Iron Man

And so it begins. My goal is to re-watch all the Marvel movies prior to Age of Ultron, in preparation for the film that comes out in May. Since I have a busy schedule and as you all know I get distracted with other things and my movie playlists often fall to the wayside (e.i. My Batman franchise watching "series") I have decided to star this now and hopefully I'll get through all of them. I probably should have started earlier but I'm starting now.

This is really where it began. Whenever I do my rants on Marvel and talk about how incredible their run has been and is still going, I always point to the beginning with Iron Man. The movie that started it all.

But does it hold up? I sort of alluded to this in my recent Spider-man post but prior to Iron Man, the number of good superhero films were few and far between.

Prior to 2008, the superhero genre looked all but dead. Spider-man was dying with Spider-man 3, the Superman reboot/remake/sequel in Superman Returns had failed, X-Men The Last Stand bombed as well. All we had was a pretty good Batman movie in Batman Begins.

Though I would probably make the argument that it was Batman Begins that reinvented the superhero genre, I think Iron Man brought it back, in force. And all with nothing but a whisper of Samuel L Jackson at the end.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

My question is, does the movie stand the test of time. Yes it promised great things in the future to keep us interested. Yes it really introduced us to an iconic character that is Robert Downey Jr. But is the movie good?

Let's take a look.

Iron Man has a very different beginning than any other superhero we've seen before. Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.) does not gain special powers, he doesn't suffer a loss or a tragedy that causes him to become Iron Man, instead he's a billionaire genius who in all reality, is kind of an asshole. He's selling weapons to the military, making a fortune off war, and being a playboy, conceded rich guy all while doing it.

Until he's captured by terrorists.

Suddenly Tony realizes that his cavalier attitude and lifestyle has had consequences. His weapons are now in the hands of terrorists, his company has had no accountability, and his legacy might be tarnished. Its here that Tony assembles his first Iron Man suit, escapes and finds his way home. That's really the first act of the movie. It shows Tony's lifestyle prior his capture, the neglecting of his friends like Rhodey (played this time by Terrence Howard). And an arrogant view on his job, facilitated by the under appreciated Pepper Potts (played by Gwyneth Paltrow). He's then captured, interacts with a fellow prisoner, learns a little bit of humility and altruism, and returns home to drastically change the direction of Stark Industries, much to the dismay of his family friend and partner, Obidiah Stane (played by Jeff Bridges).

One of the great things about Tony Stark as a character is that he's very consistent. Tony Stark is an arrogant asshole. He's basically Robert Downey Jr. However, there's a difference between being an arrogant asshole who has no concern for others and the impact of his company who Tony was at the beginning of the film, to an arrogant asshole who is actually conscience of others around him, especially the people he cares about and wanting to do good to make up for past mistakes. There's a shift in there that makes for a great superhero and a lot of it happens in the first act of the movie.

The second act is where things get a little bit iffy for me. If you're looking at traditional superhero origin stories, you've got the first act where the hero is introduced and so is the idea of his powers. The second act is him practicing with those powers, basically showing off. And the third act is when the main villain appears and the hero needs to face off with him bringing the exciting climax.

The problem with this movie is that a lot of the second act is kind of bogged down with corporate banter and politics. Its not that its hard to follow or anything, its just a little convoluted. Tony wants to close down the weapons development of Stark Industries, Obidiah thinks that is a horrible idea and wants to replace Tony as head of the company. All the while Tony wants to move the company into energy as opposed to weapons... but he doesn't actually do anything. He says he wants the weapons development division closed down but doesn't really work that hard to get the Arc reactor up and working.

If you know anything about the next Iron Man films, you know he eventually does, but if you're looking at this movie on its own, put aside all of Obidiah's shady dealings, he's not wrong to not have much confidence in Tony.

All this corporate politics can really be overlooked by the training and honing of skills Tony does to create and become Iron Man. These scenes are really fun and really do the whole training to be a superhero trope justice.

The problem I have with it is that its never really clear why Tony wants to create Iron Man. He created a cool suit during his capture sure but prior to flying off to Afghanistan to fight terrorists, there's not much of a reason Tony creates the suit beyond he just wants to create a cool suit.

Luckily, that is quickly fixed as he remembers his equipment and weapons are in the hands of terrorists and he goes to stop those terrorists to make up for his mistakes when he realizes he can't do it through the company. Outside of that, there's a lot of corporate warfare that in retrospect is actually really dry and kind of dull.

The problem with this is that suddenly the Iron Man suit becomes a high value item as Obidiah wants it for himself. I don't know, the whole creation of the Iron Man suits becomes a little bit contested when you realize that the very creation of the suit ousts Obidiah as the villain as he creates his own to be the ultimate war machine.

Again, its not there's huge loop holes in this movie, (just small ones) there have just been better films out there.

But I think the main reason Iron Man was such a huge success was because of the characters in the film. While the story wasn't the most original or incredibly fascinating story, the main attraction was the reason we loved this movie. And Robert Downey Jr. brings it. There are superhero characters that we just can't imagine anybody else playing. Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is one of them, and because of this movie and all subsequent sequels, Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark is another.

Tony Stark is in essence RDJ and RDJ is in essence Tony Stark. He plays what he would in the future be known as, Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, in just the greatest way that we can't see the Iron Man mantle being taken up by anybody for years.

When Robert Downey Jr. leaves the Marvel universe, its going to be an incredible loss.

But while Marvel was really good at creating characters that made you forget about the mediocre stories, they weren't (and in a way, still aren't) good at creating very good villains.

Jeff Bridges as Obidiah Stane is by no means the worst villain to grace the Marvel Universe, but he's by no means great. Bridges does a good job playing the greedy partner in this corporate drama but I think its that very corporate drama that makes you kind of look back at all the villains of Marvel and kind of forget Obidiah Stane.

He's serviceable, Bridges of course gives a fun performance, but there's not much of a connection between him and Tony. Its not a huge surprise when he turns out to be the villain and for someone who has been a part of Tony's entire life, killing him seemed like Tony was getting rid of the babysitter or something. Obidiah has no legacy in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he's just the bad guy for a spell and he's never mentioned again.

Now maybe that's a good thing. Maybe he just needed to be a one off villain to get the ball rolling. Again, the way its executed is serviceable but nothing incredibly memorable.

Aside from the villains, Iron Man has a decent cast of supporting characters. I actually forgot that Jon Favreau didn't have that big of a part in the first film. Its not a huge loss, it just surprised me.

Gwyneth Paltrow is kind of a question mark for me. I'm trying to take out what I know about her in later films, how she's kind of come into the role since this movie and look at her performance.

And she's... Okay.

She's a very capable love interest. She's interesting enough but she's not incredibly memorable, at least not in this film. While Pepper is an important part of Tony's life, she doesn't take on the importance that she will have until the next film, or even until the third film. In this film, she's very much an observer of Tony's story. Which isn't a bad thing. Its just nothing about her is incredibly unique. Lots of what she does could have been done by Rhodey. (Except for that whole dance thing, where they almost kiss... or maybe it could have) I get that they're setting up a romance and again, down the road, I've really come to like Tony and Pepper. But for now, I'm going to say again, she's serviceable, but not memorable.

I really liked Terrance Howard in this role. The relationship between Rhodey and Tony is actually really good in this film and I feel like its kind of lost when Cheadle comes into the role. I'll have to come back to that when I review Iron Man 2 and see if that's actually the case, but in many ways, Rhodey seemed more like a friend as opposed to that guy Tony works with who is eventually going to become War Machine/ Iron Patriot.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting something, but I felt like Rhodey's part was bigger in Iron Man and was lost in later films. Again, you'll have to wait till my review of Iron Man 2 to see if I actually liked Terrence Howard more than I like Don Cheadle in this role, but for now, I'll say that I really liked Terrence Howard in this role. It was well done and did add to the film, surprisingly, unlike Pepper Potts.

Clark Gregg started his career with Marvel with this role as Phil Coulson. honestly, this was a great way to introduce SHIELD. It was a great nod to the original material, it was a great set up for subsequent sequels, and while Coulson's part wasn't huge in this movie, I thought it was actually tastefully done.

In fact, I think if they hadn't gotten Samuel L Jackson to play Nick Fury, and the hint of The Avengers wasn't the mind blowing phenomena that it turned out to be, I think that end credit scene would have never happened and Coulson mentioning SHIELD would have been a teaser enough.

Iron Man is an iconic movie in its own right. I really hope that Man of Steel is, for DC, what Iron Man was for Marvel because it really did start something great. It really did create a universe and was not only the launch pad for other well known Marvel heroes like Captain America and Thor, but it also paved the way for some of the lesser known superheroes. Properties like Ant-man which in any other circumstance would have been laughed at, but because of Iron Man, its possible... no matter if its good or bad. It also made it so we saw Andy from Parks and Rec, team up with a wrestler, a navi, a raccoon, and a tree... Wow... Guardians really was a strange one.

And the interesting thing is, after a second look, I realize, Iron Man isn't even in my top five favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe films.

Is it a great film? No. Is it a good film? ...yes? As I've said before, Iron Man was serviceable, but beyond the origins of a beloved character and the start of something that was never done before in The Avengers, as a standalone movie, Iron Man is not incredibly memorable.

I think we often over hype a movie because its something we've never seen before not knowing that eventually, that movie is going to be surpassed. Its questionable how many movies it took to surpass Iron Man's legacy, but I think its fair to say by this point that it has been surpassed.

That's not to say the movie doesn't have merits and a lot can be said about the legacy the movie eventually creates. However, as a standalone film, Iron Man is... Okay. Not horrible, not great. Okay.

But those are my thoughts on Iron Man. The first in what I hope is going to be a continuing review series of all the Marvel movies up until we hit Age of Ultron. What do you think of my review of Iron Man? Do you think it holds up? Comment and Discuss below! Or shoot me a tweet @cmhaugen24 and follow me on Twitter for more movie news and reviews.

I'll leave you with this. You may think its a cop out that I'm doing a how it should have ended video, but the fun part about this video is that it was one of the first How it Should Have Ended videos. Enjoy!