Iron-man 1 | Work

At the time, Downey was a pariah of Hollywood. His long, public battle with addiction made him "uninsurable" for major productions. Director Jon Favreau fought tooth and nail for him, arguing that Tony Stark’s arrogance and demons mirrored Downey’s own biography. " Iron-man 1 isn't a movie about a man in a suit," Favreau said. "It’s a movie about a man who builds a suit to escape a cave, only to realize the suit can't fix what’s broken inside."

The film’s final, improvised line is its thesis. When a press conference demands the expected fiction—a bodyguard, a fabricated identity—Tony Stark looks into the cameras and says, "I am Iron Man." In any other superhero film, this would be a moment of ego. Here, it is a moment of radical, terrifying honesty. He is not hiding behind a secret identity. The man and the mask are one and the same because the mask is not a disguise; it is a declaration of a changed self. The heroism is not in the repulsor blasts or the flight capabilities, but in the will that chose to build them for a better purpose. Iron-man 1

Unlike the high-fantasy elements of Thor or the cosmic scale of Guardians of the Galaxy , the first Iron Man felt remarkably grounded. It took place in a world grappling with the War on Terror and the ethics of the military-industrial complex. At the time, Downey was a pariah of Hollywood