Iron Man 3 (2013) Review

★★ 1/2

By: Kameron McBride

I don’t envy the position of “Iron Man 3,” the Marvel Studios film sacked with the task of following up the mega–hit of 2012 “The Avengers.”

“Iron Man 3” takes place shortly after the events of “The Avengers” with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) struggling to cope with the events of that film. He’s prone to suffering anxiety attacks and can’t connect to his girlfriend Pepper Pts (Gwyneth Paltrow). To make matters worse a terrorist named The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) has begun to blow up buildings and locations across the United States. At the same time a man named Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) approaches Pots with offers of dangerous new technology.

Director Shane Black actually directed one of my favorite movies: the eternally underappreciated “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” but I don’t think his style works well here. The first two “Iron Man” movies were fun but I think they were both meant to be generally taken seriously.

Here, the tone is all over the place, honestly it got to the point that I wasn’t sure if the movie was just trying to be a straight–up satire. This was one of the big problems I had with the movie. It was just hard to get a good read on it.

Fair warning, the next paragraph will contain some fairly significant spoilers. End of fair warning.

In a scene where Tony hacks into some of Audrich Killian’s video files and discovers that a lot of the extremis users are actually military personnel who—presumably—were really hurt while serving. I thought this was an intriguing idea, having our hero have to combat against war heroes trying to find a cure, but it’s never revisited. Seriously, in the climax of the movie we see these guys getting blown away without any moral dilemma. What gives?

Speaking of strange plot points what the heck is going on with Tony’s anxiety attacks? We’re told that the events of New York are so traumatic that he is having trouble sleeping and his grip on reality is slowly slipping. Fine, I like this sort of deconstructing our hero. The problem is that it never comes at a point to create dramatic tension. Tony has anxiety attacks but never at a time when they might really threaten him. Wouldn’t it make sense if these attacks prevented him from going in the suit or something and then he had to overcome that? No, instead we get attacks at random times with no real resolution at the end of the movie. Again, what gives?

Finally, there is a twist involving The Mandarin about ¾ of the way through the film that has to be seen to be believed. I won’t spoil it here, though it may make it more palatable. I like what they were generally trying to get at here but it really didn’t sit well with me. In fact I think this is one of the biggest mishandlings of a comic villain, right up with Venom in "Spider–Man 3" and Tim Burton deciding to make The Joker kill Bruce Wayne’s parents (whoops, spoiler. That one is honestly dumb enough that you can’t hate me too much for that).

I feel bad because it feels as if everyone in this movie is genuinely trying. Guy Pearce especially feels like he is working very hard at this role but for whatever reason it just doesn’t work. Maybe it’s that his role is so undefined until the last 15 minutes? I don’t know but I love Guy Pearce and was trying very hard to like him in this movie but he just never felt right. In general our villains feel very undefined. I’m not really sure if we understand what The Mandarin wants or why he is so determined in his approach, other than to embarrass Tony.

Also I’m going to go ahead and say this: Robert Downey Jr. is starting to wear on me. It was great when he first started coming back and taking on diverse roles but now it just feels, I don’t know, redundant? He still owns the role of Tony Stark but it just feels like every time Downey Jr. is on screen now he takes on the guise of “Robert Downey Jr.: Pretentious Asshole.” It just gets a little old after awhile and given that this is the fourth film with him in the iron suit (to go along with two Sherlock Holmes movies with essentially the same character) I’m just not that excited to see Downey Jr. anymore. I’m especially not excited for the next “Iron Man” to come out.

So all in all, “Iron Man 3” is entertaining. There are laughs but there isn’t really that killer action sequence or really memorable moment to pull it through. Remember last year how spectacular the fight in Manhattan was in “The Avengers?” Or how epic that final showdown in Gotham was in “The Dark Knight Rises?” There’s nothing really like that here. Though I do really appreciate what Pepper Pots gets to do in the climax.

I think this is what really has me worried, that superhero movies are starting to get too big for their own good. How excited can you be about a new Iron Man movie— or “Thor” or “Captain America” for that matter—when you know “The Avengers 2” is coming? It’s hard to keep the stakes high for these individual franchises when they all end up being teasers for the next step in the franchise. “Iron Man 3” actually avoids posturing for the next Avengers film but at the same time it just feels completely lax. With how unsatisfied I felt at the end of the movie it just makes me worried for the future of superhero films. I hope these films can stand up on their own; otherwise I may just have to start skipping movies until we get to the next crossover.