Iron Man

Rewatching 2008’s Iron Man, the movie that kicked off the entire MCU, is wild. After nearly 20 years of movies, TV shows, and spin-offs, the first Iron Man feels so small and contained, with only a few tiny nods to the greater Marvel universe. And then it ends with a post-credits scene setting up The Avengers and the next 20 years of MCU movies, even if we didn’t realize it at the time.

As a result, Iron Man is a very important piece of the MCU, but it’s a solid sci-fi action flick, too. Iron Man also feels very much of its era, terrified to reveal that it’s a comic book superhero movie at a time before such movies had completely taken over the multiplex. That doesn’t matter because of Robert Downey Jr. and his incredible performance as Tony Stark aka Iron Man. The dude nailed it so hard that every version of Iron Man since has copied him. Meanwhile, Stark has gone on to become—for better or for worse—the most popular character from the MCU. – ZZ