Iron Man

I collected comics from like age 10 to 20. Beyond age 20, I stopped collecting but to this day I still buy and read comics. I was never into Iron Man although I did collect Iron Man from about 1980 to 1982. During those years, I mainly remember that Tony Stark gave up being Iron Man and his friend Rhodey Rhodes took his place. So it was a weird time to get into Iron Man since the only time I saw Tony Stark was passed out drunk in a hotel somewhere. He was pretty much useless.

A long time before the movie came out, I discovered that Iron Man was the favorite super hero of my friend. He told me about the upcoming movie and told me why it was so cool. He slowly pulled me into being an Iron Man fan for the first time.


The one thing that excited me about the upcoming Iron Man movie was perhaps seeing different versions of the suit and how each version was flawed and how Tony Stark would upgrade and improve. Some of my favorite scenes is when Tony Stark is alone in his lab testing his suit. I love when his bickering with his AI fire extinguisher and when he accidentally flies over his expensive cars.






One that that really impressed me is how Tony Stark is drilled into that suit. You get the impression that if something goes wrong, he's not getting out of that suit without a lot of help. And without power, there is no way he could move that suit. It is HEAVY DUTY! I never got that impression from the comic book. It always seemed so light weight in the comic but I'm sure it was heavy duty in the early days of Iron Man and evolved into a light weight suit.

In reality, the technology to create such a suit does not exist. It could never fly as far as it did. The propellant needed would weigh thousands of pounds. Somehow this new power source he's invented powers the suit and we have to suspend disbelief and just go with it.

I'm a big fan of Robert Downey Jr. Although I saw Weird Science, I didn't notice him just like I didn't notice John Cusack until later. He was on SNL, but again, I missed him. I love the movie Back to School, but I don't remember him in that. The first time I really noticed him was in the movie Less than Zero where the movie seemed to parallel his real life. His performance really stuck with me. He did a bunch of movies after that I missed then he was amusing in Air America with Mel Gibson. I missed is next few movies then I saw in Chaplin and he was brilliant. I saw Short Cuts but I don't remember him in that. Then he blew me away in his performance in The Natural Born Killers. Later I saw him in US Marshall's which was good but the performance that totally blew me away was in Wonder Boys. That is my favorite performance of his.

I used to watch Alley McBeal but I stopped before he joined the cast. I don't remember him in Gothika. Then he was in Iron Man and had a cameo in The Hulk. I saw a preview for Tropic Thunder and he looks brilliant in that.

I look forward to Iron Man 2 and 3 as well as the other super hero crossover movies he might be in as Tony Stark.


I want to see Iron Man a second time before it leaves theaters. I think it's funny how the plot of Iron Man seemed to parallel the Hulk in that they both had a Nemesis that was like them but bigger and stronger.

I'm happy that Robert Downey Jr. got his act together. I honestly thought he was going to be dead by now from a drug overdose. He was certainly heading in that direction and it seemed like he kept going back to rehab and could not kick his drug problems. If he died, I'm sure he would be replaced by another actor for Iron Man but nobody can fill his shoes.