Marvel Month - Mini Review: Iron Man

So, it’s been a while since I did a theme month in November, but here’s one

It’s Marvel Month

So, for this month I’ll be covering all the Marvel movies in the MCU that I haven’t already covered. Iron Man 3, Age of Ultron and Civil War have already been done, so I’m not doing them again. I also won’t be doing Spider-man Homecoming since that’s still a Sony product, just in the MCU (plus I don’t have any space for it) Logan and Deadpool I’ll try and cover sometime next year. Also, because since most Marvel movies haven’t been critically slammed and I don’t dislike them personally, this will be entirely mini reviews.

So, with that said, let’s get to where it all started with Iron Man.

2008 was when Marvel struck it lucky with the beginning of their cinematic universe, with a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes it remains one of their most critically acclaimed movies but not their most successful, it made $585m on a $140m budget, which was a good enough starting brick for the towering behemoth the Marvel Cinematic Universe would come to be. Does it hold up nearly 10 years later? Let’s take a look. And spoilers for a 9-year old movie will follow

Billionaire and socialite Tony Stark is captured by terrorists whilst trying to sell weapons to the military, they try and force him to build a weapon but he ends up building an iron suit to allow his escape. Back home, Stark seeks to rectify his mistakes and keep his weapons out of the wrong hands, but against him is his partner Obadiah Stane, who is secretly running these weapons sales and orchestrated Stark’s capture with the intent of him being murdered.

Damn it, I miss Avengers: Earth’s mightiest heroes. That’s not a mark against this movie, in fact it’s a compliment that this reminded me of the best Avengers cartoon, even though it came out before it started airing. I just need to say that casting Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man was the perfect choice, I couldn’t imagine anyone doing this role other than him. That’s a compliment that extends to Iron Man 2 and 3, the Avengers movies and Civil War, and Spider-man homecoming if you’re wondering.

But yeah, I can totally see this movie being Tony Stark’s origin as Iron Man in that cartoon, it lines up so well (which may have been the point) that and Eric Loomis sounds a lot like Robert Downey Jr. I really like this movie.

Marvel was just starting up here, but it’s a strong start on the world building front. Introducing S.H.I.E.L.D. and Phil Coulson in a way that feels like a natural part of the plot but ultimately, they’re setting them up to become recurring characters. Nick Fury also makes his first appearance here in their mid-credits tease, something else that would become a staple of Marvel movies from the cinematic universe.

The focus is around Tony Stark and sadly it is to the detriment of other characters. Pepper and Rhodey get very little screen time to develop their own characters outside of their relation to Tony. That’s not to say they don’t have roles, but they come very late on in the movie and are overshadowed by the action as Iron Man fights Iron Monger (Ok, it’s not referred to by name but…)

There isn’t a lot of Iron Man in this movie, I’ll be honest. There’s the escape in the prototype suit, a test flight, a fight against terrorists and against the military and the final battle against Stane. That said, it’s less notable as lots of the intervening time is spent setting things up with regards to Iron Man, him testing parts of the suit, particularly it’s flight capabilities, patching up the paint job, working on various bits and pieces, it’s all good stuff.

Obediah is an OK villain, he’s hardly a Marvel standout, which I think Marvel themselves knew since they killed him off. He’s one of the generic jealous businessmen who wants power. It might’ve made more sense to see more of the connection between him and Stark and when he actually snapped, but that said it probably would’ve killed the pacing of the movie.

The 10 rings, clearly a reference to the Macluan rings, a reference to the Mandarin, shame they forgot about that nugget when they introduced the ‘Mandarin’ in Iron Man 3. But I covered that another time. They’re all relatively stock, nothing much to talk about aside from being the catalyst for Stark becoming Iron Man.

I was invested enough in Stark’s journey that few of the nitpicks I’ve pointed out across this review really mattered to me. It’s well shot and edited, the effects hold up reasonably well, the story is solid, and the acting is great.

Rating 80/100