MONDAY MOVIE REVIEW: Iron Man 3
Iron Man can't sleep. After the event of The Avengers, Tony Stark has been exposed to a world where he is not the biggest and baddest hero around, and the stakes have been raised to the point where he can't just build a better suit of armor to defeat the bad guys (or, you know, invent a new element). But when a new villain emerges, an enigma only known as The Mandarin, it will take all of Tony's smarts and strengths to protect his country, and the ones he cares about.
In all honesty, I'm not quite sure how to rate Iron Man 3. On one hand, it's a move that did a lot very well. I think it's safe to say that Iron Man 3 has some of the best humor in the entire franchise, as well as some really big surprises, and jaw dropping action sequences. But at the same time, the story telling isn't particularly strong. With the exception of one point, I'm going to keep this review spoiler free. I can't post a review without commenting on the big twist in the middle of the movie, so that part will go under a cut.
Bring on the Funny- Robert Downey Jr has an on screen charisma that few living actors can match. You hand that man well written dialogue and he knocks it out of the park and makes it look easy. We really saw this in last summer's The Avengers, and you see it again here with Iron Man 3. The script for this movie (co written by Shane Black and Drew Pearce) is fast paced and filled with fantastic wit. It's somewhat surprising, giving the dark introspective tone of the trailer, but Iron Man 3 is on the whole light and fun. I found plenty to laugh about here.
The Curse of The Avengers- The Avengers was probably my favorite film of 2012. It was just so wonderfully written, and all the characters (even the minor ones) were so compelling that I was completely willing to overlook any of the flaws of the plot. Unfortunately, this means that Iron Man 3 has a very tough act to follow. So while the bad guys aren't necessarily poor, when compared to the villainous yet vulnerable Loki, they feel disappointingly empty. And while everything is pretty fun to watch, you can't help but wish the movie had been more focused on relationships like The Avengers. The side characters Tony meets on his journey feel like throwaways, basically an excuse for our charismatic lead to exchange witty banter. Although I can't quite put my finger on it, there was this occasional choppiness to the story that was really unappealing, especially near the beginning. I walked out of Iron Man 3 with the sinking suspicion that I had walked out of what was a really promising first draft of a script. It had a lot to offer, but it just wasn't as good as it could have been.
On The Twist- Okay! Spoiler time. So half way through the movie we discover the whole Mandarin thing is really just an act. And despite the fact that The Dark Knight Rises had a similar twist last year (where the main villain turned out to be just a secondary one), I did not see this one coming AT ALL. How do I feel about this? Well, days later, I still haven't made up my mind yet! My fiance, Tanner, despised the change and thought that it was disrespectful to just throw away a classic Iron Man villain. Part of me feels the same, but another part of me disagrees The Mandarin used to be this giant Chinese racial stereotype, and with Iron Man 3, they were kind of building him up to be this faux Muslim terrorist. When it turns out that he's a fraud, building upon our existing fears of what we feel a terrorist should look like, it's actually kind of clever. The guy who looks like Osama is a joke. The real evil is the good looking businessman with the poorly developed motivations.
And as a side note, was I the only one getting HUGE The Incredibles vibes from Aldrich Killian? Like Syndrome, he shows up in the initial flashback scene, pretty much Tony Starks biggest fan, and due to that one rejection finds himself turning into the villain He even starts monologing at one point. I found I could never take him seriously because he was always "Incrediboy!" to me. Is this a sign that I've watched The Incredibles one too many times?
Final Thoughts: Iron Man 3 had a lot of good elements. I thought it was cast well, found the action sequences to be really compelling, the special effects to be clever, and laughed more in this movie then I have in any other film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Still, the story just wasn't what I was hoping it to be. Now how much of this is due to the weakness of the script, and how much is due to the long shadow cast by The Avengers, I'm not sure. At the end of the day it's a entertaining matinees, even if I don't think it's quite worth full price. Three and a Half stars