This is an action packed movie from start to finish. From the opening scene we are gripped and taken thought a non-stop thrill packed journey. The acting is convincing enough and the characters don’t need to be since it’s understood it’s based on a comic book.
There are 4 armour suits in the movie. The first is hand made by Robert Downy Jr/Tony Stark and another engineer supplied by his captors, allowing him to escape and return to America. When he returns Stark shuts down his weapons manufacturing operations since he realises his products are used by the ‘bad guys’, not just by his country men. He starts to make a new suit which would enable him to fly. The suit wasn’t originally meant to be a weapon, it just turned out to work well as one. During development of the suit he finds that his weapons are still being used by the ‘bad guys’ so he decides to take matters into directly into his own hands. Finally there is a show down were he fights a bad guy who has his own supped up suit.
The first suit is made by hand from steel, and kitted out will a Gatling gun and missiles to enable escape from warlords.
The third suit is produced after the first test flight of the development suit, both of these are made with a fully automated CAD/CAM system available in Tony Stark’s mansion.
Iron Man’s suit it powered by the ‘Arc reactor’ which appears similar in design to a Tokamak fusion reactor. The first miniature version which he builds is capable of generating 3 GW of power (3 gigajoules per second).
My only complaint is that it’s claimed that Iron Man’s final suit is meant to be made from gold-aluminium alloy. Tony Stark does still prefer the name ‘Iron Man’, after first hearing the name he says it’s `catchy’, probably he would be embarrassed to be referred to as gold–aluminium alloy man. In the movie it is shown that suit can withstand many rounds of ammunition, which would be much more consistent with the suit being made from a very-ultra-high-strength steel armour which has recently been shown to be superior to other armour. The switch to gold–aluminium alloy was to solve a problem of icing at high altitude, were ice would form on the suit and power would be lost. Unlike an aeroplane the icing should not effect the power production of the suit, since it doesn’t rely on a turbine, but a portable reactor. Also the suit doesn’t have any aerodynamic control, like wing flaps, to be affected by icing, instead relying on thrust control, so the problem could better be solved just by making sure that the joints remain ice free by heating them.
O.K. there are only 2 problems with this movie, the other being the conspicuous product placement for burger king… which would have been more believable if he had eaten a whopper rather than a cheeseburger.
bainite 
First of all Iron man’s armor in the movie is made of gold-titanium alloy. Second the suit has variable flight control surfaces (the “wing flaps” you were talking about) which are controlled by JARVIS automatically to stabilize the suit in flight. Let’s just face it you were probably sleeping during the most of the movie.
Thanks for commenting, but read the post first next time.
Well, I read the post, and I don’t think Kablaamas Guy said anything that implied he hadn’t read it, but I figure I’ll point out a few things as well. Aside from relentless typos and grammatical mistakes (which apparently more and more Americans appear to be okay with these days), the armor is made from gold-titanium alloy as Kablaamas stated. There are several aerodynamic controls that come into play during the movie, the most noticeable being the “wind flaps” on his back, seen frequently used during the aerial battle sequence with the F-22’s. There are also less noticeable ones located on the calves of the armor, though I’m not sure what real purpose they served on an aerodynamic scale.
As for the icing issue, I’m fairly certain that Tony was attempting to see how high into the atmosphere he could get during his test flight of the Mark II, and that most commercial airlines don’t normally fly at such altitudes for obvious reasons. There are some military jets that are capable of functioning at those heights (the russian Mig-22, for example), but being military vehicles, I imagine they probably have taken preventative measures against icing. While freezing might not cause the fictional “arc reactor” to malfunction, it is possible that it could disrupt power flow to the various joints and thrust outlets in the armor. Yes, all the glowing lights in the suit do flicker off, including the one for the reactor, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t still generating power, it just might mean that the parts that need power aren’t receiving it. Keep in mind that the suit (if it could ever be realistically built) would be incredibly complex, so it’s really not too hard to believe that icing could be a minor (yet fixable) problem considering all the delicate circuitry and mechanics involved. Let’s also keep in mind that this is a fictional story based on a comic book. I think what they were trying to show in this scene was that there were problems in the initial development of the armor, and to display some foreshadowing, as Tony tried later in the movie to exploit the “icing” problems in Obediah Stane’s Iron Monger armor.
One last note – concerning the product placement, I didn’t have a major problem with it and thought it was actually quite subtle when compared to TV shows like “Heroes”, where they pretty much whore themselves out to the highest bidder – if you’re a fan, you might recall “No Way! You’re giving me the Nissan Mirano?? Thank you daddy!” or from this season when one man stated “I get terrible reception here, I should have gone with Sprint”, as if Sprint normally has coverage in the middle of a desert in Africa.
Unfortunately, product placement is everywhere despite how annoying it might be. In Iron Man, I thought the placement of the the Verizon Wireless phone during the first part of the movie was pretty weak, considering that, come on, it’s genius inventor/billionaire Tony Stark we’re talking about here. In my mind, he’d either have a hi-tech phone he designed himself, or he’d be using something at the top of current phone technology that’s available to consumers – an iPhone or a Blackberry for example (which seem more suitable for a businessman like Stark). The man has a mildly sentient, talking computer that runs just about everything in his home, why in the world would he have the comparatively non-advanced phone he uses in the movie?
Anyway, the BK placement was fine with me because a) he wasn’t eating a whopper (BK’s iconic burger), which would pretty much scream “We’re promoting Burger King”, and b) it was subtle, Tony just says he wants a cheeseburger when he arrives back in the US from captivity. He doesn’t say “I sure could go for some Burger King.” To me, this kind of makes sense – if I were held captive in a cave for a few months, the first thing I’d probably want to eat when I came back is a greasy fast food cheeseburger. It’s the classic American food that most people can connect with having a craving for. The way they placed the BK product made it appear as though maybe Tony prefers something else, but BK was the closest place to get a burger while on the way from the airport to the press conference.
Wow, this was way more than I had planned on writing originally. I get a little carried away sometimes I guess. I think I wrote more than is actually in the blog. I just get caught up in details. Oh well. It was a great movie, and I really look forward to the sequel, where I’ve heard they explore the inner demons of the characters a little more. I’m really hoping that one day they can get around to creating a Civil War series of movies – if you follow the comics at all, you should know what that’s about and why it’s such a huge deal, especially in the world of Iron Man.
Thanks for your post. I have tried to correct some more ambiguous sentences, but only found one deviation from British English spelling. I did point in my post about the Gold-Titanium alloy. I’m just saying that metallurgically this is unbelievable, steel would be far superior.
If they are as good an effort as this first movie I would welcome many more Iron Man movies.
Actually you said “gold-aluminium” rather than “gold-titanium” although I missed this at first pass, even after the first comment, I guess there’s just a blind spot there since they’re approximately the same length with broadly similar ascender positions.
I liked the review 🙂
Thanks for making my morning a little bit better with this great article!!