Iron Man

Rating: 8/10 (9 April 2020)

Iron Man is a film directed by Jon Favreau that stars Robert Downey Jr, Pepper Potts and Jeff Bridges and tells the story of a billionaire playboy Tony Stark being kidnapped and creating a suit to help him escape and fight those using weapons to do wrong. One of my most unpopular opinions when it comes to film series in general is that Iron Man is the best film in the first phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, meaning I liked it more than the Avengers. The Avengers is soon to come in my MCU Series of film reviews so for now, I'll just explain why without comparing. Iron Man is a film I describe using the word effortless because that word describes how the filmmakers made it look to craft an excellent superhero film. The career redeeming and defining performance from Robert Downey Jr here as Tony Stark would forever have many fans (including myself for a few years) calling him Tony instead of Robert. He was suave, charming and understood the subtleties of playing a character who could be downright arrogant at times but was still good at heart and somebody you could root for. Shaun Taub was excellent as Yinsen and it was honestly a tragedy he was in the film for such a short time but the lessons he taught Tony helped shape his character throughout the entirety of the 21 following MCU films and definitely was the heartbeat of this film. Some of his lines while they were in captivity I can still quote to this day such as "This is an important week for you isn't it" and especially "Don't waste your life Stark". It was awesome to see Stark progress as a character from being a man who didn't seem to care about what his actions did to others to somebody desperately trying to keep others safe from mistakes he himself made. The script was beautifully written and never directly had any of the characters state what the message of the film was but rather let their actions speak it for themselves. I will say though that the only weak point of this movie for me was the third act in that the movies villain was mediocre at best. What Obidiah Stane wanted was purely monetary and self-involved and looking back on it, it didn't really make much sense why he did what he did. Without spoiling this film because I definitely think you should watch it without knowing much if you somehow haven't seen it, it feels like his plan wasn't really complete. Sure, he had access to a certain device that would help level the playing field but in no way did it tip the scale fully in his favor. Still though he was wonderfully portrayed by Jeff Bridges taking a sharp turn away from roles like in "The Big Lebowski" and at least came across as intimidating. Gwyneth Paltrow played Pepper Potts very well here and continued to play her well throughout the course of the MCU which is more than I can say for Terrence Howard. Howard did a fine job playing James Rhodes but I think that most fans would agree that Don Cheadles portrayal during films where War Machine made appearances was much more charismatic, serious when it needed to be and enjoyable. Also Iron Man started a trend in which all phase one movies featuring the armored avenger featured AC/DC which was awesome. I love AC/DC as a band and as a representation of the badass Iron Man armor and smooth as ice Tony Stark underneath it as well. I'm still wondering why we didn't get AC/DC in Iron Man 3 or any other appearances thereafter but hey, I'm not a member of the creative team behind Marvel so whatever. Also before I give my final thoughts on the film I'd like to point out that the effects still look pretty decent twelve years later even if they are slightly dated. I remember how amazing they looked back when I first saw the film when I was seven. I was awestruck by this movie honestly, Tony Stark was always so cool and I remember drawing and designing my own Iron Man armor when I was younger. I also tried to be a smartass as a kid to match Stark so maybe not all of the good rubbed off on me but Iron Man, the Sam Raimi Spider-Man film trilogy and the X-Men movies all I used to watch as a kid because they were really amazing on a writing, directing and action front and I wished I lived in the universe of all of those movies. I also used to like the Transformers movies as a kid though and looking back on it now... Yeah, let's look back ahead. Point is movies like Iron Man blew my mind as a kid and remind me of what I will always love about movies, how they can influence you.