Look, it took me a minute, but I got there. If we had to psychoanalyze my delay, I’d probably chop it up to me fearing I bit off more than I could chew. But that’s hardly a new development, I do that a lot, hell this whole blog is more than I can chew but I do it anyway. I think my biggest worry was that it wouldn’t hold up, but then within the first five minutes I was reminded that we don’t have this madness if it had started on a C- movie.

The Pitch, if you’re like me and it’s been a bare minimum five years since you’ve last done a rewatch: Tony Stark, head of a legacy built weapons manufacturer, decides to reconfigure his life and priorities after a near death experience. The reconfiguration includes a super suit and turning himself into a guilt ridden superhero, but as they say: no one’s perfect.

You could probably create a drinking game if you had access to my brain and listened to it best sum up what was going on with “there’s a verve” as I rewatched this movie. Between Robert Downey Jr’s  (henceforth referred to as RDJ) unshakable charisma, the needle drops, the sound design (oh god the sound design), there’s just something that’s firing on all cylinders. If you didn’t know the behind the scenes stories of how the script was mostly ad libbed and the energy was “a two million dollar student film” you wouldn’t completely be able to tell. While maybe there are some aspects in the occasional minute to minute that aren’t completely smooth, the general sense I have coming out of it is “whoa”. 

I’ll admit my bias, Tony Stark is another one of those early formative characters (by the end of this, you’ll probably have a list). What can I say, I’ve got a thing for cocky, flirtatious geniuses. They’re like catnip to me. While some of that has cooled with time, age, and some… questionable character work in later movies, watching this reminded me of its existence. Tony Stark on paper is a tough sell, a man whose character arc is basically “here come the consequences of your actions chasing you (blowing you up) right now!” Combine that with an attitude toward women that could have most women on the back foot, and he’s a weapons manufacturer? For the US Military? Woof, that’s a challenge. But, of course as everyone and their mother has pointed out, Stark is carried by RDJ and his ability to use that “is he charming or do I want to deck him?” line of questioning like a tightrope he can tap dance on (for another example, check out Only You a movie I’m almost certain only works because he’s the male lead). I might ponder alternate timelines where someone else was cast, but I don’t wanna live in them. This whole phenomenon doesn’t rocket into the stratosphere without him. Well, him and that end credit scene, but put a pin in that. 

I, of course, have critiques. I have critiques about everything I love and even things that just “make no sense, compel me though” (I have… a lot of those these days). For one, I’ve never loved Pepper. Not when I was a kid and just had a dislike of romance in fiction, not now when I have a slightly lighter dislike (and have an entire pod where I try to detangle what I like and don’t) of romance in fiction. And it’s not because of an intrinsic flaw with the character, one of my favorite underutilized tropes is “world famous person and the normie who treats them like Just Some Guy (gn)™.”Is it because I don’t love Gwyneth Paltrow? Maybe, I just can’t help but armchair direct certain lines in my head. Some would complain about the soon to be overutilized blue beam to space, but I understand  this one and I at least appreciate it’s not the entire climax, just a beat in it.

I think the other thing that I appreciate with at least getting a ground level of this whole franchise soon to be haunted house built, is how everything feels real. There are bits of sci-fi tech (I’m not enough of a STEM person to understand the Arc reactor, but I get the sense that it’s like theoretically possible, but probably could only exist in big form and trying to power a human with it would just be a bad idea), but I could imagine the absolute nerd with too much time one their hands trying to science out how to build an Iron Man suit, with or without the flying mechanics jury’s out. The sound design helps, the now iconic sound of the repulsors, the way the metal clicks into place, the entire dog fight sequence, it all just sounds correct. Which is a very subjective thing, but something I wanted to mention. 

The thing that I think kept the public’s interest however was a very simple puzzle box formed from two lines of dialogue from a scene I bet over half of the initial audiences didn’t see until someone told them to go back and wait for it. “You think you’re the only superhero in the world?” and “I’m here to talk to you about The Avengers Initiative.”

Up until this point, audiences had been introduced to teams or one off heroes. One off heroes usually dealt with their specific mythos and supporting casts and teams had to work around absences and pray no one noticed. Team ups for solos? Was it possible? Were we going to get more? And, to those familiar with the comics for whom an organization calling itself “SHIELD” and a team called “Avengers” were not just throw away statements, did this mean we’re forming a team? Comics are used to people popping in for an issue or two to help solve a problem and then bouncing back out, could that be where we’re headed? And perhaps most curiously and importantly who else is out there? 

These would all be answered in time, but I would love to have one of my stops on my theoretical time machine be a comic book shop just after this movie came out. 

I titled this piece “The Blueprint” because a lot of the building blocks that, for better or worse, will become the foundation of this franchise start here. At its best, finding great actors to fill perhaps C-List heroes and having audiences fall in love with them with character beats that pierce the metaphorical armor of our heroes to see who they are at the gooey center, and asking what it means to have a super in our world even if it means we end up slightly to the left. At its worst, questionable filming from the hip productions, and some occasional overuse of bathos. But it’s not calling attention to itself yet, the story is contained but the lid is off. 

We can only go up from here. Now let’s go try and wrangle a giant green rage monster in Harlem with The Incredible Hulk.