Movie Review: Iron Man

Ok, I'm a comic book geek. I don't buy comics anymore, but when I was a kid I read Marvel comics constantly. One of my favorites was Iron Man and the Avengers, though I tended to lean more towards Captain America and Thor in those days.

I was pretty happy with the first Spiderman and X-Men movies, but then they got pretty far off kilter and the last two showings from those two franchises were pretty disappointing. So I was worried about how they would do with Iron Man, and when I first heard they had picked Robert Downey Jr. to play Tony Stark, I thought they had ruined it right off the bat.

I guess I was picturing him from his brat pack days though. I still don't think of myself being middle-aged, and so I guess I can't picture Downey being middle-aged either. As it turns out, I was completely wrong. He was the perfect choice to play Stark. The movie was just about perfect as well. My only quibble was the huge hole in his chest where his implant goes. The implant itself is something I would have been fine with if they had just left it out completely. There's nothing wrong with retconning something if it really just doesn't make much sense.

Still, that's a very minor thing. I have to say that this is the best movie I've ever seen that's based on a comic book character. I'm sure some of the Batman fanboys will disagree with me, but I was never a huge fan of DC books anyway.

Now I am still really worried about how they're going to pull off the upcoming Thor movie. I was a huge fan of this comic, especially in the days when Walt Simonson was writing it. What I'm really worried about is if the CGI is up to making someone look like Thor should look like. I guess time will tell.