It's hard to overstate just how impactful Iron Man's character was on the modern cinematic landscape. Marvel really did the impossible here—they were on the brink of complete bankruptcy and, as a last effort to save their company, they gambled on Iron Man. And it was a crazy bet at the time. If they could, they would have made a Spider-Man movie, a Fantastic Four movie, or an X-Men movie—but they couldn't. They had already sold the rights to these characters just to stay afloat, and now they we…