Background: Jon Favreau (Zathura) directs this adaptation of the popular comic-book character, with Robert Downey Jr playing the eponymous hero; alternatively known as weapons designer Tony Stark, who builds an advanced suit of armour to escape capture in Afghanistan.
Review: The trailer is a curious mix of limp dialogue (a weak Da Vinci gag), amusing oddball performance (Downey Jr), patently ridiculous set-up (Stark's forced to build terrorists a missile, but instead creates a giant suit of armour to escape, without them even knowing?), but it somehow works! The effects look beautifully plausible, with various incarnations of Iron Man achieved without much CGI (courtesy of Stan Winston's workshop) -- although a climatic sequence of Iron Man flying alongside fighter jets is CGI, but looks wonderful. You can more readily believe something metallic flying through the sky... unlike, say, Superman.
Prediction: This is sure to be a Ghost Rider-sized hit, particularly as it avoids summer 2008 with a spring release. I'm not convinced Jon Favreau was the best man for this job, but the casting is superb (Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges also co-star) and the visuals look cool. I just hope the extremely hokey premise will work better than the trailer suggests.
Hi-Res (23 MB)
HD 480P (56 MB)
HD 720P (120 MB)
HD 1080P (196 MB)
