Iron Man (2008)

That’s right. I’m beginning my run of the first phase of the ‘MARVEL Cinematic Universe’. And we open with Iron Man.

The film opens spectacularly, diving straight into the action. The wonderfully versatile Robert Downey Jr. presents Tony Stark as a very believable character and as the film develops, I realise I couldn’t imagine anyone better for the role. Terrence Howard portrays Rhodey very comically and the beautiful Leslie Bibb is good as Christine Everhart though she did seem somewhat under-developed and out of place. Jeff Bridges is of course brilliant as Obadiah Stane, though it was clear from the beginning – mainly through the direction as opposed to the scripting – that he would be the main villain of the film. The early death of Yinsen (Shaun Toub) was unexpected and worked well, though I would have loved to see more of the actor himself, whose scenes were relatively limited unlike his talent. I was less impressed with Sayed Badreya (Abu Bakaar), though this could be because the majority of his lines were not in English. Faran Tahir (Raza), meanwhile is excellent though unrealistically sinister in a comic-book style that doesn’t quite suit the realism of the rest of the film (despite its origins). I was not particularly keen on Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Potts) but it was of course nice to see Stark taking a shine to the less attractive but more genuinely nice woman at the end. Unfortunately Tim Guinee (Major Allen) was also unimpressive. However a largely underrated actor would have to be Paul Bettany as JARVIS – admittedly largely due to the scripting, but the sarcastic computer lines were hilariously delivered.
Jon Favreau’s direction is somewhat clichéd but admittedly works well, and the whole thing rattles along at a brilliant pace. Ramin Djawadi’s score is good though a little over-dramatic at times. It was nice to see the Iron Man suit going through various prototypes, much as it did in the original comics, and the plot in general was well structured with appropriate unexpected twists.Unfortunately the visual effects were weak and all the fire very obviously superimposed. My personal favourite scenes include the torture of Stark and the scene with Potts implanting her hand into his chest, as I prefer the more realistically plotted scenes – which is why it aggravates me so much that Stark survives his fall from a great height. Admittedly he saved himself before hitting the ground but the sheer drop should logically have killed him. Despite this, Iron Man’s first public appearance by the van in Afghanistan looked excellent and really suited Downey. On the other hand the endless robot battle towards the end grew tedious and the classic ‘waiting for the USB to fully download files’ was irritatingly clichéd. Nonetheless the end credits sequence was one of the best-looking I’ve seen and the epilogue with Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury) was well placed and intriguingly scripted. Finally, the moral of learning from one’s mistakes is thankfully not a common one and was subtly wired in throughout the film’s plot in a way that most films fail to do. I did have a good time watching this film and it gives me great anticipation for the rest of the series.