It raises another point, though, on the list of tech-wonderboy points made by the movie, and I loved this: how celebrinerds works the press. I have personally been on the wrong end of Steve Jobs' flamboyance re: the press pack -- the guy nearly caused me heat stroke at a store opening years back, and I haven't forgiven him yet. (Take it to comments, haters.) And I will treasure forever the summer 2003 memory of Bill Gates telling me he'd never heard "google" used as a verb and that Microsoft had never engaged in astroturfing -- nice reality-distortion field there, sir. But watching Stark work the pack, especially in that last sequence, was glorious -- and a fantastic metaphor for the integration of the character's presuit personality and who he becomes in the course of the movie. If to be a geek is to be playful, and to be a geek mogul is to often be the smartest guy in the room, that last scene lets us know that not only is our boy gonna be a no-fooling superhero, he's still going to be himself. And for two more sequels, I expect to enjoy the spectacle. Except ... did I mention a weird payoff?

Of the trifecta of superhero movies due this summer, I hope Iron Man would prove victorious, since both The Incredible Hulk and Dark Knight fail to impress me in previews. I stand a good chance of being proven right: The new kid on the block has action, humor and heart, with plenty of financial and critical mojo for a sequel. Flame on! Not so fast there ...

Fine: setups for sequel, check; Samuel L. Jackson cameo, check; reliable villainy from Iron Monger, check. What got me hollering, though -- what paid off the entire movie in a strange, shout-inducing way -- was a scene devoid of the gadgetry and yet utterly tied to it. Stane and Stark have come to blows. More importantly, Stane has come into possession of enough of the first Iron Man suit to reverse-engineer himself the "Iron Monger" version. Stark is aghast, but Stane grabs him more or less by the lapels and snarls:

You really think that because you have an idea, it belongs to you?

Excuse me?! Did the bad guy just bust out with an intellectual property defense? And in The Dude's voice? Yeah, the Lawrence Lessig book really ties the room together. ...

(At which point, I jumped up like someone had electrified the seat -- physically yanked out of the moment.)

Because as a matter of fact, Stane is correct. It's the manifestation of the idea, not the idea itself, that is protected under IP law. I can imagine a swell five-second time machine (go back to just before you put your foot in your mouth!), but unless I record and submit the plans and paperwork in a fashion pleasing to the US Patent and Trademark Office, I have a pretty flimsy claim to the IP rights when Dean Kamen eventually builds one. Of course, there are laws against reverse-engineering, and Stark could probably make a compelling case for his prior art even if he hadn't wended his way through the patent hearing yet (but if the patent holder is Stark Industries, and Stane's an officer of the company ... great, now I have to be a lawyer to get to the part where they fly around in the superhero suits? The security beat is ruining my life).

That moment gets weirder if you've lately been paying attention to the comics incarnation of Iron Man. In Marvel's Invincible Iron Man series, writer Matt Fraction has described bad guy Zeke Stane as "a postnational business man and kind of an open-source ideological terrorist."

I shrugged and forgot about that weird turn of phrase back in April (foolish of me, since the comics industry is up to some interesting digital rights management shenanigans), but in the theater, I was suddenly wondering what the heck Tony Stark's people -- meaning his Hollywood people -- are really trying to sell me. It ain't munitions, and it ain't even Happy Meals; I think it's a bill of intellectual property goods. It's not like I'm not on board for the sequels, but I expect I'm going to be a little less rapt in the glory and a little more on guard for the propaganda next time.