FILM 8 - Iron man

Tony Stark, an engineering genius, CIO of the successful Stark Industries, whilst in Afghanistan, is captured and wounded. His captors want him to assemble a missile for them. He stays with them for three months and develops a powerful armoured suit which he uses for his escape back to the U.S. He soon announces that his company will stop making weapons and he continues to work on his armoured suit. He soon finds out that his second in command at Stark Industries, Obadiah Stane, has been selling Stark weapons to the insurgents. He returns to Afghanistan with his updated armoured suit to destroy the arms and to stop Stane from misusing his research.

Iron man follows the usual superhero genre conventions by:

Ordinary person gaining super powers - The armoured suit is what provides Tony Stark with his powers.  enables him to resist ammunition. It also enables him to fly. It also enables him to shoot bolts from his hands and flares out of his shoulders.

Moral - Tony goes through a huge transformation. At the start we see him as lazy and careless as instead of going to his award ceremony he plays poker. However, at the end of the film we see that he has developed having gone trough events which have made him determined to save the world using his intelligence.

Costume - Tony Stark sports a red and gold armoured suit made out of titanium alloy. It enables him to fly, resist ammunition, as well as shooting laser bolts out of his hands and sending out flares from his shoulders.

Secret identity - At the start of the film nobody but Tony himself, know about is identity, however it isn't before long that Pepper finds out. After a fight with Obadiah, he reveals his identity to everyone at a press conference, no longer keeping his Iron Man identity a secret.

Financial support - Being a son of a billionaire give Tony Stark advantages as he uses this to make his armoured suit. Without this financial support, it may not have been possible.

Rogues Gallery - Tony Stark has to fight against what are called the Ten Rings; a terrorist group that captures him for him to make them weapons. And of course his other enemy is Obadiah, his second in command. Obadiah sells the weaponry to insurgents and so Tony has to stop him.

Achilles Heel - A weakness of Iron Man is when, Obadiah steals the arc reactor out of him causing him to almost die.

On a survey from
http://bobbiebrowng324.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/iron-man-audience-profile_25.html we can see that the majority people to watch Iron Man were aged 15-24 and 65% of these were male. So, generally aimed at the teenage plus age, and male due to the intense fighting scenes and weaponry. Also, as it is a comic, the comic book readers may be slightly older and they would want to watch to see how they have made their comic book come to life.

The Binary oppositions within the film include, firstly the obvious good V's evil, Iron man having to defeat Obadiah, after selling weaponry to the insurgent. Also the idea of the America V's Arab military. The Americans being the good ones and the Arabs being the evil ones for kidnapping Tony. It isn't before long that Tony defeats them and Obadiah on his own with his weapons.

In Iron Man, gender stereotypes are reinforced. The main character being male who is strong and powerful and involved in fighting. He is given a playboy status as he flirts with the female characters. One of the lead females, Pepper Potts, is seen working alongside Iron Man and knows his secret, which in most superhero films it is the female friend or female love interest that is sworn to secrecy of the superheroes identity. At the end of the film, Tony protects Pepper, using six agents, whilst he goes off to fight.

Iron Man entertains it's target audience throughout, through the intense fight scenes, creating immense tension and keeping the audience wanting more. It is packed with action which would keep the attention of the teen males. The weaponry involved would also interest the audience. Some scenes are also there to shock the audience for example when Iron Man (Tony Stark) reveals his identity to everyone at the press conference, it isn't typically what happens within the superhero genre usually which brings something slightly different to the genre.