‘Iron Man’ Receives Strong Box Office and Critical Opening

Iron Man opened on Friday, and so far it seems that it has done phenomenally well both critically and at the box office. The film stars Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow, and was directed by Jon Favreau.

Dark Horizons are reporting that it made $5.2 million dollars from Thursday night prview screenings, and a very strong estimated $30 million on Friday. This puts it on course to secure an opening weekend of $90 million, which would make it the tenth biggest movie opening of all time, and the strongest non-sequel opening since Spiderman in 2002.

The reviews for the film have also been great, with Rotten Tomatoes listing it with 94% positive ratings so far. That’s bound to go down over the next few weeks as naysayers join the reviewing group, but for now, is an extraordinary result for a superhero movie.

Metacritic meanwhile has it currently with a 78/100 metascore and an average user score of 8.6/10.

Iron Man looks set to be one of the most well received comic book hero movies ever, with only the original Superman movie, the first two Spiderman movies, and Batman Begins getting more rave reviews from critics and the public alike.

I think the casting, and particularly having Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role has a lot to do with that. It again proves that even an average plot and storyline can be saved by some ingenious casting choices.