The summer movie season — the season of spectacle — has officially begun. Starting today, moviegoers will be subjected to a four-month-long onslaught of the finest Hollywood bombast money can buy. For some, the season is little more than a vast cinematic wasteland, where little artistic value can be found. For others, the thought of a blockbuster a week is a burden they will happily indulge at $11 a pop, from now until the leaves turn.

Fans would be hard pressed to find a better launch pad for the summer season than “Iron Man.” The debut project from Marvel Studios, “Iron Man,” encapsulates everything a superhero movie ought to be. Time will tell if the film takes its place in the pantheon of superhero movies, but it is at least the best one since “Batman Begins.”

It’s hard not to think of Batman when watching “Iron Man.” After all, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Bruce Wayne do have remarkably similar backgrounds. Both are superheroes without superpowers, both are billionaire playboys with dead parents and penchants for expensive weaponry and gadgets and both have given up their privileged lives for a life of fighting crime.

The key difference is while Bruce Wayne likes to spend his Saturday nights brooding in his cavernous Wayne Manor, Tony Stark is actually out living the life of a billionaire playboy, with girls, expensive cars, private planes with stripper poles and fame. Only in superheroland could one believe that Tony Stark – one of the nation’s leading scientists and head of Tony Stark Industries – would also have celebrity status on par with Brangelina.

Stark’s media magnetism is no accident. Robert Downey Jr. brings sarcastic charm to the role. Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark is a grown man, bucking the trend of casting bland, fresh-scrubbed pretty boys as superheroes.

Stark is a prime target for Afghani warlords, who kidnap him in a deadly ambush and force him to build a weapon of their own. The ambush nearly kills Stark, leading him to develop the delicate subminiature component that keeps his injured heart beating. With his health back, Stark does the terrorists one better, escaping from their clutches by building a nearly indestructible super suit, making him the Iron Man.

From that point on, it’s still a long road before Stark dons the iconic red and gold Iron Man suit shown in movie trailers since last summer. This is where a great deal of credit goes to John Favreau. The “Swingers” scribe might not have had much experience with big-budget superhero movies before going into “Iron Man,” but right from the start he demonstrates a narrative and technical precision on par with Sam Raimi or Bryan Singer. Superhero movies that also encompass the hero’s origin story can be extremely clunky if handled improperly. Favreau strikes a nice balance between 90-minute nothingness like “The Fantastic 4” without heading into 3-hour-tedium territory like last summer’s interminably long “Spiderman 3.”

When the action finally kicks in, it’s a thrilling spectacle to behold, starting with Stark’s exquisitely designed Iron Man suit. Watching Tony Stark soar over the desert, evading stealth fighters at the speed of sound, is as thrilling as it is beautiful. Iron Man’s final epic battle with business rival and arch villain the Iron Monger, played by Jeff Bridges with a dash of Lex Luthor meets The Dude, will go down as one of the most memorable action sequences of the summer.

Comic book fans are notoriously fickle when it comes to seeing their beloved superheroes adapted to the big screen. With “Iron Man,” the closest thing to a complaint you’ll hear is the hip hop heads wondering what happened to the rumored Ghostface Killah cameo.

   

"Iron Man" recieved three and a half out of four stars.