Iron Man (Movie Film)

***Iron Man*** is a 2008 superhero film, based on the Marvel Comics superhero of the same name. It is the first installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the first installment of Phase One.

It was directed by Jon Favreau and stars Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark, Terrence Howard as Lt. Colonel James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts and Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane. The film spawned two sequels: *Iron Man 2* in 2010 and *Iron Man 3* in 2013.

## Plot

Billionaire, genius and Stark Industries CEO Howard Stark has his spotlight taken by his son Tony, who amazes the world with his brilliant creations. Years later, Howard dies and his company is taken over by Tony, who is about to present the new "Jericho" missile in Afghanistan. But there, Stark is attacked and kidnapped by terrorists known as the Ten Rings who order him and doctor Yinsen to build the Jericho, but instead, they spend days in the cave creating an arc reactor to keep shrapnel from Stark's heart and armor to escape. During the escape, Yinsen is killed and Stark's suit charges and he uses it to defeat the Ten Rings. He, however, crash-lands in the middle of the desert during flight and without his armor, he runs in the desert broken down but is found by his best friend James Rhodes as they return. There, Stark announces no more weapons, and it disappoints Obadiah Stane while Stark at home builds a streamlined and newer suit, every day making it more capable of flight. After discovering the Ten Rings are using his weapons and Stane had betrayed him, Stark dons his armor to fight the Ten Rings, who later find parts of Stark's prototype suit and contact Stane so he could build them an army of iron soldiers to rule Asia but he betrays them and steals the armor for his own purposes, reverse-engineering it into his own suit.

Stark decides to find out who sent the Ten Rings the weapons, so he sends his assistant Pepper Potts to hack into Stane's computer believing he could have been dealing with them, and she finds out Stane had sent the Ten Rings to kill Stark but they reneged. She arrives with S.H.I.E.L.D. to arrest Stane.

Stane's scientists cannot duplicate the ARC Reactor tech so Stane steals Tony's and dons his suit to attack SHIELD and goes after Pepper, but however Tony using his original ARC Reactor saves her and the two warriors battle, and once they get atop the Stark facility, Tony orders Potts to overload the giant arc reactor to electrocute Stane, defeating him. The next day Stark is named "Iron Man" and is advised to keep the identity a secret but reveals it anyways.

## Cast

* **Robert Downey Jr.** as **Anthony "Tony" Stark / Iron Man**:
A billionaire industrialist, genius inventor, and consummate playboy, he is CEO of Stark Industries, a chief weapons manufacturer for the U.S. military. The son of a Manhattan Project engineer, Howard Stark, he is an engineering child prodigy, having built a circuit board at four years old and an engine at six, as well as graduating from MIT *summa cum laude* at the age of 17. He takes charge of Stark Industries at the age of 21 from Stane, who had been in control of the company since Howard's death.

* **Terrence Howard** as **Lt. Colonel James "Rhodey" Rhodes**:
A friend of Stark's, and the liaison between Stark Industries and the U.S. Air Force in the department of acquisitions. Favreau cast Howard because he felt he could play War Machine in a sequel. Howard prepared for the role by visiting Nellis Air Force Base on March 16, 2007, where he ate with the pilots and observed HH-60 Pave Hawk rescue helicopters and F-22 Raptors. While Rhodes is roguish in the comics after he met Stark, his earlier disciplinarian character forms a dynamic with Stark, and he is unsure whether or not Stark's actions are acceptable. "Rhodey is completely disgusted with the way Tony has lived his life, but at a certain point he realizes that perhaps there is a different way," Howard said. "Whose life is the right way; is it the strict military life, or the life of an independent?"

* **Jeff Bridges** as **Obadiah Stane / Iron Monger**: Stark's business second-in-command and the main antagonist. Bridges read the comics as a boy and liked Favreau's modern, realistic approach. He shaved his hair and grew a gray beard for the role, which was something he had wanted to do for some time. Many of Stane's scenes were cut out to focus more on Stark, but the writers felt Bridges's performance allowed the application of "less is more". The character was called Iron Monger in the comics when he used his armor, but the codename is only referenced in the film when Stane describes himself and Stark as "ironmongers".

* **Gwyneth Paltrow** as **Virginia "Pepper" Potts**: Stark's personal secretary and budding love interest. Paltrow asked Marvel to send her any comics that they would consider relevant to her understanding of the character, who she considered to be very smart, levelheaded, and grounded. She said she liked "the fact that there's sexuality that's not blatant." Favreau wanted Potts' and Stark's relationship to be reminiscent of a 1940s comedy, something which Paltrow considered to be fun in a sexy, yet innocent way.

* **Shaun Toub** as **Dr. Ho Yinsen**: Stark's fellow captive. In the comics, Yinsen is Chinese and a physicist, but in the film, he comes from an Afghan village called Gulmira, which is one of the aspects of the modernization of the Iron Man mythos for the movie.

* **Faran Tahir** as **Raza**: the leader of the Ten Rings. Tahir is a fan of the comics,[1] and wanted to bring humanity to the henchman. "I tried to find ways to show that although he may be the bad guy, there might be a moment or just a hint of vulnerability at times, where he hasn't made the right calculations or there's a certain amount of doubt. Jon was very receptive to that kind of layering."

* **Paul Bettany** voices **J.A.R.V.I.S.**: Stark's personal Artificial Intelligence computer program, which assists him in the construction and programming of the Iron Man suit. The name of the character is a reference to the comic book character Edwin Jarvis, Stark's butler. Bettany did the part as a favor to Favreau (having worked with him on *Wimbledon*) and claimed he did not know what film he was recording the lines for during his two-hour recording session

* **Leslie Bibb** as **Christine Everhart**: A reporter from **Vanity Fair**.

* **Clark Gregg** appears throughout the film as **Agent Coulson** of S.H.I.E.L.D..

* **Samuel L. Jackson** appears as S.H.I.E.L.D. head, **Nick Fury**, following the credits. Jackson's face was used, with his permission, as the model for that of the version of Nick Fury in Marvel's Ultimate Marvel imprint.