People always say, "Third time's the charm."
However, that rule doesn't always apply to comic book movies. If a franchise is
lucky enough to make it to a third outing, the filmmakers have forgotten what
made the series successful in the first place. Superman 3, Spider-Man 3,
and X-Men: The Last Stand are glaring
examples while Batman Forever was the
start of Batman's descent into campy nipple-dom. Christopher Nolan broke from
the trend with The Dark Knight Rises
and Marvel does the same with Iron Man 3.
Iron Man 3 opens
in 1999 where the old, arrogant playboy Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) attends
a conference in Switzerland. He parties with a pretty geneticist named Maya
Hansen (Rebecca Hall) and ignores Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), a nerdy and
lame-legged scientist. In present time, Stark should be standing on cloud nine.
He helped fight off an alien invasion and he's now living together with Pepper
Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) in his cliff side Malibu mansion. Instead, Stark is
suffering from insomnia and a newfound sense of inadequacy following the events
of The Avengers. Next to the enormous
green rage monster and the god of thunder, he's just a "man in a
can." He suffers from anxiety attacks and takes refuge inside his Iron Man
armor, which has become his high-tech security blanket. He spends sleepless
nights tinkering in his workshop and building dozens of suits designed to deal
with every danger he could possibly imagine.
Danger comes with a savagery Stark hasn't dealt with before
as The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), leader of the terrorist group, The Ten Rings,
steps up his attacks on America. Meanwhile, Killian has remade himself as a suave,
Richard Branson-looking entrepreneur. His think tank, A.I.M. (Advanced Idea
Mechanics), has developed a super-soldier serum dubbed Extremis, which turns
human beings into living bombs. When one of them goes off in front of Grauman's
Chinese Theater, Stark brazenly issues a challenge to the Mandarin on live
television. The bad guys respond by reducing his house to rubble and forces
Stark to rely on more than just his suits.
Jon Favreau, who directed the previous Iron Man movies, returns as a producer and in the supporting role
of bodyguard Happy Hogan. Favreau has passed the torch onto Shane Black whose
career trajectory mirrors the troubles of Robert Downey Jr. and his onscreen
alter ego. Black became one of the highest paid screenwriters in Hollywood off
the back of his debut script Lethal
Weapon. However, he became persona non grata after costly failures like The Last Boy Scout and The Long Kiss Goodnight. Black
reappeared with his directorial debut, the neo-noir comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, starring Downey. Their relationship would lead
to Black serving as an unofficial consultant on Iron Man and Iron Man 2.
Both Favreau and Downey credit Black with paralleling Tony Stark's moral quandaries
with those of Robert Oppenheimer. Though Iron
Man 3 is far and away Black's most daunting production yet, Marvel Studios
has become enough of an efficient factory that it almost doesn't matter who is
at the helm as long as they are halfway competent.
The look and feel of Iron
Man 3 fits right into the merry Marvel method of movie making. It's slick
without being overly stylish in a Michael Bay or Guy Ritchie sort of way. Iron Man 3 is more action packed than
either of its predecessors. There's a thrilling sequence where Iron Man forms a
human chain to rescue passengers sucked out of Air Force One. The climax
features dozens of armored suits (including one of my favorites, the Silver
Centurion) battling an army of Extremis powered soldiers on an offshore oil
rig, a classic supervillain hideout. Stark's latest iteration, the Mark 42, can
be remote controlled and donned in creative fashion.
The screenplay by Black and Drew Pearce consists of several
Black trademarks such as the Christmas setting and a voiceover narration by Downey
that stops and rewinds ala Kiss Kiss Bang
Bang. Black's flair for witty banter is paired perfectly with Downey's
penchant for off-the-cuff one-liners. Iron
Man 2 was criticized for its preoccupation with building towards Avengers rather than telling a
standalone story. That's been corrected here with a more focused sequel with
only passing references to Thor and SHIELD. Everyone involved made a concerted effort
to metaphorically return Tony Stark to the cave from the first film. Stark crash
lands in rural Tennessee where he uses the tools at hand inside a ramshackle
garage and befriends a doe-eyed, precocious boy named Harley (Ty Simpkins). This
section of the film could have easily veered into mawkish Spielbergian
territory, but the sentimentality is constantly undercut by Downey's
irreverence. The script brings up the notion that we as individuals and as a
nation have created our own enemies, but never digs deeper than surface level.
Don Cheadle's Rhodey (remade as the Iron Patriot) is
sidelined for most of the movie and Rebecca Hall is wasted a bit in the
underwritten role of Maya Hansen. On the other hand, Gwyneth Paltrow gets the
chance to become more than just Stark's sounding board. Pepper Potts is thrown
into the action frequently and even puts on the armor for a brief moment. Yes,
she plays the damsel in distress, but she also gets to do some saving of her
own. Perhaps, the most intriguing character in the threequel is Iron Man's arch-nemesis,
the Mandarin. A yellow peril villain in the vein of Fu Manchu, Mandarin has
been updated and re-imagined as an uber-terrorist appropriating an iconography
of infamy. He's Castro, bin Laden, Qaddafi, Genghis Khan, and Colonel Kurtz all
rolled into one. Sir Ben Kingsley portrays the Mandarin in unique fashion with
a booming and authoritarian staccato; all accentuated by ominously constructed
video threats. However, a twist to the character will have comic book fans launching
into conniption fits.
Iron Man 3 not
only kicks off the summer blockbuster season, it's the beginning of Marvel
Studios' Phase 2 and the course will be exciting judging by the early results. Other
comic book threequels suffer from being over long and burdened with too many
characters, but Iron Man 3 never feels
bloated and moves at a quick clip. This is a fun and vibrant tentpole release
bolstered by an exceptionally heroic score from Brian Tyler, one of the best
done for Marvel Studios. A return to form for the Iron Man series and a worthy successor
to The Avengers.
Rating: **** (*****)
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