10 Most Important Comic Book Movies Ever Made

3. Iron Man

Iron Man
Marvel Studios

Given that they have been dominating the industry for almost a decade now, it seems easy to forget that Iron Man was a massive gamble for the fledgling Marvel Studios. A B-list superhero, a relatively untried director, a star with a questionable recent past and the premise of launching an interconnected universe that audiences may not even care about aren't an easy sell for a $140m blockbuster.

Luckily, what we got was one of the most purely enjoyable comic book movies of the 21st Century that set the stage for the ambitious building of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and would go on to change the way studios designed their big-budget projects, whether that be for better or worse.

These days, it comes as more of a surprise when a new potential blockbuster isn't announced as the first instalment in a 'shared universe' such is the impact Iron Man had on the business. The DCEU, Dark Universe, Transformers and many other failed projects are directly (and very obviously) influenced by Iron Man's game-changing status as the dawn of the MCU.

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