Iron Man 2 Anniversary: The First Marvel Studios Sequel Opened a Decade Ago Today

Iron Man 2, follow-up to 2008 blockbuster Iron Man and the first Marvel Studios sequel, opened a decade ago today on May 7, 2010. After publicly declaring "I am Iron Man," revealing himself as the armored superhero, billionaire inventor Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) resists attempts by the U.S. military to learn the secrets of his technology while a new enemy — Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) — teams with military contractor and Stark Industries rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) to carry out a vendetta against the self-destructive and vulnerable Stark, who is backed by the big-gunned War Machine (Don Cheadle) and S.H.I.E.L.D. super-spy Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson).

The Jon Favreau-directed Iron Man 2 won the then fifth best-ever opening weekend with $128 million — behind only Batman, Spider-Man, Twilight and Pirates of the Caribbean sequels — before going on to gross $623 million globally, bypassing the $585 million scored by Marvel Studios' first independent feature Iron Man and the $264 million punched up by its sophomore effort, 2008's The Incredible Hulk.

"Nobody expected anything of the first Iron Man movie," Favreau told Wired in a 2010 interview. "In fact, they rolled their eyes at the thought of launching a franchise with this obscure hero, thinking we were pushing the comic book genre too far."

A precursor to 2012's The Avengers — as well as 2011's superhero standalones Thor, introducing Chris Hemsworth as the Asgardian God of Thunder, and Captain America: The First Avenger, introducing Chris Evans as the star-spangled super-soldier — Iron Man 2 followed up on Iron Man's post-credits tag with a bigger role for shadowy S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who deemed Stark "unsuitable" for the Avengers Initiative that would assemble Earth's mightiest heroes, including the eagle-eyed Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and the big-brained Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) in Marvel's first-ever billion dollar grosser.