PHASE ONE
Discovery
"Iron Man. That's kind of catchy!"
June 2008 brought another shot at Marvel's big green giant, The Incredible Hulk, while July 2008 brought a little film called The Dark Knight that blew everyone away with incredible acting, mesmerizing action and a level of craftsmanship that still astonishes me to this very day. Like I said, there's a level of variety presented here in just this summer's features that showed what film starring superheroes could accomplish. In the years since, things have only gotten stranger, and in numerous cases, such unconventionality has led to some incredibly well done films.
That's a stark contrast to the pre-2008 days, where the X-Men had to make fun of their yellow spandex outfits or 2003's The Hulk which couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a dark tragedy or a film where CGI Eric Bana fought violent CGI poodles. It's not that deviating from your comic book source material is always a bad thing (many modern superheroes have lent immense depth to female characters who were nothing more than eye candy in the comics namely), but many of these films felt too focused on apologizing for their comic book roots instead of embracing the elements that made them so beloved in the first place. I'm not exactly sure it's a shocker that Sam Raimi's first two Spider-Man movies, especially the second, remain among the best superhero films for, among numerous other reasons, adhering to what made Spider-Man so legendary while adding all the elements of cinema that make the artform so compelling.
It's in Iron Man, the first superhero film of that notable summer of '08, that one can see how the art-form of superhero filmmaking was changing. Today, it sounds like total poppycock, but back in this age, Iron Man was a nobody. He was more known as the name of an Ozzy Osbourne song, and for having a cartoon in the 90's that didn't have anywhere near the fanbase of the X-Men cartoon from the same age. And now Marvel was gonna use him as the character to launch it's independent film studio and plans for a shared universe, a type of storytelling that hadn't been attempted on the scale that Marvel was planning to turn into reality.
So how exactly did Iron Man become the pop culture sensation he is today? It's simple really; he had a great movie that launched him into the public consciousness. Much of this can be attributed to the main character, Tony Stark, who wasn't just a unique lead for a superhero movie, but would have stood out in any major blockbuster. Not since Jurassic Park centered around 40+ year old scientists and mathematicians had a summertime popcorn flick focused on someone whose age was over 30. Looking over the number one movies for the ten years prior to Iron Man's release, only Shrek 2 and Saving Private Ryan starred actors who weren't under the age of 40.
And yet, here was Robert Downey Jr, an actor drenched in controversy, headlining Marvel's first independent foray into cinema. It was an unconventional choice on all counts, and one director Jon Favreau had to pressure Marvel executives to approve of, but it pays off in dividends. Downey has the rascally sensibility needed to make Tony Stark's smarmy personality seem charming instead of off-putting. It's also a smart move from a perspective of story structure to introduce Tony not at a press conference or in his mansion, but just driving with soldiers, cracking jokes and having a good time. The sharp juxtaposition between those enjoyable moments of casual conversation and the intense violence that unfolds mere seconds after those exchanges renders the chaotic bloodshed all the more powerful.
Of course, Stark isn't saint by any stretch of the imagination, and his lack of responsibility for the deadly weapons his company makes is played up the primary flaw in his character. However, the cataclysmic effects his tools have on innocent civilians is felt when he's attacked by The Ten Rings, a terrorist organization that uses his companies missiles to attack Stark and take him prisoner. It's here, as their hostage, that the film really becomes compelling. Stuck only with Dr. Yinsen (Shaun Toub) for company, Stark soon realizes that there's far more to this world than the next supermodel he'll bed. That what his company profits greatly on hurts people.
That he must use his intellect to help people.
Downey Jr. makes this kind of progression feel natural, and scenes with him and Yinsen trying to build the Iron Man armor under incredibly hazardous conditions are fraught with tension. This is also where director Jon Favreau past experiences with his 2003 film Elf begin to be a major asset in Iron Mans success; Buddy The Elf, like Tony Stark, is a distinctive personality that leaves a notable influence on those he interacts. Both Buddy and Tony begin to learn there's far more complexity to the world than they could have ever imagined, and while Tony changes more over the course of his film, both never, during their stories, lose the notable charms that made them such engaging characters in the first place.
Pepper Potts similarly thrives on busting through the mold, primarily in how her relationship with Tony doesn't become an overtly romantic one by the films end. The groundwork is laid for that to be a possibility down the line, but there's a more realistic pacing in their interactions that helps emphasize Iron Man's knack for juxtaposing heightened superhero antics with more naturalistic characters and personalities. Another one of these personalities is Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane, a character many have derided when looking at the film, but honestly, I actually think he's a pretty interesting baddie.
It helps, of course, that Bridges is charming as all out (as you can likely tell, this film started a number of trends future Marvel Studios films would utilize, namely, in this case, excellent casting), and is able to flip-flop between conveying a fatherly presence in early scenes with Tony and being a more menacing entity in a notable sequence where he confronts Pepper in his office. The final battle between him and Tony even works for me, and I would actually like to take a moment to confront one criticism people have with this scene: Obadiah managing to use the suit in the finale even without the large amount of training Tony underwent. The thing is though, this lack of experience plays into the finale, with Obadiah failing to take into account the suits vulnerability to colder temperatures and his movements in the piece of hardware feeling more clunky than Tony's more expertful motions.
Of course, while the scene is fun, it's certainly not the best moment in the fun. That honor belongs to when Tony confronts Yinsen in the final moments of his life. Here, all bloody and bruised, is the man whose witness Tony transforming into a better person, whose help has been invaluable in creating the first Iron Man suit. "Come on, you're going to see your family. Get up." Tony says, in a pleading tone, eliciting Yinsen to look over with a weary look and notes his family is dead "...and I'm going to see them now. I want this." Before he departs for his family though, he offers Tony one last piece of advice: "Don't waste your life."
Those four words will drive Tony in all that is to come in not only Iron Man, but also all his future films. It's also a phrase at the crux of a scene whose smallness in scale is only matched by it's emotional potency. There's a lot of nifty action to be found in Iron Man, ditto for humorous moments, but it's also, at it's heart, the story of a man who learns about what life is really, truly about. Seven years later, it's a feature whose impact can still be felt on the cinema landscape at large, but more importantly, it's still a damn great movie
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