I do love myself some comic book superhero movies, but with the recent treatments and flops, I feel the excitement is wanning on the classic superheroes. Iron Man I do consider of the classics, of Marvel of course. I got to admit, I was not expecting much from the movie. I was pleasantly surprised. The Premise: Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) inherited Stark Industries and is well known for his weapons. He is not just the head of the company but he can make machines and missiles himself. He goes to Afghanistan and is abducted and is shocked to found out terrorists are using his weapons. They force him to build a missile and him being the 'bad boy' he is, he builds a 'iron man' armor to fight them off, destroy the weapons and get out of there. He makes an enemy in the not-so-threatening Raza (Faran Tahir). Tony makes friends with Yinsen (Shuan Toub), who helps him with the armor but of course is a sacrificial lamb and dies, and not mentioned again.Tony returns home three months later, determined to stop making weapons and destroy more weapons that are with the bad guys. The guy who took over the company between Tony's father and himself, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) is not so happy. Obadiah cares for Tony but not as much as about the money. He finds Tony amusing, but he considers himself the 'big boy.' Tony locks himself in his basement perfecting the Iron Man technology, worrying everyone else, while he is being locked out of the company by the board. The movie makes its research and is believeable in the context of science fiction. Most of the 'flying' and other technology is made pausable and grounded in reality. It is a 'smart' superhero movie if anything, and it doesn't shave off the fun in the process. Of course, when the movie gets to the final battle, it goes full-fledge sci-fi but I ain't spilling it, because the movie pretty much keeps you in suspense on who is the real bad guy. The terrorists don't come off completely cartoon-y or stereotypical, like I said they made their research and comes off realistic.
There is great acting from Tony's Gal Friday Pepper Potts (Gwen Paltrow), best pal Jim Rhodes (Terrence Howard), and Bridges. Bridges does great in the gray area, and revels in it with a smirk. I am not crazy about Robert Downey Jr., I haven't been able to sit down through any of his movies, but he does come off charismatic here. I don't think I completely believe him in his cause, but I do see he is having fun when 'making' the Iron Man technology. I couldn't help but look at Downey's body, it looks good in this movie. He has fluctuated more than Matthew Perry from skeleton skinny to chubby strange, but his butt is not ignorable. The smart thing about the movie is that it sticks with its central characters and central plot, it doesn't try to have a b-plot, it is very universal, comes back together in a circle.
