Tony Stark, the millionaire playboy, as incarnated by bad boy actor Robert Downey, roars into theaters today, with the kind of adrenalin rush Stark gets from racing his shiny new Audi A8 down the Pacific Coast Highway from his super-cool cliffside mansion. As the first of this summer’s big comic book adaptations, Iron Man is certainly a nice way to kick off the season: with a big - and also quite an intelligent - bang!

Perhaps what is most amazing about the film is the rather clever way it transcends the limitations of it’s comic book origins, as well as it’s own rather predictable script. If read on it’s own, the storyline would seem to be full of events and situations which any avid comic book reader could easily see coming. For instance, the opening scene, where Tony Stark is being transported through the Afghan desert by a convoy of U.S. Army Hummers. As Stark nonchalantly sips his Scotch on the rocks, we know the convoy is going to be hit by enemy forces. And sure enough, it is, but somehow director Jon Favreau (with the help of Christopher Boyes and the other sound editors)  still manages to take us by surprise.  In fact throughout the movie, Favreau and his two teams of scriptwriters seem to be playing a game of one-up manship with each other.

As all the standard elements start to roll-out, just when you think the filmmakers are going to follow the typical clichés, we sometimes (but not always) veer away and get a fresh point-of-view, that keeps the film from ever falling too deeply into a rut. However, what really makes the film a success and great fun, is the letter-perfect casting. It’s hard to imagine anyone doing a better job than Robert Downey as the arrogant, but still likable Tony Stark, who we meet as the film begins. Stark then slowly undergoes, not only a transformation of heart, but also a transformation into an avenging superhero, after he’s been held by his captors for several months in a secluded mountain cave.

As director Favreau notes, “When you’re creating the origin story of a superhero, you have certain critical responsibilities, one of which is showing how the hero came to be. That can be a burden, but it also gives a filmmaker the opportunity to allow the audience to become the hero alongside the main character. I personally have the most fun as a viewer when I witness the learning curve of the superhero.”

Co-writer Mark Fergus explains the character arc the writers wanted for Tony Stark further: “Early on in one of the writing meetings with Jon Favreau and producer Peter Billingsley, we sat down and just asked, ‘If we had to boil this movie down to one sentence what would that be?’ After a few deliberations we came up with: ‘Iron Man’ is a story about a man who finds his heart.’ The idea behind a movie should always be something you can really boil down to a singular theme that is easy to understand. When you break down the character of Tony Stark, he really is a man who learns to feel and connect and to accept responsibility for his role in the world.”

Once again, this concept, while hardly original, dating as it does back to the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, it is imbued with a freshness by Downey’s acting chops and the brisk presentation director Favreau brings to the proceedings, greatly aided by the alternately gritty and sleek cinematography of Matthew Libatique.

Director Favreau realized that there might be a natural tendency to want to get Iron Man right into action with his suit and to start fighting, but wisely points out that, “the more engaged you are in the story, the more interested you will eventually be in those set pieces… So in writing the script, we made sure to spend time with the character as he is discovering the technology, refining the suit and learning how to use it.”

Indeed, after Stark invents his first Iron Man suit, and makes an impressive set-piece escape from his middle-eastern captors, the film settles in for some solid character development and interaction between the other main characters, including Stark’s business partner, played by Jeff Bridges, and his executive assistant, played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Both actors bring a great deal of nuance and verve to what are basically stereotypical roles, and also get to deliver some clever repartee.

In fact, Jeff Bridges does such a great job playing his part as Stark’s highly affable friend in the first half of the picture, you begin to wonder if he’s really going to turn into a bad guy. Of course, does he ever, becoming the supremely devious megalomaniac we expected all along, who in the best tradition of Super Villains remains charming to the last, even as he’s literally pulling the heart out of our hero.

As usual for this kind of big budget picture, the technical work is superb, with special note going to Stan Winston and his team of designers for making such a plausible suit for Robert Downey to wear. Likewise, production designer J. Michael Riva gives us some stunning sleek and ultra modern designs for both the Stark industries munitions plant and the Frank Lloyd Wright type of house Stark inhabits, perched high on a cliff overlooking Malibu beach.

Strangely, what comes off least effectively, is the final battle between Iron Man and Bridges, who by now has managed to transform himself into the far bigger Iron Monger. Perhaps it’s due to it being a bit overly familiar, coming after the similar bouts that were seen in the two RoboCop movies. But in any case, like the shrapnel that is embedded in Tony Stark’s chest, it’s not a fatal flaw, and this opening episode of Iron Man provides us with a nice launching pad for yet another Marvel franchise, with all indications pointing towards Iron Man taking on his famed arch-enemy, The Mandarin, for the inevitable sequel.

IRON MAN (2008). Directed by Jon Favreau. Screenplay by Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway, based on characters created by Stan Lee, Don Heck, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby. Cast: Robert Downey, Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow, Leslie Bibb, Shaun Toub, Faran Tahir, Sayed Badreya, Bill Smitovich, Clark Gregg, Tim Guinee. 126 minutes.