Iron Man
Heavy metal

// The skinny: When weapons designer Tony Stark has a harrowing experience in the Middle East, he decides that his life needs a new focus that leads to the birth of Iron Man in this origins tale.

// Review: For every Spiderman 1 and 2 (let's just pretend 3 never happened), there are dozens of comic book movie abominations like Daredevil, Elecktra and The Punisher. To the joy of rabid fanboys and moviegoers, Iron Man turned out to be a fun, smart flick that lived up to the seemingly impossible hype for a film about a B list Marvel super hero.

/ In this slightly revisioned origin story, Tony Stark is kidnapped by terrorists and forced to build weapons for them. Instead he crafts a crude suit of armor and proceeds to blow the camel juice out of his capturers. He becomes disallusioned when he realizes how easily the bad guys were able to acquire his weapons, and designs the Iron Man armor to end all of that.

/ Having Robert Downey Jr play Tony Stark is an even more inspired casting than Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne. He really doesn't have to stretch himself to portray the narcissistic, alcoholic, billionaire philanderer. Jon Favreau's vision of the film is somewhere between the campiness of Spiderman and the brooding of Batman Begins, which seems just perfect for a comic book movie.

/ It's almost mind boggling how Hollywood butchered the cash cow of comic movies for so long. When you get crappy actors, crappy directors with crappy scripts, you get The Fantastic Four. When they assembled competent talent with Iron Man, studio execs got to have their cake and eat it with the best reviews of the year and a $100M opening weekend. And yet the upcoming Wonder Woman is guarenteed to be closer to something like a Ghost Rider.

// Wrap up: I am a huge comic book geek and have extensive knowledge of Iron Man, but this movie is so accessible anyone will find themselves thoroughly entertained. I'm a little concerned about the new Hulk film though.

Entertainment rating: 4