Iron Man - Stay Through The Credits

There are some spoilers ahead. Stop reading unless you want to be pauked.

I saw Iron Man on Monday. Luckily, I was tipped off to stay through the credits for the real final scene of the movie. Thanks, Speedman.

What happened was so mind-bogglingly cool that I stood up in the theater, raised up my arms, and yelled "YES!". The theater attendant who was waiting to clean up said she had a similar reaction when she saw it.

I won't say what it is, but in an amazing coincidence, as soon as I got home later that day, I read on the internet that Marvel Studios announced Iron Man 2 and a Thor movie both coming in 2010, and a Captain America movie preceding an AVENGERS MOVIE in 2011. Ant-Man is also in development.

As for this Iron Man movie, well, it rocked hard. Robert Downey nailed the role of Tony Stark and made it his own, Jeff Bridges was great as bad guy Obadiah Stane, and everything else in the flick, including the ending (before the post-credit one) was simply heaven for an old fan of the comic like myself.

We've entered the second age of Marvel Movies. Now that Marvel has and is its own studio, it has control and is clearly building up the "universe" aspect of it. And the quality of the care for the property far exceeds what the other studios have done with Marvel properties over the last eight years.

Blade paved the way, and X-Men really started what I thought was going to be the great, golden age of Marvel Movies. At the time, I was totally blown away by the X-Men movies, the Spider-Man movies, and even Daredevil and the Hulk, in spite of most people's disdain for some of them. Looking back, though, I realize that I had settled for movies that were "good enough", and that could never be linked together like the comics are.

The clear failures of the last few years - the Punisher, Elektra, Fantastic Four movies, and the terrible Spider-Man 3, had me giving up hope that Marvel even gave a rats ass about these things, as long as the money kept pouring in. There were great things about these movies, don't get me wrong, but they failed on a lot of levels (Doctor Doom is the most blaring example).

Iron Man has kickstarted everything and there is hope again. I can't wait to see if the upcoming Incredible Hulk movie keeps the momentum going.