Iron Man 3 - Movie Review

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I love comic book movies–I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Iron Man surprised the heck out of me with its awesomeness, and I have faithfully seen each of the Marvel Phase I movies–culminating in the big bang of goodness that was The Avengers.

Now Phase II begins, once again with an Iron Man film. Why mess with success? Shortly after the climax of The Avengers, we’re back on the west coast as Iron Man 3 begins–rich, brilliant, happy-go-lucky Tony Stark (playing at the lowest difficulty setting there is) has faced his own mortality. The result: anxiety problems and possible PTSD.

Everyone has moved on to new jobs and responsibilities, including Happy, Rhody, and Pepper Potts, but Tony is struggling to put his life back together and prioritize the things that are truly important to him.

The story is built through a combination of current events and flashbacks to Tony’s pre-Iron Man days, as old acquaintances re-enter both his life and Pepper’s, forcing Tony to come face-to-face with the man he used to be.

Along the way, Tony digs deep into his own psyche, building some surprising friendships and showing how much he has grown as a man since we first met him.

The villain of the piece, plot twists and all, was something of a disappointment after Loki and his army of Chitari in The Avengers. It likely didn’t help that I saw this as part of a marathon, sitting through both previous Iron Man movies as well as The Avengers immediately prior.

The plot, too, suffered a bit. The mystery aspect was interesting, but Tony seemed to just stumble over plot points. Surely with his intelligence, and the resources available to him, a better investigation could have been put together.

Some of the denouement seemed like it should have been part of the movie, not an after-thought, but perhaps there wasn’t room–there seemed to be too much narrated wrap-up and some of it created more questions than it answered: Why didn’t he do that before? Did it need to be so final?

Make no mistake, Iron Man 3 is eminently watchable-as always, Robert Downey Jr. lays it all on the table, leading a bunch of stellar performances: Ben Kingsley, Don Cheadle, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rebecca Hall, and Guy Pearce, with a special call out to Ty Simpkins as a boy who befriends Tony and helps ground him in the real world. The best scenes by far are the ones between Simpkins and Downey, where a boy teaches Tony how to be a man, and those between Cheadle and Downey, when they forgo super-powered suits and are just two buddies.

I’m already looking ahead to the rest of Phase II–next up Thor: The Dark World.

Review by Elektra Hammond

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