My latest location from the new Iron Man movie is linked below.
When I was younger I really enjoyed comics, animated stories, and movies about DC and Marvel comics. At one point I was really into Batman, but over the years it was so overdone, and some of the movies were just downright bad that I burned out of it. I did some reading of Iron Man, but was never truly into that character. Honestly, most comic book movies that come out these days I usually pass up. I might see them on cable at some point and watch parts of them, but I can't remember anything I have watched from start to finish. I probably would have passed on this one too if the Alabama Hills were not in it.
I saw it earlier today. Overall, it was a real fun movie and well done. The only concern I had with something like this is if the action would be overdone. I had read that there is an explosion every twenty minutes. I do not know if that is the case or not, but I did not feel like I was overwhelmed with action at the expense of the story. There was a good balance in all of what they did. I think when they do the sequels they have set up a good foundation to work with so they can improve on what they did here.
I am glad to see that Robert Downey Jr. pulled this off and will create a following with this. Hopefully, he can keep himself in check for other roles.
The Alabama Hills locations turned out pretty much like I thought it would. They do not last too long in the movie. In fact, be sure you are there when the movie starts to see the part I refer to in my link below or you will miss it. What I have shown in the two videos I have done pretty much covers the major scenes there.
The airport scene looks like it was just done in Lone Pine. There is an airport right as you come into town heading north on the right. It is across from Anchor Ranch.
The "cave location" is an interesting one that I am not 100% about the location, but is on a road just outside of Keeler. Iron Man is shown flying out of the area on what would be the Inyo Mountains which is the mountain range to the east of the 395 HWY. I always like pictures from this way because Mount Langley looks really huge from this angle compared to the others. Give me a few months and I'll see if I can get an exact location.
The thing with a movie like this is the editing is very quick and they do not always show you everything around the area. So, the "cave" and some other scenes might take a bit of work if I want to try to figure them out. Although I am crazy enough to tell you that there is about one second where one of the villians is in a truck later in the movie that is on movie road. It is near what I am calling the Iron Man Ambush Location. That is just my intuition of the area kicking in after seeing a split second of where they were. It seemed to me they cut out a lot of the action during the ambush that we saw in the trailer. That is slightly disappointing, but maybe they will show more on the dvd release. It seemed like a lot more of that area was used in the trailer.
The sandy desert area is just outside the town of Olancha. There is a tradition of movies that want to look like they were filmed in the Sahara Desert come here to film. Even Hopalong Cassidy went "overseas" to this desert here in one of his films.
Regardless of the locations used, it was still a fun movie that I am glad to have seen. I do think it was a lot more adult than some other comic book movies I have seen. I await the dvd after the summer.
Okay, to see my latest video, which I may take down and redo at a later time with better conditions go here:
The Iron Man Ambush Location
For the old video I made back in October that, I guess, holds up pretty well after seeing the whole scene go here:
The Jericho Missle Launch Site (Originally, based on the movie trailer)
Be sure to stay after the credits of the movie to see an additional scene that sets up the sequels.
