Iron Man (2008)

Overall: A+
Cast: B+
Plot: A+
Special Effects/Stunts: A
Similarity to Comic: A+
Director: Jon Favreau
Comic Company: Marvel
Stars: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges
Rating: PG-13
See the IMDB page
See the Rotten Tomatoes page

I went into this movie with absolutely no expectations, literally I remember seeing it for no other reason than I was bored and needed to waste time.  What I ended up seeing is one the best superhero movies ever made and one of the major reasons I began following comic book movies so closely.

The Good: Well for one almost nobody outside of true comic book nerds knew much of anything about Iron Man, and if we had heard of him we thought the concept must be pretty lame and/or impossible to do in an entertaining way for modern audiences.  We were all very wrong.  This movie set the foundation for the rest of the Avengers movies and launched a competition between Disney and Warner Brothers to see which company could outdo the other with comic book based movies, we all won from the outcome.  The special effects are ahead of their time.  Lets not forget that Spider-Man was made in 2002 and it's effects were little above that of the power rangers movie.  The plot was equally as exciting and believable and they played this movie as close to the book as I've ever seen.

The cast was outstanding.  RDJ is the perfect actor for the role of Iron Man AND Tony Stark, not many actors can pull off both the hero and the alter-ego as well as he did.  Another great casting choice was Jeff Bridges.  He plays protagonists and antagonists so well that hes perfect for a role where he's a friend that betrays the protagonist.  Terrance Howard did a good Rhodey and Gwyneth Paltrow is a charming Pepper.  Even all of the supporting actors did a wonderful job and it adds to the character of the film as a whole.

The Bad: Not a whole lot to put in this section.  I think maybe the small details in the technology throughout the movie were a bit unbelievable.  Tony makes a energy device in a cave while being held captive and none of the captors are aware that he did it?  Then they watch him build a super suit killing machine thing and they just go ahead and let him finish?  THEN he blasts off and flies a hundred feet in the air and crashes in his Steel suit and is okay enough to stumble around the desert until an American helicopter that just happens to be carrying Rhodey just happens to fly over him and just HAPPENS to recognize him and land?  They might have pushed that one just a bit.

The timing in this movie seemed a little rushed in places.  For example after he's rescued he starts building the Iron Man suit.  The plot progresses about two movie days and all of a sudden he has designed and fabricated an entire state of the art killing machine suit by himself in his own basement garage?  It would take a team of geniuses and a lot of time to come up with that.  These are only small details though, they do not really detract from the movie at all.

The Interesting: Of all the comic book heroes to spark comic book movie gold who would have thought it would be Iron Man?  This movie really did start a phenomenon.  People that aren't even that into superheroes love this movie, it has a 93% Rotten Tomatoes rating for crying out loud.  I just wonder why Spider-Man, or Superman, or Batman didn't do this well?  They just found the perfect cast and threw them together in the perfect formula of writing and directing and story lines and it happened.

The armor in this movie looks incredible.  In every Iron Man comic book I've seen the armor always looks very rigid and uncomfortable and robotic.  The costume designer and CGI technicians really did a good job making the armor look human and modern and sleek.  It didn't act robotic in the movie, I wouldn't have even doubted that there was a man inside if I had seen it in real life.  Kudos to the creators of the armor in particular.

Conclusion: This is easily one of the hands down best super hero movies of all time, if you get nothing else from my blog than at least get this; see Iron Man.