Iron Man (Spoiler Alert)

So, like many other nerds, Leigh, his lovely wife Laura, and I all went to see Iron Man yesterday.

It rocked.

Robert Downey, Jr. pretty much makes the film, with his breezy irreverence and the supporting cast of Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, and Terrence Howard all give solid performances.

One aspect of the film that I thought was handled extremely well was the villain. In most superhero movies, the hero exists in a void apart from the regular comic universe, so there is always a need to somehow create a villain to match the hero. The X-Men franchise was one of the few to get around this (and Daredevil, oddly enough) as they established from the beginning that there were lots of mutants, thus giving the heroes plenty of people to fight.

In Iron Man, the villain came about fairly naturally and I never felt that it was forced. Unlike, many other super hero movies I could mention.

Overall, Iron Man moved along briskly, with a lot of fun sequences highlighting the creation of the armor and Downey’s very fun portrayal of Tony Stark.

However, the biggest surprise was the ending. No, not the ending ending, but the bit at the end of the credits (the post-ending?). Samuel L. Jackson shows up as Nick Fury, straight out of the Ultimates, suggesting a possible Avengers movie. Which would absolutely rock.

Overall, Iron Man is well worth an afternoon. I give it 6.98 Wombats of out of a possible 7.119.

EDIT: Leigh just sent me this: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/news/1647345/, so apparently, yes, a live-action Avengers is in the works. Geeks and nerds rejoice!

Cheers,
-Jason