MCU Sunday #1: Iron Man

Preface: As promised last year, I plan to review every single currently available movie in what is known as the  Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) over the year 2024. These will appear in order of their release over that time period. This is the first installment. (Oh, and by the way, after I've exhausted all of the currently available MCU movies I will be rounding out the year with some of the other available movies made from the Marvel comics pantheon)

Notes: In each of the MCU installments you will be seeing references to two recurring events that occur in nearly every MCU movie.

Where is Stan Lee?: Stan Lee was the driving genius behind Marvel Comics.  He usually shows up in a cameo.  Sometimes these are so quick you gotta be sure you don't blink. Occasionally he gets a line  of dialogue.

And the Credits Roll: You should always stay in the theater for the credits when watching a MCU movie, because during the credits and at the end there is a teaser (or two) that is worth the wait.  Often they were a teaser for the next installment of the films.

MCU Sunday: Part I:

I have to admit that I missed this first installment of the MCU movies in the theater. I'm not sure what the circumstances were that prevented it at this juncture.  I regularly went to superhero movies ever since the days I first started going to movies on my own back in the early 80's.  But Iron Man did not make my viewing list for films in 2008.  

As I stated in my post on this site last year (The Marvel-ous Past), I have always enjoyed superhero stuff, especially those done by Marvel Comics.  And I had seen all of the Tobey Maguire Spiderman movies as well as those of the X-Men and the Fantastic Four.

I didn't really get into those movies that are now considered part of the "Marvel Comics Universe" and it's ensuing timeline and story line until The Incredible Hulk. And even then, I did not watch them all in the theater.  The reason for that was I was going through a particularly troublesome time in my life, with the onset of glaucoma discouraging me from going to the theater, as well as a brief period of unemployment.   

But I did manage to watch them all on the small screen.  Let me say this for the record.  Although they are still entertaining, nothing beats seeing all this stuff on a movie screen. (I used to go to a LOT of movies when I was younger, including comedies and straightforward dramas.  These days I only venture into theaters for movies that promise a bunch of explosions and special effects... like Marvel superhero movies)

 

 

 

Iron Man (2008):

So, the movie begins with Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) in transit in a military convoy.  The convoy gets attacked by enemy fire and Tony is injured and the rest of the convoy apparently killed.

Fade to a few days prior.  Here we find that Tony is the head of a corporation whose main business is creating advanced weapons.  Tony is a pretty unlikable character at the beginning.  He is self-obsessed, egotistical and manipulative. And he also doesn't really give a rat's ass about responsibility, as evidenced by the fact that while he is being awarded a prestigious award, he is in the casino gambling and hitting on women.

 

 Flash forward . The next morning Tony is working on some project after having spent the night with a reporter.  His secretary/Jack-of-all-trades, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), tries to get him on his way to a meeting he has scheduled across the globe. Eventually she gets him on his way, although he is still not entirely focused on the task at hand.

Then we get back to the present.  Tony has been captured by a tribal rebel faction whose goal is to get a weapon from Tony that will match the one he has been supplying to their adversaries.  To this point he is forced, along with another captive, Yinsen (Shaun Toub), to create said weapon.  Although he is being monitored, Tony instead makes a suit that will incorporate various technologies that will eventually transform him into Iron Man.

After successively defeating the tribal faction with the help of his new suit, Tony returns to the States, where he has a press conference informing the world that Stark Industries is going to cease making weapons and focus on other activities, much to the chagrin of Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), the former partner of Tony's father, and still de facto the second in command of Stark Industries.

Forthwith Tony has a change of heart and becomes involved in trying to change the world for the better. He has plans to give the company and his image a makeover.  He attends a charity event, where the reporter he had a liaison with prior to his capture informs him that someone delivered some of his company's weapons to the rebel faction he had been a prisoner of. They had used those weapons to attack the village of his co-conspirator, Yinsen, apparently as an act of revenge.

Where is Stan Lee?:  At the event Tony passes an older gentlemen who is standing with several attractive younger women, only his back showing to Tony.  Quite naturally, possibly, Tony mistakes the man for someone else, Hugh Hefner.

Tony uses his Iron Man suit to attack the rebels. But since only he knows that he is Iron Man at this point and even the US armed forces don't know he is on their side, several Air Force planes try to attack him.  In an effort to call them off, Tony has to reveal to his friend and military liaison Col. Rhodes (Terence Howard) of his true identity.

Eventually, Tony learns that his partner, Stane, was behind the abduction and that he, Stane, had intended that they kill Tony.  That having failed, Stane has to take things in his own hands.  Using Tony's technology, Stane creates his own Iron Man suit, which of course, leads to the final confrontation.

And the Credits Roll: Tony walks in to his laboratory where he encounters Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) waiting for him. "I am Iron Man.  You think you're the only superhero in the world?" he asks.  Tony is invited to join the Avenger Initiative.

 

 

Iron Man is a great start to the MCU series. For those of us who enjoy superhero movies, it represented a new turn in the presentation of the Marvel pantheon. One of the impetuses of the Marvel Comics company to form the MCU  was a frustration with how Hollywood had presented some of it's other franchise heroes. (Spiderman, The Fantastic Four, and the less than well-received Ang Lee version of The Incredible Hulk (Hulk).

Fantastic Press' Top 100 Comic Book Movies ranks this first Iron Man film as #6 in the pantheon of comic book movies.  Although the author suggests that the last part of the movie "degenerates slightly into rock'em sock'em robot territory".  (And just what. pray tell, is wrong with rock'em sock'em robots?)  It also says that the film adheres to it's "emotional core". (I will be coming back to 100 Comic Book Movies frequently during this series.  I highly recommend it,  It's very entertaining.)

 

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 The old Plymouth is ready to roll.  Got to get out there and fight the good fight for truth, justice and... sorry, wrong superhero... but I got to fight for smething.  Maybe a good burger.

Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy