Iron Man has been out for a few weeks now to generally positive reviews. Though when it comes to the character of Pepper Potts, we have seen some difference of opinion.
I should warn that these links all contain spoilers for the movie.
Lisa at PunkAssBlog was displeased at the use of the character.
Oh, but what about Pepper Potts? Well, she certainly was held up and epitomized as the Ideal Female–the main bad guy outright tells her this about three-quarters of the way through the movie: “You’re a rare woman, Pepper. Tony doesn’t know how lucky he is!” And that’s about the sickest part, because what she is is the perfect mistress–not even a wife, because a wife does have some modicum of legal and financial power in a relationship, and the movie makes it absolutely crystal-what Pepper is is the perfect woman. If they’ve never had sex, it’s only because he hadn’t yet gotten around to telling her to strip and spread ‘em, which she would of course passively (and reluctantly, because it was Wrong! but eagerly, because she Loves Him!) obey. He can’t live without her! Because who else would schedule his meetings, get his dry cleaning, fix his coffee, and sweetly flub everything of cinematic importance she is cast to do on except when he’s on the phone with her giving her exact, minute, step-by-step instructions what to do. She never complains, except very passive-aggressively and with the shyest smile. And she validates him not once but twice in his total misogyny–she’s actually the only one who ever outright calls one of his easy conquests a slut and she tells him how he is with “girls” is “fine, of course!” It’s really hard to believe she’s even the model of domestic efficiency she’s painted to be, as she’s clearly dumb as a stump: “I can’t! You’ll die!” she shrieks when he tells her to blow something up, even though it’s clear to a two-year-old that if she does absolutely nothing he’ll die even faster.
Livejournalist Innerbrat defends the portrayal of the character.
Pepper was amazing on so very many levels: and I’m the person these days who sits back and looks for problems from a feminist front. I wanted to get angry and bitter, but I couldn’t. And when I got back and looked at reaction posts, I found everything I had to say nicely summed up on the Hathor Legacy. Pepper has the narrative role of being the non-heroic foil to Tony Stark: the Alfred to his Batman, the Xander to his Buffy, the Ando to his Hiro, and- actually, I can’t think of a female example, although maybe season 1 and 2 Willow comes close. Neither sidekick nor damsel, she rejects the role of love-interest because Tony’s not just her boss, but also a well established womanising jerk, and she shows her contempt for women who let him treat them like that very early on.
She has her flaws – the most significant one being that she’s so fond of an utter git like Tony Stark – but she makes up for them by being so invaluably sensible in everything except not taking off her watch and gold ring before performing open heart surgery near a powerful electromagnet.but you can’t have everything.
While livejournalist Tiredfairy also likes the character with one small caveat.
I do have one other quibble about Iron Man, and it’s Pepper Potts. Not her character, really, who I thought was fine. She’s awkward and funny, forgets to put on deodorant (wow, a human flaw!), and doesn’t like having to stick her hand in her bosses chest, but does it anyway. We don’t see her a lot, and hey, it’s Iron Man not The Adventure of Pepper Potts. And she didn’t end up being the damsel in distress…she came close, but they narrowly avoided it. And anyway, Iron Man was doing what he needed to do regardless…her being in danger wasn’t his motivation for action. And that’s definitely a step up.
My only problem was…her shoes. Seriously. You can not run away from a giant maniacal robot over grates in 6 inch stiletto’s. Your foot is going to get caught, your ankle is going to break, something. I’m not saying she needs to be in granny shoes, but some killer boots wouldn’t have been remiss. I know, leave it to a girl to get hung up on an item of fashion…but come on folks. Details like that really can snap you out of your suspension of disbelief. Because it just makes no sense. I’ve worked in NYC, I have seen women get those kinds of shoes stuck in subway grates. And none of them can manage a full on run in ‘em. They force a particular kind of stiletto shamble I find vaguely silly. But I digress.
So what do you think?
May 18th, 2008 at 12:23 am
I can honestly say that in about 50 years of movie viewing I have never noticed the shoes someone wears.
May 18th, 2008 at 1:34 am
I don’t think that when Pepper selected shoes when she dressed for work that day she anticipated having to run away from a giant mechanical man-suit. Didn’t she just go to Tony’s earlier to quit?
Anyway,the real wardrobe mystery is Obadiah Stane. He wore one outfit to go to Tony’s and rip out his heart and then suddenly had changed to a different shirt and slacks when he got back to the lab to put it in the Iron Monger suit.
May 18th, 2008 at 2:17 am
Those shoes were indeed super-ridiculous. I’ve no love for Gwyneth Paltrow, so I’m neutral on her as Pepper Potts. Her shoes though? Totally lame. And laming.
May 18th, 2008 at 3:37 am
…huh.
Funny enough, I noticed the shoes. Mainly because of the scene where she power walks into the lab with them with SHIELD grunts in tow.
But then she runs across a steel mesh grating faster than an iron death machine in them.
I’ll admit, I was impressed.
May 18th, 2008 at 11:38 am
I think Lisa takes a pretty one sided stance and makes some outlandish statements, like why Pepper hasn’t had sex with Tony, but some points she makes aren’t too far off. Pepper has flaws just like Tony and that makes her an interesting three dimensional character. I think when she threatens to walk out on Tony after finding out about Iron Man says a lot about her strong personality.
May 18th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
I also noticed the shoes. There’s a down-shot where you can see she’s standing on a grate and my first thought was, “she’s definitely standing on clear plastic”.
It was distracting to watch her try to run in those things.
Personally, I thought the cut when she first sees TStark as Iron Man was very abrupt. I was like “WTF?” Why would you cut there? That was an important moment.
I also didn’t buy the “you’ll die, so I’m leaving you” thing. It felt a bit forced. Just like Rhodes abandoning him when he finally starts to pull himself together.
Movie was O.K. Competent but not a single thing that I hadn’t seen before in film. The concept of one guy in a suit, fighting another guy in a suit was surprisingly boring. Hate to say it, but anime has employed it much better over the years.
Also the:
-Arabs as “savage killers with no political motivation” was grating. Weren’t they supposedly in Afghanistan?
-The helpful Arab gives his life to save the American and give his life meaning
-Since when do Arab groups round up women en masse and kill the men? I’ve heard nothing of the sort in the current mideast conflicts.
Irritating…
AE.
May 18th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Maybe you should stick to non-fiction movies AE.
May 18th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
I like “fiction” as much as everyone else. If they set it in Dr. Doom’s fictional country I wouldn’t have a problem. But they reference a non-fictional conflict but add in a very political message. Just because no one talks about it doesn’t mean that it isn’t there.
I always find it funny that when you make a statement against policy in films or comics, everyone wants politics out of their entertainment. “Don’t preach at me” is often heard. Yet, when the message is for the other side, it’s suddenly appropriate…
As for Pepper, she had moments when she really sparkled on film, and there were others:
- she sneaks into the office
- she has to blast the ceiling
- she almost kisses Tony
where she turned into generic frightened girl-woman/DID.
Less irritating than MJ in SP3, though.
Fiction should stick to fiction, but if they want to add in non-fiction then they should play it straight and not become propaganda.
AE.
May 18th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
The biggest complaint I have with women running in heels is the incessant CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK.
May 19th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
AE:-
the scenes in the town were in a fictional country, kurdova.
and the “arabs with no motivation” were a collection of mongolian, middle eastern and various others. they were hired by / devotees of ‘the ten rings’ [the mandarin].
May 19th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
AE
“-Arabs as “savage killers with no political motivation” was grating. Weren’t they supposedly in Afghanistan?”
The Ten Rings wanted to conquer Asia. That’s a pretty good motivation for a terrorist group.
“-The helpful Arab gives his life to save the American and give his life meaning”
That whole subplot was inspired by Iron Man’s comic book origin. The ONLY difference is that Yinsen was Vietnamese in the comic, but is updated to be Middle Eastern in the movie.
“-Since when do Arab groups round up women en masse and kill the men? I’ve heard nothing of the sort in the current mideast conflicts.”
Such atrocities have been covered in the news on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Actually, in much of history, it was not unusual for a invading army to kill the men and take the women to be raped. Women
were considered extra spoils of war.
May 19th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
On that note, check out this review of Iron Man being “un-PC” and thus really cool:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JerryBowyer/2008/05/05/irony_man
Fred