Movie Review: Iron Man

I might be the last person I know to have seen Iron Mane. Everyone said it was a lot of fun and I agree with that. It uses the Marvel comics stories as a basis for a pretty well balanced movie.

Robert Downey Jr. brings billionaire inventor playboy Tony Stark to life. Stark Industries is a defense contractor and Stark goes to Afghanistan for a test of a new missile system. He's captured and forced to build a weapon (in a cave). Instead (since they don't watch him too closely) he builds a suit of mechanized armor (in a cave), takes on his captors and escapes. Back home he announces his company will stop producing arms. He offers no alternative for the company and merely locks himself in his garage working on improvements to the armor. The rest follows step by step and was a bit too predictable but still fun.

The tech is obviously fantastical but they do a reasonable job in discussing it and letting some engineering issues come into play. The obvious impossibility of the armor is the power supply (we can't even power a cell phone for more than a day or two) but that's the technical breakthrough that Stark made. You see Stark make iterations in the armor and solve unforeseen problems and learn to fly step by step. This was probably my favorite sequence in the film. it's not Apollo 13 but it's very fun.

Another strength of the film is that the three supporting characters are reasonably well developed. Gwyneth Paltrow is Pepper Potts, she is Starks more than capable assistant and potential love interest. Terrence Howard plays Jim Rhodes, a military liaison and Jeff Bridges is Obadiah Stane, Starks COO and mentor.

The special effects are very good. When he takes revenge on his captors it's very clear that regular humans have no chance against Iron Man; one punch sends bodies flying. By the end of the film there is a more evenly matched opponent for Iron Man.

The balance of the film is very good. There's action, humor, character development, and even a plot or two. And while it is an origin movie, it doesn't feel bogged down telling an origin story. And it doesn't fall into the trap of the Batman films of telling 2 or 3 origin stories in the same film.

A lot of people are calling this the best comic book movie ever. I can't say I agree with that. Let me narrow this down to superhero comic book movies since A History of Violence was originally a graphic novel and The Incredibles was never a comic book. I think I rank Iron Man 6th. Number 1 is easily Batman Begins and while i haven't seen them too recently, the first two Spider-Man and X-Men films are, I think, a little better. But then comes Iron Man and it's easily up there.