Plot
Following the explosive events at New York, Tony Stark (Robert Downy Jr.) finds himself bereft with anxiety and a sense of purposelessness. Unable to sleep, he buries himself amongst his fabled iconic iron suits, threatening his relationship with long-suffering carer-come-girlfriend Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). All the while, enigmatic terrorist codenamed The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) is wreaking havoc across the States with bomb-attacks and hacked TV spots. Against his wishes, The Man in The Can is thrown into potentially the most dangerous – and certainly the most personal – fight of his life.
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| Because it ain't cool if you don't punch the floor. |
Review
If it wasn’t for Iron Man – with it’s pitch-perfectly cast Robert Downy Jr., endearing comedic tone and barnstorming critical & financial success – it’s fair to say that the whole Marvel’s Avengerscinema arc would never have got off the ground. Marvel supremo Kevin Fiege said as much. It’s more than fitting then that Iron Man 3 should stand as the opening of Marvel’s Phase 2 along the road to global domination.
Taking the reigns from Jon Favreau, director Shane Black kicks off Phase 2 in more ways than just numerically. Heralding a darker tone but with no let up to the series characteristically cutting sense of humour and a narrative with a finger pressed firmly against the pulse of modernity, Iron Man 3 is a complete reinvention of the Marvel-ian comic book caper.
RDJ is as charismatic and endearing as ever while Paltrow’s Potts develops in interestingly genre-busting directions, following the route pioneered by Joss Whedon’s Avengers. While some of the new characters feel like little more than farts in the wind– botanist Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall) most notably – others fit right in. Guy Pearce is fascinating as the mysterious Aldrich Killian but it’s Ben Kingsley who steals the show, putting in a remarkable performance as the surprisingly complex – and twisty – Mandarin, keeping a character that could easily have gone sprinting all bandy-legged in to ridiculous territory pleasantly grounded and believable.
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| 'Tony, I want you inside of me.' |
Naturally, action is often the order of the day and yet Iron Man 3 is far from the prototypical ‘action’ film. The first Act is, in fact, almost bereft of any explosions whatsoever save a magic brain plant (what the what!?) and instead focuses entirely on Stark the man, tracking his development from semi-dead nuke hero in space to obsessive insomniac. It makes for an often surprising and uniquely compelling character exploration perhaps never before seen in anything remotely ‘comic book-y’ on the big screen. It also grants RDJ the chance to flex his acting chops outside of pop-culture jabs, on several instances traipsing into remarkably intimate soliloquys on his life. There’s always the expectation for a joke or a gurn to camera, a casual brush-off followed by a hectic back track to the blasé, and when it doesn’t come it’s…weird. But in the right way.
But have no fear! There are still quips galore, from ol' Shellhead and the rest of the merry cast, riffing on topics that range from Downton Abbey to Croydon. Black’s characteristica razor-wit style is present and accounted for by the spade full, characters always on the ready for a dash of non-sequitur humour even when faced by a wall of fire, an unkillable man, a free-fall from 30,000 feet or a thousand thousand explosions.
It’s the writing that’s the major highlight here. Visual effects are good but nothing special, the standard crisp fare for any film of the Marvel canon. The writing however is something else. While a few newcomer characters feel emptier than a bag of crisps, most are astutely constructed (and cast) to fit around a deceptively illuminating narrative. Early reviews have been quick to call out the narrative as a slobby hack-job, a collection of disparate ideas flung together before being thrown in front of the camera. This reviewer however hopes for a more favourable retrospective approach.
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| 'You came to the wrong neighbourhood, mother-'...memes. |
While by no means perfect – and sometimes confusing in a ‘what’s the point?’ kind of way rather than ‘what the hell?’ – Iron Man 3 is one of the few films of it’s ilk – big budget, big name, big market – to embrace a narrative that gleefully toys with the post-modern sensibility and even satire. Whether or not it has performed well in this respect will be proven in time, but with villains that are far from what they seem to be, a focus on anonymity and the dissonance inherent in a modern day cyber-world and metaphor galore, Iron Man 3 has – for want of a much much better and more descriptive word – legitimate depth.
What’s even more impressive however is how it juggles these tentative notions with the classic Iron Man/ Marvel style, ensuring that it doesn’t alienate old fans while simultaneously maybe drawing in a new crowd. For every Machiavellian unveiling, there’s a classic buddy-cop moment between Tony and his best friend (and now Presidential Guard) Rhodey (Don Cheadle) aka War Machine…aka The Iron Patriot. The climactic set piece – a ludicrously OTT, hugely entertaining skirmish on an oil drill – is full of moments of subtle (and not so subtle) humour in the face of adversity, a potentially alienating aesthetic that works because of the character’s chemistry.
Ultimately, while noticeably over-long and sometime sufferer of over-indulgence (some conversations are irritatingly snappy; some of the technological showboating needlessly grandiloquent, a virtual ‘who’s bigger?’ competition) Iron Man 3 concludes as a boisterously entertaining chapter in Marvel’s every-growing library. Though still not as good as the first Iron Man, it has surely set robust foundations for the next few years of Marvel magic.
And as for the whole ‘where are the other Avengers while Tony’s off fighting? argument: ‘this is not superhero business, it’s American business’ which, despite pretty much every comic ever written taking place almost entirely in the States, are two different things apparently.
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| What's more impressive: the table ornament or that the sofa doesn't sag despite the IRON suit? |
Verdict
With a much greater focus on Stark the man than Stark the Suit, Iron Man 3 is an entirely different beast to its predecessors. Though the plot may sag under its own crisscrossing weight on occasion, Iron Man 3 is a triumph for the ever-burgeoning comic book genre: it manages to reinvent its hero (from Bear Grylls survivor to one-man army) and its own mythos along an explosive journey from start to fanboy credits sting. One for the fans and newcomers alike.
4/5
The closest thing to Captain America that you'll be getting:
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