Playboy Tony Stark has inherited the defense contractor Stark Industries from his father, Howard Stark, replacing Obadiah Stane who had taken over the company until Tony was 21. Tony, aside from coming from wealth, was brilliant since youth and graduated from MIT at just 17, with his father passing soon after. Since then, Tony Stark has created countless smart weapons used by the government and that have changed the world forever. Despite this, Tony has a distinct careless attitude, and his business strategies are far from traditional.
On a trip to war-driven Afghanistan with his friend Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes to demonstrate the new “Jericho” missile, Stark and some military guards are ambushed by terrorists using weaponry from Stark Enterprises, where Stark himself is critically wounded with shrapnel and imprisoned in a cave by a terrorist group known as the 10 Rings. While Stark is passed out, Yinsen, a fellow captive, builds an electromagnet device to keep the shrapnel from entering Tony’s heart and to keep him alive. It’s initially powered by a car battery, but when the 10 Rings force Tony to build another Jericho missile for them he is able to make a condensed version of his Arc reactor to power the magnet in his chest.
Instead of building a missile for the terrorists, Tony decides to build a metal suit to armor himself against his captors, powered by the Arc Reactor and electromagnet. He is able to succesfully contruct the suit with Yinsen while the 10 Rings believe he is working on the bomb, and when they start to suspect otherwise, Tony is already done. He attacks the terrorist group trying to get him and Yinsen out, but in the crossfire Yinsen passes away. Tony promises to not waste his life.
After making it out of the cave, Tony wanders around the desert until he is spotted by a U.S. helicopter, and safely escorted back to the states. There, he immediately issues a press conference for his company, where he (literally) sits them down and tells them that Stark Enterprises will no longer manufacture weapons. Obadiah Stane advises him otherwise, saying it would ruin the company and his father’s reputation, but Tony counters with the fact that his Arc reactor has the ability to provide free clean power for the entire planet.
Stark goes on to work on a more powerful suit and Arc reactor, and his personal assistant, Pepper Pots, puts his old Arc reactor in a glass case after a conversation about keepsakes, labled, “proof that Tony Stark has a heart.”
Tony soon finds out that Stark Enterprise weapons were recently shipped to the 10 Rings and are being used to attack Yinsen’s home village, and that Obadiah has betrayed him and is trying to become the new CEO of Stark Enterprises. In response, Tony puts on his suit and flies to Afghanistan where he saves Yinsen’s village and attacks the Ten Rings. He is then spotted by the U.S. Military, who thinks he is an attack plane and tries to shoot him out of the air. He calls Rhodes and reveals what he is doing to him while trying to avoid being shot.
In a different scene, we see Obadiah meeting with the 7 Rings members where they bring scraps of Tony’s original suit from the cave, where he turns on them, killing them all. We then see that he creates an even larger suit created from the parts. Back in Malibu, Stark sends Pepper to go get information from Stane’s computer, and is almost caught while doing so. Here we learn that Obadiah planned the initial hit on Tony in the beginning of the film, working with the 7 Rings the whole time. She later meets with agent Phil Coulson of SHIELD; “Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division”, a counter-terrorism agency, to inform him of Stane’s activities.
Obadiah and the people working for him cannot replicate the arc reactor effectively, so he decides to get the reactor himself from Tony’s chest directly, using a device to paralyze him. Relying on the device to survive, Stark crawls to the arc reactor pepper encased in glass and uses that to power his suit. In the meantime, Pepper and members of SHIELD go track Stane down to arrest him, but he appears in his suit and attacks them. Tony tries to fight him off, but with Obadiah having the superior arc reactor and the larger suit, Tony is overpowered. In response, he tells Pepper to go atop the Stark tower and override the arc reactor, which unleashes a large electrical surge that knocks Stane unconcious, and makes him fall into the reactor, killing him.
The next day, everybody is calling Stark “Iron man” in the suit, and agent Coulson gives Stark a cover for the night of the attack. While retelling this story to the press, Stark cannot sit and watch the hero be celebrated without them knowing who it is, and he announces that he is in reality Iron Man.
In a post-credits scene, the first of many in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, SHIELD Director Nick Fury visits Tony at his home, and mentions that he might not be the only superhero in the world, and that he is looking to put together a team called the Avengers.
I honestly really liked this movie. Iron Man is a really well-thought-out movie, and I like how Marvel Studios decided to make this movie their introduction to their cinematic universe. I actually had never seen any Marvel movies, aside from the Spider-Man movies, until I decided to watch all the movies in their universe. Robert Downey Jr really sold the character of Tony Stark for me, and I don’t think I could see this movie being as good as it is without his charisma.
I love the messaging in this movie. At first, I was a little skeptical as to why the protagonist was bombing countries in the middle east—that’s not a great hook—but as the movie goes on, I love where his character goes and how quickly he changes his mind after seeing how much harm his weaponry has done.
The whole Afghanistan arc for Tony is probably my favorite part of this movie. I love how, after being kidnapped by the 10 Rings people, Tony is able to create a giant suit of armor instead of a bomb and nobody questions anything until it’s basically finished. The electromagnet is also introduced here, and it’s cool how the Arc reactor and his suit come into play with his actual body, and isn’t just a suit. I also loved Yinsen, and was really sad when he died. The last words he says to Tony, to not waste his life, are especially significant when you think about how much Tony Stark and his persona Iron Man would go on to impact the world around him in following movies.
I love Pepper, she’s a really responsible assistant for Tony, the exact opposite of who he is, and honestly a really good love interest for him. She is really good at turning his attention to what matters, which we will see more of in future movies. She also just has a lot of things to do in this movie other than just being his assistant or love interest, and she is really involved in the main conflict and conclusion, working with SHIELD and all.
Obadiah is a really well-played character in my opinion. Maybe I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should of, but I never really suspected him to be a main villain. That reveal at the award ceremony definitely suprised me, and the fact that he planned the whole attack on Tony suprised me even more. Knowing that Stane had complete control over Stark industries for a few years before Tony took over makes me wonder how much harm he had done before the movie even began.
I honestly like how Tony decides to reveal that he is the person in the Iron Man suit in the first movie he’s introduced in. He is way too prideful to hide his hero identity from the public, and even if he tried it would probably be really difficult in future installments. The “secret identity” trope is really important in many hero’s storylines, but it wouldn’t really help anything in a billionare’s life.
Overall, Iron Man is a really good movie and introduction to the MCU, which takes aspects from the real world and morphs it into a political satire and action film, and opened the gates to countless future films and TV shows sourced from the Marvel comics of the past decades.
