18 Years Later, Disney’s Action Sci-Fi Is Taking Over the World Once Again

The anticipation for Avengers: Doomsday is feverish, to say the least, and the MCU is reaping all the benefits. The franchise has regained prominence, with all the talk of its demise that has dominated the conversation for months taking a back seat to unabashed optimism. The films that make up the franchise have seen a resurgence in streaming, and even the weakest of the Avengers films benefited. And racing up to the top, as it should be, is the MCU’s best, the one that started it all 18 years ago: Iron Man.

Why ‘Iron Man’ Became the MCU’s First Great Movie

By rights, a film about a lesser-known superhero outside comic circles, played by an actor who had only started to rebuild the career that he had utterly destroyed through addiction, directed by Jon Favreau, then best known for Elf​​​​​​, shouldn’t have been a hit. The superhero genre had largely squandered the momentum created by Sam Raimi‘s Spider-Man and his genre-redefining Spider-Man from 2002, with the likes of Catwoman and Spider-Man 3 effectively bleeding it dry. Yet it did succeed, wildly, to the tune of $585 million plus.

So what was it about Iron Man that drew people to the film back then? Like Spider-Man before it, Iron Man represents a true reinvention of the superhero genre, lending it the gravitas Raimi brought to Spider-Man but with a stark realism that keeps it grounded. Favreau kept it fun, adventurous, dramatic, straightforward, and insular, teasing a bigger world without succumbing to a full reveal. Then there was the casting of Robert Downey Jr., a gamble that paid off in spades.

With Tony Stark/Iron Man in that second tier, there were literally no preconceived notions of what the character should be: no inescapable shadow of Christopher Reeve; no years of comic-book lore in the public consciousness, where everyone knows the story of Peter Parker and the radioactive spider verbatim. Downey Jr. was already reinventing himself for moviegoers, and as such was free to craft the perfect marriage of character and actor, becoming truly inseparable from his creation. And the way he was effortlessly able to take Stark from an arrogant, careless charmer to a (somewhat) humbled, morally-stricken charmer was, in a word, stunning.

How ‘Iron Man’ Became an MCU Comfort Movie

But why is the film drawing in viewers now, 18 years later? The reasons above play a part in it, as true now as they were then, but there’s more to it. The simplest explanation is that fans are marathoning MCU content before Avengers: Doomsday hits. That 18-year span would place Iron Man right in the heart of a new generation, too, where those who grew up with the film are now at an age where they’re showing it to their own children.

That tracks, given that the film doesn’t require homework going in. Straightforward, one doesn’t need to have watched countless hours of streaming content just to know what’s going on in Iron Man. It represents a simpler time for the MCU, a sense that it was building towards something important, as opposed to now, where such a high bar has been set that anything less than Avengers: Endgame is a disappointment and a step backwards.

There could be another, more psychological rationale for Iron Man‘s recent streaming success: the concept of the “comfort movie.” During times of turmoil, of which current events certainly qualify, people face difficult decisions, life changes, and an almost relentless outpouring of negative news from almost every direction. All these things work to overload our cognitive abilities, our working memory, and, as silly as it may sound, watching a new movie requires a lot of mental work that only adds to the problem. First, you have to find a movie that you might be interested in, no guarantees, then you need to know the characters, track the storyline, and leave enough room for plot twists.

But as Psychology Today notes, “there’s no guesswork, cliffhangers, or stressful anticipation when watching an old favorite — which makes it easier for our tired, overloaded brains to process.” What fills that role better than Iron Man? It’s a classic good vs. evil film; there’s no guesswork, and there aren’t multiple timelines and thousands of hours of content to know to enjoy it. It’s easy to like Downey Jr., easy to dislike Jeff Bridges‘ Obadiah Stone, and it’s easy to fall into the childlike thrill of seeing that first successful test flight again. But whatever the reason, Iron Man hits the heights once again, 18 years later, it just seems right.