Iron Man vs. The Dark Knight

Iron Man vs. The Dark Knight

The question that has plagued everyone's mind since 2008. Who will win?

Editorial Opinion
By The4thWall - Apr 20, 2010 08:04 PM EST
Filed Under: The Dark Knight

First off, let me say this...I loved both movie. This is not meant to offend the directors or say which director is better than the other. This is simply a fun competition between two equally amazing films. Enjoy!





Iron Man, directed by Jon Favreau, is about a billionaire industrialist who is captured over seas while demonstrating a new weapon. He narrowly escapes and has an epiphany. He becomes the hero Iron Man and faces terrorists and evil within his own company.





The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan, is about a superhero who faces his greatest enemy while he questions why he does his "work" at all.


Jon did a great job adapting a classic hero onto screen. He made sure that Iron Man followed as close to the feel as the comic as possible. He also made sure that he had cast the perfect person for Tony Stark. Favreau really did his homework on this one. Nolan had already established Batman in Batman Begins, so he made sure that he focused on Joker and Two-Face for this one. He knew that people wanted a realistic Joker, so he studied many of the graphic novels featuring the darker Joker, while keeping you guessing as to what his origin is.


Who is the winner you ask? Well, I'll tell you that there is no winner. Iron Man and The Dark Knight are on two different leagues. Iron Man follows the comics more closely than Dark Knight, but The Dark Knight was more about making a really good filmmakers movie. So, I say that Iron Man wins when it comes to staying true to the material, but The Dark Knight wins when it comes to reinventing the material. You tell me in the comments below which one you believe is the better honor.

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ThunderCougarFalconBird
ThunderCougarFalconBird - 4/21/2010, 4:25 AM
Like you say, these are two different movies. Although both CBM's they are actually two seperate genre of film.

You can give pros and cons for each title and come to a dead end. The only way I can personally seperate the two when thinking about their rankings is this:

When your looking through your DVD collection, be it for a lads night in or just solitary boredem, which do you pick up? We all have movies that for reasons unknown we choose to watch over others, even if we think the others are "better" (due to acting, direction, etc). More often than not for me it's Iron Man I choose and that is the reason I rank that movie as my number 1 CBM.
airbeyonder18
airbeyonder18 - 4/21/2010, 8:30 AM
@The4thWall: Well said, very good article.
Faust1973
Faust1973 - 4/21/2010, 9:42 AM
I agree with Ron...even though Incredible Hulk to me is better than Iron Man...(just my opinion, don't kill me) I think for "movie night", Iron Man would win over TDK...now if I want insightful and deep and morose, and I'm alone, I might pop TDK in for the "messages"...but having said THAT, Batman Begins, for me, is the better for that...I actually CRIED in Batman Begins...TDK is just thought provoking.
thunderforce
thunderforce - 4/21/2010, 10:33 AM
You cant compare iron man to tdk , you should be comparing iron man which is the first to batman begins and iron man is better . You can compare iron man 2 with tdk but i havent seen iron man 2 yet so i will wait .
DarkWebs
DarkWebs - 4/21/2010, 11:12 AM
@ Miksanderson09 Yeah I agree with you dude, I am a big TDK fan too but Iron Man the tools to beat him out for sure
KeithM
KeithM - 4/21/2010, 12:41 PM
I enjoy both and don't even try to trouble myself over which I think is "better". Good is good and that's good enough for me.

Could care even less for Box Office. As long as they're good and make enough to make more, then I'm happy.



StephenStrange
StephenStrange - 4/21/2010, 4:04 PM
Favreau reinvented when he had to. He had the class to do so only when it was absolutely necessary to make the story good, and the details click right with thinking audiences.

What Nolan did was great, but he did such a fantastic job of bringing Batman to life that faithfulness to the comic just wasn't that important after all.

But that wouldn't apply to movies where they aren't faithful and it ends up sucking. So the moral is that if your truly going to improve on it, good then do so. But if it's not an improvement; ie if it's just some arbitrary crap your writer came up with because it seems like a cool idea then don't do that. Don't bother to make it at all.
I realize that these douche bag directors usually can't see the difference from where they are sitting, which is why you really need someone who is familiar with the material. It's sheer idiocy to try and break the rules when you don't even know what the rules are.
That's like making a movie about a book you never read. Your very likely to FAIL
superbatspiderman
superbatspiderman - 4/21/2010, 7:08 PM
The Dark knight will win because Iron Man is a good movie but TDK was a masterpiece and Heath Ledger did one of the greatest movie performances I have ever seen in a movie so after everything The Dark Knight wins.
ThunderCougarFalconBird
ThunderCougarFalconBird - 4/22/2010, 1:08 AM
brazilianbatman - TDK is a masterpiece, but an overrated masterpiece. There is more to a movie than clinical perfection which is what TDK was. Iron Man had heart and an enjoyment factor that out weights a huge part of TDK. I have said that right from their release so it is nothing to do with IM2 coming out. I feel the same about Heaths performance. It was truely amazing and worthy of his Oscar but he did nothing new and those who say he did have their head in the sand or up his arse. There have been better performances that have gone un rewarded.
CaptainQuirk
CaptainQuirk - 4/22/2010, 10:12 AM
TDK is more than just a comic book movie.... WIN!
KeithM
KeithM - 4/22/2010, 10:41 AM
@brazilianbatman: Calm it down son - you're giving fanboys a bad name. You're entitled to think TDK is the best that ever was, but to state that nothing will ever be better, except a sequel that hasn't even been started yet, shows you have a very closed mind and an immature attitude.

You can like what you want, but you can't tell someone else that what they like is "wrong" (unless they like Superman Returns, in which case they NEED to be told). ;)
Brezovsky
Brezovsky - 4/22/2010, 6:16 PM
My vot goes straight to the dark night. 1)dark knight had overwhelming success than iron ma 2) Batman will kick iron man's a** all day
Stumblin
Stumblin - 4/23/2010, 3:02 PM
I'm with Ron, sorry brazilian, but since I saw Iron Man I've always stated it was the best CBM adaptation, and still stand by that. Though movies like Dick Tracy are very close, nothing gave me the experience like Iron Man. Dark Knight was good, but hardly perfect I still think Burton's is more truer to the comic.
Layperson
Layperson - 4/26/2010, 2:17 AM
It's tough to judge the two beacause they differed so radically. I think that from start to finish, Ironman was the more complete movie in terms of editing polishing and overall movie making. The Dark Knight however revolutionized CBM's in a way Iroman could never do...not because it wasn't great, but because it lacked an edge that TDK had.

For as much as I loved TDK there were some glaring problems...everyone harps on the action, but I tend to question some of the HORRID single lines of dialogue (almost any line not delivered by Ledger, Bale, Cain, Oldman, Freeman, and Eckhart), incomplete story telling, and really just over the top ideas.

Over the top ideas worked in Ironman becuase the feel of the movie was more fantastical. TDK was so dark, real, and gritty I didn't buy some of the stuff in there...A cellphone bomb in a cronie? really? Oh and how did Dent go from killing a cop in a bar, to Maroni's limo, to Gordan's family, and back to ground zero?

All that said, TDK did much more for legitimizing CBMs in the long run. Largely due to its cast. I mean, I really don't believe we'd be debating this today if Ledger hadn't been EVERYTHING we wanted in the Joker, or Eckhart hadn't been everything we wanted in Dent. Also, in the grand scheme of things TDK will go down in history as a gamechanging film. Film students everywhere are going to analyze Ledger's performance and be wowed, movie buffs everywhere are going to put Ledger's Joker on the list "greatest villains" of all time, and 20 years from now you'll remember the first time you saw the trailer for TDK and said, "I can't wait for that movie" That's the legacy TDK leaves.

I suppose I'd still go with Ironman because in terms of stand alone movie making...It was better to me, more polished, more complete, more pure entertainment. But it cannot hold a candle to TDK in terms of legacy.
BIGBMH
BIGBMH - 4/26/2010, 1:37 PM
Round 1: Batman Begins vs Iron Man
Pretty similar movies in a general sense but very different tones. I love both, but I'd have to go with Batman Begins.
Round 2: The Dark Knight vs Iron Man 2
TBD, but Dark Knight is a tough act to follow, so IM2 is going in the underdog. It does however have the secret weapon of being part of a larger Marvel cinematic universe, with ties to the much anticipated Avengers.

Iron Man vs The Dark Knight? Not exactly fair to compare 2 movies with such different tons, especially since one of them is a sequel, but The Dark Knight definitely gets the win here because while it may not be as true to the comics (it goes for how things would be in our world) it is hand down the better overall movie.
Angelus
Angelus - 4/28/2010, 3:20 PM
Of course Bats win. Iron Man would be murdered by him in a fight, and he was in the movies too.
entouragefan
entouragefan - 6/23/2010, 11:00 PM
in this fight the only winner is the fans because both of these movies were great. the only flaw in either was the voice that Bale used for Batman it was hard to understand somethings in the theater
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