I've been having a really hard time with this one.
This is one of those movies that I so desperately want to like, that had many good-to-great moments, but I just can't. There are too many problems, too many voices in my head screaming at me that there is something wrong with Iron Man 3. Hopefully, when I'm done here, I'll be able to give a straight answer.
IM3 had a lot riding on it, which couldn't have helped. Not only is it a follow-up to a very weak Iron Man 2, but it also had to contend with the surprisingly great Thor and Captain America films, not to mention The Avengers. Now, to say IM3 is a sequel to The Avengers would be VERY WRONG in the same way that Thor was not a sequel to IM2. Same universe, common characters, but not the same movie series. And thank the gods for that, because holy shit, would IM3 fall short by comparison to Avengers. It's not IM3's fault there, and it would be laughable to even attempt to compare to Avengers in terms of greatness in scope, or even just general importance. I've said several times that Avengers was a huge accomplishment across the board, WAY too much to be compared to a second sequel of one of the several main characters. That being said, it doesn't excuse IM3 from having the kind of problems it has.
I'll start with inarguably the strongest element of this string of movies, and maybe of all the Marvel films thus far: Robert Downey Jr. Yeah, he's freaking awesome as Tony Stark, no argument here. He's been damn-near-flawless since donning the armour in 2008, and was one of the more endearing parts of Avengers (which is saying something). He's just as good here, creating a constant source of levity in what has the potential to be a very dark film. His wit is sharp and quips are lightning-fast, and barely a minute of Stark on-screen goes by without a chuckle being had.
Here's the problem: there's just too much of him.
Iron Man was great because it was an introduction to the character, and RDJ's performance instantly made the audience fall in love with him. IM2 had its problems, but RDJ wasn't one of them. Here, it's as though director Shane Black expected the film to succeed or fail solely on RDJ's back, so he had the character turned up to 11 the entire film. In many ways Stark was the same guy we saw in Avengers, but with one staggering difference: there was no Thor, no Cap, no Banner, and at the end of the day, no Joss Whedon. Anyone familiar with Whedon's work can testify that while the stories may be centric to one character, his work is very much focused on ensemble casts. Buffy, Angel, Firefly; they're not great just because of Sarah Michelle Gellar or whoever, they're great because of the chemistry that Whedon seems to constantly magic together out of a group. He did that with Avengers, and RDJ came out looking like a star. He rode that momentum into and through IM3, but with no one to play off of. No other protagonist was on screen with him long enough to benefit from any interaction. All we got was Tony Stark throwing out one-liners at ludicrous speed at anything that moved, sometimes even when he was all by himself. I'm reminded of the Pirates of the Caribbean films in that the more they focused on Captain Jack Sparrow, the less effective he was as a character and the worse the films became. The difference is I don't give a fuck-and-a-half about Captain Jack or POTC, but R'hllor be merciful if the Marvel films get fucked up because Disney thinks the world needs to be force-fed more Stark.
In accordance with the 'too much Stark' complaint, there isn't enough Iron Man. The scenes of the actual hero in costume are few and far between, with only one of those scenes sticking out in my mind as truly memorable. And to me, the worst of it is there wasn't much point to him not being in the suit when he wasn't. Now, there was a film last year that came out with the same kind of pacing, and it was also the third/final instalment of a superhero trilogy. It would be ignorant of me not to say that bias exists when it comes to the Dark Knight Trilogy, but there are reasons why this pacing worked in DKR and doesn't in IM3. First and foremost, Bruce Wayne is Batman regardless of whether or not the suit is on, which is something you can't say about Stark and Iron Man. Second, the lack of Batman in DKR was much more organic and reasonable, as well as necessary to the story. It's not so much in IM3. Stark has some personal shit going on throughout the film, sure, but in no way does he face the same turmoil that Wayne faces. I would very much hate to come out and say that IM3 straight-up stole ideas from DKR
Also, throughout the bulk of the film where we don't get Iron Man, Stark gets to show off what makes him, well, him: his intelligence and ingenuity. He just starts Macgyver-ing shit all over the place in lieu of having his armour (which, it turns out, he could have easily gotten to anyway). It was a neat revelation of Stark's abilities...except that it wasn't anything new. Lest we forget how he made the armour in the first place: by making a goddamned electromagnetic heart out of a scrap yard of bullshit while being held captive IN A FUCKING CAVE, and then building himself a giant suit of armour, again, IN A FUCKING CAVE. I think it's safe to say that Stark is a bona fide genius and no more screen time should be devoted to proving it.
RDJ's dominance of screen time leaves little to go around for the supporting cast. Characters we are led to believe are essential to the story, such as Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts or Don Cheadle's Jim Rhodes, don't stay on screen for long and don't do much when they are, at least not until the climax of the film. The only other character that has nearly as much time on-screen is Guy 'Where the hell have I been since Memento?' Pearce, who was incredible as antagonist Aldrich Killian. The slow burn downplaying of the Mandarin character was a neat approach to a mysterious man-behind-the-curtain type big bad for the first two thirds or so of the film (sigh, but more on that in a bit). For me, the most notable characters to address are the ones that weren't even fucking there. Where in sweet blue hell was SHIELD when this mess was happening? I understand that maybe vanilla human terrorists are a bit whatever for a SHIELD-calibre organization, but when said terrorists are singling out one of your golden boys that damn near killed himself to save Earth? Yeah, maybe the helicarrier could swing around for a drive-by, make sure things are cool. I get having the bad eye, but Samuel L. Fury had to have had some idea what was going on. I get no Avengers interference, but seriously? If I were Stark, next time the world was in danger, I'd tell Fury and Agent Robin Sparkles to go fuck themselves.
Before I get too shitty with IM3, I'll talk about something I actually liked. After a series of events as fantastic and otherworldly as what happened in Avengers it was nice to see one of the characters be brought back to real life. The story of this film was as realistic and relateable as Marvel gets without getting dark (see: alcoholism, racism, infidelity, goddamn domestic abuse). What makes it better is that the film cites the events of Avengers several times as being the cause of real fuck-off problems for Stark, the most normal human of the bunch. The apparent changes made to the Mandarin character (again, during the first two thirdsof the film) were effective in making him a more realistic villain, as opposed to the magical being he is in the comics. While maintaining this realism, the film stays true to its predecessors' use of ridiculous super-science to remind the audience that, yes, this is a movie about a man in a huge, heavy suit of armour that flies, fires weapons out of literally everywhere, and now is about as well trained as a golden retriever to the point that it comes when you call it. Iron Man is one of the more broken superheroes out there, to the point where it risks making any encounter trivial, and therefore boring and predictable. This film did a decent job of levelling the playing field between good and evil. I just wish there was more Iron and less Man.
An obvious best goes to the actual look of the film. If the Marvel films have done one thing right across the board it's been the look. The atmosphere of the films have been captured by the tone, setting, and effects used to create these larger than life heroes. I don't think Marvel would have gotten this far without the first Iron Man looking the way it did. Yeah, the armour is fantastic and completely unrealistic in and of itself, but the look of it and of the film in general was real enough to have us believe in it. Thor was more fantasy, but the setting of Asgard and its contrast with Earth made it work. Captain America was more of a WWII period piece, but I never felt like it was out of place at any point in time, considering it was also a Comic Book Movie. Marvel does their shit well, and IM3 is no exception. IM3 was pretty dark at times, in tone and atmosphere, so much so that there were times where I felt sympathetic towards a character that normally I would have no sympathy for whatsoever. The honest truth is that I've never really liked the Tony Stark character, but these films, along with RDJ's performances, have made him one of the best comic book characters to make the jump onto the big screen.
Now that I've got some good in with the bad, I'll jump into what bothered me most about IM3: change for change's sake. This bullshit bothers me to my very core wherever I see it, any kind of adaptation or remake of a source material of any sort, where significant points are altered for no fucking reason. It doesn't happen a lot here, but it happens. This is where I may lose some people because I do get nitpicky as the stereotypical nerd that I can be, and that's fine. Opinions are subjective and that's why I started this blog business in the first place. I just feel the need to point out the inconsistencies here to make people aware of why this film bothers me SO much considering it was a pretty good film.
Let's start with the Iron Patriot. There was literally no reason for the pimp-my-ride version of the Iron Man suit to be present other than to make the fanboys swoon. That shit drives me nuts, and it gets pulled all the time. The X-Men movies are the worst offenders: they basically tried to stuff as many random mutant references as they could into each film but didn't do so properly, leading to a goddamn clusterfuck. X-Men 3 glossed over some pretty big deal mutants (Angel, Juggernaut, the Morlocks) and had a sentinel as a fucking cameo. The Wolverine movie was just a hot mess of random muties that I can't even begin to understand. Now IM3 has gone and done the same with Iron Patriot. In the comics, Iron Patriot was a big deal and representative as a big bad not just to Iron Man, but the Marvel Universe as a whole. The presence of the suit as used in the film would have been just as effective if it were, say, fucking Iron Man!
The biggest change made in IM3, and consequentially the biggest problem I had with it, came in the presentation of one of Iron Man's traditionally big player antagonists. There has been an uproar between critics, fanboys, and personal friends of mine in regards to what happened in the beginning of the third act of this film. For the sake of spoilers, I'll try and keep this as vague as possible, but I make no promises. Basically, the first two thirds of the film do a tremendous job of establishing a global threat and menacing terrorist in The Mandarin. In the comics, The Mandarin is the be all, end all for Iron Man baddies, a rogues gallery that's not necessarily all-star talent. For bad guys, there's pretty much just Mandarin, MODOK, and a whole bunch of motherfuckers in armor not unlike Iron Man. Mandarin is a master scientist, martial artist, and wielder of alien tech in the form of ten rings. The film presents Mandarin with a more realistic approach of a terrorist, along the lines of Osama Bin Laden. I felt this was a good move especially to link the third IM film to the first a la Dark Knight Trilogy. Hell, there was already a Mandarin reference in the first Iron Man (The terrorist cell holding Tony in IM1 is part of an organization called 'The Ten Rings'. Continuity is boss, and I'm thrilled when it's acknowledged in films). However, with the third act comes a drastic shift in the tone of the film that more or less takes a lot away from that build-up. It wasn't awesome, it wasn't even terrible...it was just so out of fucking nowhere that I had no immediate reaction to it. I was a deer in the headlights. Some films are able to pull this off and have it work, sometimes it makes the fucking movie. This was not one of those times. As I said earlier, I had no idea how to feel about this film and this is the biggest reason why. First off, it's an even bigger change to a major player in the Iron Man mythos, the equivalent to Ra's Al Ghul for Batman, Magneto for X-Men, or Norman Osborn for Spider Man. Secondly, it wasn't necessary at all. I almost feel as though it was done just for the reaction of it, just for the laugh or surprise or confusion it would inevitably receive from the audience. If so, then congratulations Shane Black, and also, gooooooooooo fuck yourself.
Alright, I've done it. I've made my decision.
Wait for it....
Yeah, I liked this movie. In the grand scheme of things, it was still quite inferior to IM1 and Avengers, but it fit the story arc of Tony Stark fairly well. The story told in it is really good, actually, and grounds the Marvel films in a way that Thor: The Dark World and Guardians of the Galaxy or whatever aren't going to be able to do. It capitalizes on the fact that Stark is the only hero in the Avengers that the audience can even come close to relating to. RDJ continued to do his thing, even though I thought he was doing it too much here. if the rumours of him being done with Iron Man after Avengers 2 are true, I will definitely miss him. As for the changes made along the way, a second viewing tends to make everything clearer and better, in a hindsight 20/20 kind of way, so I'll give it another shot. Sometimes the change works in retrospect, and not so much as it's happening. It's how I felt about Dark Knight Rises, and I didn't love that movie after the first viewing either. Yeah, it's another comparison between Iron Man and Batman, but a good one. Both films were fitting and real endings to their respective stories. Like Tony himself, the film had flaws. What do you expect? Not everything can be perfect.
Well, The Avengers came close.
Knight Owl
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