SPOILERS WITHIN – YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Someone said the summer blockbuster season keeps opening earlier and earlier every year and they’re not wrong but if our opener Iron Man 3 is anything to go by, we’re in for a long, stinky trek through the mire. With a reshuffling of the pack in the next step of the Marvel Film Universe and the reigns handed to an action film writer, the Iron Man franchise picks up a killing degree of rust.
After the events of Avengers Assemble, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr., Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows) has changed and started obsessively building new Iron Man suits to combat his insomnia, going for quantity over quality. However, the rise of new age terrorist, The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley as the antithesis of Ghandi), gives Stark a focus after a personal attack. Using think tank AIM chairman Aldrich Killian’s (Guy Pearce, Lawless) Extremis virus, the Mandarin uses biological suicide bombers as his weapons. Taking a personal and public beating, Stark must learn to rebuild himself so he can save the one person he cares about, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow, Contagion).
Four movies in and Downey still hasn’t letdown as Tony Stark. Despite this film’s many problems, Downey is the only man to pull off the eccentric billionaire mad scientist and is a model professional actor who keeps you engaged throughout. Paltrow does a few more things more independent and is a reasonably step beyond the stereotype damsel in distress Pepper is from the first Iron Man movie and, as completely random as her involvement in the final showdown is, could even get into the Avengers from her actions.
Don Cheadle (Flight) gets completely shafted after being such a strong character in James Rhodes who can go toe-to-toe and is on equal as Iron Man in his War Machine suit. He does absolutely nothing in his own repainted suit and is treated as an afterthought. Jon Favreau, the director of the first two movies, returns as Stark’s bodyguard Happy again, but is put into a coma for most of the runtime showing his significance in proceedings. In fact, the mid tier Extremis henchmen (led by the excellent James Badge Dale, 24) do more worthwhile things than our long standing Team Tony members.
As a douche business man come good, Pearce certainly is a sexy man to look at and pulls off obviously cartoon levels of evil well in Killian. Probably the only reason he was hired given the amount of topless time he has at the end of the film. But a massive problem is he’s evil because he is. He sprouts some guff about owning both sides on the war on terror yet it’s never clear why he’s doing it. Money? Ideological reasons?
Now sorry to drop a spoiler on you lot, but Kingsley does two characters. The radical terrorist which he plays to perfection in the first half is earth shaking in tone and presence, only to turn out to be all a comedic act frontman for the real big bad in the shadows in an admittedly funny performance, which drags up memories of The Big Lebowski. Nothing wrong with the performance on either side of the coin from Kingsley but it’s not what we expect in a frankly disgusting bait and switch tactic to garner interest from the trailer. Did we really need a comedy character chucked in like this when you can still pull off a serious false figurehead? No not at all. Completely random and a waste of a top talent.
Most of the film’s problems lies with the direction and writing. Director and co-writer Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, his only prior directed film) has plenty of humour action movie credits such as Lethal Weapon and got a stellar ‘return to greatness’ performance out of Downey in Bang Bang so you can see why he was tapped to take over from Jon Favreau in guiding the Iron Man franchise. However, you get the feeling the man doesn’t get how to handle a superhero film even on a basic level.
There’s plenty of terrible humour when it’s not needed or wanted in a movie about science based genius who puts on a metal suit to fight injustice. Some of it works as it’s based on the character like Stark’s old womanising ways which is fine – it makes sense it should be in this film. But then we get something completely left field like the reveal than the Mandarin is a massive fake and the man playing him is a stoner idiot. Why is that in a serious superhero film? Another weird example is when Stark needs to borrow a TV truck to hack the villain’s files and the TV crew member who finds him turns out to be a massive Tony Stark fan, getting his hair cut like his and a tattoo of him on his arm. Now this is throwaway time killing material in an already bloated, messy film. So I’ll ask again, apart from a poor joke, what is the point of this? How does it expand the mythos of Iron Man?
In the final, admittedly cool fight with Stark and his various suits taking on the Extremis charged goons, Stark looks incredibly weak using multiple suits which get taken out rather easily to despatch the main threat. Admittedly, it’s set up that Tony just keeps building new suits constantly without any real thought to making them to the peak of their abilities, especially with his newest model, but after seeing these former suits of brilliance and mechanical technological feats get batted away, it makes him look like a chump. Considering, this is the same man that saved all of mankind from an alien invasion at the end of Avengers Assemble, I feel like we’re watching an alternative universe Iron Man here.
Due to Black’s focus on comedy rather than filling out the film’s essentials, plot points fly from A to B with next to no explanation and there are some characters left badly needing definition or something worthwhile to do apart from pointless comedy schtick. Take the Iron Patriot armour when Rhodes wears it for example. Apart from an interesting visual, he does nothing but hilariously goes to a bogus terrorist hideout. There’s no defining Rhodes moment where he puts his foot down and kicks a little ass as per the remit of the War Machine. All those guns, bells and whistles are just for show only.
It could be argued that I shouldn’t be worried about all this and just concentrate on the nice dumb action but there’s hardly anything to sink your teeth into. Sure we get the big suits vs. oil tanker scrap at end but since Tony comes off looking weak jumping from suit to suit, he doesn’t exactly engage. There’s a fairly intriguing Tony in half a suit fighting off a hoard of goons fight so naturally that’s ruined by dodgy camera work. The raid on Air Force One is a bit contrived (also, why fire off a handgun when you have a laser beam for hands?!) and the ‘save the freefalling President aides’ scenes is muted when the camera looks up and sees the countless others onboard the President’s plane blow up. Yay! Feel happy for the people that lived! It doesn’t matter about the rest! Look Iron Man did a funny! In a film with the hero being all action, Iron Man 3 is sorely lacking.
There’s a clear schizophrenia over what film Iron Man 3 is trying to be. It tries to be both the serious and camp superhero work at the same time. It goes for the big science ideas and hero themes at the same time as going for the kid ‘n’ adult buddy film. The atrocious amount of humour is akin to those seen in other off kilter ratios like Robocop 3. There’s also random themes like patriotism with an extended, overcomplicated plot about kidnapping the USA president and homeland terrorism. It tries to get so much in, it completely forgets the audience it’s aimed at. I could not honestly tell you if this was aimed at children or adults, comic fans or casual etc. Such a weird lack of focus.
For those of you keen to find out what’s next in the Marvel Film Universe, don’t get your hopes up. There’s nods to the other characters but we hardly get a who’s doing what. Despite being a main plot point in Stark coming to terms that there are bigger and more powerful gods and aliens in the universe, compared to him in his tin man costume, it gets quietly pushed to the side until he comes to terms with it at the end in a big revelation for the characters. It’s a good thing they learnt their lesson from Iron Man 2 and Captain America which were stunted by too much build towards the Avengers movie and not concentrating on their own plots. We don’t have a clue where the universe is going next though which with the hard sell that’ll be Guardians Of The Galaxy puts the Marvel Film Universe in an uncomfortable place for once.
Oh and those fans of the post credits scene will be incredibly disappointed, but then that’s just desserts for you waiting around until the end of the show leaving yourselves open for a throwaway moment like that.
There’s talk of Downey being a bit bored of the Iron Man role and may finish up with Avengers 2 or here even as Stark. Since that will be a massive expansive film if he turns up in that, Downey leaves this film as the last solo adventure he’ll take in the suit and… thematically it’s a success. Stark realising he’s a drop in the ocean is a masterstroke and going into overdrive trying to create new and more specific suits to combat situations is a nice nod to the comics. His story arc comes to a natural end by the credits of Iron Man 3 and whilst we’re in the air with the future of the character, faults aside, this Tony Stark gets the send off he deserves.
You can’t help but recognise that Robert Downey Jr. pushed a relatively B-List hero who noone cared about really in Iron Man into A-star category as a pop culture icon. In fact, if it wasn’t for the success of this comic book hero, it could be that Disney and Marvel wouldn’t have their lucrative Avengers franchise. However, they stopped giving the fans what they want and handed off to a man unattached to said franchise and completely derail any momentum for what’s coming next. Easily the worst Marvel release in a while, even beating off the pointless Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man 3 suffers irreparable damage when you stop to think about what’s happening in front of you. Questions like how have we gotten up to this point and what is this guy’s motivations are kept on the way side without much though. I’ve got it! This film is for the bloody populist Transformers lovin’ audience of today after an injection of sugar and explosions to satisfy themselves in a “safe”, unchallenging environment.
If you’re after an unashamed popcorn flick with drips of “cool” action and multiple attempts at humour, good for you, add another 4 to the score below. There are some of us however that want to see a science based superhero film that doesn’t have filler characters, a messy plot and 75% terrible comedy. Iron Man 3 will undoubtedly make some mad money from the casual audience but the good work of building an accessible universe accepted by the hardcore fans is washed away. For Downey’s swansong on the character, a slight triumph.
Terry Lewis – @thatterrylewis.
