"I am Iron Man!"

I wasn’t sure what to expect with the latest superhero film, Iron Man. As a kid growing up with one foot planted firmly in the Marvel Comics Universe, I often hoped to see my favorite superheroes on the big screen. Twenty years later, my wishes have been realized, though with mixed success. Some films, such as Spider-Man and The X-Men, have been cinematic candy for comics fans. Other films, such as Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Elektra, Punisher, and others… not so much. Now comes Iron Man, about a guy who defeats evildoers with a yellow-and-red high-tech suit of armor.

We first encounter the soon-to-be hero, billionaire genius inventor Tony Stark, as he travels in Afghanistan while demonstrating the latest product of Stark Industries: a terrifying weapon of mass destruction called the Jericho missile. The pentagon is buying what he’s selling.

But the military is not the only one with designs on Stark; he is soon captured in an ambush by a group of cave-dwelling terrorists using weapons he helped create. He is wounded in the attack, but survives with the help of an electromagnet over his heart. Stark is forced by his captors to create weapons for them, but instead he improvises a bulletproof armored suit that helps him escape.

Back home, having seen the devastation that his weapons hath wrought, Stark turns pacifist. He announces that his company will stop making weapons, a change that concerns his right-hand man, Obadiah Stane who is more concerned with the company’s plunging stock than Stark’s newfound idealism. Soon Tony Stark has troubles both foreign and domestic, and must don his Iron Man suit to save the day.

One common problem with superhero films is trying to fit in the origin or backstory. Screenwriters need to do more than just introduce the character, because many in the audience will already know how the unassuming college kid became Spider-Man, or how the playboy genius inventor Tony Stark became Iron Man. (That was one of the major screenwriting challenges of The X-Men, which has many different heroes; a spinoff film of the Wolverine character—played by Hugh Jackman—will be coming to theaters May 2009 and include his own backstory.) The writers for Iron Man pull off the trick nicely.

I have to be honest, I didn’t expect much from Jon Favreau after he laid the massive stinking dud that was Elf on the filmgoing public. Apparently, however, his talents shine when he’s actually given a decent script (and when Will Ferrell is locked far, far away). The cast is uniformly good; Robert Downey, Jr., apparently able to stay clean and sober throughout the production (much to the relief of the studio), gives a very nice performance as Tony Stark. Jeff Bridges is excellent as Obadiah Stane, Stark’s menacing mentor. Even Gwyneth Paltrow turns what could have been a throwaway part as Stark’s lovely aide-de-camp (and love interest) into an important and meaty role.

In other hands, and with a lamer script, Iron Man could easily have been a tired retread of other badass android-killer flicks like RoboCop and Transformers. Hollywood knows that having really good special effects of cool, high-tech robots and mechanical exoskeletons will sell tickets. All those cool mechanical whirs and clicks and shiny metal is enough to make many a fanboy’s heart go pitter-patter. But without a matching story and characters we care about, it all falls flat. It’s a nice little irony that in the film, Tony Stark’s (physical) heart plays a role in the story. In Iron Man, the film’s (metaphorical) heart makes the story itself come alive.