If you're one of the many ticketbuyers who saw Iron Man this past weekend, Marvel Studios thanks you: you helped get the comic-book company's plans to produce its own line of self-generating comic-book movies off to a soaring start. (The name "Marvel Studios" has appeared in each of the movies based on Marvel's licensed characters going back to the 1998 Blade, but Iron Man is the first that wasn't a "co-production" basically funded by a major studio.) But those who declined to stay until the end of the voluminous closing credits missed Iron Man's final scene, which is not so much a revelation as a marketing tie-in. As seen in this YouTube-posted video, which judging from the crowd noise on the soundtrack may not be entirely copyright-protected, Iron Man ends with Robert Downey, Jr.'s Tony Stark, who is already known to make a drop-in appearance in the forthcoming The Hulk, receiving a visit from Colonel Nick Fury, played by one the few living American actors who might convincingly chew nails, who seems to be out on a late-night recruiting drive for the Avengers. The Avengers, the ever-shifting superhero team whose core membership has included Iron Man, the Hulk, the mighty Thor, and that dipshit Hawkeye, have been slated for their own movie next year; Iron Man's Jon Favreau has expressed an interest in directing.
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