Iron Man was actually Good!?!

Color me surprised. Now I always thought that the casting of Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark was excellent casting but was very leery of Jon Faverau as director. Aside from bits and pieces of Zathura there's nothing in his resume that screams BIG ACTION SET PIECE. Turns out that it was a non-issue. Iron Man is great simply because of the performances, particularly the LEAD performance by RDjr.

Just like how Patrick Steward will be the definitive Professor X, or how Mark Hammill is the definitive Joker or CHristopher Reeve will always be the definitve Superman?

Robert Downey Jr. IS IRON MAN.

From the opening bit in the Humvee with the soldiers ("Well you actually have excellent bone structure there. I'm having a hard time not looking at you now. Is that weird?") to the scene where he's walking around his lab blasting things out of frustration and slowly realizes that he has the means to take out his frustrations on the the actual people who are making him frustrated, he is awesome as Tony Stark.

Jeff Bridges exudes a a creeping menace as Obidiah Stane and only screams at someone once in the entire film but when he does it's to good semi-comic effect. He epitimizes the direction where Stark was headed before his life altering event.

Gweneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts was the biggest surprise for me as I usually find her annoying but here she was the perfect romantic and comic foil for Stark. Usually dont find her attractive much less sexy but here I could see why someone could.

My favorite part of the movie had nothing to do with armor or blasting but with the interplay between Stark and his longtime friend James Rhodes played by Terrance Howard. There's a bit early on where Stark is late for a flight and Rhodes has been waiting two hours for Stark to show up. ON the flight Stark is just trying to get Rhodes to relax and Rhodes thwarts Starks gentle nudging at every turn. There's a cut to a scene later on to what looks like a darkened club with Ghostface Killa from the WU-Tang (who also calls himself...wait for it, TONY STARKS) blasting over the speakers and video screen. Tony and Rhodey are sitting on a couch drinks in hand and Rhodey seems considerably less stressed. It isnt until you see the stewardess start dancing and a Retractable POLE come out of the floor that you realize that THEYRE STILL ON THE PLANE. I could not stop laughing for at least a minute and realized that they nailed hedonistic Stark personally.

ONLY that d00d would be living that large to have hot ass stewardesses and a FUCKING RETRACTABLE STRIP CLUB POLE on his jet.