Directed by John FavreauStarring: Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrance Howard
Although I grew up immersed in the Marvel Universe, Iron Man was never very interesting to me. He was just a guy in a suit. But he's always been a major player in the MU and has grown more and more important in recent years. It was only a matter of time before they got ol' shell head up on the silver screen.
A note on movies about Marvel characters. All the marvel films until this year were produced for a variety of different companies, a result of marvel selling off film right to it's various characters when the company had financial trouble in the 90's. So Spider-Man was made by Columbia/Sony, X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Daredevil by 20th Century Fox, Blade by New Line, Hulk by Universal, etc. Besides Spidey 3 and X-Men 3, Marvel films have lately been god awful suck-fests (both Fantastic Fours, Punisher, Elektra, and the worst film of 2007 Ghost Rider). Marvel has since wised up to how profitable these films can be and created their own film production company, to self produce it's own properties. Iron Man is the first of these self produced films. And they knocked it out of the park!
The greatness of this film starts in one place: Robert Downey Jr. He is totally comfortable in playing a character that has to have a pretty drastic change of heart (PUN!) He brings a casual humor not present in other uptight, underwritten heroes (see Nick Cage in Ghost Rider). Unlike some Batmen that were shitty Bruce Wayne/good Batman (Val Kilmer) or shitty Batman/good Bruce Wayne (George Clooney), Downey owns this role as Tony Stark, from frivolous billionaire arms dealer, to frustrated but driven inventor to heroic armored warrior. Gwyneth Paltrow shines as his assistant/maybe love interest (where's she been?) and a bald Jeff Bridges creates a classic ally turned nemesis.
The movie looks phenomenal. The Iron Man armor just pops off the screen, in every scene. (I'm a rhymin' machine!) My only disappointment was in the final battle, it wasn't quite as grand as it could have been. After such great build-up and what looks to be a heavyweight showdown between armored foes, eh. It's just an "eh" battle. Also, Terrance Howard's "Rhodey" does nothing but whine. He's gonna be big in the sequels, but in this film he does zippy.
One pitfall inherently built into the super hero genre is the orgin story. You gotta do it, and it probably will take up the an hour of your film. Some do it in flashback (Daredevil, most Batman films), others play it straight (Spidey), but few make the orgin more fun, if not all together better than the rest of the movie. Iron Man is the first event film of the summer. And (I KNOW IT'S EARLY!) could be the best.Movie Cheetah's Grade: A
** One last note. I don't think this is appropriate for young children. It's PG-13 for a reason and has some cold-blooded violence. Executions, torture, and a frolicking love scene make this a no-no for the Dominator, I don't care how much he wants to see it. Rent the kids the Iron Man cartoon from the 90's. It sucks, but you may fool them!
