Iron Man (2008)

It’s hard to believe that there was a time before Marvel’s success with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel was struggling with a lot of films during the mid-2000’s with films such as ‘Electra’, ‘Blade: Trinity’, ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’, ‘Spider-Man 3’, ‘Daredevil’ ‘Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer’ and two ‘The Incredible Hulk’ films.

Then after the failure of 2008’s ‘The Incredible Hulk’ another Marvel film was released. Iron Man at the time wasn’t a household name outside anyone that hadn’t read a comic however and Robert Downey Jr had been struggling trying to get back into work due to personal problems so there was very slim chance that when ‘Iron Man’ came out, it was going to be a hit.

The story starts off with eccentric billionaire playboy Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) being captured by terrorists in Afghanistan during which he builds an iron suit to fight crime.

‘Iron Man’ was an immediate hit that very quickly spawned the MCU and its storylines that stretched for ten years (everything after ‘Avengers: Endgame’ doesn’t exist in my opinion).

I actually preferred the second film over the first. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t like it though. As much as I find the acting and soundtrack pretty good, I find the first Iron Man film alright. Maybe it’s because I didn’t get into the MCU until the first Thor film so I never watched the first Iron Man film until a few years later before ‘Avengers Assemble’ came out.

It’s a film that still holds up to this day compared to the MCU in the last six years…and MUCH better than the awful ‘Iron Heart’ Disney+ show.