Waaaagh!

Ok - so Iron Man works - and it works for a couple very specific reasons. Firstly, the script isnt pablum - it doesnt fill itself up with a bunch of idiotic technobabble crap - and other than building a bulletproof armor suit and a revolutionary nuclear power supply in a cave out of spare missile parts - it doesn't really challenge the absurd. The Hulk turns big and green every 5 or 10 minutes - Ben Grimm makes clobberin time noises and punches people through a wall - that's kinda what you expect in super hero flicks. In this one - there's some acting... honest to god acting... and while it's not a 'smart' script it's certainly not a shitty one either.

The second reason it works is that Tony Stark is a raving alcoholic with huge authority issues and tremendous talent... his drinking problem was a huge driving factor behind the book for a decade - it's a tremendous downward spiral or a story arc - eventually leading to a really awful bottom. Robert Downey Jr was perfectly cast. He can get into this character in a way I doubt any other a-list actor in Hollywood could.

This leads me to question... why. They know what works - they know what doesn't... that wont work.