This week I had the opportunity to see the Iron Man movie. I went in fully spoiled, heck I even saw the secret post-credits footage on youtube. You see I initially wasn’t going to see this film. I’ve never been much of an Iron Man reader. I picked up a dozen issues or so over the years, mostly during the Armor Wars story arc. It never held my attention for long. More recently I’ve only seen Iron Man in the Civil War stuff where he comes off as something between a control freak and a Nazi. So when asked the question ‘Tony Stark is…” I don’t fill in ‘Iron Man’, ‘Rich’, or even ‘a Genius.’ Nope I go straight for ‘a Douchebag.’ I was fully prepared to skip this movie and not feel bad about it. Then the reviews started coming in. Not the main stream one. I barely notice the mainstream media and even Rotten Tomatoes can’t get me to see a movie based on their reviews. The reviews I follow are contained in the podcasts I listen to. From Summer’s endorsement on Slice of Sci Fi, to the segment on Fist Full of Comics (and Games), to the whole hour that Geek Radio Daily (Weekly) did on it, everywhere I turned someone was recommending it. So I caved and went and am quite happy with the result.

It turns out that Iron Man is a really good film. Robert Downey Jr did a fantastic job of playing the lovable douchebag. I would have never thought he would be a good fit but it turned out he is perfect. The supporting cast is excellent as well. I didn’t recognize the actor who played Jim Rhodes (Terrance Howard) but I liked what he did with it. Rhodey was always my Iron Man (if I can be said to have one.) He was Iron Man in Secret Wars and the West Coast Avengers, two titles that I did read. I look forward to his expanded role in the sequels (the Director Jon Favreau has said that he is interested in doing as many Iron Man movies as they can. Of course his interest may be because the character he played in the film ends up with Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in the comics.) Gwyneth Paltrow did a great job, as did Jeff Bridges. (I never knew that losing his hair would make The Dude such a bastard.) As for the rest of the film, it is pretty strong all around. The special effects were great, of course. The armor looked awesome. There was a certain amount of predictability to the story but then when isn’t there in a superhero movie, especially an origin story. Still there was a good mix of humor, action, and drama.

I think it helped that I heard the in depth analysis that I did before seeing it. As I said, I wasn’t a huge fan of Iron Man so there were a lot of things that would have gone right over my head. In fact the little I knew probably would have made it worse for me. I would know that I was missing things where someone completely unfamiliar with the subject matter wouldn’t notice. If you know nothing of Iron Man, I can recomend this movie highly. If you know a little about Iron Man you might want to check out some of the aforementioned podcasts to prepare you. I’m glad I did.

Iron Man also makes a good flagship production for the new generation of Marvel movies. As I understand it Marvel is now developing these movies on their own instead of selling the rights to other studios. This will permit them to more smoothly tie their Marvel Universe movies together. With Iron Man as a starting point we now have The Hulk coming soon, Thor in 2010, Captain America (2011) which should lead nicely to the Avengers (2011?) Hopefully they can maintain this level of quality in there other production and keep the future bright for supers movies.