Iron Man (2008)

Let me put this plainly: Iron Man is a bit dull. Not bad, not broken, just... dull. And I know that's a mildly controversial thing to say about the film that started one of the biggest franchises in cinema history, but here we are.

Robert Downey Jr. is, genuinely, perfect casting. There's no argument to be had there. He brings a swagger and a sharpness to Tony Stark that makes the film watchable even when it probably shouldn't be. The suit-building montages are undeniably cool, the one-liners land, and for stretches of it, you're having a decent enough time. But then the plot kicks back in, and you remember that underneath all the charm and the clanking metal, this is a pretty thin story told in a pretty workmanlike way.

Strip away the quips and the CGI and what you're left with is a bog-standard origin story. Cocky rich bloke has a change of heart, builds a weapon, fights a bad guy. It hits every beat you expect it to, in roughly the order you expect it to hit them, and then it ends. There's nothing wrong with that on paper, but there's also nothing that makes it sing. The villain is forgettable. The stakes feel low. The pacing drags badly in the middle.

The comparison that keeps nagging at me is The Dark Knight, or any of Nolan's Batman films really. Because here you've got a very similar premise on paper: a billionaire tech genius with trauma and money and a burning need to do something about the state of the world. But whereas those films treat that premise as an invitation to go somewhere genuinely interesting, Iron Man treats it as a product specification. Here are the required components. Here is the assembled unit. Please enjoy responsibly.

And look, I'll be honest, Marvel films aren't really my thing. I know that. I've sat through enough of them to know where I stand, whether that's Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) or Avengers: Infinity War (2018). But I try to set that bias aside when I can and ask: is this a good film on its own terms? And the honest answer here is: only sort of. It's a functional film. Competently made, well-cast, occasionally fun. But it's not a film I'd rush back to.

The thing that bothers me most is that Iron Man gets talked about with such reverence, and I think a lot of that reverence is retrospective. It's the film that built the house. Fair enough. But being the foundation doesn't automatically make you the most interesting room. Plenty of what came after it is more ambitious, more confident, more willing to take a risk. The original, rewatched now, can feel like a pilot episode for something bigger than itself, which, of course, it literally was.

I'll check in with Iron Man 2 (2010) and Iron Man 3 (2013) in due course, though I'm not rushing to the screen. If you love this one, I get it. The charm is real. Downey Jr. earns every bit of goodwill the franchise built on his back. But as a standalone piece of filmmaking, I can only call it what it is: two and a half stars, decent enough, and not much more than that.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 2008  | Watched: 2012-03-02

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