Yeah, I enjoyed it.

The first of the summers comic book/superhero films is here (we’ve got The Incredible Hulk, The Dark Knight, Hellboy 2, Hancock and The Punisher 2 to come) and standing tall astride the top of the Box Office charts. I thought it was pretty good but that’s mostly down to the actors involved: Robert Downey Jr. was great as was Jeff Bridges as his Nemesis and Gwyneth Paltrow as his erstwhile assistant-slash-unrequited love interest. Incidentally - am I the only person on the planet to not think less than fuzzy thoughts about her as an actress?

There’s been a lot of criticism of the films pacing, saying that the second half was much slower than the start but personally I couldn’t see it. Perhaps it’s because, unlike most superhero films, there was much more character exploration. Tony Stark’s transformation into Iron Man also represented a change in his character from amoral to moral coupled with an awareness that his life is actually rather empty, illustrated pretty well by the fact that he seems to be far friendlier with his robots than the people around him. Of course, being a comic book film, it’s not exactly going to be a character driven piece and I’m happy to say that the action scenes were pretty good too. It’s just a shame that we saw most of the good stuff in the trailers which left very little new stuff to see. What will be interesting to see in future sequels (already announced and pretty inevitable considering it’s one of Marvel’s biggest properties although I don’t think I’ve personally ever read any IM comics) is whether they explore the darker side of the character, his descent into alcholism and his sometimes dubious politics.

All in all, Iron Man is a good start to a summer that is chocka full of potential. If this turns out to be the worst film of the summer than I am going to be a very happy bunny.