Iron Man 3 Review

Twisted Metal

It’s astounding how well the road to The Avengers went for Marvel Studios.  With the exceptions of The Incredible Hulk’s underperformance at the US box office and the recasting of two roles, things couldn’t have gone better.  The Avengers, the culmination, was praised by critics & fans and made all of the money last summer.  It was the end of “phase one” as Marvel calls it now.  Iron Man 3, the third film in the franchise that started it all, was meant to set the stage for “phase two”.  If this film is any indicator, looks like the road to “phase two” is going to be a lot bumpier.

To be fair, Iron Man 3 isn’t all terrible, but it is a mess.  Director Shane Black, who co-wrote the screenplay with Drew Pearce, tries to cram a lot into a 130 minute film.  As a result, a lot of characters wind up underserved (what is the motivation for Rebecca Hall’s Maya Hansen?) or completely wasted (Miguel Ferrer as the Vice President).  Tony Stark and Pepper Potts are really the only two who get proper coverage, and that’s also because they’ve had three other movies to develop their characters.

The plot also bites off more than it can chew, as it handles Tony Stark’s anxiety after The Avengers, the threat of the Mandarin, Killian and his plans to, um, create supersoldiers or something (Killian may as well be the head of Underpants Gnomes Inc. his plan makes that little sense), Tony on the run and the kid he meets there and some other things I can’t say in a spoiler free review.  This is enough material for two or three movies.  I wonder what the deleted scenes will look like for this film.  Compare it with The Avengers (unfair, but inevitable) which, despite a wonky beginning, had good plotting otherwise.  There is some solid action, as seen in an early attack sequence that was rightfully used in the trailers and some parts at the end, but I wish there was more to keep me invested in that action the way it was in previous Iron Man movies and The Avengers.

Like another third film in a superhero franchise, The Dark Knight Rises, this film also suffers from a lack of the eponymous hero in action as their superhero persona.  It didn’t bother me so much in Dark Knight Rises, but maybe that’s because I found the rest interesting enough.  This film contrives reasons to keep Tony Stark out of his suit, but it only makes sense some of the time.  Wouldn’t it make more sense to have him in the armor more often, even if it’s a cynical ploy to sell toys?  I get that taking his suits away can help raise the stakes and seeing Tony use his intellect to MacGyver new toys is a good way to recall the first movie, but not when he has access to his arsenal.

A common adage about comic book films is that a film is only as good as its villain, and that is one of the fields Iron Man 3 is strongly lacking.  The Mandarin barely registers and Killian’s backstory is underdeveloped.  We end up getting a lot more of these indestructible henchmen whose motivations in helping this criminal enterprise are unclear.

Iron Man’s biggest sin is something I’ll get more in depth in the spoiler space.  So here comes some tap dancing around it.  There are certain moments in the history of comic book film misjudgments that will no doubt get a comic book fan’s blood boiling: Galactus as a cloud, nipples on the batsuit, the entirety of Green Lantern.  There is a moment in Iron Man 3 that may go down as one of those moments.  A friend of a friend, who is a hard core fan of Iron Man, had practically a nervous breakdown when this happened.  It’s the perfect example of a bad twist: it lowers the stakes and makes an already convoluted plot more tangled.  It’s baffling that Marvel Studios would allow such a twist to happen in this film.

Judging by the cast interviews, it feels like they’re preparing to wrap up this franchise either here or in one more movie.  After the rejuvenated Avengers made the subpar Iron Man 2 easier to take, I was ready for as many Iron Mans as they could make.  Now I wish the series would end before it goes from misfire to complete disasters.

Don’t get this review wrong: I didn’t hate this movie and I’m not ready to write off the Thor and Captain America sequels.  However, it feels like the franchise may be beginning to turn: its obligations to other franchises and the expectations that a huge film like this are expected to live up to may be weighing it down.

Grade: C-