Iron Man was the first movie in the Marvel Cinematic
Universe as it exists now. Not all
Marvel based movies at the moment fit into this universe, due to ownership
agreements. Eventually all of them will
be rolled into Marvel Studios, but that’s another issue all together. Since the Avengers comes out next week and I
haven’t been doing any reviews lately, I thought I’d use this event to give me
a new start. I’ll review all five
movies up to this point as well as The Avengers as soon as I get home after the
midnight showing.
Iron Man stars Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron
Man. Downey Jr. was pretty much made
for this role, and even though he was pretty famous before, I think this movie
launched him to new heights. He’s
sarcastic, greedy and uncaring in the beginning and makes a believable
transition to generous, caring, and still sarcastic, but in a more charming way.
Gwyneth Paltrow is great a Pepper Potts. This was a character I wasn’t really
familiar with when the movie came out.
I mostly read books from the Ultimate Universe, which at the time, she
hasn’t showed up in very much. I had
read Civil War at this point, but she wasn’t in that either, so seeing a
character that I cared about, but didn’t know much about was more pleasing than
I expected. She cares about Tony no
matter what he does, but when she believes in what he’s doing, then you see
that in her portrayal of the character.
Terrance Howard is James ‘Rhodey’ Roads. He does a pretty good job, but he doesn’t
become War Machine until the next movie (spoiler alert), but I think he plays
the character less serious than Don Cheadle does (spoiler alert again… he’s not
in Iron Man 2), but I enjoy Tony and Rhodey’s comical back and forths more than
their really serious banter in the second movie.
Jeff Bridges is Obadiah
Stane/Iron Monger (though he’s never called that, which seems to be a pattern
in a lot of modern super hero movies, not to name the villian… Iron Man 2 does
the same thing). When he’s pretending
to be Tony’s friend you believe it, but when he shows his true colors, he’s a
person you love to hate.
Tony Stark is a
rich industialist that almost dies and realizes making weapons for the
government is wrong. He sees a friend
he made during his capture in the middle east die to save him which causes a
drastic personality change. He wants to
change his company, but to make change happen in the world he creates a suit of
armor (that he pioneered during his life and death situation) to take on the
evils of the world (but first the evils his company allowed to take
place). A business partner gets ahold
of his tech and a battle insues, etc.
The story
compared to the original comic story has a lot of modern updates
throughout. They’re in the middle east,
not Vietnam. The tech takes a lot from
currently computer displays. The 3D
interface in the movie may not be that far off in all honestly, but it’s really
cool none the less. The process of him
creating the armor is detailed pretty thouroghly, but remains interesting the
entire time.
The special
effects are top notch. I know a lot of
people, especially nerds like me, love to gripe about CGI. This movie is not one to look at and say,
“Hey, look at that not real looking computer puppet. This should be stop motion,” or whatever the current trend of
retro effects is. The suit CG mixes
well with Tony Stark, when you can see part of him, and only part of the suit
is CG. They used a partial suit when
filming, but that just adds to realism.
There are a couple instances where you get drawn out of the film by the
CG looking a little off (Iron Monger’s suit retracting is a good example), but
nothing horrible.
This movie may be
as important as The Dark Knight as far as comic book movies go. It took a different route mixing comedic and
serious aspects of the script and melded them perfectly. The characters are believable and you want
to know what happens to them after the movie.
Which you get to in Iron Man 2 (more on that later).
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