Iron Man Movies In Order

Marvel’s Stan Lee initially wrote his first Iron Man comic back in 1963.  Since then, his character has lived on in live action movies, animations, and TV series.  The first action movie was filmed in 2008 and featured Robert Downey Jr. who played Tony Stark, an eccentric billionaire that designed and built the Iron Man suite to stem the flow of shrapnel to his heart, saving his life.  These movies are part of a larger series from the Marvel Cinematic Universe which features many of the Marvel characters over the last 50 years.  Iron Man is part of The Avengers, a group including Hulk, Captain America, and Thor.

Iron Man was the first movie to kick off the Marvel Universe, which now contains over one dozen films.  Due to the resounding success of Marvel’s live action movies, their Cinematic Universe now has numerous movies slated all the way up until 2019.  The Iron Man character goes on to make multiple appearances in these movies including major roles in The Avengers, Spiderman, and the Captain America series.

If you’re wondering if you have to watch the Iron Man movies in order, the answer is probably yes.  Let me first start by saying that each movie has its own plot and story line, and could definitely be watched individually.  If you’re being dragged to the theaters by friends or watching a movie casually with your significant other, it’s perfectly fine to watch Iron Man out of order.  However, the experience if you watch them in order will be greatly improved.  The first Iron Man shows how Tony Stark was initially injured, shows off his brilliance as an engineer, and explains how the original Iron Man character came to be.  The subsequent movies build on that character development throughout the series, and much of what we learn about him in the first movie is used to help set the context of the next movies.  If you’re a fan of other Marvel movies, I highly suggest you see these films chronologically.

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Iron Man (2008)
Iron Man 2 (2010)
Iron Man 3 (2013)

The Iron Man series has been warmly received by both critics and fans alike.  The average critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes is an 81%, with the average fan rating on IMDB at 7.3 out of 10.  The fan and critic enthusiasm has been matched at the box office with the series as a whole earning around $2 billion in ticket sales.

Unfortunately, despite the complete success of this series, it seems like Robert Downey Jr. does not want to carry on with this series.  In an interview given in 2015, Downey signaled that there are no plans for a fourth movie.  In July 2016 Downey again signaled he would not play a role in part four and was willing to pass his role on to 15 year old actor Riri Williams.  One thing is for sure, the Iron Man character is going to at least make one more appearance in subsequent Avengers movies.

Hopefully we have not seen the last of Tony Stark and his super hero persona.  With such a long history dating back five decades, it would be a shame if we’ve seen all of the Iron Man movies that will be released.  Be it a fourth movie or a reboot of the series, fans all over the world would love to get another shot at watching this age old superhero on the big screen.