He speeds into battle in a fiery flash, laying waste to all challengers. That's not just Iron Man but the film's likely box-office outcome too. The film has been assembling a towering wave of momentum. But is it a tsunami? When the first meaningful audience tracking surveys rolled in, Paramount and Marvel Studios had to say Iron Man sure was looking like one.

Movie studios and exhibitors are desperate for a hit, with 2008 attendance down more than 6 per cent compared with a year ago and last weekend's total grosses down almost 20 per cent versus the same weekend in 2007, according to the research business Media by Numbers. Several of the year's higher-profile releases, including films from George Clooney (Leatherheads) and Jodie Foster (Nim's Island), all faltered.
lift the business

But when Iron Man hits theatres today, it may single-handedly launch what is Hollywood's most important (and profitable) season and help lift the business out of its doldrums.
As is the industry habit, Paramount and Marvel are trying to manage expectations downward. They note (accurately, as it turns out) that Iron Man is hardly as popular a comic book character as Spider-Man or Hulk, that almost all school-age kids will still be in classes when the film opens this weekend.

That said, some rival studio executives and producers — having looked at Iron Man's strong tracking numbers — are now saying the film could be one of the summer's top hits, especially since Paramount and Marvel have spent only 30 per cent of their advertising dollars so far.

Protective suit

Directed by Jon Favreau, Iron Man stars Robert Downey Jr as arms manufacturer Tony Stark. Captured by Middle Eastern guerrillas who force him to build a missile, a wounded Stark instead constructs a protective iron suit that allows him to escape. Once free and back in Malibu, US, Stark secretly refines his design, turning himself into a more peace-minded crusader. His about-face might worry longtime assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) but it really ticks off business partner Obadiah Stone (Jeff Bridges). Before long, Stark's Iron Man faces a very bad boardroom revolt.

Because the character resides in the middle rungs of Marvel's superhero ladder, below not only Spider-Man and Hulk but also X-Men and The Fantastic Four, equivalent movie comparisons are problematic. X-Men, which helped launch the modern comic book revival, debuted with $54.5 million in 2000.

There's telling strength hiding inside Iron Man's audience surveys, box-office experts say. While some Iron Man doubters worry that the film's female appeal is too far behind its male interest to yield a true, all-demographic blockbuster (men are almost twice as interested in Iron Man as are women), a close look at the numbers tells a different tale.
And with the acclaimed Downey and the Oscar-winning Paltrow in leading roles and mostly favourable reviews to be expected, Iron Man should also draw strongly among more discriminating — older, put less diplomatically — moviegoers. There's little, in other words, to hold it back.

Paramount, which is marketing the movie that Marvel paid for as its first self-financed production, notes that only two non-sequels (Spider-Man and The Passion of the Christ) have ever grossed more than $80 million (Dh294 million) in their first three-day weekends. Even if Iron Man (which cost $135 million, which is Dh496 million, to make) grosses $50 million (Dh184 million) in its first weekend, it will be headed toward profitability and have everybody at Paramount and Marvel beaming.

A winning plot

Robert Downey Jr steels, sorry, steals the show in this latest cinematic plundering of the Marvel comics universe. He serves up swagger and swank and arch one-liners in place of the earnestness of Spider-Man, or DC's dour Batman. His charismatic performance holds Jon Favreau's film together when it threatens to lose its way between the crash-bang set pieces.

Initially, Downey Jr is Tony Stark, a Scotch-swigging, philandering, billionaire arms manufacturer. Wounded by his own ordnance and captured in what is clearly Afghanistan — though Favreau keeps the politics deliberately vague — Stark escapes by building a suit of robotic armour around a generator implanted in his chest to keep his injured heart going. Back home he starts to question his trade, and builds a new suit with which to destroy his mis-sold armaments. He's hard on the outside, soft inside, and we know his heart's in the right place because we can see it glowing, like ET's.

Witty scenes

Fortunately, Downey Jr's Stark doesn't stop being flippant or flash. There are delightfully witty scenes of him trying out his armour like a new sports car, observed only by two dumb robots and a sarcastic electronic butler. Thank goodness for a hero whose flaws are arrogance and cockiness, because elsewhere, the human element is lacking. When Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges appear as Stark's assistant-cum-love interest and his mentor-cum-nemesis, the film slows noticeably.

While Bridges just happily chews cigars and the scenery, the growing intimacy between Stark and Paltrow's fetishistically-attired but prim"Pepper'' Potts feels agonisingly forced. Perhaps Favreau, who wrote Swingers and directed Elf, is happier with jokes and the ironic observation of boys and their toys. Sure enough, we're soon back to Stark's Iron Man, taking a mobile phone call in his helmet while playing aerial tag with a pair of F11 fighter planes. There's a satisfyingly climactic CGI battle, but Downey Jr tops it in the witty denouement with pure acting skill.

Favreau's film inevitably recalls other superhero movies because all their storylines follow a broadly similar arc. A more telling problem is that it seems to treat itself as the first installment in a franchise. Stark's struggles here are basically internal: only at the very end does he contemplate what it means to be Iron Man. Other characters are sketched in and cued up for future glory."Next time, baby,'' says Stark's bland chum Jim (Terrence Howard) as he eyes a spare metal suit.

I hope there is a sequel, though. Despite its flaws, the film delivers splendidly tense action sequences, a magnetic performance from Downey Jr, and Paltrow in tight dresses and high heels. Which, for superhero fans, is a near-perfect hat-trick.

Turning point

For decades, none of Marvel's New York-based success story really mattered to Hollywood. Then in the late 1990s a new Marvel boss, Avi Arad, made it his crusade to get his company's classic heroes on the silver screen. The breakthrough came in the 2000 Fox film X-Men, which was deeply loyal to the comic book. Its success started a cinematic windfall for all those old Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko characters, who were belatedly ideal for a moviegoing public in love with CGI wizardry and outsider heroes.

“The intention now," Kevin Feige, the president of production for Marvel Studios, said with a smile,"is to keep the streak alive''.

David Maisel, chairman of Marvel Studios, said:"We're not in the movie business, we're in the Iron Man business right now. Marvel owns the intellectual property. We have an Iron Man video game coming, the toys, the comics, we have an animated television show coming, a direct-to-DVD animated Iron Man movie last year. We have a different perspective.''

By John Horn, Los Angeles Washington Post News Service and Nick Curtis, Evening Standard

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Iron Man set for box office hit