Iron Man (2008)

After being held captive in an Afghan cave, billionaire engineer Tony Stark creates a unique weaponized suit of armor to fight evil.

Director:

Jon Favreau

Writers:

Mark Fergus (screenplay), Hawk Ostby (screenplay)

Stars:

Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard

Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 20 wins & 65 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Robert Downey Jr.	...	Tony Stark
Terrence Howard	...	Rhodey
Jeff Bridges	...	Obadiah Stane
Gwyneth Paltrow	...	Pepper Potts
Leslie Bibb	...	Christine Everhart
Shaun Toub	...	Yinsen
Faran Tahir	...	Raza
Clark Gregg	...	Agent Coulson
Bill Smitrovich	...	General Gabriel
Sayed Badreya	...	Abu Bakaar
Paul Bettany	...	JARVIS (voice)
Jon Favreau	...	Hogan
Peter Billingsley	...	William Ginter Riva
Tim Guinee	...	Major Allen
Will Lyman	...	Award Ceremony Narrator (voice)

Storyline

Tony Stark. Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. Son of legendary inventor and weapons contractor Howard Stark. When Tony Stark is assigned to give a weapons presentation to an Iraqi unit led by Lt. Col. James Rhodes, he's given a ride on enemy lines. That ride ends badly when Stark's Humvee that he's riding in is attacked by enemy combatants. He survives - barely - with a chest full of shrapnel and a car battery attached to his heart. In order to survive he comes up with a way to miniaturize the battery and figures out that the battery can power something else. Thus Iron Man is born. He uses the primitive device to escape from the cave in Iraq. Once back home, he then begins work on perfecting the Iron Man suit. But the man who was put in charge of Stark Industries has plans of his own to take over Tony's technology for other matters.

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Plot Keywords:

billionaire | inventor | robot suit | based on comic | marvel cinematic universe | 

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Taglines:

Get ready for a different breed of heavy metal hero.

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Genres:

Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and brief suggestive content

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official site

Country:

USA

Language:

English Persian Urdu Arabic Hungarian

Release Date:

2 May 2008 (USA)

Also Known As:

Ironman

Filming Locations:

Palmdale Regional Airport, Palmdale, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$140,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$98,618,668, 2 May 2008

Gross USA:

$318,412,101

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$585,174,222

Company Credits

Production Co:

Paramount Pictures, Marvel Enterprises, Marvel Studios

Technical Specs

Runtime:

126 min

Sound Mix:

SDDS Dolby Digital DTS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

An early draft of the script had Howard Stark, Iron Man's father, as a ruthless industrialist who becomes War Machine.

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Goofs

(at around 24 mins) When Yinsen is pouring the melted palladium, he has poured it and turned the casting cup upright, but then when it switches back, he is finishing pouring the palladium again.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Tony Stark: I feel like you're driving me to court martial. This is crazy. What did I do? I feel like you're gonna pull over and snuff me. What, you're not allowed to talk? Hey, Forrest!
Jimmy: We can talk, sir.
Tony Stark: Oh, I see. So it's personal.
Ramirez: No, you intimidate them.
Tony Stark: Good God, you're a woman! I honestly, I couldn't have called that. I mean, I would apologize, but isn't that what we're going for here? I thought of you as a soldier first.
Ramirez: I'm an airman.
Tony Stark: Well, you have actually excellent bone structure ...
[...]

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Crazy Credits

SPOILER: A scene appears after the closing credits: Tony Stark arrives home to find SHIELD director Nick Fury waiting for him so that they can discuss the Avengers Initiative. This leads into The Avengers (2012) (a superhero team of which Iron Man is a founding member).

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Alternate Versions

The made for TV version's opening scene there is about 10 seconds added after Tony's Humvee gets hit and you see him get out and picks up an M-16, then it jams, he throws it down and you see the entire convoy under fire and Rhodey is firing the mounted gun and yells at Tony to get down.

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Connections

Featured in Atop the Fourth Wall: Flash Comics #1 (2012)

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Soundtracks

Damn Kid
Written by Ali Dee (as Ali Theodore), Zach Danziger and Vincent Alfieri
Performed by DJ Boborobo
Courtesy of Dee Town Entertainment

User Reviews

Delivers Intelligence & Great Acting with its Fun

Rest assured, Iron Man is an absolutely amazing movie. I won't dare spoil any of this remarkable movie for you but I do recommend it as highly as I possibly can. Marvel needed to get in to the solo movie making business long ago. Instead of leasing out their characters to other studios, they're making movies themselves. Most everyone knows Iron Man is their first effort and what a great lead off film! This movie helps take the comic book genre to the highest level. Just like they did in the books, they reinvent standard epic adventure by "Marvelizing" characters and making them more believable. The Spider-Man and the X-Men movies did this to a degree but only as far as their respective studios wished to stay true to the source material. Anything added or amended was for the benefit of the live action adaptation. Director Sam Raimi pulled this off by talking to the summer crowd, not down to them with the Spider-Man series. Jon Favreau has done the same thing here but I think he's done it even better. Raimi intentionally threw in a little cheese. Favreau adds nice bits of humor but not too much. He also grounds the action and the suit of armor in firm reality. I've said it before but it's brave to reach for the highest common denominator with a big budget film and Favreau delivers a movie with as much feeling as it has action and intensity. Needless to say, Robert Downey Jr. and company deliver the goods. It's a movie that has a wonderful balance that delivers intelligence with its fun.

The amazing yet realistic action is paced by the plot and characters that keep you interested from start to finish. What absolutely blew me away were the phenomenal special effects. I know they built a practical, working armor. What I loved is the use of CGI was used to augment the real life armor and not create something from scratch. Most all CGI constructs feel fake somehow but the stuff in Iron Man didn't seem fake even for an instant. As great as everything looked, what really drives the movie is the emotional resonance and down to earth nature of the plot. Sure the concept is wild but it's all presented so that you really believe it could happen. I doubt anyone will find fault with this movie unless they went in trying to dislike it.

This is, without a doubt going to be one of my top 10 movies of 2008, quite possibly the number one film.