Tagline:
Heroes aren’t born. They’re built.

Wide Release Date:
May 2, 2008

Directed by:
Jon Favreau
Screenplay by:
Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway
Produced by:
Avi Arad, Kevin Feige

Starring:
Robert Downey Jr.
Terrence Howard
Jeff Bridges
Gwyneth Paltrow
Leslie Bibb
Shaun Toub

PREGAME THOUGHTS

TONY STARK WAS ABLE TO BUILD THIS IN A CAVE!

WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!

I’ve only seen three of the, as of right now, thirty-four movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is one of them. I liked it a lot.

Iron Man begins my mission to watch every MCU movie in release order. Wish me luck, chucklefucks.

THE 700(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

TONY STARK WAS ABLE TO BUILD THIS IN A CAVE!

WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) travels to Afghanistan with his military buddy Lieutenant Colonel General Private Detective Sergeant Admiral James Rhodes (Terrance Howard). This isn’t a pleasure trip this time! Stark’s going to demonstrate his new Jericho missile! After the demonstration, his convoy is struck by enemy fire. Stark is wounded, captured, and taken hostage by the Ten Rings terrorist organization, something I still don’t know much about myself. They want Stark to build a Jericho missile for their group in exchange for freedom. Sounds like a bluff to me.

Some scamp is setting off firecrackers again!

Stark is imprisoned with a man named Ho Yinsen (Shaun Toub), who fabricated an electromagnet for Stark’s chest that is keeping missile shrapnel from entering his heart. Together they “build a Jericho missile”, and by that I mean they build an arc reactor and a metal suit to escape their imprisonment. Or at least Stark’s imprisonment. Yinsen will be left high and dry, apparently.

Right before they finish, and not a millisecond later, the Ten Rings catch on to Stark and Yinsen’s little scheme and ambush them. Yinsen grabs a gun and starts shooting all willy-nilly as a distraction while Stark powers up the metal suit. Yinsen dies for the cause, Stark destroys the Ten Rings’ weapons, flies away, crashes farther off in the desert, ruins the suit, and doesn’t die. Rhodes discovers him somehow and flies him back home.

After having survived such a bullshit fucked up situation, Stark holds a press conference to announce his withdrawal from the weapons manufacturing business. They’ll now focus on snow globes and lava lamps. Stark’s father Howard’s old business partner, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), as in “stain in his underpants”, tries to warn Stark that he’ll ruin the company and destroy his father’s legacy. Stark don’t give fourteen shits about this. Weapons are done.

While Stark spends every minute of his leisure time rebuilding a sleeker version of his metal suit, his personal assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) helps with various tasks, like “helping him not die all of a sudden”. There’s a fun scene where she replaces the electromagnet in Stark’s chest with a new and improved version. It was quite an intimate moment.

Awwwww, these two lovebirds…

At a charity event, a reporter informs Stark that the Ten Rings have acquired some of Stark’s weapons and are using them to bomb various villages in Afghanistan, including Yensin’s hometown. Stark flies out there with his new suit to stop the attacks. While flying home, two US military aircraft tail Stark with Rhodes directing on the ground. At this point, Stark has to admit to Rhodes that he’s the one flying around causing such a commotion-style ruckus and Rhodes has to call off the counterattack.

While all this is happening, the Ten Rings have recovered all the bits and pieces of Stark’s broken prototype from the middle of the desert and attempt, at the direction of Obadiah “Poopypants” Stane, who is supplying them with weapons and planning to kill Stark to take over the company, to rebuild the suit. How’s that for a sentence? Well, Stane is successful in reverse engineering the suit, but the arc reactor that powers the suit is impossible EVEN THOUGH TONY STARK WAS ABLE TO BUILD IT IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!

Stark becomes aware of illegal shipments of his weapons to Afghanistan and tasks Potts with cracking the database for more information. She learns that Stane was behind it all. She meets with Agent Phil Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Clark Gregg) with this information.

Because Stane’s team can’t replicate the arc reactor, he breaks into Stark’s home, debilitates him, and steals the one in his chest. Scrambling for his life, Stark installs the old one that Potts had encased in glass as a gift.

When S.H.I.E.L.D. attempts to arrest Stane, he has already suited up and ready for Bad Guy Mode. Long story short, Stark beats (and kills) Stane and everything is back to status quo. The next morning, Tony Stark admits to being Iron Man in a press conference, much to everyone’s surprise and chagrin.

And then Earth blew the fuck up and everything died. The end.

*Black Sabbath music plays*

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — General Movie Thoughts

TONY STARK WAS ABLE TO BUILD THIS IN A CAVE!

WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!

Quite an enjoyable movie! I like the part where Tony Stark did the thing and then made the quip and then saved the day.

TOPIC 2 — Real Movie Thoughts

Oh, I have to take this seriously? Very well, then.

Until three years ago I couldn’t give a shit less about superheroes. Now I’m reading comic books all day like a child while comparing the intelligence of Captain America (dumb) to the intelligence of Superman (also dumb). The point I’m getting to is that I’m a big stranger to superhero movies, having only seen about two handfuls over the last 36 years and enjoyed a lot less. This is one of the ones I have seen and did enjoy, which I can only say about… well, as of this moment, no other superhero movie. Honest to Jeezus. The Dark Knight? Blow me.

You see this little lightbulb here, Stark? The dude does not abide.

I’ve come around on superheroes, though, so I expect to enjoy a good chunk of these MCU movies. As the first movie in the cinematic universe, Iron Man sets the bar high. Robert Downey Jr. is cast perfectly as Tony Stark, the intelligent and snarky wisecracker who is far from perfect. He sets the tone right at the beginning by being loose and conversational as his convoy rides through the shithole of Afghanistan. Yes, it is a shithole. Shut up. Then he confidently demonstrates his new whiz-bang missile system. Then he gets blown up and kidnapped! Needless to say, his confident attitude gets shaken. Throughout the movie you see Downey Jr. make the movie his own, putting on an incredibly memorable performance in a role that I can’t imagine someone else filling. Ty Burrell? No!

Paltrow as Pepper Potts is a good fit too, and, thankfully, not at an inappropriate age to be a Tony Stark love interest. No one wants to see a young woman chasing an old man. What is this, some Patrick Stewart shit? No! It’s also nice that they kept it subtle, not the focus of the movie, but just enough to give some believable sentimentality to a couple of action movie characters. She’s also a classic foil; the level-headed realist to Tony Stark’s over-the-top inventiveness.

Aahhh, then there’s Jeff Bridges. Fucking great, this guy. Obadiah Stane is a real piece of shit antagonist, and Bridges has just the right amount of arrogant bombast to pull it off beautifully. Plus, he shaved his head and grew a beard for the role, something that he obviously pulled off splendidly. Lots of nice adverbs in this paragraph! I also like how they made him a business partner instead of just a rival from another company. Twists the knife a little harder in Stark’s supple little gut.

Is your bowtie crisp, or are you just happy to see me?

Terrance Howard? Who cares. He got replaced by Don Cheadle anyway. I don’t even remember his name in the movie? Professor Air Force?

Would recommend. Holds up well for something over 15 years old already.

TOPIC 3 — Iron Man

I don’t know much about Iron Man, admittedly. When I think of Iron Man I think of Robert Downey Jr. and his fondness for really, really hard drugs. I’m, like, 27% certain that Tony Stark from the comics isn’t shooting up heroin or anything like that. Every Marvel hero has a flaw, and I’m not sure what Iron Man’s is. Captain America, for example, is a stupid sack of shit, and Spider-Man pees his pants a lot, but Iron Man? Is he a hard drinker? Does he kill the prostitutes that he bones? What’s his deal?

We may never know. That’s all I really have to say about Iron Man. Also, he’s really rich. Maybe he can afford to shoot up heroin without ruining his life.

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

To avoid spoilers about the final press conference, the extras were told that it was a dream sequence.
Spoilers for whom? The extras? Who gives a shit about spoiling a movie for extras?

Jeff Bridges said he felt really uncomfortable not having a script or rehearsals, since normally he is very prepared, and knows his lines word for word. Realizing it was like he was in a “two hundred million dollar student film” took the pressure off of him and made it fun.
This movie cost $200,000,000 to make? What the fuck, Hollywood? Feed some children.

In an interview with Britain’s Empire Magazine, Robert Downey Jr. thanked Burger King for helping him get straight edged in 2003 with a car full of drugs.
lol what? This is the best sentence I’ve ever read.

Hey, I can play Lemmings on this thing!

Jon Favreau celebrated getting the job as director by going on a diet and losing seventy pounds.
Yes! I got the job! Now to starve myself for weeks, as a treat!

During pre-production, Robert Downey Jr. set up an office next to Jon Favreau’s office, to discuss his role with him, and to be more involved in the film’s screenwriting.
Reportedly, Downey Jr. also drilled a hole in the wall for “anonymous blowjobs”.

“Being in the Iron Man suit is like being in the coolest Halloween costume ever,” said Downey Jr. “You’re putting the suit on and you catch a glimpse in the mirror and you go, That’s right, Grandma would be proud.”
Grandma is really hard to please, too. Grandma used to ink Sailor Jerry tattoos on convicts. Grandma voted for Ralph Nader in the 2000 election.

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

Yes. This is probably one of the better superhero movies considering Robert Downey Jr. is the man and it’s cool that he hasn’t placed any heroin in body for 20 years!

I also saw Iron Man 2 and I remember not liking it too much, but that’s a topic for another post (the one where I talk about Iron Man 2 <—— and if there’s a link there that means I talked about it! Click it!)