Iron Man

By Robbie Collin

HERE he comes, roaring through the skies at Mach 3, knocking out more carbon emissions than a Bombay traffic jam. It's Iron Man—aka the least environmentally friendly superhero on earth.

He's starring in the first of the year's very big, very expensive blockbusters, where there's no such thing as a too-big fireball or a too-loud electric guitar solo, and the word ‘overkill' draws nowt but blank looks.

You want fossil-fuel-incinerating bang for your buck? With Iron Man, you get it.

Heck, you can feel the ozone layer thinning out above your head as you watch this thing.

The first of a planned trilogy—more of which later—Iron Man's an ‘origins' story in the same vein as Batman Begins.

Billionaire weapons manufacturer Tony Stark is touring Afghanistan in the hope he can convince the US military to buy some of his new Jericho missiles.

Unfortunately for Stark, the tour is ambushed and he's captured by a terrorist cell who force him to build them a missile for free.

Not the brightest bunch, these guys.

Because they only realise their ‘missile' looks suspiciously like a giant killer robot with flame throwers for arms a few minutes before Stark climbs inside it, boots down the door and toasts them alive.

And on his return to the US, Stark rebuilds a snazzier suit and uses it to right wrongs made worse by the weapons his company creates.

What? The deadly shrapnel caught in Tony's heart during the ambush might be a problem, you say?

It's not—he's also built himself an electromagnetic pacemaker powered by a mini-reactor. Isn't it amazing what they can do nowadays?

Yep, it's one of those.

A ‘just sit back and let it happen' kinda film, with science straight from the Doc Emmett Brown School of Movie Technology if you recall the days of the Back To The Future movies.

Only surprise being the Iron Man suit doesn't run off "1.21 jigowatts" of power from Libyan plutonium.

So don't worry too much about how Stark knocks out a load of world-beating weaponry in a week, from scrap, in a Tora Bora hole.

Because director Jon Favreau keeps the atmosphere so amped and the pace so snappy, it all seems perfectly plausible.

Tony Stark could have built a five-dimensional nuclear stoat from a Fairy Liquid bottle in there and I would have believed it. Plus, if you're there for the stonking special effects you won't care anyway.

They are some of the best yet committed to the big screen—aside from a couple of dodgy facial cut-and-pastes while Stark's getting into the Iron Man suit.

They inch it past last year's Transformers movie in terms of getting the weight, power and look of heavy metal hardware just right.

But it's not just a technical triumph. Artistically, the look is spot-on too.

Every shot's loaded with rich inky colours, every set and scene drawn with a penciller's eye. This is how to turn a comic book into a movie.

And as Marvel Studios' first self-produced effort, it bodes very well indeed.

Fortunately, the cast have got the tone sussed too. Terrence Howard and Gwyneth Paltrow both bring the right amount of depth to their characters without overdoing it, and Jeff Bridges is great as Stark's sinister business rival Obadiah Stane.

But the lion's share of praise must go to Robert Downey Jr for taking the character of Tony Stark and making it his own.

"The best actor of his generation," according to Gwynnie at this week's premiere. Pushing things a bit far, if we're honest, but there's no question he's earned every penny of his latest paycheck at least twice over.

Waltzing along the billionaire man-child/smug t****r line with absolute ease, Downey's Stark is much more likeable and textured than any number of superhero alter-egos (Peter Parker, I'm looking at you, son).

And where he takes the character in the inevitable sequel (alcoholism's been feted as a possible dark plot twist) I'm genuinely looking forward to.

The first thing I thought when the end credits started rolling was "right, I want to see what happens next". Fortunately, the cast have signed on for a trilogy, so it looks like we'll find out.

If Favreau steers clear of the gimmicks and overcrowded villain line-up that wrecked Spider-Man 3, he's got a franchise on his hands to rival Batman here. Really.

So, an extremely strong four stars then. But if you're in the mood for some serious superhero action, feel very free to add a fifth to that rating. And if you're a teenage lad or a comics fanatic? Double it.