Iron Man

2008’s Iron Man, directed by Jon Favereau.

Starring Robert Downey Jr, Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, Clark Gregg, Shaun Toub, Paul Bettany, Faran Tahir, and Jon Favreau. 

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Sound Editing (Frank E. Eulner and Christopher Boyes) and Best Visual Effects (John Nelson, Ben Snow, Daniel Sudick, and Shane Mahan).

What is it about?

Iron Man is about a wealthy arms dealer/defence contractor playboy, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr, superbly cast), who while in Afghanistan encounters terrorists and is injured by his own weaponry.  After going into cardiac arrest, Stark is kept alive via a makeshift fancy electronic battery. Tony is then able to stitch together a crude metal suit to combat and escape his terrorist kidnappers. Returning to America, Tony vows to stop manufacturing arms, and to create a rocket propelled armoured suit to fight ill intentioned groups. While he has the help of Air Force General Rhodes (Terrence Howard), and his loyal and capable assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), Stark’s coworker Stane (Jeff Bridges) has different opinions on the direction he wants the defence company to take. Will Stark be able to embrace responsibility, to create peace instead of destroying it?

Why is it worth seeing?

Although it wasn’t planned at the time, Iron Man is the beginning of a mega machine that would become the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). While Disney did not purchase Marvel until the following year, this is the first film (along with the same year’s The Incredible Hulk), for the Phase 1 project of Marvel. It’s a rollicking start to the MCU that would create the most successful franchise in film history.

The hiring of the previously addled with addiction and failure of potential Downey Jr. is the most successful casting coup since Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine character in 2000’s X-Men. Like most successful film roles, it’s simply impossible to imagine anybody else playing the character of Tony Stark. Downey Jr’s instincts for being cleverly motor mouthed but also madly vain serve him well as the brilliant inventor who is as good at manipulating people as he is at creating machines and circuits.

With Dark Knight being released the same year, Iron Man is wise to follow suit and let the antagonist serve as a foil to the protagonist. Nowadays, with superhero movies coming out every 8 months, one of the important elements that seems to separate the great films from the commendable (and terrible) is a potent villain. Bridges, as the smooth talking and less philanthropic yin to Tony’s yang, is no Joker (who is?), but he’s delightfully underhanded in his methods, before he gets awfully results focused.

Filled with guitar crunched montages of machines being built, sarcastic barbs, and self actualization of our hero’s journey, Iron Man is a welcome to a world that proved you could be (somewhat) faithful to the spirit of comic books while attracting a mass audience. Director John Favreau keeps things zipping along, and ends on the perfect note. The multitudes of comic movies that would invade cineplexes over the next decade-plus should take note.

 

Rating:

4/5

Trailer: Click Here.