Reviewed by TFfan on Sun October 5, 2008

I am not going to review the Iron Man Movie in this review as I am sure with all the cash this movie raked in, just about everyone and his brother has seen it. For those of you that wish to read a review, I will refer you to the Movie Review that was posted for the movie. What am I am going to cover in this review is everything else on the Ultimate 2-Disc Edition Iron Man release.

So what do you get for your hard earned money? You get 2 DVDs crammed with the Iron Man movie and literally double that in additional footage, outtakes, behind the scenes, interviews, previews, prototypes and even more than I ever knew there could be for a movie. For real, most DVDs leave me wanting for more but the Iron Man Ultimate 2-Disc set really is the ultimate set.

What impressed me from the start is the extra material is actually very well produced for a DVD. Among the many mini-documentaries and behind the scenes footage is a lot of thought about how things would be presented. Many DVDs offer a smattering of extra stuff and repeat a lot of footage, but the Iron Man *stuff* never gets tired. This is evidenced by lots of very slick editing, inter-cut footage from early stage models with subsequent and the final versions of the production. Combined with fantastic sound bites from John Favreau and all those who worked on the movie explaining how things worked. You get this amazing insiders view of how Iron Man was made.

One of the highlights on the set is the inclusion of deleted and extended scenes. Included are eleven scenes from the film that for one reason or another were not used in the final release. The scenes included are Convoy Ambush, Craps Table with Tony and Rhodey, Tony & Rhodey on Stark Jet and Military Ceremony, Rhodey and General Gabriel, Tony Comes Home, Tony Begins Mark II, Dubai Party, Pepper Discovers Tony as Iron Man, Obadiah Address Scientist, Rhodey Save Iron Man on Freeway and Rooftop Battle. I don't want to spoil these for you so I won't get into details, but I found the most notable clips were the Tony & Rhodey on Stark's Jet and Tony Comes Home where we get to see some of the special technology Stark's home utilizes as well.

For those of you with questions, this set is loaded with answers. The coverage begins with the very first days following Director John Favreau through the concept, design, filming, production, editing and on through the release of the movie. It is really quite astonishing to see all the people who worked on this movie and how everything came to together. There are interviews with everyone from Favreau to Stan Winston, Jeff Bridges, Stan Lee, Robert Downey Jr., the lead creators from ILM to the people at Marvel and so much more great stuff. Watching the extra 4 hours of Iron Man flys by without feeling tired or repetitious.

If you are like me and really interested in the creative process behind the movie, you're in for a real treat. They pull out all the stops giving us looks at first concept drawings, explanations behind the evolution of the suits, why they chose the look they did, what was CGI and what was real and well everything. Beginning with design sketches and artist renderings we follow the steps they used of sculpting the real models, then CGI models and the process incorporated to animate them for the film itself. I really enjoyed seeing the side-by-side comparisons of real and CGI models.

One of the things that really impressed me was what an amazing director and overall great person we see John Favreau is. We learn a lto about him as we John through the production of the movie. What we see and hear over and over again from everyone on the crew is what an incredibly passionate, driven and inspiring person Favreau is. You can see it in the footage. In the discussions between the director and a plethora of artists, editors and technical people he works with. He is adept at taking in new ideas from others without dampening their passion. Quick to respond to what he likes and give constructive direction where to improve things when he doesn't. It's true what they say about him, he is "Iron Man."

Overall, this is as good as it gets in my DVD player. Combine a great movie with a ton of additional footage that is very well done and is actually informative gets an easy 5 stars from me. This is must have for anyone who loves and wants to be Iron Man for a little while.