Iron Man (2008)

Title: Iron Man

Year: 2008

Director: Jon Favreau

Rating by the MPAA: PG-13 for some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and brief suggestive content

Official Synopsis (from marvel.com): 2008's Iron Man tells the story of Tony Stark, a billionaire industrialist and genius inventor who is kidnapped and forced to build a devastating weapon. Instead, using his intelligence and ingenuity, Tony builds a high-tech suit of armor and escapes captivity. When he uncovers a nefarious plot with global implications, he dons his powerful armor and vows to protect the world as Iron Man.

Official Trailer

STEPH SAID

Rating:

Review:

Honestly, when I decided to watch Iron Man I didn’t know what to expect. I had never heard of him. I had never watch a story that featured him. And, knowing only that Robert Downey Jr. was to play the lead role of this movie, I decided that I didn’t want to do anything with it. I was pleasantly surprised. Then again, when you don’t expect much, anything will be alright.

I enjoyed Iron Man's origin story: how he was created and what he stands for. The war, terrorism, and violence, and the harsh reality it presented struck a chord in me. It is such a delicate and sensitive subject, that I was impressed it was lightly used in this type of movie.

I don’t like Downey because he seems arrogant, and he lets it show in every movie I have seen him in. They haven’t been many, granted. But, turns out, Tony Stark is arrogant! I couldn’t tell if it was Downey’s arrogance, or his acting skills, shining through. At least, that’s what I thought at first. By the end of the movie, Stark underwent a change of heart. He changed enough for me to like him, and that is saying something. Ironically, Downey’s portrayal of Tony Stark became the part I liked the most about this movie.

On the downside, I didn't enjoy the overall ending. First of all, Ms. Peppers comes out of Stark Industries and takes as much time to call Stark as it takes Stane get to Stark's home. If Pepper had called Tony and tell him about what she find out, maybe the ending of the movie would have been different. Also, Obadiah creating another suit was too much, too fast. It took the genius Tony weeks to create the fully functioning Iron Man suit. The geniuses at Stark couldn’t crack the arc reactor. Yet, Obadiah created bigger suits in days. To make everything seem even more unrealistic, Iron Man seemed to beat Stane too easily, even though he was using the old arc reactor, and he didn't have any power left.

Irrelevant to the bad ending, I am, most of all, grateful for this movie’s success. It is the beginning of something huge. If this movie had not been a success, maybe we wouldn’t have The Avengers, let alone Guardians of the Galaxy, right now.