So I saw Iron Man this weekend and it was excellent, big ups to Marvel.  I’d say this clocks in after the first two Spidermans and tied with the first X-men movie, though the second X movie was very good.

From the get-go, they set up who Tony Stark was and where he was going and then dropped him into the fire, so to speak.  Robert Downy Jr was excellent as Tony Stark.  In the comics I always thought that Tony was a charming, smooth player, but never did I think he was a funny guy which he most certainly is in this movie. The movie is funny without it being distracting and there are some great moments with his robots, specifically the flame retardant robot. There’s also a hilarious scene aboard Tony’s private jet.

Iron Man himself is awesome.  I marked out hard when he was flying around, like in the picture above almost as hard as when I saw Spiderman swinging around for the first time.  Man, I’d do that for hours if I could.

The cast was very good.  Howard and Paltrow were solid but the guy who stood out the most was Jeff Bridges (The Dude!) and that shouldn’t be any surprise, but well, it sort of was.  The guy was flat out amazing as Obidiah.

I myself didn’t find too many things askew from the source material.  Sure they updated Tony’s origin from Vietnam war to the one in Afghanistan and made Rhodey a General, but these are very minor.  No complaints whatsoever.

So if you haven’t seen this yet, I strongly suggest you do.  Prepare for a good movie, maybe the best so far this year.