Iron Man 3 was a fantastic movie.
If I’m going to be picky it really should have been called Avengers Assemble: The Aftermath Part 1, but that’s a bit of a mouthful and nobody wants a repeat of the Rise of The Planet of The Apes do they?
I suppose the fact it’s set around Christmas is odd to get your head around simply because we are approaching summer and May is the beginning of the “summer blockbuster” season. It’s only the occasional Christmas tree, twinkling lights and feasts that make it obvious but then the Americans always seem to be celebrating some holiday so it didn’t necessarily bother me.
What did bother me is the Eiffel 65 song in the intro. Surely there was a better song out there for around NYE 1999?! Or maybe there was a reason behind the Blue (De ba dee), I’d love for someone to enlighten me on that one.
I digress. The opening scene set on New Year’s Eve 1999, felt like a plot just shoehorned in. But still a good storyline, which is probably why this movie could easily work as well as a standalone rather than the third part of a trilogy or as I mentioned earlier part one of the Avengers Aftermath. And definitely allows us to ignore Mark II and all that electric whipping, grey hair extensions and bad Russian accents.
The script is greatly attributed to Shane Black, which after some quick research I found he wrote one of the best movie scripts ever, The Last Action Hero as well as the Lethal Weapon trilogy. He co-wrote the screenplay with Drew Pearce.
The iron-y with the movie is that it is about weaknesses. Tony Stark is Iron Man, as it was so often drummed into our heads. But he really isn’t Iron Man without the suit of armour, his shield, his wall that he puts up between him and the rest of the world. His weakness soon become clear after the anxiety attacks he suffers following the aftermath of the fight with aliens in Avengers, he saved New York but at a cost.
Who is Iron Man? (Image from Collider)
I think I expected more Iron Man and less Tony but in retrospect it’s what makes the movie work, we get a lot of face time with Tony and therefore Robert Downey Jr. He is simply so charismatic it makes the superhero become less one dimensional and more intriguing he is a human with human emotions, but with a brain of a genius that he uses to great extremes. I don’t know RDJ but I kind of felt there was more of him in this character than ever before, with more narcissism and arrogance but then maybe that is just the mark of a good actor.
Another fabulous actor that brought loads of laughs was Ben Kingsley’s character The Mandarin, I feel like some people may not have seen it yet so I don’t want to be spoilery but boy was his character twist hilarious. And now I’ve said it those who haven’t seen it will be looking out for a spoiler anyway!
My mother was informing me a while ago how well Guy Pearce had done, he managed to do one of those rare things in Hollywood where you kind of disappear but then reinvent yourself and become a fantastic character actor, the really great evil guy who wears a creepy suit with bare feet and makes it work. His turn as the aptly named Aldrich Killian, was scary to say the least, I mean you kind of knew from Tony’s opening narration that he would be a bad guy but just how bad isn’t revealed until later.
And not forgetting the precocious if not adorably funny Ty Simpkins as Harley Keener, who lightened up Tony’s mood and enabled him to move past his issues and fix his Iron Man suit. He was definitely needed to provide the light relief during the period Tony is trying to figure out is foes and fight his way back to becoming Iron Man.
I think my only issue was with the fire-breathing and weird ass Terminator-like Extremis ‘victims’, but that was probably because they were pretty much unbeatable and I think I kind of wanted Stark/Iron Man to get a bit ahead after they destroyed his home. But then the movie took a quick turn for the better, which seemed a bit like HUH but they were all destroyed at the bottom of the ocean HOW could that happen.
That’s were I think the movie went slightly off-kilter because the ending was rushed. There was a moment where I was like boom, go Pepper, in the face of what she goes through she could work alongside Tony rather than him having to constantly feel like he has to protect her and choose between her or his suits. But then oh no, the writers can’t be bothered with that and a quick fix is put in place and that is that.
And then the other part of the epilogue where (OK SPOILER) Tony gets the piece of Iron removed from his chest and is in effect no longer Iron Man! SAY WHAT? I genuinely believed from the first movie that the reason Tony Stark built a mini version of the Ark Reactor was because the iron pieces could not be removed, only for him to decide in the epilogue ah bugger it I’ll get them taken out now. I just don’t know why they did that?! Anybody else give me an explanation, because I don’t know the comic book lore a great deal.
I still really enjoyed the movie, it was a great piece of action and I’m especially looking forward to Thor 2 and Captain America 2 because of it. And everyone else in the world must have enjoyed it too because it became the second biggest debut in the US just behind Avengers Assemble, grossing an estimated $174.1 million.
Oh and lastly when did Jon Favreau get so fat?
