Robert Downey Jr. IS Tony Stark (spoilers ahead)

I watched Iron Man today and it was an awesome movie. To me, it is definitely the best superhero movie since Batman Begins (one of my top 3 superhero movies now) because it is that good. I was amazed how perfect Robert Downey Jr. is being Tony Stark as it was a great casting choice. The supporting cast was also pretty good with Terrence Howard being Tony's good friend and eventually hinting to himself he'll be War Machine soon. I was very impressed with Gwyneth Paltrow's role as Pepper because I thought she would be another generic love interest for the hero (not a fan of Kristen Dunst being Mary Jane in the Spider-Man flicks) and I was wrong. Jeff Bridges is okay as the villain of the movie even though I would of wanted a villain from the comic books in this one, but there will probably be one in the sequel. The action scenes are amazing as the CG folks nailed Iron Man pretty well with the suit, weaponry (The Uni Beam is there = Yes!!), and the flying. While I wished the Proton Cannon would make an appearance (a Marvel vs. Capcom 2 reference), the amount of source material is very faithful to the Iron Man character.

I also definitely stayed after the credits for the bonus scene and that was funny with Samuel L. Jackson being Nick Fury from SHIELD telling Tony about the Avengers intiative. I'm curious how this special scene will play out with the sequel (Live-action Avengers movie??). The humor is handled very well throughout the whole movie as well as the one-liners when Downey Jr. being Iron Man was toned down.  This is definitely one of my favorite movies this year already (even though I haven't watched that much movies this year) and a great start for the summer movie season especially with the box office numbers being 100 million in its first weekend, which is crazy. Iron Man has set the bar for superhero movies (both Marvel and DC) in terms of high-quality movie magic even though The Dark Knight (new trailer is sick!!) is going to be pretty good and I'm not a fan of the new Incredible Hulk movie yet, but I would still watch anyway. I'll probably watch Speed Racer next weekend despite being too colorful to me.