Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
66
Bandslam
45
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
29
Collector, The
23
Couples Retreat
80
District 9
61
Extract
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
60
Funny People
32
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
27
Gamer
41
G-Force
39
Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, The
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
55
I Can Do Bad All By Myself
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
33
Love Happens
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
51
My Sister's Keeper
42
Orphan
28
Pandorum
63
Perfect Getaway, A
86
Ponyo![]()
35
Post Grad
48
Proposal, The
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
24
Sorority Row
83
Star Trek![]()
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
55
Taking Woodstock
47
Time Traveler's Wife
96
Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3D![]()
35
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
28
Ugly Truth, The
88
Up![]()
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum![]()
56
Adam
72
Adela
39
Adventures of Power
78
Afghan Star
61
After the Storm
66
Afterschool
xx
All the Best
58
American Casino
72
Amreeka
48
Antichrist
73
Araya
62
Art & Copy
55
As Seen Through These Eyes
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The![]()
13
Beautiful Life, A
70
Beeswax
35
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
71
Big Fan
66
Black Dynamite
51
Blind Date
xx
Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly
76
Bliss
35
Blue Tooth Virgin, The
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
57
Boys Are Back, The
45
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star![]()
70
Bronson
45
Burning Plain, The
xx
Carriers
55
Casi Divas
57
Chelsea on the Rocks
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
59
Collapse
44
Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha
82
Cove, The![]()
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The![]()
67
Departures
xx
Dil Bole Hadippa
71
Disgrace
xx
Do Knot Disturb
70
Earth Days
24
Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat
85
Education, An![]()
55
Endgame
xx
Eulogy for a Vampire
xx
Everyone Else
xx
Fatal Promises
56
Fifty Dead Men Walking
62
Five Minutes of Heaven
74
Flame & Citron
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
28
Free Style
xx
From Mexico with Love
50
Fuel
25
Gentlemen Broncos
50
Give Me Your Hand
58
Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo![]()
52
Grace
64
Harmony and Me
81
Headless Woman, The![]()
xx
Heretics, The
63
Horse Boy, The
73
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
74
Humpday
94
Hurt Locker, The![]()
29
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
16
If One Thing Matters: A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
75
In Search of Beethoven
83
In the Loop![]()
61
Intimate Enemies
42
Irene in Time
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
19
Labor Day
xx
Laila's Birthday
41
Little Ashes
41
Little Traitor, The
66
Liverpool
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
83
Maid, The![]()
xx
Ministers, The
59
More Than a Game
67
Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, The
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
xx
Mystery Team
48
New York, I Love You
73
Night and Day
66
No Impact Man
47
Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
34
Other Man, The
xx
Painter Sam Francis, The
54
Paper Heart
xx
Paradise
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
44
Peter and Vandy
35
Play the Game
77
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
xx
Pretty Ugly People
65
Providence Effect, The
76
Rembrandt's J'accuse
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
40
Shrink
61
Skin
77
Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, A
xx
Skiptracers
46
Splinterheads
39
St. Trinian's
89
Still Walking![]()
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
55
Storm
65
Tetro
70
That Evening Sun
72
Thirst
xx
Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D (re-release)
61
Trucker
xx
Turning Green
83
U2 3D![]()
66
Unmade Beds
66
Unmistaken Child
70
Visual Acoustics
55
Walt & El Grupo
67
Way We Get By, The
69
We Live in Public
64
Wedding Song, The
64
Where is Where?
xx
White on Rice
74
Woman in Berlin, A
69
World's Greatest Dad
70
Yes Men Fix the World
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
xx
You, the Living
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Iron Man
EMAILPRINTParamount Pictures, Marvel Studios

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 38 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 449 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Action | Adventure | Drama | Sci-fi | Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Larry Lieber (characters), Jack Kirby (characters)
Don Heck (characters), Stan Lee (characters)
Matt Holloway, Art Marcum
Hawk Ostby, Mark Fergus
Directed by: Jon Favreau
Release Date:
Theatrical: May 2, 2008
DVD: September 30, 2008
Running Time: 126 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and brief suggestive content
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, Shaun Toub, Leslie Bibb, Bill Smitrovich, and Nazanin Boniadi
Tony Stark is a billionaire industrialist and genius inventor who is kidnapped and forced to build a devastating weapon. Instead, using his intelligence and ingenuity, Tony builds a high-tech suit of armor and escapes captivity. When he uncovers a nefarious plot with global implications, he dons his powerful armor and vows to protect the world as Iron Man. (Paramount Pictures, Marvel Studios)
Also On Metacritic
GAMES: Iron Man (PS3)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Variety Todd McCarthy
Ever-eclectic director Jon Favreau, who briefly pops up onscreen as a Stark minion, maintains a brisk but not frantic pace, and, in concert with lenser Matthew Libatique, production designer J. Michael Riva and the first-rate visual effects team, has made an unusually elegant looking film for the genre.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The gadgetry is absolutely dazzling, the action is mostly exhilarating, the comedy is scintillating and the whole enormous enterprise, spawned by Marvel comics, throbs with dramatic energy because the man inside the shiny red robotic rig is a daring choice for an action hero, and an inspired one.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
You hire an actor for his strengths, and Downey would not be strong as a one-dimensional mighty-man. He is strong because he is smart, quick and funny, and because we sense his public persona masks deep private wounds. By building on that, Favreau found his movie, and it's a good one.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Is it possible to have yet another expensive excursion into this genre that seems in any way fresh, original and alive? The answer, surprisingly, is yes.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
Downey and Favreau and the special-effects team transform the trying-out of the armor and its powers into slapstick cadenzas. But equally entertaining is Stark's and Potts' recognition that they share more than a mere working chemistry.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Loyal assistant, Pepper Potts, isn't much of a part, but Gwyneth Paltrow is a presence. She stands around looking amused and flabbergastingly pretty, slinging wisecracks with serene aplomb.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Downey plays off his own bad-boy image wonderfully. The writers give him great lines to work with and ditto that for his Girl Friday, Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts, whose own svelte lines cannot be improved on.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Scott Foundas
Iron Man, too, is something that people will see regardless of the reviews, but here is the point: Where Michael Bay (Transformers) has mastered a kind of sensory-assaulting pop art, Favreau is a born storyteller who engages the audience's imagination rather than crushing it in a tsunami of digital noise.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
Some of us knows that there's an American style -- best displayed in the big, smart, kid-friendly epic -- that few other cinemas even aspire to, and none can touch. When it works, as it does here, it rekindles even a cynic's movie love. So cheers to Downey, Favreau and the Iron Man production company. They don't call it Marvel for nothing.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
All praise to acting dynamo Robert Downey Jr., who brings so much creative juice to the party that Iron Man achieves instant liftoff.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
When it comes to tone, Iron Man achieves something at which many of even its most celebrated predecessors have failed: it doesn't FEEL like a superhero movie. Instead, it's bigger and more inclusive.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
With such smarts and outstanding special effects, I eagerly await a second Iron Man movie, which of course is virtually promised in the final scene.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Until a final conflict that more resembles a monster-truck jam than a superhero showdown, Iron Man is solid gold.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
As big-budget comic book adaptations go, this one's a gratifying freak--the right kind of conflicted, as well as quick-witted. It's a lot of fun.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Even at his coolest, Downey's Iron Man remains a ghostly, neurotic crusader -- one whose life, in the Marvel tradition, has become a grand spectacle of overcompensation.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Iron Man is the rare comic-book movie that makes the prospect of a sequel seem like a promise instead of a threat.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
There are more compelling stories to be found in the comic book world, and there are more expressive directors than Jon Favreau. But on the bases of wit, verve, spirit and whiz-bangery, it's pretty tough to find fault with.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
The result is the first comic-book movie in a while that actually feels like a classic comic book: fast, furious and flip. Forget about superheroes with love problems and tortured souls.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Downey and Favreau give the movie a quirky flavor it can call its own. For that we can be grateful.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
Has the advantage of being an unusually good superhero picture. Or at least -- since it certainly has its problems -- a superhero movie that's good in unusual ways.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
When it's idling in neutral, and we're watching Stark putter in his workshop or seduce unsuspecting journalists, Iron Man abounds in that rarest of superpowers: charm.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
The movie's climactic battle scene is mildly thrilling -- although it's not nearly as exciting as simply watching Downey and Bridges work together. Bridges makes a great villain precisely because he's such a relaxed, affable presence.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
And Favreau? If you'd told me 12 years ago that Swingers' comic linchpin would end up helming one of the best, most visceral, and downright fun foray of all the comic-book franchises waiting in the CGI wings, I'd have told you to amscray, kid. But what the hell? Turns out irony's good for your blood.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
A brain-free ride on a cinematic bullet train.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Iron Man's biggest strength is that the fantastically armored suit doesn't overpower the intriguingly flawed character encased within.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
An action sci-fi blockbuster extravaganza that provides cartoon thrills for thinking people. It's the best movie of its kind since the second "Spider-Man" movie four years ago.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
A dark delight that combines pop-culture wit and genuine emotional depth.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
Iron Man is the first Marvel Comics superhero movie I would willingly sit through a second time. This is the result not just of what the movie does, but what the movie doesn't do.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Cynical, hip, politically opportunistic and loaded with kick-ass comic action.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
It's a fantastic special effect because it doesn't look like a special effect: The movie sells the illusion that the suit could maybe, possibly, exist.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
The movie is so clever and smoothly paced that it's easy to overlook the odious story line.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar
As comic book movies go, Iron Man is a solid entry. Downey and company help drag Favreau out of the genre holes he digs, making for a decent experience.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Downey appears to like all this make-believe. Even the clunky dialogue sounds witty out of his mouth. This is not a part that makes great demands on his talent, and his slummy approach to it is amusing.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Though Iron Man is diverting enough in the comic-book-movie mode, there is one thing it doesn't have, and that is dramatic unity. Unlike the irreducible element that is its namesake, Iron Man the movie is an alloy, a combination of several different and disconnected components that don't manage to unite to make a coherent whole.
Read Full Review >Empire Dan Jolin
It's not sure where to go once the final Iron Man suit is constructed, and seems in a rush to get there, but Downey Jr and the supporting cast are so perfectly placed we're already looking forward to the bound-to-be-better sequel.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
I suppose it's asking too much for a great actor to be matched up with a great director on a project like this. On the other hand, there's always the sequel.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
[Downey] can make offhandedness mesmerizing, even soulful; he passes through the key moments in this cloddish story as if he were ad-libbing his inner life.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
It succeeds only fitfully. Toggling between Stark's impish goatee and Iron Man's full-metal body condom, and amid so many generic fireballs, kill shots and earsplitting thumps, bumps and crunches, the film finally collapses under its own weight.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 449 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Satanic Majesty gave it a10:
I'd love to have an Iron Man suit to fly to the supermarket and buy some groceries every weekend. Imagine that! This movie is fantastic, it's got so much "metal": an eccentric millionaire, with a devotion for peace, who's built a scintillating suit to catch the bad guys. As for Nigel's opinion: let us be kids again, the superhero movie is a genre itself, so don't blame it on Iron Man. By far enough to bother.
Tony Heat gave it an8:
Pretty much what you would expect in a movie about a superhero except that the writers allow us to see the human side of the character more than once. Robert Downey Jr does a good job of portraying the role.
Master Orb gave it a9:
Only one problem: the idea that you can tell terrorists you are building a rocket while imprisoned in their secret base but secretly build a huge metal suit, all while on closed-circuit TV, without them knowing. I know you're supposed to suspend your disbelief with comic book movies but this was so ridiculous that it really took me out of the film. besides that, it kicks.
R. Lopez gave it a10:
Iron-Man, one of the greatest superheros that has ever graced the comic book scene has finally mad it to the big screen in ones of the best and most successful comic book adaptions ever made, Iron-Man proves to the world that he's a hero that's built and not born. Iron-Man stars Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark an ultra rich, genius weapons designer who has everything he wants and nothing at all, while Tony is demonstrating a new weapons of his he is captured by a group of terrorist who want him to build the very same weapon, now Tony has to use all his wits and genius to get out alive and his escape comes in a very familiar way, a high tech suit of armor made by him and his captive friend and assistant Yin sin. After Tony returns to civilization he decides not to make weapons anymore and uses his new found suit of armor to protect the innocent from the terrors of the world. Iron-Man is a high tech, high flying sci-fi action comedy that won't let you down until the movies over, Jon Favreau brings his own style to an old friend and turns Iron-Man into a truly jolting and explosive experience that you just can't miss. This film succeed beyond everyone's expectations, no one thought that Robert Downey, Jr. could carry this movie, much less alone portray a hero that's been in our consciousness for over 40 years. But amazingly he pulls off an outstanding performance that's sure to make you accept him as Iron-Man for years to come, this movie is exciting, daring, funny & witty and is a perfect treat for comic book fans alike. Iron-Man is still and will always be one of the best hero's out there hands down.
holly f gave it an8:
So it took me forever to eventually see this film. By then I'd already seen The Dark Knight twice in theatres and my friend had already bought the Iron Man DVD. I'm actually not a fan of superhero movies at all, but more a fan of the actors in those movies. Now, bear with me but the problem with TDK is the heart of that f-ing movie is sucked out in a vortex of doom and f-ing gloom. In comparison, I ADORED IRON MAN! I love characters, I love actors and assembled in this picture are amongst the most lovable of both. I was constantly entertained, the film WASN'T a half an hour overlong *cough*Thedarkknight*cough*. I have begun an obsession with RDJ because what an amazing and interesting man. No matter what film he's in, he's the best thing in it. The first 3/4 I was so engaged and interested and in love with everybody in it. I love origin stories best, mostly because I got see RDJ in a muscle shirt and full of dirt (oh yeah!). Only problem is the final fight sequence. It lacked a certain sense of epicness (yes that a word now). It was a lot of banging and clanging and I didn't feel satisfied by that final fight scene. The last few scenes in the movie and mint! Go and see!
Nigel M. gave it a2:
Great film, but only if you're a 9 year old boy. Simplistic and predictable, as all superhero films are. Time for anyone older than that to grow up and stop hollywood churning these out I reckon. Brief synopsis: Good guy vs bad guy who wants to rule the world, big fight at end, guess who loses? See also: Batman, Hulk, Spiderman, Superman, Fantastic four, in fact every other damn superhero movie. Why bother?
Erica M. gave it a4:
Boring. Music poorly concieved. Though there are good actors in this film, there aren't a lot of good acting opportunities. We turned it off half way through, and returned to it with resignation. What is it that everyone liked about this movie?
