I'm Stephen Metcalf, Slate's Critic at Large, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, summer movie Bonanza edition.

This is also the daily podcast from slate.com for Wednesday, May 7, 2008.

On today's program, we're going to talk about Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr., and the Big Summer Rollout.

We should say, spoiler alert, we'll be giving away plot details from Iron Man.

Joining me today are Slate's culture editor, Julia Turner. Hello, Julia.

Hi, Julia. Hi, Steve. And our film critic, Dana Stevens. Hi, Dana. Hi, Steve.

Iron Man appears to be well on its way to making someone not named Stephen Metcalf a billion dollars.

Are we cheering this movie on, Dana? How'd you feel about it? Well, you know, I've already reviewed it a podcast on it once. I'm very curious what you guys think about it. I think, I don't know, I was of literally two very divided minds on the movie.

I thought that every moment that it was about Iron Man's alter ego, Tony Stark, it was great, basically because we got to see Robert Downey Jr.

without his face covered with his CGI metal hood.

And then whenever it went over to the superhero clanging metal robot zone, it was far less interesting.

I also think that the politics of the movie are extremely dubious and worthy of discussion. Yeah. We can get to that in a minute. Well, yeah, we'll get to the politics in a little bit. It's a lot of fun to see, though. I mean, I've certainly recommended it as the first big fun summer movie. Yeah. Julia, what do you think? I totally loved it. I liked both halves of it. I liked the billionaire playboy weapons dealer part,

which is who the Tony Stark character is. And I liked his Iron Man alter ego because there was something

so gearhead about it. I mean, it's totally implausible. Robert Donnie Jr. plays Tony Stark,

the director of this Stark Industries, this international weapons company, who spent most of his life raking

him money and not thinking very much about the technology that he sells and what happens

to the people who are struck by his weapons. But they also, the thing that's very comic-booky

about it is that he's like a MIT tech geek who

actually invents his own weapons.

Like he's also the chief scientist of the firm he's the Playboy millionaire, billionaire,

CEO of.

So we get to see him like tinkering with robots in his shop in a way that is delightful.

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