurer, to become Indiana Jones. He puts away the spectacles, packs the fedora and whip, and he’s off to exotic lands. That’s really what we wanted Indy to be – an Everyman version of James Bond. We were almost using a kind of cultural shorthand, building Indy out of these superhero traditions, yet grounding him with weaknesses that make him identifiable. It’s those weaknesses that make him different, and his desperation that makes Indy so much fun. He’s a great hero, but much of the time he’s just stumbling around, trying to stay alive.

Harrison Ford, Actor

I spent time learning the whip, just lashing the shit out of myself for about two weeks until I learnt the timing of it. The trick is to know when it is at its full extension before you bring it forward.

I didn’t have time to have any input into the costume. It’s a bizarre costume, if you stop to consider it, a man wearing a leather jacket in generally hot locales. But I understood that if he’s carrying a whip, he might as well be wearing a leather jacket, because it doesn’t make any f***ing sense anyway.

I was never bothered or frightened about working with the animals. It was the presentation that made them look scary. A rat is a rat until you go down into a sewer in Venice and there are 6,000 rats. Then you’re dealing with a phobia. Filming with the animals, whether spiders, rats, snakes or bugs, was always a struggle, but all in a day’s work.

The most off-the-wall moment in Raiders, of course, was the shooting of the Arab swordsman. I was suffering from dysentery (as were most of the crew). There was supposed to be a big whip-versus-sword fight. I wasn’t in love with it, and it was going to take three days. Terry Richards, the stuntman, had worked for months to become the greatest movie swordsman. We were all dying to get out of there - I could stay out of my trailer for as long as it took to expose 400ft of film, which is about 10 minutes, then I was back in the trailer on the throne. It was our last sequence, so Steven and I decided that, considering I have this gun at my side, why don’t I just use it to shoot him?

The first time I shot him, Terry took a minute and a half to die. Steven said, “Well, this isn’t going to work.” I said, “No.” So, the next time, as soon as the camera guys said “Speed”, I just shot him. He was so surprised, he just fell over. It was a great moment, but I keep thinking about that poor son of a bitch, because he was robbed.

Steven Spielberg, Director

I had a lot to prove when I made Raiders, because I had done three movies in a row that had gone wildly over budget and schedule - 1941, Close Encounters and Jaws. I was ready to turn over a new leaf, and Raiders was my chance to make a movie responsibly: under schedule and under budget. Fortunately, George is a tremendous producer and gave me a lot of support and help with preparation. I wasn’t dreaming of big box office or making a classic; all I was focused on was making a film the audience would like, and doing it in a way that was fiscally responsible.

When it came time to do Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, George wanted Indy to go after the Holy Grail, but I just didn’t think that sounded very exciting. It was static, it was a cup - what’s it going to do? Sit on a shelf while I take pictures of it? But George said, “Well, there could be something paranormal about it, a legend that says, if you drink from the cup, you get everlasting life, just like the fountain of youth.”

Still, I thought it wasn’t compelling enough, but as we talked, I thought, what if the grail means more than that? Maybe it could stand as a metaphor for the relationship between Indy and his dad? Indy sets out for the grail, but ends up closing the distance between himself and his father. I could relate to that emotionally because I had experienced something similar with my own father. Once Sean Connery came on board as Indy’s dad, I really felt we had something special. When Indy’s dad calls him “Indiana” instead of “Junior”, and tells him to let go of the grail, when our hero chooses wisdom and family over fortune and glory, I felt we’d completed the character’s journey. And when they rode off into the sunset, we’d finished the trilogy. The curtain had come down on Indiana Jones.

But the years went by, and the idea of doing a fourth film kept coming up again and again. Eventually, Harrison, George and I decided we would bring back Indiana Jones if we could find the right story line. It took a while, but here we are, 19 years after Last Crusade.

I was determined that advances in film technology would not change the heart of this movie. No blue screens - I wanted to walk on real sets, to stage real stunts. We approached this new adventure in a traditional way, to stay true to the original trilogy and to the adventure serials that inspired it.

I can say bringing Indiana Jones back for another adventure was a privilege and the right thing to do. For those of us who made the film, and hopefully for the audience as well, it certainly was worth the wait. Indiana Jones’s story, which started in the jungles of Peru, has finally come to an end in . . . C’mon, you didn’t really think I was going to tell you the ending, did you?

Frank Marshall, Producer

If the Indiana Jones movies have taught me one thing, it is how to improvise. For me, these movies have always been an exercise in how to make an A picture in the style of a B movie. For example, in Raiders, we needed a close-up of a snake in Indy’s lap in the cockpit. Steven showed me what he wanted, and I just found a snake guy, rented a camera and airplane, then took a couple of people down to Long Beach to shoot it. I put on Indy’s pants and this huge snake was fed through the front of the plane, up onto my lap. There were no trucks, no equipment, just four people shooting the shot like it’s a student film. That’s the B-movie style, and it’s lots of fun because everyone pitches in.

I guess I became the designated “snake man” in London, when he asked for a shot of a snake going through Karen Allen’s shoe in the pit. We didn’t have time for the first unit to wait around for it to happen, so I said, “I’ll do it.” Of course, this attitude caused me to get cast as the Flying Wing pilot. We were on location in the Sahara and, on the day we started shooting the sequence, all the stuntmen were sick with stomach problems, so Steven said, “Go put on the jump suit. I want you to shoot at Harrison.” It was 130 degrees in that cockpit and, because I was in the background of the fight, my role grew from one to three days. I’ve never been so hot, and on top of that, Karen gets to clonk me over the head with the chocks!

Vic Armstrong, Stunt arranger

The great thing about the stunts is the spontaneity: they don’t look overchoreographed or overrehearsed, they just look improvised, joyful, realistic and dangerous. The stunts are integral to the story. They get a laugh or add drama; they are never just there because we needed a big stunt.

The first scene I was given to coordinate on Raiders was the Flying Wing sequence. During the fight, Harrison throws a punch. Pat Roach, as the German mechanic, pops his head back and Steven yells, “Great! Print it. Let’s move on.” I said, “Excuse me, sir, that was a miss.” He said, “Are you sure? It looked like a hit to me.” I said I was sure, so we did it again. Four days later - it took four days to get dailies to Tunisia - we were watching dailies in the lobby of the hotel. I’m sitting two rows back, behind Spielberg. My heart is pumping because the shot is coming up. We watch, Harrison throws a punch, and it is just off. Steven turns to me and says, “Good call, Vic.”

Spielberg is a tough taskmaster. You’ve got to bring your A game to the table because he’ll ask for the impossible, but he’s open to ideas as long as they add to the story or add to the energy.

We moved at a great pace - it just rattled along, not like today’s movies, which take months. I’ll never forget when Les Dilley, the art director, was dusting the German cars down and Spielberg said, “C’mon, Les, get a move on. Remember, this is only a B movie.”

Michael Kahn, Editor

Raiders had a very stylised opening. The rolling ball was fun to put together. Steven shot it with many cameras and we just kept it rolling and rolling with editing. It was a great cheat. We had a lot of laughs on that show. My favourite line is, “Asps, very dangerous - you go first.”

Steven completes his first cut with me. George will then come in and we’ll run the entire film. He makes his suggestions, then Steven and George just mitigate - “I like this, I don’t like that.” That’s how it’s always worked. George is great to work with, he always has so many ideas, but Steven has final say on how the film is edited.

Ben Burtt, Sound designer

The bottom line from the first conversation I had with Steven was that we wanted to create a soundtrack in the grand tradition of action-adventure movies. I grew up loving those sound effects. I could tell you whether it was a Paramount movie or a Warner Bros movie just by the face punches or the thunderclaps. I was crazy enough to be that interested, so it worked out great for Indiana Jones, because I could draw on my love of the classic sound-effects repertoire.

We could have created the soundtrack for Raiders by going to a library of prerecorded sounds and saved ourselves a lot of trouble. But we wanted to take the sound vocabulary of those films and redo it in high fidelity, with an epic, almost cosmic quality. We wanted to exaggerate everything. Gun shots in Indiana Jones became cannon shots - everything was magnified.

For the slithering of the snakes, we used the sounds of hands stirring a bowl of my wife’s cheese casserole. It’s a goopy, squishy sound that we also ended up using for Jabba’s body movements. The rats in Last Crusade were speeded-up chickens. The sound should create a feeling in the audience, tell the story or add a special sensation to the moment. It’s also important to pick sounds that have the right emotional association with them. When I succeed at that, I feel like that’s the most satisfying part - a little bit of cheese casserole can have a big effect.

 AFP

CRAWFORD, Texas — In a welcome break from two wars, terrorism, soaring oil prices and other woes, US President George W. Bush on Saturday was to celebrate his daughter Jenna’s wedding on his Texas ranch.

Far from the pomp and publicity of past White House nuptials, Jenna, 26, was to marry fiance Henry Hager, 30, less than one year after he proposed at dawn atop Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park on Maine’s coast.

“Today is my daughter Jenna’s wedding day. This is a joyous occasion for our family, as we celebrate the happy life ahead of her and her husband Henry,” the president said in his weekly radio address.

“It’s also a special time for Laura, who this Mother’s Day weekend will watch a young woman we raised together walk down the aisle,” he said, hours before the ceremony on the 1,600-acre (850-hectare) estate.

With twin sister Barbara as her maid of honor, and 14 young women attendants, Jenna and Henry were to speak their vows at 7:30 pm (0030 GMT Sunday) before a cream-colored Texas limestone cross that the president erected near a lake on the ranch just for the occasion.

“She just wanted to get married at home. She just feels a lot more comfortable there. And it will be really beautiful. This is the time when the wildflowers are all blooming,” Laura Bush said Monday.

Early Saturday, tiny Crawford — population 751 — sat under a gray ceiling of clouds, and the weather forecast called for a partly cloudy evening with 91-degree (33-degree Celsius) heat.

Best wishes messages could be seen at a local church as well as some of the tiny town’s souvenir shops, which were making the most of the attention, selling 11-dollar computer mousepads and 10-dollar coffee mugs adorned with the happy couple’s picture.

Jenna was to wear an Oscar de la Renta gown with matte beading and embroidery, and the ring was to be a Hager family heirloom reset with sapphires, Bush aides confirmed.

They declined, however, to confirm that the newlyweds would honeymoon in Europe before settling down in Baltimore, about 45 minutes drive from Washington and the most powerful father- and mother-in-law in the world.

Hager, who is set to receive his business degree in a few weeks, met Jenna during the president’s 2004 reelection and worked as an aide to Bush’s since-departed political guru, Karl Rove.

The White House has managed press attention with near-surgical precision, claiming that key details are “private,” then doling them out either in dribs and drabs sure to stoke media interest, or in splashy exclusive interviews like a Vogue magazine article that drove early coverage.

The menu was not publicized because the Bushes wanted their guests “to be surprised by the festivities,” said Laura Bush spokeswoman Sally McDonough, who declined to list any names from what could be a marquee guest list.

But the president himself proudly announced that he was erecting the cross, which he said would stand as a permanent landmark on the ranch.

Laura Bush later said that the cross would be made from the same stone as their home on the “Prairie Chapel” estate, and drew laughs when she deadpanned: “It’s permanent.”

“Neither one of us are nervous,” she said. “It’s a very interesting passage of life when you get to that time in your life when your first child is getting married. And we’re getting, for us, our first son.”

A handful of celebrity television programs descended on Crawford. Local police said they expected a few protesters. As they always do when Bush is in town, authorities were to seal off a large radius of airspace around the ranch.

The wedding was by no means a foregone happy ending. Back in February 2005, Laura Bush had panned Hager, telling ABC television: “This is not a serious boyfriend — I hate to have to be the one to say it on television.”

“But he’s a very nice young man.”

 By Juan Carlos Perez

Responding to the momentum around data portability, MySpace has launched its own “Data Availability” effort with big-name partners Yahoo, eBay, Twitter, and fellow News Corp. unit Photobucket.

The initiative’s goal is to let MySpace members share their public profile data outside of the walls of the social-networking site.

“Today, MySpace no longer operates as an autonomous island on the Internet, by allowing the data that creates the engaging and collaborative experience that is MySpace to now be shared across all the sites our users visit,” said Chris DeWolfe, CEO and cofounder of MySpace, during a press conference.

Enter Information Only Once

As the popularity of social networks keeps rising and people set up multiple profiles in such sites, they are demanding the ability to carry their data, content and connections from one site to another, so that they don’t have to re-enter all that information again.

This is what the MySpace initiative aims to address, DeWolfe said. “Your personal online social profile will become your Internet address. Social activity isn’t about creating a walled garden. Socially dynamic Web destinations should be portable and allow users to import and export aspects of their platform,” he said.

The functionality will become available at some point in the coming weeks to both users and third-party sites. At the core will be privacy and security controls so that users retain tight control over what data they share and in which site.

“The initiative is founded first and foremost on allowing users to have comprehensive control over their own content and data. Users will have complete control over what information they share and who they share it with,” said MySpace Chief Operating Officer Amit Kapur.

Outside of MySpace

Data and content that users will be able to carry outside of MySpace will include public basic profile information, like their bios, interests, favorite music and movies, as well as their photos and videos.

Changes made to these elements on their MySpace profiles will be dynamically updated on the third-party sites. This also includes decisions to drop a site from their network of updates, which is key to privacy and security principles, MySpace officials said.

“Rather than populating new profiles and updating information across every Web site … users can now update their status on MySpace and dynamically share that information with the other sites they care about,” Kapur said.

MySpace will make this functionality available not only to large Web sites like the initial partners, but to sites of all sizes, including “mom-and-pop” ones with little technical know-how.

The main tool for MySpace members will be a control panel where they’ll be able to manage their “data availability” parameters. The granularity of the controls in this panel will increase over time. Meanwhile, MySpace will also release client-side and server-side tools based on open standards for third-party Web sites that want to participate.

Part of the initiative includes MySpace’s joining of the DataPortability Workgroup. Data availability is MySpace’s first step toward embracing all aspects of data portability, said Jim Benedetto, MySpace’s senior vice president of technology.

Asked whether Facebook would be welcome to participate in this initiative, DeWolfe said that the rival social network would indeed be able to participate, as well as any other site on the Web that’s interested.

 by Kate Kelland 

LONDON - Prince Harry was awarded a military service medal on Monday for 10 weeks of frontline service in Afghanistan.

The 23-year-old served in Afghanistan with other members of his Household Cavalry Regiment last winter but was flown home in February after just 10 weeks when a media blackout collapsed, sparking fears that worldwide coverage of his deployment would make him a prime target for pro-Taliban insurgents.

Harry took part in a march with around 160 soldiers from his regiment through the streets of Windsor, where Harry’s regiment has its headquarters.

The troops were then presented with the Operational Service Medal (OSM) for Afghanistan by Princess Anne.

Harry secretly flew to the southern Afghan province of Helmand in mid-December 2007 to work as a forward air controller, calling in air strikes to let pilots know where their targets were.

He was the first member of the royal family to see active service in a theatre of war since Prince Andrew flew helicopters during the Falklands war 26 years ago.

Prince Charles, Prince William and his girlfriend Chelsy Davy attended the service where he was awarded the medal.

William, 25, paid a brief and secret visit to Afghanistan last week to meet frontline British troops. The prince, who recently won his RAF wings, flew a military transport plane for part of the journey to Kandahar and spent three hours at the airfield.

British forces have been fighting in Afghanistan for six years, but are struggling to hold out against a resurgent Taliban force which, according to U.S. intelligence assessments, now controls at least 10 percent of the country. 

Around 7,800 British troops are currently serving there, mainly in the south. A total of 95 British soldiers have died during operations.

Last week, the regiment suffered its latest loss when Trooper Ratu Babakobau was killed after his vehicle drove over a mine in Helmand.

Curtis Eichelberger

Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Marvin Harrison is under investigation in his hometown of Philadelphia in a shooting that took place earlier this week, a source close to the investigation told Anthony Gargano of Philadelphia’s WIP Radio.

The shooting reportedly occurred early Tuesday afternoon outside a North Philadelphia bar owned by Harrison. Harrison has yet to be arrested or charged with the crime. Police spokesman Sgt. Ray Evers had no comment Friday.”I just walked off the practice field [at rookie minicamp] and heard about the incident, and that’s all I know,” Colts coach Tony Dungy said Friday. “We’re obviously going to look into it. I haven’t spoken to Marvin yet.” Calls by ESPN to Harrison and his agent have not been returned. NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said the league was “aware of the report, and we are looking into it.” The source said the alleged victim came into the bar, Playmakers, around 5 p.m. and engaged in an argument with Harrison, who was at the bar. The victim then left the bar, heading to his car, with Harrison following. Gunfire broke out, the victim was hit in the hand, and a young girl was slightly injured by flying glass from a car that apparently was hit by a bullet.

Police came to scene, but the victim did not identify a shooter. On Wednesday, according to the source, ballistic tests showed that the gun that had fired the shots was a custom-made Belgian weapon, and police determined that Harrison owned such a gun. Police then went to a Philadelphia car wash owned by Harrison to question him about the gun. Harrison admitted owning such a weapon, but claimed it never left his suburban Philadelphia home. However, the source said the gun was discovered in a bucket at the car wash, and tests showed that it had fired seven bullets that matched those found at the scene. The source said police were contacted Friday by an attorney representing a second alleged victim in the shooting, and police are now waiting for that individual to come forward.

Harisson

Arizona State University has disbanded their cheerleading squad after several photos of the girls in various states of undress were found on a campus blog entitled “The Dirty.”

Athletic Director Lisa Love opted to cut the entire squad despite the fact the pictures only featured six members of the team. It was also discovered that the photo was taken two years ago and was done in fun at a “cheer party.”

Several members of the ASU cheerleaders believed that the school had been planning on disbanding the squad prior to the photo scandal and used the picture as motivation for their decision.

Picture Gallery

Jose Canseco, the former AL MVP who made millions during his baseball career, has had his home foreclosed.

Canseco told the syndicated TV show “Inside Edition” that he walked away from his $2.5 million, 7,300-square foot home in suburban Encino because it didn’t make sense to continue making payments.

“I do have a judgment on my home and it to me is very strange because it didn’t make financial sense for me to keep paying a mortgage on a home that was basically owned by someone else,” he said in an interview that aired Thursday.

“You know my life, this financial thing, is a very complicated issue. Obviously, when you make all that money, people think, `OK, let’s assume it is $35 million.’ People have to understand that $35 million, you’re paying the government 41 percent. That leaves you with about $17 or $18 million, not even. Then you’re taking care of your whole family.”

He added that a couple of divorces cost him $7 million or $8 million.

Canseco said his top earnings year was $6 million and that his financial situation obviously is different than most people who are losing their homes.

“What about other families that we’re hearing on TV, that they’re saying, `We have nowhere else to go,’” he said. “I mean, that is amazing. I’ve got books (he’s put out two expose-type books on drug use in baseball), we’re now trying to produce the movie to both.

“Like I said, my situation was a little more different than most. I decided to just let it (the house) go, but in most cases and most families, they have nowhere else to go.”

By Richard Corliss

He soars through the night sky, disrupts military aviation, wages holy war against those twin bastions of evil, terrorists and corporate bigwigs. He’s Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), zillionaire industrialist, and he arrives accompanied by the POW!, BANG! and KA-BOOM! suitable for a movie based on a comic book, but with lots more intelligence than the genre usually demands. It’s Iron Man to the rescue, yanking movies and the worldwide box office out of its months-long doldrums and into the stratosphere.

Starting tonight with saturation screenings, Iron Man kicks off the blockbuster movie season right on time — seven weeks before the summer solstice. But the Hollywood moguls can’t afford to wait for June 21. Summer is the season designed to remind the still-vast film audience why they pay to see movies. And for the past few years, summer means now. In 2007, three of the four top-grossing films (Spider-man 3, Shrek the Third and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End) all came out in May. (The fourth, Transformers, was released in the flop-proof July 4 week.)

This year on consecutive May weekends, the plexes should be clogged with customers to see Iron Man — the first movie financed by the comics-based Marvel Enterprises — followed by the Wachowski brothers’ Speed Racer and the latest installments in the Narnia and Indiana Jones franchises. Super-heroes, fast cars and a lion who might be Jesus: star power supreme, just when the industry needs it.

So say goodbye to the less exalted characters of the cinema’s winter and early spring: the Asian-American dopers and slacker documentarians, the weepie men and baby mamas, the caveman hunters and Boleyn sisters, the chronically unmarried or uncomfortably pregnant or serial-killer imperiled women — you’ll hardly be seeing any women at all in star roles. Even Judd Apatow and his goofball satyrs are taking a break. (The reigning producer of R-rated comedy has two movies opening toward the shank of the summer.) Fallible, ordinarily engaging, human-size, earthbound characters just don’t measure up when the weather turns warmer. We need another hero, and lots of ‘em, the bigger, stronger and cartoonier the better.

At the beginning of Iron Man — directed by Jon Favreau from a script by Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway — Tony Stark is nearly a cartoon villain, though he’s drawn in the bold, confident strokes worthy of a ’60s Marvel Comic cover by Jack Kirby. He has a Mephistophelean goatee and a glint in his eyes that suggests this former boy wonder is a genius at wasting his genius. He’s a devoted practitioner of pride, lust and avarice, to name the fanciest of your deadly sins. This is a man who has got it all: wealth, power, glamour, notoriety and more women than he can shake his stick at. At the very moment he’s supposed to be receiving an award at a Las Vegas convention, he’s actually at the craps tables surrounded by his favorite pets, big money and fast women — both endlessly duplicable, both instantly disposable. It’s all booty to him.

Tony is an arms dealer, an occupation that has fascinated playwrights for ages (George Bernard Shaw in Man and Superman, Arthur Miller in All My Sons) and accounts for some of the evil-genius rep of Halliburton’s gift to governance, Dick Cheney. In his first appearance in the March 1963 issue of Tales of Suspense, as written by Stan Lee and his brother Larry Lieber, and illustrated by Kirby and Don Heck, Stark was inspired by Howard Hughes in his Spruce Goose phase: titan of industry, crackerjack engineer-inventor, indefatigable wooer of Hollywood actresses. (Later in the decade he’d be transformed into a cool Cold Warrior, fighting the Commies in Vietnam.) In the movie he’s more a Richard Branson figure: suave, sexy, driven, a master of self-promotion and record-breaking stunts. What else could a rich man need?

Redemption. When Tony goes to an Afghanistan-like war zone to unveil a new weapon, his jeep is blown up, his team of escorts killed, and as he passes out he sees that the missile that did the damage came from Stark Industries. Severely wounded — and kept alive with a car battery wired to his heart — he comes to in the cave of Taliban-like insurgents, whose head-shaved leader (Faran Tahir) would very much appreciate it if Tony could confect a home-made bomb for him. Instead, with the help of a fellow prisoner (Shaun Toub), Tony constructs a heavily-armed metal suit, blasts his way out of the cave and resolves to change his nickname from Merchant of Death to semi-pacific Iron Man. “I have more to offer the world,” he says, “than making things blow up.”

If Tony’s conversion isn’t quite as history-altering as Saul’s on the road to Tarsus, it’ll do fine here. Where he used to think he could make himself great, now he wants to make himself useful. He resolves to study war no more, to do penance for the sins that made him rich. In a way, Tony is a throwback to the tycoons of yore, Rockefeller and Carnegie, who made fortunes by exploiting their workers, then tried to atone through vast philanthropies. (As if building universities and concert halls was a nobler form of payback than contributing to the widows’ and orphans’ fund of their late employees.)

Tony is as smart, wily and manic as ever, but now he’s a man with a mission: to dismantle his own company. Which doesn’t thrill his longtime, avuncular, head-shaved partner, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges). No matter: Tony has never taken “Don’t” for an answer. Like a geek in a Silicon Valley garage, a knight smithing his own armor, Tony retreats to his workroom to build himself a new casing. And he won’t make Dr. Frankenstein’s mistake of using shoddy materials. This will be no stitched-together, run-amok creature. It can’t be Tony’s ruin; it must literally save his lifesaver. When he’s done, out steps Iron Man: a monster with heart.

We’re not saying that Iron Man (actually, as Tony says, “Gold-Titanium Alloy Man”) is some gigantic Gandhi. Nonviolent resistance is a sanctified political strategy, but as the key to Act Three of a comic-book movie, it kinda sucks. For Stark, his cool new gadget is both a fun toy (he can fly inside it, attracting the attention of military planes) and a weapon (for the climactic face-off with Iron Monger, a larger version of Iron Man). These are the episodes, executed with plenty of technical panache, which will keep young eyes stuck on the screen this weekend. Kids will see themselves in that kewl flight suit, and image that they are manipulating the Man and Monger automatons, sweller and more humanoid than any Transformer.

But the real treat is for grownups, who get a beguiling character study behind and above the special effects. Favreau — who directed the best Will Ferrell comedy (Elf) and an agreeably mature fantasy (Zathura: A Space Adventure), and before that wrote and starred in Swingers, maybe the sharpest buddy comedy of the ’90s — knows that, when making a big movie, you do not leave your I.Q. at the soundstage door; you bend your gifts in different directions. He lends Iron Man the unobtrusive speed and precision of classic comedy. An actor before he was a director, he’s not content to let his stars play stereotypes, or even archetypes. Bridges and Toub, and Gwyneth Paltrow as Stark’s gal Friday (the most attractive she’s been in years), aren’t slumming in the least. They’re rising to the material, and elevating it.

Downey’s the best. In movies he’s usually been the skeptical observer in a supporting role (perhaps because his drug history has made producers reluctant to cast him in the lead). He’s Irony Man, standing off to the side, undercutting the hero’s big dreams or rash motives with a sardonic critique delivered at lightning speed — no mumbling or pauses for him.) He sometimes seems to be in his own movie, one that’s smarter and faster than the one he’s been signed for. But having been entrusted to carry Iron Man, Downey sets the pace, establishes the tone and this big movie whirls along to keep up with him. Which it does; it fits Downey as smartly as his Iron Man jumpsuit.

Readers of movie reviews often think that critics hate the big Hollywood stuff and cherish only the little films about Romanian abortions or Iranian kids. But some of us, this one anyway, knows that there’s an American style — best displayed in the big, smart, kid-friendly epic — that few other cinemas even aspire to, and none can touch. When it works, as it does here, it rekindles even a cynic’s movie love. So cheers to Downey, Favreau and the Iron Man production company. They don’t call it Marvel for nothing.