Iron Man movie review

May 5th, 2008

I went into Iron Man on the weekend with low expectations. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of Iron Man or the Tony Stark character, and I also have trouble watching Robert Downey Jnr. My one hope with Iron Man, was that I would not walk out of the cinema as disappointed as I had been after seeing Ghost Rider. Fortunately, Iron Man exceeded my low expectations.

Iron Man is very much an ‘origin’ type movie. It goes about introducing characters and back story, and in many ways sets up everything required for numerous sequels. Think the first Spider-man film or Batman Begins. It’s perfect for those with no prior knowledge of the character, and works as a big dumb action movie you can sit through whilst eating a whole bucket of popcorn or wheel of cheese.

If I were to break the plot down into bite size chunks, it’d go as follows:

Millionaire weapons developer, Tony Stark is kidnapped by terrorists (or his customers);

Tony Stark develops the first version of the Iron Man costume to escape from captivity;

Following escape, Tony Stark realises he’s not cut out for the weapons business so decides to help people… by building the Iron Man armour, that is later described as the worlds ultimate weapon;

Stark struggles with the threat of a hostile takeover within his company as well as growing sexual tension with his assistant, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow);

Stark’s company goes on selling weapons behind his back, and begin developing an Iron Man armour of there own, based on the first version Stark used to escape;

Big explosions, some fighting, and Iron Man vs. some kind of bigger Iron Dude; and

Ending that leaves things wide open for a sequel.

Iron Man was an enjoyable movie. Good if you’re not in the mood for too much thinking, and just want to see action and stuff blowing up. I’d give it a solid 3.5 out of 5.

In other comic book related news, check out the latest trailer for the Dark Knight movie. I watched this, and then had to have a little sit down. If this doesn’t get you harder than a diamond in a snow storm, then nothing will… July 17…

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