Iron Man (2008)

When wealthy industrialist Tony Stark is forced to build an armored suit after a life-threatening incident, he ultimately decides to use its technology to fight against evil.

Director:

Jon Favreau

Writers:

Mark Fergus (screenplay), Hawk Ostby (screenplay),

Stars:

Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges

Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 14 wins & 43 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Robert Downey Jr.	...	Tony Stark / Iron Man
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 is the complete playboy who also happens to be an engineering genius. While in Afghanistan demonstrating a new missile, he's captured and wounded. His captors want him to assemble a missile for them but instead he creates an armored suit and a means to prevent his death from the shrapnel left in his chest by the attack. He uses the armored suit to escape. Back in the U.S. he announces his company will cease making weapons and he begins work on an updated armored suit only to find that Obadiah Stane, his second in command at Stark industries has been selling Stark weapons to the insurgents. He uses his new suit to return to Afghanistan to destroy the arms and then to stop Stane from misusing his research.

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Plot Keywords:

missile | genius | escape | afghanistan | playboy | 

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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 [br]

Country:

USA

Language:

English Persian Urdu Arabic

Release Date:

2 May 2008 (USA)

Also Known As:

Ironman

Filming Locations:

California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$140,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£5,465,103 (UK) (2 May 2008)

Gross:

$318,298,180 (USA) (26 September 2008)

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:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film was shipped to some theatres under the titles "Bell" and "Debonair".

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Goofs

Outside the press conference, Tony pulls one Burger King cheeseburger out of the bag Hogan is holding and is seen finishing it in the next scene when he is walking to the podium. But, when Tony is seated and begins talking about his father, he pulls the cheeseburger out of his pocket and begins eating it. When Stane asked if he had one for him, Stark replied that there was only one left, suggesting he bought more than one. In fact, he did buy more than one burger as he was finishing one when he was getting out of the car. There is a good chance that he placed one in his coat pocket before reaching for the last one in the bag. When Stane asked him if he had one for him he had one open in his hand getting ready to eat it and one in his pocket for eating later.

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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 (a superhero team of which Iron Man is a founding member).

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Connections

Followed by The Avengers 2 (2015)

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Soundtracks

"Back In Black"
Written by Brian Johnson, Malcolm Young and Angus Young
Performed by AC/DC
Courtesy of Columbia Records
By Arrangement with SONY BMG Music 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.