Iron Man (2008)
This is it. The movie that started it all.
(I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to write a reflective review of the first Iron Man without making some comment similar to the above. Just getting the pleasantries out of the way now.)
Iron Man is the story of Tony Stark (updated from 1960's Vietnam to 2008 Afghanistan), a famous industrialist and weapons manufacturer who ends up in the clutches of a powerful terrorist group and builds a weaponized suit to escape. Along the way, he learns that maybe building missiles to kill people isn’t the most satisfying way to build a legacy. He also learns to love. Okay, maybe more that first thing. Jesus Christ, I'm really bad at this.
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The lead role of Tony Stark is played by Robert Downey Jr. Truly, it can’t be said enough; without his performance in this movie, we wouldn’t be talking about any of this. Forget The Avengers; there’d be no Captain America: Civil War, there’d be no Infinity War, there’d be no upcoming movie with the word “war” in it at all. This website wouldn’t even exist. He is Tony Stark in every way. In a sense, that’s literal; both men are immensely famous party boys with a penchant for really bad habits that get taken to hell and back, and are now faced with the enormous tasks of changing their ways for the better. It helps that nobody delivers a line nowadays than Downey Jr. can. He holds the movie together and he is undoubtedly a big reason why The Avengers had the giant response that it did (but we’re not there yet).
As we go forward in the MCU, a simple truth emerges about the Iron Man series; the movies are at their greatest when it pits Downey Jr. against a single other actor. More on this when we get to Iron Man 3, but part of what makes Iron Man’s origins so engaging is the way Downey and Shaun Toub, playing Yinsen, Stark’s de-facto mentor, bounce off each other in that Afghani cave. It’s no accident that the series would go on to somewhat replicate this scenario two sequels later. Toub does a very nice job in a somewhat thankless mentor role, giving our hero the advice and guidance he needs to overcome his obstacles, then doling out some parting food for thought before heroically dying.
I’m not really the biggest fan of Gwyneth Paltrow as a person; anyone who can come up with a phrase like “conscious uncoupling” is not okay in my book. While I don’t think she’s necessarily the best match against Downey, she does get a couple of very nice moments as Stark's Girl Friday Pepper Potts. Her flustered delivery of “at least three olives” after coming close to smooching Stark at the Walt Disney Concert Hall is a highlight, as well as their chemistry in the scene where Pepper changes out Stark’s chest arc reactor (note: how did they even film that? Was it a practical effect, or just extremely good CGI?). The rest of the time, she’s fine and doesn’t hurt anything.
However, I do give the movie credit for making Pepper generally not useless. In fact, for all this talk about how society needs a female-led superhero movie, Marvel Studios should be commended for having a unusual number of non-useless female characters. I’m not saying the series is a feminist dream (nothing ever is), but at least Pepper has a functional brain most of the time; oftentimes, she’s arguably smarter than Stark. We have yet to meet most of the ladies in the Marvel-verse, but Pepper sets a good baseline.
Is it weird that I kind of enjoyed Terrence Howard as James "Rhodey" Rhodes? There’s a bit of backlash against him in hindsight, and there are rumors that Favreau wasn’t a fan of his performance, but I don’t know. The worst possible thing they could have done is cast someone that was going to try to compete with Downey (Paltrow falls into this trap every once in awhile); in a backhanded compliment-y sort of way, Howard goes the opposite route. Howard’s usual is-he-asleep?-energy works to his advantage here, and the contrast between him and Stark is hilarious. What’s better, the movie knows it; when I saw Iron Man in theatres, the moment Stark reveals his secret identity to Rhodey (to avoid being blown out of the air by two Raptors (the fighter jets, not the dinosaurs although holy shit let me write that down)), the look on Howard’s face was a legitimate “fuck yeah!” moment.
Jeff Bridges gets the distinction of being the first super-villian to emerge in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Obadiah Stane. As far as that goes, he does alright, although he sometimes feels like he’s in a different movie, or maybe from a different planet (this will be a common theme with people playing Iron Man villains). Stane’s real purpose is to give us some insight and backstory into the Stark family, beginning with Tony’s dad Howard, a character you’ll find out more about later (to the backstory-allergic, this particular thread is actually lovely and worth pursuing).
Alas, the film that debuts the MCU also debuts a problem that to some degree still plagues the franchise to this day: ladies and gentlemen, the Hero-Battles-Evil-Version-of-Hero-While-Things-Explode-Finale! As entertaining as Stane is throughout the movie, for all intents and purposes, the main villain of this movie turns out to be Evil Iron Man. I’m also not entirely a fan of taking a known comic book villain, putting him or her in a movie, and then have them exist in the world of the movie for a few days, if not a few hours. If I may digress to a different universe for a second, Spider-Man 2’s Doc Ock drives me nuts for this exact reason. I mean, it’s Dr. Octopus! Even my mom knows who that is! You don’t want to keep him around? Seriously, go back and watch Spider-Man 2 (the real one, not the one with Jamie Foxx). Otto Octavius is Doc Ock for maybe three days in movie time. One of the most iconic supervillians in Spidey history and he’s gone quicker than the time it takes for THC to stop showing up in a hair sample. Ridiculous.
ANYWAY, Iron Monger is in no way Dr. Octopus, but in some ways, that makes it worse. Iron Man isn’t exactly known for his rogue’s gallery; the most famous one is probably The Mandarin, a character the MCU has shied away from, sort of (it gets complicated on that front, hold your questions for a little bit), and for good reason. Basically, the Iron Man series can’t afford to burn through what few bad guys they have at their disposal. Nevertheless, Iron Monger is quickly dispatched and the day is saved. Rest in peace, Stane.
The film is directed by Jon Favreau, who was probably most well known at this point for directing Elf, being Monica’s boyfriend Pete on Friends, and of course Swingers. But I need to mention that he also provided one of the all-time “I-really-don’t-give-a-fuck” performances as Foggy Nelson in 2003’s Daredevil, a very shitty movie that we’re not going to have to talk about or refer to again on this website for a long while. Anyway, Favreau directs this movie very nicely. He generally lets the actors’ personalities shine, and it is to his credit that the movie is heavy on practical effects as opposed to CGI, a fact that Favreau wore as a badge of pride at the 2007 Iron Man Comic-Con panel. It helps ground the movie and makes it feel like, hell, maybe this could happen, a quality that’s going to be very important once aliens start getting introduced.
But we’re not there yet.
But we’re not there yet.
As far as opening salvos go, Iron Man is about as good as they can come. The supporting cast is solid, the material is pretty good, and you have a franchise-defining performance in the center of it all.
Random Observations
-Every time I watch this movie, I’m struck by how much Bridges looks like Woolly Willy.
-Speaking of Jeff Bridges, he gets the Line Reading of the Night Award for his odd cluster-bomb of a delivery of “TONY STARK BUILT THIS IN A CAVE….WITH A BUNCH OF SCRAPS!!”
-Also, nobody thought a guy named Obadiah Stane might be up to something?
-The Unintentional Irony Scale I purchased just for And Then Shawarma exploded immediately upon viewing Howard’s total-cool-guy enthusiastic delivery of “NEXT TIME, BABY.” For newcomers, um…don’t get attached to Howard’s portrayal of Rhodes.
-For as minor as his part actually is, Clark Gregg’s Phil Coulson gets some serious burn in at the end. He’s part of the closing fight scene, for Christ’s sake! As for newcomers to the MCU, mark him well. He will be crucial as we move forward.
-As fast as Pepper Potts closes up everything she was looking at on Stane’s computer as he approaches his desk, the idea of her just staring at a blank computer screen is arguably more suspicious.
-Rhodey’s plan to keep the military out of Iron Man and Iron Monger’s battle that closes the film is a dumb one. “Just a training exercise”? Sure, a training exercise that is flipping cars over in the middle of Los Angeles at 9 in the evening! Happens all the time.
Dat Post-Credits Scene Tho: And then of course there’s Samuel L. Jackson’s cameo after the copyright credits have rolled as leader of S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury, the moment we all realized Marvel Studios was ready to make its place in movie history (okay, I lied; that moment happened when we all read about this scene on the Internet beforehand). It’s very interesting how much of a charge watching this scene one still gets, even to those who have seen this several times before. Simply put, nothing quite like this had ever been attempted before. Of course, nobody knew yet if they were going to be able to pull off this stunt; it was just exciting that somebody was trying.
Things to Look Out For
Iron Man is a relatively stand-alone film. However, there are still little threads of the sprawling storyline about to unfold. Newcomers, take note of the following things:
-The aforementioned post-credits scene.
-As mentioned above, Clark Gregg’s Phil Coulson continues to be a key part of the MCU.
The mysterious organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D. is also a major player in the films to come.
-Keen eyed viewers may have noticed what looks like Captain America’s shield in Tony Stark’s workshop. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIVeuYqjMlk]. In the timeline of the series, Cap is still under ice, so it’s truly more of an Easter Egg (it’s not literally his shield, just a replica), but it’s still cool (why, you ask, would there be a replica of Cap’s shield in Stark’s workshop? Hmm….). It took me years to learn this was there, by the way, so don’t feel bad.
-As alluded to above, Howard Stark is a character that will become integral to some of the early history of the MCU “mythology”, if you can call it that.
Fun Facts
-As alluded to in the site introduction, Quentin Tarantino was at one point approached to write and direct a film adaptation of Iron Man. That whole article is chock-full of insanity, by the way and is well worth a read. Drew Barrymore in a sincere Barbarella remake? Sign me up!
-The movie’s script wasn’t exactly finished by the time it was time to start filming, so if a lot of key dialogue sequences had a improvisatory feel to them, well, you’re not wrong. As a result, a lot of the best parts of the film weren’t in the script; Downey is the one who came up with the press conference on the floor, as well as the Jericho sales pitch. All further proof that this movie would be nothing without Robert Downey Jr.
-Downey was also used as an adviser on how to make the cave in Afghanistan look more captive. For some reason, this included Downey teaching everyone how to make tea out of a sock, which, as you may recall, never comes up in the film proper. Still, sock tea!
-Okay, one more Downey story, and it really has little to do with the movie, outside of Burger King getting a big old plug about 40 minutes in. Here, Downey tells the deceptively simple tale of how he finally kicked his heroin addiction. Holy cow, we may need a discussion page just for this story alone.
-Ghostface Killah had a cameo early in the film, but eventually got cut before the movie was released. This seems like a missed opportunity.
