Director Jon Favreau's Iron Man: Film Review
Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges
Aug 7, 2008
A lot hinged on Iron Man - failure at the box ofice might well have heralded a decline that could’ve set the superhero genre back to somewhere near the god-awful camp of the 70's and 80's (admit it, they were rubbish).
We might at least have seen the genre wane for some years before public confidence could be restored.
As it happens, Marvel was willing to risk a substantial investment; was able – consequently - to attract big names and there’s no doubt that Iron Man has been a critical and financial success (it has taken in over $500 million worldwide).
Happy days for Marvel.
Tony Stark: the Man of Iron
Iron Man is Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr), a billionaire industrialist who builds weapons for the US military.
While in Afghanistan pitching his latest missile technology to the brass, Stark’s convoy is attacked by a terrorist cell. He’s gravely wounded by the explosion of one of his own weapons, being used by the natives, and awakes to find himself their prisoner.
Stark is put to work by his captors, who want him to build them a missile, but instead devises a way out. The result is a prototype suit of power-armour designed to help him forcibly escape.
When Stark returns to US soil, he realizes the validity of the argument against being an arms dealer and wants to re-direct Stark Industries to stop it from doing any more harm – which does not please company partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges).
In addition, Stark sets to work on building an advanced suit of armour and Iron Man is born...
Marvel Hits the Mark, But Only Two out of Three
Director Jon Favreau does a sterling job with keeping the film feeling grounded and realistic, while handling the action sequences with maturity. The special effects, of course, are a crucial selling point and they are fantastic.
Iron Man easily translates to one of the very best on-screen superheroes and will have fans in raptures.
The ever-brilliant Robert Downey Jr is an ideal choice for the role of Tony Stark, while Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges bring a lot of class to what are otherwise highly stereotypical parts.
No doubt there will be a bigger role for Terrence Howard in the sequals, which promise to follow the classic comic storyline of Jim Rhodes having to become Iron Man in place of an out-of-control alcoholic Tony Stark (wherein Rhodes himself becomes addicted to his new identity and Stark must don his prototype suit to stop him.) Of course, this is mostly speculation at this point.
The weakness of the film, however, lies in its third act, in which the story dives into a predictable bout between hero and villain.
It would have been far preferable to see more of Iron Man just being Iron Man, rather than have him immediately faced with someone bigger and badder than himself (and would it really have been so unthinkable to forego the presence of a supervillain?).
Marvel must be careful of building all their projects to the same blueprint or the franchises will quickly become two-dimensional and no cast or amount of special effects will save them.
A promising development against this stagnation is that Marvel are beginning to integrate their characters into a cohesive universe, with the SHIELD organization being introduced and Downey Jr making a cameo appearance in this year's Incredible Hulk as Tony Stark.
For now, Marvel have proven they can go at it alone and the first two acts of Iron Man make the film one of the best comic-adaptions around.
- Produced by: Avi Avrad & Kevin Feige.
- Director: Jon Favreau.
- Screenplay: John August, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Arthur Marcum, Matthew Holloway.
- Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard.
- Released: May 2008 by Paramount Pictures and Marvel Studios.
- Running Time: 126 mins.
