You may have noticed how creak-free the publicity machine for Iron Man has been. It’s irritatingly perfect. Whenever there’s a big football match on, rest assured there’s an Iron Man trailer at half time making you feel like an idiot for not thinking about it all the time, non-stop, now and forever. Indeed, whenever 15 to 40-year-old males are likely to be gathered around the goggle box you can bet your nan’s oxygen mask that Paramount’s promotion team will be there before you, ready to shove that charming devil with his shiny metal suit in your face.
These aren’t ten second TV spots either; these are two minute, loud, brash motherfuckers that show the whole bloody film bar the boring bits. In other words, they’re really good. And probably so expensive that the marketing budget will be hid from prying eyes for the next century for fear of the whole recession-hit world turning against those rich bastards in La La Land. But why, a sensible person might ask, the big spend? There’s been nothing but piss on the cinema for months, so surely the general public are going to leap toward the multiplexes at the first sight of CG. Not so, for as cocky as the suits at Marvel and Paramount might appear to be about their too-cool-for-this-hero-shit mascot, they’re secretly petrified about the unstoppable enemy approaching.
Like most people with a pathetic life and bugger all sense, I’m fairly excited about the Iron Man movie. The idea of a man dressing up in an expensive toy and blowing the crap out of evil foreigners simply appeals to me. But will I be watching it come the all-important first week of release? Will I hell. I’ll be killing people instead. And stealing cars. And selling drugs. Basically, I’m going to be playing the shit out of GTA IV and there’s nothing Iron Man can do to stop me.
Now, when a big game is released, there seems to be shorter queues at the pictures, and Paramount knows it. That’s why there’s been this month-long pre-emptive strike on our TVs. It’s also why Iron Man won’t be the biggest movie of the summer and why the chances of a sequel are going to be seriously affected by something that has sod all to do with it. Not that I care though, after all, I’ll be too busy blowing the bollocks off mobsters to give a shit.
