Plot
When wealthy industrialist Tony Stark is forced to build an armored suit after a life-threatening incident, he ultimately decides to use its technology to fight against evil.

Release Year: 2008

Rating: 7.9/10 (255,818 voted)

Critic's Score: 79/100

Director: Jon Favreau

Stars: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard

Storyline
Tony Stark is the complete playboy who also happens to be an engineering genius. While in Afghanistan demonstrating a new missile, he's captured and wounded. His captors want him to assemble a missile for them but instead he creates an armored suit and a means to prevent his death from the shrapnel left in his chest by the attack. He uses the armored suit to escape. Back in the U.S. he announces his company will cease making weapons and he begins work on an updated armored suit only to find that Obadiah Stane, his second in command at Stark industries has been selling Stark weapons to the insurgents. He uses his new suit to return to Afghanistan to destroy the arms and then to stop Stane from misusing his research.

Writers: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby

Cast:
Robert Downey Jr. - Tony Stark / Iron Man
Terrence Howard - Rhodey
Jeff Bridges - Obadiah Stane
Gwyneth Paltrow - Pepper Potts
Leslie Bibb - Christine Everhart
Shaun Toub - Yinsen
Faran Tahir - Raza
Clark Gregg - Agent Coulson
Bill Smitrovich - General Gabriel
Sayed Badreya - Abu Bakaar
Paul Bettany - Jarvis (voice)
Jon Favreau - Hogan
Peter Billingsley - William Ginter Riva
Tim Guinee - Major Allen
Will Lyman - Award Ceremony Narrator (voice)

Taglines: Get ready for a different breed of heavy metal hero.

Official Website: Official site [Brazil] | Official site [Japan] |

Release Date: 2 May 2008

Filming Locations: Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, California, USA

Box Office Details

Budget: $140,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend: $102,118,668 (USA) (4 May 2008) (4105 Screens)

Gross: $585,174,222 (Worldwide) (2 October 2008)

Runtime: 126 min

Trivia:
Gwyneth Paltrow based her performance on 1940s heroines (who she claimed were sexy, witty and innocent all at once).

Goofs:
Continuity: The amount of grain on the bags that Yinsen is lying on in the cave changes in between shots.

Quotes:
[first lines]
Tony Stark: I feel like you're driving me to court martial. This is crazy. What did I do? I feel like you're gonna pull over and snuff me. What, you're not allowed to talk? Hey, Forrest!
Jimmy: We can talk, sir.
Tony Stark: Oh, I see. So it's personal.
Ramirez: No, you intimidate them.
Tony Stark: Good God, you're a woman! I honestly, I couldn't have called that. I mean, I would apologize, but isn't that what we're going for here? I thought of you as a soldier first.
Ramirez: I'm an airman.
Tony Stark: Well, you have actually excellent bone structure there. I'm kinda having a hard time not looking at you now. Is that weird?
[...]

Delivers Intelligence & Great Acting with its Fun

Rating: 10/10

Rest assured, Iron Man is an absolutely amazing movie. I won't dare spoil any of this remarkable movie for you but I do recommend it as highly as I possibly can. Marvel needed to get in to the solo movie making business long ago. Instead of leasing out their characters to other studios, they're making movies themselves. Most everyone knows Iron Man is their first effort and what a great lead off film! This movie helps take the comic book genre to the highest level. Just like they did in the books, they reinvent standard epic adventure by "Marvelizing" characters and making them more believable. The Spider-Man and the X-Men movies did this to a degree but only as far as their respective studios wished to stay true to the source material. Anything added or amended was for the benefit of the live action adaptation. Director Sam Raimi pulled this off by talking to the summer crowd, not down to them with the Spider-Man series. Jon Favreau has done the same thing here but I think he's done it even better. Raimi intentionally threw in a little cheese. Favreau adds nice bits of humor but not too much. He also grounds the action and the suit of armor in firm reality. I've said it before but it's brave to reach for the highest common denominator with a big budget film and Favreau delivers a movie with as much feeling as it has action and intensity. Needless to say, Robert Downey Jr. and company deliver the goods. It's a movie that has a wonderful balance that delivers intelligence with its fun.

The amazing yet realistic action is paced by the plot and characters that keep you interested from start to finish. What absolutely blew me away were the phenomenal special effects. I know they built a practical, working armor. What I loved is the use of CGI was used to augment the real life armor and not create something from scratch. Most all CGI constructs feel fake somehow but the stuff in Iron Man didn't seem fake even for an instant. As great as everything looked, what really drives the movie is the emotional resonance and down to earth nature of the plot. Sure the concept is wild but it's all presented so that you really believe it could happen. I doubt anyone will find fault with this movie unless they went in trying to dislike it.

This is, without a doubt going to be one of my top 10 movies of 2008, quite possibly the number one film.

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