Iron Man: Rise of Technovore

Where to begin? Whole story revolves around super-science bio-nano machines that can reconstitute themselves into any shape and are practically indestructible in this case armour.

The story is so drawn out that the seconds became minutes and the minutes hours. This instalment should have be regulated to a 20 minute episode. A best way to describe the torture of watching Technovore is to compare it to a late 60s to 70s Sci-Fi from Russia.

Then you got the dialogue which is god awful crap. It is so pretentious and boring. Half it sounds like those horrible anime dubs. While we are at it the voice acting also boarders on the same quality of those anime dubs. James C. Mathis III was the only one did a good job.

To sum it up it is the most unrealistic, illogical, boring, pretentious crap. Madhouse has yet to repeat their success for making an animated movie for the English market since Vampire Hunter D and their only good release after that was the Highlander direct to video movie.

Not even worth renting unless you are a die hard Iron Man or Madhouse fan.

The anime scenes were so boring. 57 minutes in I remembered that it was supposed to be about a satellite. One thing that the other reviewers seems to have missed is that Black Widow swore. That was the most exciting thing about this movie.

The Animation is probably the strongest part of this installment of this Iron Man production. The Voice Acting could use some work on the supporting cast though. The story begins as we are placed dead centre in the middle of another technological marvel as Stark is trying to change the world. However bad guys don't take a Vacation. Stark has to fix things before its too late. And that's my problem with this movie. The only sense of urgency seems to come from Stark and its not very convincing because the Antagonist is way too enigmatic. Even when the pseudo-philosophical mechanized angst driven plot unravels you don't really care, assuming you understand what everyone's motives actually are. The Antagonist is dreary, his monologuing is distracting and his intentions in-genuine. However, cameo appearances from a few heroes in Marvel universe make up for this. Overall its a shaky 7/10. It could have been 30 mins shorter and just as sweet.

Iron Man: Rise of Technovore did have some good ideas going for it, and considering the characters and that a good deal of animated superhero films are good, there was good potential here. Unfortunately, while with a couple of things that keep it from being unwatchable, Iron Man: Rise of Technovore wasted almost all the potential it had.

What saves Iron Man: Rise of Technovore from being unwatchable is the animation and the character of the Punisher. The animation is crisp and vibrant in colour, smooth in drawing and the backgrounds are incredibly dynamic and detailed, with a couple of funky visuals in the action. The Punisher's screen time is far too short, but when he is on screen the film actually is diverting and entertaining.

Everything else just doesn't work however, with the script and story being the biggest failures. Instead of having dialogue that has suspense, interest, wit and emotional resonance, the script manages to be devoid of all four. It is very talky to the point that parts just ramble on and on for forever, and sometimes with no real reason to. Even worse is that much of it also sounded incredibly awkward. The story is one big, drawn-out, incoherent mess, stretching everything(with the rambling dialogue being the offender here) to the point that the running time feels like an eternity. There were some really cool ideas here but nothing ever is explained(hence the incoherence complaint), and the pacing was like trudging through the thickest mud, that's how dull the film was.

Iron Man: Rise of Technovore has action scenes that are the very opposite of fun or suspenseful. Aside from a couple of funky visuals they are very pedestrian in pace and perfunctorily choreographed, complete with some horribly stupid moments. The film does a very bad job with the characterisation, only the Punisher is interesting. The heroes are bland and not always with much personality(Stark is stripped of everything that made him such a good character in the live-action films)- this is unforgivable seeing as when done well they are among the most entertaining superhero characters ever. While the villain is severely underdeveloped, with everything about him screaming of one-dimensional cliché. The voice acting, with the exceptions of a good job from Norman Reedus and a reasonably acceptable one from Matthew Mercer, often sounds like the voice actors were very unmotivated and like their hearts weren't in it. Eric Bauza is especially problematic, he's very monotone here. The music is forgettable at best and lacks energy, momentum or atmosphere, but the poor sound quality doesn't help(flat and distorted).

To conclude, Iron Man: Rise of Technovore has good animation and Punisher is a good character, to a lesser extent too two voice actors fare better than they deserved to, but despite the potential that's all the film has going for it. 2/10 Bethany Cox

The animation was good, like most Japanese animes. The voices were OK, without them being neither great nor grating to the ears. I didn't even consider the film having a soundtrack until the time of this review, so if it was, it was completely ignorable. What else is there? Oh, yes, the story. And the story is pretty much crap.

I see a pattern here: somewhere between the releases of big Hollywood productions, some low budget animation features appear, usually straight to video, and usually made by the Japanese. Is it an attempt to squeeze more money out of fans or one to bring more American productions to Asian markets? Probably both.

The problem with this idea is that the difference in quality between the big budget movies and the animated features is huge, and not always in a predictable direction. Look at the Resident Evil animated movies; some of them were way more enjoyable than the live acting ones.

So, what am I to think of Rise of the Technovore when the Stark hero is way off the image that Robert Downey Jr. created (let's face it, he pretty much carries the films by himself), the villain is practically copy-pasted from Japanese animes (bad ones) and, as many reviewers observed, the dialogue is boring and pretentious.

So I have to mark it as a failure. Not a big failure, mind you, we are talking about comic book heroes, so the expectations were low to begin with. However, I was kind of hoping for an interesting story that somehow escaped the censure of the Hollywood politburo. Alas, they had an American write the plot and that sealed its fate.