It was announced today that Gwyneth Paltrow has signed to play "Pepper" Potts on the upcoming Iron Man feature film. Getting Robert Downey, Jr as Tony Stark was, I thought, a major coup, as I have a fair bit of respect for his acting abilities (though relatively little for his worth as a human being). I tend to think of Paltrow as being a bit more lightweight, but I definitely have enjoyed her performances in a few films, and following her Oscar in Shakespeare in Love several years back, she's got some name cache. So I suspect this signing will only elevate the profile of the film.
Sometimes I think the measure of a comic character's potential for great movie stardom is directly proportional to the amount of classic comic stories to draw from. Batman, for example, has a ridiculous backlog of incredible tales that could be adapted into film, and recently we've seen this happen with Batman Begins. Similarly, the best part of an otherwise-blah Daredevil movie was the Elektra storyline that was lifted from Frank Miller's comic run. And of course Sin City was a direct adaptation of several stories. The second Fantastic Four feature is rumoured to have some connection to one of the greatest FF tales ever, which is the arrival of Galactus on Earth as preceded by his herald, the Silver Surfer (FF #s 48 - 50). When I consider Iron Man in this light, he certainly has a handful of pretty interesting tales, along with a whole lot of crap. I'll be watching with interest as little bits of plot leak out, to see if I can figure out what the screenplay is drawing from.
By the way, it's too bad that the article reveals "Pepper's" real name (Virginia) as that's always been a neat little bit of comic trivia that I happen to know and most fans didn't. Now it'll become comic knowledge, I suppose. And I'll feel ever so slightly less special. :-(
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