Beautiful, simply beautiful

Rating: Null/10 (17 August 2013)

This stands in my personal ratings as one of the best superhero movies of all time, if not as one of the best movies of all time. It's that good.
What makes the movie stand out from its brethren is, first of all, the sheer quality. Everything in this film feels just right. The character of Tony Stark is dead on. I believe that even the most hardcore Marvel nerd would agree that Robert Downey Jr. was perfectly cast for this role. He epitomizes the character beautifully, from the raw charisma to the brilliance of mind to the witty comebacks to the vulnerability of alcoholism. The movie would work just because of him (which the sequels will show), but luckily we get even more for our money. We get special effects that defied all of our expectations, we get a fetching origins story, we get Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Cane (one of his best recent roles) and Gwyneth Paltrow as the perfect Pepper Potts. This is very heavily a character film, which I don't mind at all when the characters are as good as this. Sure there are great action scenes and it's a nice film visually, but it works and it's so good because the characters work off each other so well. You can feel the underlying tension whenever those three share screen time.
I could nitpick here and state that perhaps the whole film felt a bit rushed because they had to cram to much material into a single film, or that the final battle could have been slightly better (mostly because of the villainous gloating cliché), but all these minor complaints pale in comparison to the film as a whole. I love this film. It's a brilliant character study, an even more brilliant action film and one of the best superhero movies yet made. See it, love it.