Iron Man is an American science fiction superhero movie based on the Marvel Comics character Iron Man. It is the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). It was released in different countries on dates between April 30, 2008 and May 2, 2008. The movie follows a billionaire industrialist (Robert Downey Jr.) having a heart transplant. The movie was positively welcomed from both audience and film critics. It was the number one movie in the United States in the opening weekend.

Plot 
Tony Stark is the CEO of Stark Industries, a company that makes weapons and bombs.  He flies to Afghanistan to show off a new weapon called the "Jericho" missile to the United States Army.  He and four other soldiers drive off in a Humvee, which is then attacked. One of the attack weapons was a bomb that Stark Industries had made.  The soldiers are killed. Stark is badly injured by shrapnel from the bomb and is kidnapped.

Stark wakes up in a cave to find a man named Ho Yinsen standing over him.  Yinsen tells Stark that he took out as much shrapnel as he could. He also installed wires connected to a car battery to stop the rest of the shrapnel from reaching his heart and killing him.  Raza, the leader of the terrorists, orders Stark and Yinsen to build a Jericho missile for him.  Stark builds an arc reactor that produces clean power.  He uses it to replace the car battery that he has been carrying around.

Stark and Yinsen then build an armored suit for Stark to escape in.  Because Raza demands that the missile be ready the next day, Stark decides they must escape soon. But his suit is not ready yet. So Yinsen picks up an assault rifle and starts shooting to give Stark more time.  When the suit is ready, Stark defeats Raza and his men. Yinsen is badly injured and dies. Stark sets fire to the whole camp and lifts off using the armored suit.  He crashes and the Army finds him and his friend, James Rhodes.

When he arrives home, Stark announces that he is closing the weapons division of Stark Industries.  He then spends his time downstairs building a new armored suit and a new arc reactor more powerful than the last one.  Stark tells his secretary, Pepper Potts, to destroy the old arc reactor, but she instead puts it in a glass box.  On the first test of his second armor, Stark goes up into the atmosphere and the suit freezes up.  He rebuilds it to work in cold conditions and paints it red.

At a party, he learns that Obadiah Stane, who is second-in-command at Stark Industries, and others are secretly selling weapons to Raza and his men.  He tells Potts to go into Stane's office and find the shipping records so he can fly to the places and destroy the weapons.  Stane finds out that Pepper Potts has the information.

So Stane builds a suit based on Stark's first suit, the Mark I, which Raza found in the desert and gave to him. He names his suit the Iron Monger.  But his scientists cannot make an arc reactor to power it, so he goes to Stark's house to steal his. He paralyses Stark with a small device that Stark built, and takes the arc reactor out of his chest. Without the arc reactor, Stark cannot live long. He goes back to his workshop to find the original arc reactor.  He breaks the glass box and puts the old arc reactor in his chest. Then he puts on the Mark III suit to fight Stane.

Potts and a group of government men go to Stark Industries to arrest Stane, but they find him in the Iron Monger suit. Stark and Stane fight. Stark has Potts blow up the large arc reactor at Stark Industries to kill Stane. In a few days, the photographs of the fight appear in newspapers. The press call Stark's armor Iron Man.  A government agency, S.H.I.E.L.D, tells him that he should say that he was on a boat during the events, so his role as Iron Man in the fight is kept secret. But during a press conference, Stark says that he is Iron Man.

After the movie credits, a man named Nick Fury tells Stark that he is not the only superhero around and that he would like to discuss the Avengers Initiative with him.

Cast 
 Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man
 Terrence Howard as James "Rhodey" Rhodes
 Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane
 Shaun Toub as Ho Yinsen
 Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts
 Faran Tahir as Raza
 Paul Bettany as J.A.R.V.I.S.
 Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson
 Jon Favreau as Harold "Happy" Hogan
 Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury

Sequels

Iron Man 2 

Because this movie did so well, Marvel made a sequel.  It is called Iron Man 2 and was released in April, May and June 2010.  The different release dates were for different parts of the world. Iron Man also appears in other Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, like The Avengers.

Iron Man 3 

A third movie, Iron Man 3 was released on May 3, 2013.

References

Other websites 
 Official Iron Man website 
 

2008 science fiction movies
2000s superhero movies
American science fiction movies
English-language movies
Iron Man movies
Movies directed by Jon Favreau
Movies set in Afghanistan
Movies set in Los Angeles
Marvel Cinematic Universe movies