Iron Man (2008)

	Directed by: Jon Favreau	COUNTRY USA GENRE Drama/Sci-Fi/Action NORWEGIAN TITLE Iron Man RUNNING TIME 126 minutes
	Produced by: Avi Arad Kevin Feige
	Written by: Mark Fergus Hawk Ostby Art Marcum Matt Holloway

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Tony Stark	Robert Downey Jr.
Rhodey	Terrence Howard	½
Obadiah Stane	Jeff Bridges	½
Pepper Potts	Gwyneth Paltrow	½
Christine Everhart	Leslie Bibb	½
Yinsen	Shaun Toub
Raza	Faran Tahir	½
Nick Fury	Samuel L. Jackson	-

Review

Robert Downey Jr.'s customized, free-floating rendition of a superhero is a flying and womanizing euphoria, but he's not quite enough to conceal the fact that this Jon Favreau-directed addition to the subgenre of serialised superhero films suffers greatly from a lack of imagination and new angles in plotting and bad guys. After a crisp opening hour, in which the conveniently clever irony of Tony Stark's situation is both well addressed and potently realized, we might start thinking Iron Man will be a standout in the genre for years to come, as the title character is slowly born, bringing with him a placenta of impressive gadgets and visualizations of futuristic technology.

Us boys (who will be boys) can hardly ask for more – well, except perhaps for a faintly believable adversary who isn't overblown and dehumanized to such a degree that it is impossible to feel anything for either him or the battle he is fighting with our hero. Jeff Bridges' Obadiah Stane might just be the silliest of the many silly superhero villains in recent years (Willem Dafoe will have me excused). His boringly inflated, misanthropic megalomania is not at all accounted for, and Bridges can do little more than have his voice distorted into the typical unrecognizable grumble as his villain contaminates both the Iron Man character and the film, wrapping it in an unattractive veil of insignificance.

It is a shame that the writers of superhero movies feel obliged to include a villain with identical or similar powers to the superhero. In my opinion, this totally undermines the marvel of the hero himself, but perhaps more importantly, it removes the crucial human factor from the equation. What starts as an interesting human and psychological portrait of Tony Stark ultimately turns into a mechanical (in every sense of the word) affair of Michael Bay–ish proportions.