Tony Stark is a billionaire industrialist and genius inventor who is kidnapped and forced to build a devastating weapon. Instead, using his intelligence and ingenuity, Tony builds a high-tech suit of armor and escapes captivity. When he uncovers a nefarious plot with global implications, he dons his powerful armor and vows to protect the world as Iron Man.

Since the release of X-men in the summer of 2000 there has been at least three or four movies based on comic books every summer. Some are well known and popular stories others are more obscure. Some are really great, some are just good and a lot of them are mediocre or just plain bad. So where does Iron Man fall in this onslaught of comic based stories and characters? Iron Man would fall in the category of one of the better done and more exciting comic book movies to make its way to the big screen in the last decade or so. Up there with other greats like Spiderman 2 and Batman Begins the movie mixes plenty of action with a really good story and real drama. It keeps your glued to your seat and never really seems to have a slow moment even as it unfolds an intricate tale. Then mix in a lot of really awesome action sequences and realistic CGI and the movie just plains blows you away.

The story of Iron Man is definitely a lot different that what has come before it. Gone are the super villains, Iron Man is fighting his own creations as a weapons manufacturer and the terrorism they are being used for. He doesn’t have any special powers other than his own intellect, he wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider, he did not wake up a mutant with special abilities, he wasn’t exposed to gamma rays. But when faced with his own mortality and with the incredible harm he has created without even realizing it, Tony Stark wakes up and decides to turn all his genius to fighting these wrongs and becomes Iron Man. His character is flawed, his morals are questionable but in the end he becomes a super hero. This is a new and interesting twist to the comic book formula used in many movies. The character isn’t young, he isn’t infused with super powers, he is a man trying to make amends for the wrongs he has done.

I think they give Iron Man a little bit of what they stole from Spiderman. In the comics Peter Parker invents his web shooters and other gadgets that he uses to fight crime but in the movies they make this just a natural phenomenon thereby robbing him of his genius. All Tony Stark has is his genius and the ability to build a super suit. I have to admit I am not too familiar with the Iron Man comic, I knew the genesis and the general story but without reading the comics I am not sure where they are going to go from here as most comics have their super villains that make the story that much more interesting. The movie ends with a surprise that I am not sure is conductive for a sequel but could easily be used in a sequel.

Robert Downey Jr. is absolutely perfect for this role, I doubt they could have found a better actor to play the part. His own life has some many parallels to Tony Starks that it is almost uncanny. Both were rich playboys with loose morals who found themselves in trouble and who had to turn their lives around. You can see Downey bring all these things from his own life to the character of Iron Man. He gives the story realism and is also a fantastic actor that pulls off the part with incredible ease. I was also impressed with Gwyneth Paltrow who gives the character Pepper Potts a great counterbalance to Tony Starks flashiness. She is down to earth and gives the movie a lot of its humor. Iron Man is definitely a must see and one of the better comic books movies out there and a fantastic way to kick off the summer of blockbusters.

Grade: A-