Any movie with the number three in its title screams “SUCK!” in my mind. Namely The Hangover 3, Lethal Weapon 3, Doctor Dolittle 3. There are exceptions which whisper “mediocre,” like Star Trek III, Spider-Man 3. Iron Man 3 was leaning toward the former camp because its predecessor could be summed up with one word, turgid. I know the definition from Webster.com is different yet I feel my usage is accurate as per the spirit of Roger Ebert. We went for a couple reasons despite the cynicism: to celebrate the Summer kickoff and to see Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin…finally, a real opponent from the Iron Man mythos.
You’ve seen the commercials/trailers, you know what is going down so I won’t waste the electrons there.
I’m glad to say that the new director (Shane Black, famous for writing the first Lethal Weapon flick) breathed new life into Iron Man. It still runs a tad long but there are fewer boring gaps in the action, what one friend’s son called “too much chit chat,” aka scenes involving the hero’s girlfriend. Due to all the cross-pollination the Marvel studio is able to achieve in their shared universe, references are made about last Summer’s The Avengers plus Thor and SHIELD. Makes you wonder why aren’t the others involved in the fight, namely Captain America if the Mandarin is the new bin Laden. (I know, it’s just a movie.) As much as I prefer DC comics, the Marvel films have continued to impress me and Iron Man 3 did it again by re-inventing the Mandarin into a plausible nemesis for the 21st century. Maybe DC needs to stick to where they succeed, on the smaller screen before they make another Catwoman or homoerotic Batman movie.
I say ignore the critics who’ve given it weak reviews. They either don’t know squat about superheroes, they were expecting a Woody Allen story or they already decided to hate it. Trust me, I’m a stickler about the umbrella genre known as Nerdcore and since I’m boycotting Star Trek Into More Explosions and Lens Flares (I read a spoiler to confirm my reasons why JJ Abrams is the worst thing to happen to Star Trek), you can take my review to the bank.
As always, sit through all the ending credits for the traditional surprise and I’m not spoiling anything by saying Marvel promises Tony Stark will return.
The Alamo treatment was a funny mix of the cheesy Sixties Iron Man cartoons written by Ralph Bakshi and the not much better contemporary versions. Interjected between these snippets was an old movie of Robert Downey Jr. goofing around in front of a mirror, his short-lived recording career videos, a humorous commercial Ben Kingsley did for Prada, the Iron Baby movie, some guy at a convention who spends way too much time making the armor and Don Cheadle as Captain Planet in a Funny or Die bit.