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* WARNING - Spoiler Alert!!!
The first Iron Man was certainly going to be “The
Gamble Movie” of 2008. I’ve given it that title because it was a film
directed by Jon Favreau, who had previously helmed such family-friendly
films as “Zathura” and “Elf” starring Will Ferrel. The actor chosen to
play Iron Man had never starred in or headlined a summer blockbuster
before, and with his fair share of hits and misses over the years (as
well as widely-publicized personal problems) Robert Downey Jnr didn’t
look like the safest bet to carry a “Summer Superhero Blockbuster”. And
on top of all that… who was Iron Man? The majority of movie goers
had not heard of this comic book character prior to the film and his
image and concept were somewhat different from the likes of Spiderman,
Batman or the X-Men.
However, the film went ahead and Iron Man was a huge
surprise in more ways than one. It was a great film; thrilling,
action-packed, intelligent and funny. Robert Downey Jnr fueled his
brilliant performance with imagination and wit, launching a resurgence
for himself as an actor not seen since the likes of Johnny Depp in
“Pirates…” or John Travolta in “Pulp Fiction”.
Downey Jnr plays the multi-faceted Tony Stark;
billionaire businessman, doting playboy, brilliant engineer and asshole.
He designs weapons for the military, inheriting the legacy and
continuing the tradition started years ago by his father, an
enterprising inventor. Stark is ridiculed and attacked by the press for
his support of the US military’s presence in Afghanistan, but despite
this he travels there to personally demonstrate the power of one of his
weapons.
While being transported via convoy, Stark and his
host soldiers are attacked by militants. The troops are all killed, but
Stark survives and is taken prisoner. As he awakens, finding himself in a
cave, Stark discovers he’s being held by a group of “freedom-fighters”
who have been victims of the weapons he designed. Instead of killing
him, they want to tap into his genius and force him to build a powerful
weapon for them... but Stark has other plans. He starts constructing a
suit, fueled by a power cell he created to keep his heart beating, as
it was almost destroyed in the convoy attack. Once his suit is made,
Stark escapes and returns to the US. Due to his brush with death, Stark
comes back a changed man and makes a radical decision to stop making
weapons completely. Several times, he is approached by a man who calls
himself Agent Phil Coulson from the ‘Strategic Homeland Intervention,
Enforcement, and Logistics Division’. He wants to debrief Stark on his
escape, but the billionaire keeps avoiding him.
To get away from all the attention he would have
previously lapped up, Stark goes into exile and decides to refine the
suit he created while held captive. Slowly and unsurely, Stark
constructs his suit and becomes Iron Man. He can fly, shoot
weapons from his hands and has a direct link to his home computer system
inside his helmet. His suit is once again made possible by the power
cell keeping him alive, but that has its limits.
New enemies emerge from the shadows to take on Iron
Man, but of course he smashes them all to smithereens! At the end of the
film Tony Stark confesses to the world that he is Iron Man
* TIE IN TO THE AVENGERS – at this point, “The
Avengers” had not been green lit as a movie, but the studio behind Iron
Man was certainly hoping it would happen…one day. The first tie-in
hinting at a possible Avengers movie happens at the end of the credits
for Iron Man; a tactic which would be added onto the end of the four
following films. In this scene, Stark returns to his huge mansion after
confessing to the press he was Iron Man. But he’s not alone in his home.
A man dressed in black steps out of the shadows, unknown to Stark and
asks “You think you’re the only superhero in the world?” Stark asks the
man to identify himself, so he announces he is Nick Fury, Director of
S.H.I.E.L.D. which we assume is the acronym they finally came up with
for the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics
Division. Fury speaks again ““I’m here to talk to you about The Avenger
Initiative”. END OF SCENE *
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