Iron Man (2008)

Summary

Comic book adaptation about a troubled billionaire who fights crime and terrorism.

Director

Jon Favreau

Downey Factor

High.

Character

Tony Stark, a genius billionaire playboy who makes himself into a superhero.

Looks

Dashing, very well dressed, fit. In other words, great.

Performance

Strong, convincing, makes the movie.

Line

It is one thing to question the official story, and another thing entirely to make wild accusations, or insinuate that I'm a superhero. That would be outlandish and fantastic. I'm just not the hero type. Clearly. With this laundry list of character defects, all the mistakes I've made, largely public.

Love & Sex

He's an international playboy who flirts with every woman in sight, including his assistant (Gwyneth Paltrow).

Dies, Gay or Villain

Of course not.

Cast

Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges

Connection

Gwyneth Paltrow in Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, The Avengers, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.

Jon Favreau in Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, Chef, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Avengers: Endgame.

Samuel L. Jackson in Hail Caesar, Iron Man 2, The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.

Clark Gregg in Iron Man 2 and The Avengers.

Leslie Bibb in Iron Man 2.

Paul Bettany in Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.

Stan Lee in The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War.

RDJ Says

Anytime I was with Jeff Bridges and even more so with [Gwyneth] Paltrow, you just felt like there was this chemistry where you always got the definitive version of a scene whether it was loosely scripted or a little bit more prepared… There's a scene where [Tony] is doing a weapons test and he says, "Is it better to be feared or respected? Is it too much to ask for both?" Jon and I were literally writing that line for line as we went along shooting it that day. And I put on sunglasses because was all on cue cards. It was that thing where you go, it's more important that we feel like we're just coming up with this and we like it. And there's no trick we can't employ to cover up the fact that we're kind of making it up as we go along … Iron Man was a meditation on responsibility and an exploration of how a small group of people can take a two-dimensional idea and, if the winds are right, create something that makes people say, "That was my favorite movie of the year." ... Iron Man, to me, is an exciting enough event for most people that it has kind of eclipsed the usual thing of when I go in [to an interview] and I have worked my ass off on a movie and they never even mention the title. All they want to do is talk about the five dumbest things, or the five illest moments I have ever had in my life ... I'm really excited about it. Stark is the superhero who is just a man. Not that I wouldn't play a guy who was bitten by a spider or has some freaky connection with bats, but I think Iron Man is more accessible. The fact that he's practically killed by one of his own weapons is the kind of myth that is very timely. I'm going to give it everything I've got ... This seemed the right time to play Iron Man, while I still have the energy and a limited amount of gray hair, which I can easily lose with a semi-permanent rinse ... I prepared for the screen test so feverishly that I literally made it impossible for anybody to do a better job. I had never worked on something that way before; I was so familiar with six or nine pages of dialogue, I had thought of every possible scenario. At a certain point during the screen test I was so overwhelmed with anxiety about the opportunity that I almost passed out ... The morning Jon Favreau called and told me I'd gotten the gig—I still get all choked up just remembering. It was such an invitation to this cornucopia of possibilities. And it all happened ... It's the same pressure as Chaplin, except there's no reference. You're creating the reference ... Like Tony Stark, I took some hits mostly in my own making, but everyone transforms, some of it is just a function of age. I'm not in my twenties. I'm not in my thirties ... The character is a combination of Jon and I. Tony Stark is his direction and my execution and sometimes my ideas and then his direction of those ideas ... My involvement [in the creative development] was I tended to show up to the set most mornings, take the script, throw it against the wall and say, "We gotta rewrite this." Jon [Favreau] would say, "Oh, good morning. I see you don't like the scenes today." It had a good structure and what we tried to do, and I believe somewhat successfully, was infuse it with more slightly more watchable stuff ... I thought maybe I'd like to be in a movie that more than 16 people would see ... We said we needed the greatest Pepper Potts we could think of. Suddenly I am on the phone and Chris Martin is answering saying, "Yeah?" I'm like, "Hey, it's Robert Downey, is Gwyneth there?" "What?" "No really, it's Robert Downey Jr, really." He goes, "Robert Downey fucking Jr is on the phone." And then we really, really, really went after Jeff Bridges hard because he was definitely reticent, and he is, he's a very, very picky guy ... Because the suit is 6'5" tall and I'm not, once they called action and slammed the helmet down, I realized that I was not looking through the eye slots but, basically, through the nostrils. And there are no openings in the nostrils ... There's a scene where we're out in the high desert and these massive 60-mile-an-hour winds are blowing. And sand is everywhere, and I'm in this Mark I suit. And everyone's wearing dust masks. I'm just in this contraption, and I looked around and said, "We have to get this right now." It was so ridiculously funny—it'd be impossible that you'd survive. So what do you do? For some reason or another I just started cracking up ... [My two body doubles and I] took turns complaining [about wearing the suit]. I'd come in on the day that he was shooting second unit. And he'd be like laid out in a pool of sweat and still like in half in the suit. He'd just be like [groaning], "Dude..." He'd be like, "You're on tomorrow, right?" And I'd be like, "I'm on, dude. We're going to do the close-ups and I'll swing through the thing." He goes, "Cool!" We had like a support group. He'd come in the next day, he'd be like, "Man, you cool? Can I get you something?" I was like, "Maybe an Advil," and then we'd both go visit the third guy ... The first Iron Man was essentially wrapping the character around a cooler version of "me." As we've gone along, I'm starting to wonder who's playing who, and I'm glad there are so many talented new people in the Marvel lineup. Ultimately, I'm real, and he's not. It's kind of important for me to remember that ... And that year I got invited to the Time 100 event in the city. You could bring one person and say how they influenced you. I brought my dad and I said how strangely being raised by him in his counterculture world, once I finally sobered up it wound up really informing the approach we took in trying to reinvent the [superhero] genre. And I said, Dad, you have any comments on this?” And he took the mic and he said, “I’m not your father.” He brought down the house.

Time & Place

Contemporary California and a fictional sort of Middle Eastern town.

Lit Reference

Marvel's Iron Man comics

Availability

Released in theaters 2 May 2008. On DVD and Blu Ray everywhere in the universe and possibly in alternate universes.

Foreign Titles

Argentina: Iron man - El hombre de hierro (The Iron Man)
Brazil: Homem de Ferro (Man of Iron)
China: Steel-Xia
Estonia: Raudmees
Hungary: A Vasember (The Ironman)
Japan: Aianman

Rotten Tomatoes

94% fresh | 234 reviews

Critical View

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Tony Stark is created from the persona Downey has fashioned through many movies: irreverent, quirky, self-deprecating, wise-cracking. The fact that Downey is allowed to think and talk the way he does while wearing all that hardware represents a bold decision by the director, Jon Favreau. If he hadn't desired that, he probably wouldn't have hired Downey. So comfortable is Downey with Tony Stark's dialogue, so familiar does it sound coming from him, that the screenplay seems almost to have been dictated by Downey's persona.

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Too often movies adapted from comic books come with their own split personalities. There's the flat, prosaic story, with ... thinly scripted regular-guy roles. And then there are the special-effects parts, when suddenly we're asked to believe that a man can fly... The fun of Iron Man, a Marvel adaptation in which a routine arc has been burnished with great elegance and skill, is the way that it heals the split, soldering the two halves of its hero into a single organically driven figure.

Does It Hold Up

It might seem a little quaint once you know movie Tony Stark's eight movie character arc, but come on. Of course it holds up.

2 Reasons to See It

1. The wildly popular blockbuster finally turned him from a troubled actor into a superstar. If you haven't seen it yet, what are you waiting for?
2. You're tired of those morally superior, mutant superheroes.

Overall

Even if the superhero thing isn't your scene, he spends a lot of time out of the suit acting like an exaggerated industrialist version of himself.

If You Like It

You might also like Sherlock Holmes (2009), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Photos

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