History Film / IronMan1

* MagicalDatabase: Variant; when Pepper Potts is [[spoiler:hacking the Stark Industries mainframe]] from Stark's office computer (and at his request), she instantly translates the soundtrack of a foreign language video into ([[JustAStupidAccent appropriately accented!]]) English by typing in "Translate" on the video viewer's window. This is a case of ShownTheirWork - New Scientist checked up the plausibility of this and found that there are programs in development that do the same thing, if not quite so smoothly just yet, but there's no excuse for the accent.

* BlackSpeech: Urdu is a real language, but it is used this way. The hero of the movie is captured and tortured by evil terrorists, who speak in a language that most of the audience will be unfamiliar with, and with no translation subtitles.

* AndShowItToYou: Iron Monger rips out Tony’s artificial "heart", the arc reactor, and then taunts the hero while holding it out in front of him.

* AreTheseWiresImportant: Tony does this to Iron Monger.

* BiggerStick: Everyone from the Ten Rings to Obadiah wants to get their hands on Tony's Iron Man technology so they can outstip everyone else's weapons. The phrase "bigger stick" even comes up in the movie itself when Tony is talking to the reporter about his father.

* BottomlessMagazines: Averted. Iron Man's power source, the arc reactor, will run out of power if the power drain from the suit outstrips the power output of the reactor for too long.
** Played straight with everyone else who fires kinetic weapons, though.

* ChekhovsGun: Tony Stark builds a electromagnetic device called an Arc Reactor to protect his heart, then upgrades the unit by having his secretary, Pepper, install a larger version in his chest. He tells her to throw the small unit away, but Pepper has it put in a display case for him. The miniature reactor becomes crucial later on, when [[spoiler: Obadiah Stane takes the larger reactor from Tony's chest while he's paralyzed, and he must rely on the smaller model to power his suit and his heart.]] Also, Tony's second attempt at the suit doesn't work out too well after ice builds up during a high-atmosphere flight.[[spoiler:He later uses this against the BigBad.]]

* ChestBlaster: Tony uses this during the climax to blast Iron Monger out from under the car he's holding.
** It's one of the extremely few appearances in the films of the Unibeam; in the comics, Iron Man's chest plate can project not only a searchlight but various kinds of energy. When Iron Man really needs to blast someone or something, the Unibeam fires a super-sized repulsor ray.

* ComesGreatResponsibility: After building his Iron Man suit, Tony understands that its power must be used to help people and begins an [[CharacterDevelopment arduous transition]] from a glorified [[JerkAss douchebag]] ArmsDealer to humanitarian hero and champion of world peace.
** ...Who is still kind of a [[JerkassWithAHeartOfGold douchebag.]]
* CurbStompBattle: Tony Stark's Power Suit vs. a group of batshit crazy terrorists armed with powerful automatic weapons, grenade launchers, and '''tanks''' = ''Ridiculously'' easy Stark victory, usually in under 6 full minutes. The more he upgrades the armor, the more epic the curb-stomp.

* DrunkOnTheDarkSide: [[spoiler:Obadiah Stane]], normally calm and AffablyEvil, seems to lose his shit after becoming the Iron Monger, and even seems to [[LampshadeHanging realize it]].
-->'''[[spoiler:Stane:]]''' I have to admit, [[PowerHigh I'm deeply enjoying the suit]]!

* FunWithAcronyms: The running gag about the government agency with the overly long name... [[spoiler:which they eventually shorten to S.H.I.E.L.D.]] Unless you read the comics it's hard to catch the acronym the first few times.

* HeyWait: "Is that today's paper?" This is a subversion of the trope. [[spoiler:Obadiah suspects Pepper is up to something the moment he enters the office. He only asks for the paper because he (correctly) thinks she's hiding something in it. He doesn't care about the paper, he throws it down onto the desk as soon as she leaves.]]

* HowDoIShotWeb: The first half of the film is basically Tony trying to figure out how to fly. The Mark I armor doesn't so much fly as rocket skyward and then fall, and after building his boot jets for the Mark II armor, Tony invents the repulsors to act as flight stabilizers. And then after that, there's the [[ChekhovsGun icing problem]].

* IcarusAllusion: Tony flies toward the moon, causing a buildup of ice on his suit. [[spoiler:He later solves this problem and uses it to his advantage against an enemy.]]

* {{Improv}}: [[http://io9.com/5417310/jeff-bridges-admits-iron-man-movie-had-no-script According to]] JeffBridges, there was no script; the entire movie was improvised. Bridges said he had problems getting his head around this style of film making until he told himself to think of it as "a $200 million student film". [[http://www.superherohype.com/features/articles/96427-exclusive-an-in-depth-iron-man-talk-with-jon-favreau In an interview, director Jon Favreau]] confirmed that there was no completed script, and wrote and rewrote many scenes during production. Also while most of the dialogue scenes were improvised, the action scenes were thoroughly planned out. Lastly, all of the changes got approval by Marvel studio executives along the way.
** Think about that. A near-total improvisation movie is one of the most highly rated movies ''ever'' (95% on the Tomato Meter, more than half of the PIXAR movies out there) and grossed well over $585 million worldwide.

* ItsPersonal: He decides to go back to Afghanistan and take on the Ten Rings after seeing they've attacked Yinsen's hometown.

* KubrickStare: Check out Stane's expression in the poster at the top of the page. Kind of odd - Obie's actually a [[AffablyEvil pretty]] [[BlatantLies nice]] [[TheStarscream guy]].

* LivingLegend: Tony's jealous of his own coverage and outs himself as The Iron Man.
* LookMaNoPlane: The first movie has an example of the "fight military aircraft" version (though he never actually attacks them; the only damage to a plane comes from accidentally colliding with him).

* MagicalDatabase: Variant; when Pepper Potts is [[spoiler:hacking the Stark Industries mainframe]] from Stark's office computer (and at his request), she instantly translates the soundtrack of a foreign language video into ([[JustAStupidAccent appropriately accented!]]) English by typing in "Translate" on the video viewer's window. Sort of a case of ShownTheirWork - New Scientist checked up the plausibility of this and found that there are programs in development that can pretty much do the same thing (if not quite so smoothly just yet). No excuse for the accent, though.

* MookHorrorShow: The Mk I storming out of the Ten Rings camp.

* MythologyGag: The first suit of armor Tony builds looks very similar to Iron Man's original appearance in the comics.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Iron Man unintentionally causes the destruction of an Air Force F-22 that attempted to intercept him (before they knew he was a good guy). In his defense, he made sure that the pilot's ejection suit worked properly. Also, he helped to design and build many of the weapons being used by the Ten Rings.
* NoodleIncident: "...Let's face it, this is not the worst thing you've caught me doing."
* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup: Subverted and avoided in every way the writers could think of. [[spoiler:The first suit and its plans are recovered and used as a basis for Stane's.]] Stark has two functional suits in his house, and the facilities to build a new one from scratch in five hours... [[spoiler:Except one. If not for Pepper's leaving the original mini-Arc Reactor as a gift to Tony, Obadiah would have successfully left Tony for dead.]]

* NotQuiteDead: [[spoiler:Obadiah]]

* OperationGameOfDoom: When Pepper had to help Tony change out his nuclear pacemaker, though it wasn't played completely straight.

* PreMortemOneLiner: "'''''[[BadAss My turn.]]'''''"
** Later, attempted with: "Your services are no longer required."
* RealLifeWritesThePlot: There was a scene planned for the climax of the first film where Iron Man drives his Audi [[spoiler:into Iron Monger, where it flips and he breaks the roof in half and jumps out. The effects team found that A) the car was too well-engineered to flip, and B) the roof was too difficult to cut through. The entire scene was scrapped. Yes, that's right, the ProductPlacement car was (in a sense) TooAwesomeToUse.]]

* SexyBacklessOutfit: Pepper's dress at a party. She feels distinctly uncomfortable in it, to say nothing of the fact that she forgot to put on deodorant and is dancing with her boss in front of a lot of her co-workers. Tony tries to put her at ease by telling her she smells fine.

* ShootTheHostageTaker: Tony does this during his raid on Afghani warlord, using shoulder-mounted guns.

* TanksForNothing: Tony Stark (in his Iron Man suit) gets matched up against a tank. He just looks at it, fire a dinky missile, and walks away. Said tank then explodes.
* TaughtByExperience: Stark invoked this by refusing calculations and diagnostics to get a feel for the Mark II design and whatever flaws it may have. [[{{Foil}} Stane]] plans to sell his MiniMecha knockoff on the black market, so he just crams it with computer assistance -- without which [[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy he can't hit a human-sized target at six meters]] with [[MoreDakka automatic weapons]] and [[StuffBlowingUp explosives]].

* TerroristsWithoutACause: The Ten Rings organization seems to be this, though maybe we just don't know their cause yet.
* ThrowingOutTheScript: At the end of the movie, Tony Stark and S.H.I.E.L.D. had earlier come up with a cover story that Tony was supposed to give at the press conference. After a few questions from a skeptical press, Tony decides to just tell the truth: "I am Iron Man."
** Also, assuming the movie had a script, something like this happened during shooting, to hear Favreau, Bridges, and Downey tell the tale.
* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: Good job, Paramount marketing. You put your biggest movie of the summer on heavy trailer rotation for a clean month before the US release, allowing a lot of people to figure out many of the plot elements.

* UnflinchingWalk: Fires a remote explosive at a tank in Afghanistan then calmly walks away until a few seconds later it detonates and takes the tank with it.

* ViewerFriendlyInterface: Most of the images inside the Iron Man suit's holographic interface are so large that they would obstruct Tony's view, display data he doesn't even need at that time, and generally are there more to [[RuleOfCool look cool for the viewer]] than actually be useful to Tony.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Iron Man unintentionally causes the destruction of an Air Force F-22 that attempted to intercept him (before they knew he was a good guy). In his defense, he made sure that the pilot's ejection suit worked properly. Also, he helped to design and build many of the weapons being used by the Ten Rings (and presumably the Taliban, though that much is never stated in the first film).

* BigFriendlyDog: For a certain value of "dog", the robot Tony refers to as "Dummy." After calling it useless, threatening to donate it to a city college, and then [[spoiler: having the device that's keeping him alive ripped out of his chest,]] who comes to the rescue [[spoiler: with the original arc reactor]], moving the same way a puppy would?
-->'''Tony''': Good boy.

* Then, there's the scene when Tony's assistant, Pepper Potts, walks into his lab just as he's testing one of the repulsor beams in the suit's gloves. The recoil throws Tony offscreen and you hear him hit the far wall a couple seconds later. Pepper's reaction, mainly her complete lack of concern for his safety, is what really sells it.

* CarFu: During their battle on the highway, Iron Monger grabs a motorcycle as it's driving by and smacks Tony into the ground with it.

* SexyStewardess: Tony's private flight attendants double as go-go dancers.

* ImpossibleTaskInstantlyAccomplished: Tony Stark is captured by would-be conquerors, and forced to build a Jericho Missile, which he designed within a week or so or the battery powering his new "pacemaker" will die. Within that week, he instead designs a miniature arc reactor, builds it, and installs it so his heart will be powered forever. Then over the course of three months, he designs a suit of Powered Armor, builds it, and escapes. Just in time, just as the terrorists were growing suspicious.

* LiteralChangeOfHeart: Sort of. Getting the arc generator put in Tony's chest symbolically represents his assumption of the role of Iron Man.

* InMediasRes: The movie begins a little while in with Tony in Afghanistan being escorted back to his plane. He jokes around with the troops [[spoiler: then his convoy gets attacked. His guards are quickly slaughtered and when he tries to take cover. A missile, one made his company, lands near him and explodes in his face knocking him unconscious. Tony's then captured by the Ten Rings and is put up for ransom.]] The story then flashes back 36 hours to show Tony's personal life up till that point.
* ItsPersonal: He decides to go back to Afghanistan and take on the Ten Rings after seeing they've attacked Yinsen's hometown.

* PillarOfLight: When [[spoiler:the big arc reactor blows/vents]]

* PillarOfLight: When [[spoiler:the big arc reactor blows]]

* LookMaNoPlane: The first movie has an example of the "fight military aircraft" version.

** When Tony tells Colonel Rhodes, "Looks like someone did your job for you" referencing his earlier role in "TheBraveOne".

--> '''Tony:''' Tell me, how did you manage to fix the icing problem?

* TwistEnding: Most superhero movies end with [[spoiler:the hero's SecretIdentity intact, but at the end of the first film, Stark reveals it to the world. This is even after the comic book "bodyguard" explanation is devised as a cover... which is then torn apart by another character who remarks on how ridiculous it is. Considering Stark's humanitarian ways, this makes a great deal of sense.]]