Iron Man isn’t a comic character I followed growing up: I was more of a Spider-man guy. That said, I greatly enjoyed watching Robert Downey, Jr. fall into Tony Stark, arguably the perfect role for Downey’s playboy-esque manner and bravado. The first movie centered on Stark’s survival at the hands of Afghan terrorists, then converting his military-reliant weapons and technology business into a peace-driven venture, helping to wipe away the decades of damage wrought by himself and his father before him. The second outing for the character, Iron Man 2, focused on Stark’s new-found celebrity, as he coped with the fact that the world knows that he’s Iron Man. To be honest, I didn’t care for the second one all that much, but upon a second viewing awhile back, it grew on me a bit.
Enter Iron Man 3, the first post-Avengers movie featuring, well, an Avenger. The first Iron Man movie helped pave the way for Marvel to bring The Avengers to the big screen (and it was awesome…), and now, with the third movie in the franchise, it’s all about Tony Stark coming to grips with the aftermath of the events in last year’s hit.
That is to say, a lot of this movie deals with Stark enduring something akin to PTSD. Like…a lot of this movie.
I don’t mean the movie’s bad, but there’s a lot of comedy to it, a lot of character interactions, a lot of Tony Stark and how he deals with the world around him. But I didn’t think there was all that much Iron Man in it. Sure, he was walking around in the suit (or dragging it behind him…), but even when he was in the suit, he was literally just walking around, chit-chatting, making jokes…not actually being Iron Man. Heck, he nearly didn’t fly until the end of the movie. Most of the action scenes dealt with Tony: not with Iron Man.
The performances by the actors were all superb, as always. The effects were great. I saw it in IMAX 3D, and while I can recommend the “IMAX” part of that, I didn’t think the “3D” was all that necessary. If you want to see it in any normal digital theater, you probably won’t miss much. Still, I can’t say the 3D detracted from my experience at all.
The story wasn’t even bad, necessarily. It kinda returned to the “foreign terrorist” feel from the first movie, along with another baddie from Stark’s past (played by Guy Pierce, who I thought did a decent job…though Ben Kingsley should have had more to do, in my opinion). But there were so many threads going, between the PTSD line, the Pierce line, the Kingsley line, the relationship with Pepper Potts (Gwenyth Paltrow), the Iron Patriot stuff, and others that focusing on fewer threads may have helped solidify the story a bit better.
Seriously, why Iron Patriot? It was barely featured, yet it seems like a big deal was made of it in all the marketing. Why?
So, in the end, I’m glad I saw it, but the first movie still reigns supreme. Perhaps I’ll like this one better on a second run-through, but for now, I’m just considering this one “so-so.”
Good thing Star Trek: Into Darkness comes out next week. 🙂