Iron Man

RATING: A-

Opening your movie with AC/DC's "Back In Black" is about as good a start as you can get. And then our main character being caught in an explosive ambush is pretty good too. In other words, the movie does a great job of getting you absolutely hooked early on. 

By now, we're all pretty familiar with this particular guy. He's appeared in a total of six Marvel movies now. And it's also probably rather difficult to forget about the movie that started this whole "Marvel Cinematic Universe" thing. I personally doubt that the guys at Marvel knew they'd be where they are now when they made this movie. Either that, or they were incredibly ambitious/optimistic. And it actually worked out for them. 

So in this particular movie, we get told the origin story of Tony Stark/Iron Man; which happens when he, the CEO of Stark Industries--a company known for creating weapons--is captured by Afghan terrorists and wakes up with shrapnel embedded in his chest from an injury. Forced to fight to survive, he creates an iron suit to escape and then decides to use his brilliant new "iron suit" idea to fight against evil. 

Despite how far we've come in this series, this movie mostly holds up pretty well. Although there a couple points during the flashbacks that go by slowly, there's not a whole lot of dull moments. Once the Iron Man suit is on, the action sequences become a lot better; a highlight being a scene where he saves a bunch of Afghan refugees and attacks the "Ten Rings" terrorist group. The climactic fight with Iron Monger is quite awesome as well. 

On the casting, Robert Downey Jr is quite great as Tony, even if he's still working out the kinks a little bit. Jeff Bridges does a fantastic job in his role. I can't say the same for Gwyneth Paltrow, whose performance and scenes are more annoying than anything and do admittedly take down the movie a slight notch. I like Terrence Howard as Rhodes, although it's still weird seeing him in the role since he got replaced immediately afterwards. Also, it'd been years since I've seen this movie, so I'd forgotten how much Clark Gregg was involved as Agent Coulson, who is great, of course.

All in all, it's pretty difficult to deny that Iron Man is a good movie. I don't find it to be quite the revered classic that some do now (especially when compared to some other better Marvel movies) but it was still a pretty darn good starting point for the most ambitious film franchise of all time. It's pretty fun and exciting for the majority of the way through. If you somehow haven't gotten yourself wrapped into this Marvel series yet, the first Iron Man film is the place to start.