Marvel will kick Phase 4 off in a couple of months with Black Widow so I figured it’s about time to go back to 2008 and rank all of the MCU movies in the Infinity Saga in preparation. These will be spoiler reviews, as you’ve had plenty of time to see these movies by now and they’ll be actual review reviews, not “why this is great” or “why this sucks”. Reviews will go up every couple of days and we will move through the franchise chronologically starting with the movie that started it all off: Iron Man.
Iron Man is a good movie. I’m not sure if there is anyone who wouldn’t contest the point. The dialogue is snappy, Robert Downey Jr. is at the top of his game and the movie just looks good. It’s always an impressive accomplishment when a good movie is released but very few movies are this impressive. Sure, there are movies with bigger cinematic scope and greater filmmaking feats, but this movie should not have been as good as it was. Robert Downey Jr. was cast despite of the fact that he was a recently recovered alcoholic with a questionable track record, there was no script and the movie was being made up as it went along. And yet, twelve years later, this movie goes down as one of the greatest movies of the 2000s. How impressive is that?
There are a number of things that made this possible. For one, the script is as straightforward as possible. Where other Iron Man movies will get too convoluted and complicated for their own good, this one keeps it simple and focuses the movie around one idea: the man Tony Stark. It is clear from the very start of the film that both director Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. know everything there is to know about Tony Stark, never for a second do you doubt that this is a real person. This is not a plot-based movie, if it were it would have very likely gone the way of The Hobbit movies, all style and no substance, however because the story is entirely focused on the growth of Tony Stark, we get a clear narrative from start to finish.
And now we get to perhaps the most crucial reason as to why this movie was a success: before this, there had never been a hero like Tony Stark, and frankly, we still haven’t got one. In any other movie, Tony Stark would have been the villain. He would have been the careless billionaire profiting off of war because it made his life fun that the hero would have to take down. For the ordinary viewer, there is nothing to empathize with in Tony Stark. However, Jon Favreau cleverly finds one detail that changes the way we think about him, as Yusuf says: “so you are a man who has everything, and nothing”. While Tony Stark was never unlikable before this revelation (Robert Downey Jr. doing an excellent job at being charming while also being an a**hole) this makes him empathetic and gives the audience a reason to root for them. Heroes are supposed to be good people and Tony Stark isn’t, but the fact that he still tries to do the right thing shows just how great of a character he is.
And now we get to the supporting cast. They’re all fine. Most likely because of the messy production they never get as fleshed out as Tony more than what the plot needs and what the actors bring. Terrance Howard is Robert Downey Jr.’s straight man best friend who’s there to help out when needed and there to lecture Tony when he’s being unreasonable, Gwyneth Paltrow is RDJ’s love interest because she’s a female and she’s in the movie and she’s there to be worried about Tony Stark (though, to give the movie credit, they don’t force the romance story farther than it needs to) and Jeff Bridges is there to be the bad-guy. That’s about it. There’s also Phil Coulson who literally serves no purpose to the plot other than to set-up SHIELD but it’s small and justified enough that it’s forgivable. But even though the characters in writing are flat, all of the actors do an admirable job at making these people feel alive (side note: I do think Terrance Howard is better than Don Cheadle, not that Cheadle is bad, but Howard feels like a military man that happens to be Tony’s best friend and Cheadle just seems like one of the dudes that drinks at the bar with Tony on the weekends (okay, he’s not THAT relaxed, but he does seem more quippy and less strict)) and the story doesn’t even really need them to be that complex. This is Tony’s movie, and he deserves the focus.
Speaking of Tony’s story, the biggest complaint often lobbied at this film is that Tony’s arc ends at the end of act II and that after that there’s a fight scene. Defenders of the movie will often point out that Obadiah Stane represents what Tony Stark was and could be if he hadn’t become a pacifist and while that’s true, I also think there’s more to it. See, everybody know’s that Tony’s arc in this movie is to stop being an irresponsible weapons manufacturer and take responsibility for the damage that he’s done, but the thing is, his arc doesn’t end when he destroys his weapons that are being used by terrorists because he’s still using the Iron Man armor as a weapon. During that entire battle, the Iron Man is shot to look like a monster, whether he’s hanging on to the bottom of a US military jet like some sort of parasite, being hit by a missed, falling into a large hole and then climbing out with a menacing look on it’s face, or punching through a wall behind a guy to grab him. Sure, we root for it because we know who’s underneath and he’s doing good things, but without context Iron Man could easily look like a villain. But then in the third act battle between him and the Iron Monger (cleverly shot like some monster as well, mirroring the second act), he’s not going to war against terrorists, his only goal is to protect as many people as possible from the Iron Monger. He begins the movie creating weapons, then he becomes a weapon (Obadiah “you tried to rid the world of weapons, you gave it it’s greatest one yet”), and then finally he becomes a protector.
That’s not to say that the movie is without it’s faults. As I mentioned earlier, Phil Coulson and the rest of SHIELD serve no real purpose to the plot other than to provide some cannon fodder for the Iron Monger (which Phil Coulson survives off screen to pop back up afterwards) and did we ever learn why SHIELD wanted to talk to Tony? Because I was waiting for some sort of reason other than “we need to talk to you about what happened”, but that never happened. Then there are some strange cuts and the timeline is a bit strange, it’s kinda hard to figure out if this all takes place in a couple of days or over several months or whatever. The first act does feel a bit slow. And even though thematically it makes sense, Obadiah Stane is revealed to be the bad guy kinda sloppily and there doesn’t seem to be much motivation to him other than keep the company alive which is kind of a small goal and doesn’t really explain why he just starts throwing cars with families in them. But even still this is a good, impressive movie.
P.S. The MCU has a tendency to be more comedic nowadays so it was strange to watch this movie and see how grounded it is. All of the jokes come from Tony Stark and none of them really get to the banter that the MCU is known for now. In fact this could really be called a gritty origin story. The people feel like they could be real and the story feels like it could happen and it’s dealing with a real-world problem with very little glamour. People said that at least the DCEU was trying something new by being gritty, but Iron Man is pretty dark and gritty but it’s still a super-hero movie and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. This is how to do a realistic super-hero movie.
P.P.S. Well that was my longest review ever. I had to use TWO pictures so it wouldn’t just be a block of text. Let’s see how The Incredible Hulk does...
Personal Rating: 8/10
Enjoyment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Depth: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆
Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆
Writing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆
Directing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆
Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Comedy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆
Tension: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ⭐️ ☆
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