A fun and serious film

Rating: 8/10 (4 May 2008)

Iron Man has a nice contrast for an action movie. It has a gritty theme to it which is derived from real life and yet it's able to hyper it up without becoming totally unappreciative. The performances, special-effects and cinematography of the film all work for the comic-book movie.
The only problem I see with the film is that it fails to set itself firmly apart from the rest of the Marvel Mythos Films. It has its own cast of characters but they all appear to be hand-me-downs from the rest of the Marvel films in some ways. The climactic clash in the latter half of the film also felt predictably obvious. We already have the X-Men and Spider-Man movie franchises to offer us the big duke-it-out fights and I just wish they could have come up with something more original for Iron Man.
Altogether Tony Stark has never been one of my favorite comic-book characters, but the movie version of Iron Man is none the less worthy of watching. I'll also probably want to see the sequel but it just fades in many ways when compared to the other Marvel Features.