Movie Review: Iron Man

Disclaimer: This review will contain spoilers. Don't read it unless you've already watched the movie or unless you don't care about being spoiled. I like to analyze movies, and I can't really do that unless I spoil the movie. You have been warned.

Tony Stark is a billionaire who runs a weapons manufacturing plant he inherited from his father, Howard. On a trip to Afghanistan to talk to soldiers about a new weapon his firm developed, the Jericho Missile, his platoon escort is attacked and Stark is taken hostage by a terrorist group known as the Ten Rings. Imprisoned by the group, Stark befriends a fellow captive named Yinsen, who saved his life by removing shrapnel from his body. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to remove all the shrapnel, so Yinsen installs a device in Stark's chest to prevent the shrapnel he couldn't remove from reaching Stark's heart and killing him. Raza, the leader of the Ten Rings, orders Stark to create more of the Jericho missile. Stark pretends to work on the missile but instead develops a suit of armor, which he uses to escape (and unfortunately, Yinsen is killed buying Stark time to finish his suit). After escaping, Stark wants to close down the weapons production of his company but starts to learn that there is a bigger plot afoot -- his own company has been selling arms to the terrorists.

This is the movie that started it all -- the first film in the franchise that would become the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the formula that many would try to recreate and ultimately fail, though the modern-day DCEU is still on life support. Marvel struck gold with their idea of building a whole cinematic universe around their comic book characters. While there are many similarities with the comics, the cinematic universe is considered a different continuity from any in the comics. So while many elements will remain the same to bring in long-time fans, they are not necessarily beholden to comic canon in their films.

Now, I grew up with many superheroes, including Iron Man. But I never really read the comics. I played cards as a kid; my parents would not have had the money to buy me cards and comics, and when I finally reached an age where I could get a job and buy my own, the comics just never really appealed to me much. So my knowledge of superheroes comes primarily from the animated shows I grew up with. Iron Man was one such cartoon that played when I was a kid (others included the X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman, and Super Friends). As such, I'll be looking on Wikipedia for similarities and differences to the comic book characters.

Stark, in the film, is a ladies' man, genius inventor, and an arms manufacturer. You do get a real sense of his playboyishness in the film, but good grief, many of the deleted scenes kind of takes it to a whole other level. The film seems to have stayed pretty close to Stark's origin story in the comics, except that in the comics Stark was captured by one Wong-Chu.

Some people have expressed disapproval in the way that films like this try to set up a cinematic universe, feeling that it takes away from the story of the film to spend a couple of minutes world-building. But I actually like that. I prefer shows and movies that take place in a larger universe. That's one of the reasons I enjoy Star Trek, because there have been 50+ years of shows and movies, all within the same universe (or, now, multiverse). There's a minor bit of worldbuilding in Iron Man, such as the post-credits scene with Nick Fury, the fact that Phil Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D. shows up and wants to debrief Stark on his suit, and Rhodey looking at the War Machine armor and commenting "next time, baby" (speaking of that, the part of James Rhodes was recast for Iron Man 2, which is kind of a shame because I thought that Robert Downey, Jr. and Terrence Howard had good chemistry in this film). I appreciate those kinds of things and I like to know where a particular story rests in the overall continuity of a universe.

Themes

Stan Lee originally devised Tony Stark as a hyper-capitalistic industrialist to explore Cold War themes. The comics version of Iron Man explored industry's role in the Cold War. For the films, war is still the central focus. Stark is a man who believes that war is the only way to achieve peace -- the way to keep peace with your neighbors is to have more powerful weapons than they do. After he is captured by a terrorist group and discovers that his weapons are being sold to the enemy, he announces that Stark Industries will no longer manufacture weapons which leads to a confrontation between himself and the second-in-command of his business.

Stan Lee Cameo

Stan Lee has had cameos in other Marvel films prior to this one, but this marks the first of his MCU cameos. Lee is attending a party for Stark Industries as is mistaken for Hugh Hefner by Tony Stark.

Grade: A+

Superhero movies have not been all that great. In fact, they were usually pretty awful. Superhero films were occasionally pretty good (such as the first Superman movie, the first Batman film, The Dark Knight, and the first two Sam Raimi Spider-Man films). Iron Man helped show that not only could superhero movies be good films, but that they could also be taken seriously as a film genre. It doesn't take itself too seriously, but it does treat its characters and its themes seriously. It also, along with Sam Raimi's Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, helped set a new bar for superhero films, one that many films have failed to live up to (Fantastic Four, anyone?).

Iron Man
Directed by: Jon Favreau
Written by: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway
Starring:
Robert Downey, Jr. as Anthony "Tony" Stark/Iron Man
Terrence Howard as James "Rhodey" Rhodes
Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane/Iron Monger
Shaun Toub as Yinsen
Gwynyth Paltrow as Pepper Potts
Faran Tahir as Raza
Paul Bettany as the voice of J.A.R.V.I.S.
Leslie Bibb as Christine Everhart
Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson
Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan (cameo)
Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury (cameo)
Stan Lee as himself (cameo)
Tom Morello as terrorist guard (cameo)
Jim Cramer as himself (cameo)