Iron Man 3 review

Whenever you hear that there’s a new director on a series of films, it can’t be good. I think that the first two Iron man movies were good, and the second one was more “meh”, but still good. Jon Favreau directed the first two, and I was sad to see him go. I had actually heard of the new director, Shane Black, from a film he did a few years ago, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. This film, also starring Robert downey Jr, was a very funny film-noir type murder/mystery. It’s a favorite of mine, so I was looking forward to seeing Iron Man 3, although I was still skeptical. After all, I am not sure what kind of tone Shane Black would set for the Iron Man series.

The film takes place after the events of The Avengers; Iron man seems to be struggling with how these events affected him. He is doing what he does best: building Iron Man suits. The new villain, The Mandarin, (Ben Kingsley) is doing bad stuff. In the comic, The Mandarin has ten rings which he got from a crashed alien spaceship. Each have “magic abilities,” they are advanced alien science that would appear as magic to the common observer. I was kind of wary of this choice of a villain. The Iron Man series, up until this point, had some plausibility to it. Yeah, its a guy wearing a metal suit, flying around, but it still just advanced science, not magic alien rings.

I am talking like a purist; someone who has read the comics, and has some idea about how things should be in the film. So my opinion is screwed. I have some expectations before entering the movie theater. One of the story lines in the film also revolves around Extremis, one of the best modern Iron Man stories. It changed the character of Iron Man very much. It had this hard edge element to it. I am sorry, maybe my expectations for this story have made me disappointed with this film. They do not hold true to many aspects of this great superhero story, and are instead just cherry picking some ideas, forgetting KEY elements that made it great.

All in all, the tone of the film is just silly. Gone is the character that has some edge to him. He is just a funny jokester that has too many Iron Man suits. Even something dark about the plot is ruined with the use of some silliness to lighten things up. All I am going to say, is shadows on the wall. Look for it. The idea that Iron Man is a man struggling to handle all this craziness that he has now experienced is a subtle part of the character development. It just seems kind of secondary, and later in the film is just forgotten. I guess he just gets over it. It feels like lazy storytelling. The “character development” felt like something that was tacked on so that they had something emotional to talk about in between the action. I have to say, the action felt weak. Remember that moment in the first Iron Man, when he shoots the tank and walks away as it blows up? You felt like Iron Man was a badass. It might have been over the top, but it was fun. I felt none of that in this movie; never once did I feel like Iron Man was awesome. That is disappointing, because the character is nothing but.  

The story seemed weak and puerile, and in some parts completely pointless or unnecessary. I could think of many directions the plot could have gone but didn’t, and the result is bland. I feel like Shane Black is someone that knows how to make movies, but is not a comic book fan. He missed the key elements of the characters and the universe he inherited. I am probably making this film sound worse than it is. It has some fun parts, and I laughed at Robert Downey Jr. He is still great to watch, but sometimes he just doesn’t have the presence  he had in the other films. If you are going into this film with no comic book knowledge, or don’t care, you might enjoy this film. I, unfortunately, did not.

The Rating System

Production (Directing, Editing, Music)4-5

Story (Plot)2-5

Characters (Likability, Acting)4-5

Writing (Dialogue, Cleverness)4-5

Emotions (Was it; Fun, Scary, Sad, Do I care)3-5

Over all score 17-25