 The movie begins with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) riding with soldiers on duty in Afghanistan. He is joking with some members of a convoy who seem to be genuinely amused by his persona and his flamboyant public image. Suddenly, the convoy is attacked. The soldiers fight to defend themselves but are quickly killed.
 Stark flees the Humvee, taking refuge behind a large rock. A missile lands nearby, remaining intact long enough for Tony to see the Stark Industries logo on it. It explodes sending shrapnel into Tony's chest despite the body armor he wears. Tony is captured and recorded on video by a group of masked terrorists.
 36 hours earlier: A flashback sequence reveals Tony's history as a child prodigy before taking over his father's company, Stark Industries, at age 21. Colonel James "Rhodey" Rhodes (Terrence Howard) attends a ceremony to present Tony Stark with an award for his work, but Tony is not in attendance. Tony's right-hand man (and his father's former partner) Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) accepts the award in Tony's stead.
 Rhodey later finds Tony partying in a casino. On his way out, a reporter named Christine (Leslie Bibb) approaches Stark with some questions regarding the ethics of his weapons business. Stark deflects her questions with some swift quips and the two end up spending the night together at Tony's oceanfront house.
The next morning, Christine is awakened by a voice on a computer monitor. It's JARVIS, the artificially intelligent program responsible for running Tony's house and his research lab. Christine is greeted by Tony's assistant, "Pepper" Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) as she leaves the house.
Pepper helps Tony catch up on some business before Tony heads out to the airport where his plane awaits. In flight, Tony talks with Rhodey. Rhodey is unhappy about Tony's lax attitude, and Tony tries to get his old friend to relax. Before long they are drunk and leering at the stewardesses.
Tony arrives at a military outpost in Afghanistan to demonstrate his company's latest project: the Jericho, a super-missile system. After the demonstration, Tony gets a phone call from Obadiah and they are both pleased that the demonstration went well. Tony goes off with the convoy, which is soon attacked by terrorists.
Much later, Tony regains consciousness in a cave. His chest is hooked up to a strange device. Another captive, Yinsen (Shaun Toub), explains that he operated on Stark but was unable to remove all the fragments from the bomb blast. Yinsen created a device -- essentially an electromagnet powered by a car battery -- that will keep the remaining fragments from shifting and causing further damage to his heart.
The terrorists who captured Tony and Yinsen enter the room. Yinsen translates; they want Tony to build them a Jericho missile. Tony refuses and they torture him, shoving his face in a tub of water.
Hours later, the terrorists, a group called the the Ten Rings shows off a huge stockpile of weapons -- all made by Stark Industries. Tony appears to relent and start building the missile, but has other plans. With Yinsen's help, and using palladium collected from his weapons, Tony constructs a tiny version of an arc reactor, streamlined from a much bigger design used at his company's headquarters.
The power output is enough to run Stark's heart for "fifty lifetimes... or something much bigger for about 15 minutes." It will also be enough to keep the shrapnel in Tony's heart from shifting any further and killing him.
Tony designs a way out for himself and Yinsen: an armored suit powered by the arc reactor that he will wear and use to defeat the terrorists. Midway through construction, the head of the Ten Rings, a man named Raza (Faran Tahir) arrives and threatens to torture Yinsen, angry because he thinks Stark is not working on the Jericho as they wanted. Tony bargains for Yinsen's life, saying he makes a good assistant. Raza gives them one more day to finish.
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