Iron Man (2008) Movie Memories

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Friday night. It's Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada this weekend and I have absolutely no plans. I was supposed to be playing D&D with the family this weekend, but those plans changed, which is fine. Tonight I'm here to talk about Iron Man. The movie that launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe back in 2008. But, this isn't a movie review, and I didn't watch the movie before coming on here. On this night, 17 years ago, I sat in my living room with a friend in my program in college and we watched the movie together as neither of us had seen it yet (I hadn't started going to the theaters with Brad on a semi-regular basis yet when Iron Man was released). So let's talk about the night of Friday, October 10th, 2008.

Released on May 2nd, 2008, Iron Man started what is now known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe and made $585.8 million at the box office. At the time superhero movies hadn't become as popular as they were in the 2010s. Marvel had done well with the X-Men movies at 20th Century Fox and the Spider-Man movies at Sony Pictures, but both franchises had started to lose steam with X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006 and Spider-Man 3 in 2007. Other Marvel movies such as Daredevil in 2003 and Fantastic Four in 2005 hadn't done very well, and none of the movies based on DC Comics characters besides Batman Begins (2005) had done very well either in the 2000s. 

Starring Robert Downey Jr. as the titular character, the movie was hugely popular, despite the character of Tony Stark/Iron Man not being a hugely popular comic book character, despite having an animated series in the '90s. However, the crazy thing is is that while Kevin Feige and Jon Favreau hoped to launch a shared cinematic universe, something that hadn't really been done since the Universal Monster movies of the '30s and '40s had stopped coming out, they knew it wouldn't happen overnight and made the movie so it stood alone incase it didn't do well enough to fit with The Incredible Hulk, which Universal was releasing basically a month after Iron Man came out.

During this time I was in college. I had just bombed in the Radio Broadcasting program at Algonquin College, and was licking my academic wounds in the special winter semester track of the General Arts and Sciences program where students who either flunked out of other programs or hadn't been able to start in the fall semester of the school year could still take classes even if they didn't know what they wanted to do next. So I was really busy with schoolwork and wasn't paying too much attention to the news coming out about the movie at the time. I may have seen the trailer on YouTube or had seen a TV spot for the movie during episodes of How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014) and The Big Bang Theory (2007-2019). But, being that I'm not a fan of Marvel in general, and at the time, knew very little about Marvel Comics outside of three Spider-Man comics I'd gotten when I was a kid, and the X-Men and Spider-Man movies, as well as having seen everything else besides the Punisher movies up to that point. I didn't really know who Iron Man was or anything like that. And, while the movie looked cool, I personally just didn't care.

Fast forward to October, 2008, I was fully integrated into the media stream of the General Arts and Sciences (GAS) program at Algonquin, having recovered enough academically to not completely wash out of college. By this point Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk had finished their theatrical runs, with Iron Man faring much better at the box office than The Incredible Hulk (which only made $265.6 million against Iron Man's $585.8 million) did. It also fared much better with critics and the audience than The Incredible Hulk did, and Iron Man had just come out on home video formats (this was before streaming kids), with The Incredible Hulk joining it later in October.

I'd made a friend in my new college program. Her name was Jackie, and we got along pretty well. I'd explained to her that it would be difficult for me to stay at the college after classes to hang out, but, I invited her over for a movie night, complete with pizza. She accepted and we made plans to hang out at my place on a Friday night in early October. This was the semester that we had Political Studies class on Fridays at like 5 pm and were usually out by 6:30, even though the class was supposed to be two hours long, ending at 7 pm. We even had a test that day, so we were out of class even earlier. While I was in class, I'd asked my mom to stop at the gas station and see what she could find in the way of movies to rent for us. I think I'd asked her for something specific, but I don't remember what it was. I just remember she couldn't find whatever movie it was, so picked up Iron Man instead.

Jackie had agreed to drive me home since she was coming over after class anyway, so we stopped at Little Caesar's in Manotick and got ourselves a pizza on our way back to my place. Jackie was the first friend from college I ever had over at my place. The first of two. The other being Andrew, whom I've talked about on the blog during my movies I saw in theaters in the 2000s post a few years ago. Jackie had a boyfriend, so I knew this was just a fun one on one friend hangout rather than the potential for something romantic to start. 

Of course, by 2008 VHS had gone the way of the Dinosaurs, so the only format available at the gas station was DVD, it was also the only format we could watch since my parents hadn't bought a Blu-ray player, with Blu-ray still being relatively new at the time (just a little over two years old at the time). So my mom had rented Iron Man on DVD for us. We ate our pizza first, because I had dogs at the time and had we tried to eat our pizza in front of the TV, they would've tried to steal the entire pizza from us. And then we put on the movie.

I remember liking the movie, but, being that I wasn't a Marvel fan, I had no idea what it meant when Samuel L. Jackson showed up in the post-credits scene as Nick Fury, since I had no idea who Nick Fury even was. I just didn't know that having Fury showing up to recruit Tony for the Avengers Initiative meant something big if the movie did well and Marvel Studios was allowed to start the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

I had fun hanging out, watching the movie, and eating pizza with Jackie that night, but that was kind of where my Marvel movie watching journey ended. The next Marvel movie I saw ended up being X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2009. That movie was the first Marvel movie I ever saw in theaters. I'd missed The Incredible Hulk entirely, and the next time Marvel Studios released anything that was part of the MCU was Iron Man 2 in 2010, so I think that two year gap between The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2 kinda quelled the Marvel hype for a while. I don't know for sure because I wasn't locked in on the online geek scene at the time, being that I only watched YouTube for music videos at the time, wasn't part of any Facebook groups, didn't have any other social media accounts (Instagram wasn't even a thing yet, and wouldn't be until October, 2010), and didn't participate in any online forums, except for one Star Trek forum. All I had were the friends I hung out with, and I don't really remember if Brad and I even talked about anything Marvel was putting out aside from going to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2009 and then Iron Man 2 in 2010. I just remember him being surprised the day we went to see The Amazing Spider-Man in 2012, when I told him I hadn't seen Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger (both having come out in 2011), or The Avengers, even though I'd also enjoyed Iron Man 2.

Being that he was the only friend I was seeing movies with in 2011-2012, and I hadn't made plans with him, or either of my siblings, to see those three movies, I really don't get why he was surprised that I hadn't seen them. Especially since I didn't have friends over very often to watch movies with, video stores had started closing, and gas stations were close to getting rid of their movie rental sections by that point (Netflix was a thing by then too). 

Alright my friends, I think that's it for me for tonight. I just wanted to come on here and talk about my memories of seeing Iron Man for the first time being that it was 17 years ago, to the day, that I first saw the movie. I had seen it in my memories on Facebook on Wednesday, as I'd been excited to have Jackie over on the Friday, and I think we'd just finalized our plans for that day. 

I think that's it for me for this week as well. I'll be back next week for sure though. So until then have a great night (or whenever you're reading this blog post) and I will talk to you all later. Take care.