The summer blockbuster season was ushered in this year with the release of Iron Man, the latest in what has become Hollywood’s favorite genre: the superhero movie. The film has been lauded by critics and audiences alike, and has already grossed more than $400 million worldwide.

At first, Iron Man might seem to be a fairly liberal film. Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr., is an obnoxious weapons manufacturer who likes to glibly state things like, “Peace means having the biggest stick.” While in Afghanistan on a weapons demo, Stark is ambushed by a militia with weapons that he himself made, and after quickly building a giant robotic suit and escaping his captors, he decides he wants to use his technological genius for good.

But Stark is thwarted by his partner, Obadiah Stane (played brilliantly by Jeff Bridges). Stane becomes the super villain in the film, and can be seen as a stand-in for the military-industrial-complex. Which is why Iron Man may seem like a liberal film.

Some might say, “This is a summer action flick, not some Michael Moore diatribe. What politics?” While I would agree that some (but not many!) movies are apolitical, it’s hard not to see some sort of political statement in a film whose first act is set in a country where we’re currently fighting a war. Even though Iron Man is a science fiction movie of sorts, it injects itself into the real world by starting the action off in Afghanistan. (It’s worth noting that the original comic book was staunchly anti-communist, and began with Stark in Vietnam.) Remember, the filmmakers could just as easily have made Stark’s kidnappers Chechen rebels, or even crazed right wing separatists.

The ideology of Stark’s kidnappers is kept vague, although most audiences will see them as Taliban/Al-Qaeda/Islamo-fascist stand-ins. Their evil leader rants about some sort of a Genghis Khan-like empire, so we can assume that their interests include conquest. They are both evil and dumb.

After Stark escapes his captors, he calls a press conference and declares, “I came to realize that I had more to offer this world than just making things that blow up.” He then promptly builds the ultimate killing machine and blows a lot of things up. Clearly, Iron Man still thinks that peace is having the biggest stick, or at least a stick made of titanium that flies and shoots missiles (which is, I believe, exactly what Teddy Roosevelt had in mind).

Stark’s first mission as Iron Man is to save some poor Afghan village from the very same Genghis Khan-obsessed militia that kidnapped him. In a paternalistic fantasy of Neocon foreign policy, Iron Man saves the helpless villagers from the militiamen using his superior technology and wit.

There’s a telling scene when Iron Man, after blowing up a tank, turns around to see 10 or so bad guys, each holding a gun to a hostage. We then see Iron Man’s point of view, a straight out of RoboCop (or is itTerminator? Or both?) computer screen that correctly identifies which person is an enemy and which is a hostage. A gun pops out and, in one fell swoop, cuts the evildoers down. Isn’t this the kind of thinking that got us into the mess we’re in? Not only that, but Iron Man’s robo-gun kills the bad guys with no collateral damage whatsoever. The reality is that we can hardly ever tell who the bad guys are and who the good guys are, and most of the good guys don’t even like us because we tend to accidentally kill good guys while we’re going after bad guys.

Iron Man showcases the three foreign policy fantasies: that there are good guys and bad guys, that we can tell which ones are which, and that superior technology can defeat any foe. These aren’t Neocon fantasies, or Washington fantasies, or even Hollywood fantasies. These are American fantasies.

–Hillel Aron