Iron Man 3

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a comic book geek's dream come true: some of the greatest heroes from the pages of ink and color being brought to life by the skilled hands of auteurs and actors who,  for the most part, know and understand the characters they are dealing with. Some creative license can be expected along the way, as many of these characters are decades upon decades old and may need a fresh coat of paint for today's audiences, and certain characters and/or story arcs featured in these books may have been licensed to other movie companies and just can't be used. Would it be great to see Tony Stark trading quips and one-liners with Peter Parker atop the Baxter Building? Of course, but all three franchises are held by three different companies, so in that case you have to make it work with the properties you have, which is why we got Tony Stark trading quips and one-liners with Steve Rogers atop Stark Tower in The Avengers instead. As I have stated before, I am an unabashed comic geek, and though I understand changes are sometimes necessary in these movies, I also think they should stick to the source material as closely as possible. That being said, let's take a look at the latest installment of the MCU, Iron Man 3.

Robert Downey, Jr. returns as billionaire playboy industrialist Tony Stark/Iron Man in his third stand-alone installment that takes place after the events featured in 2012's The Avengers. The film starts in 1999, however, in a flashback scene where Stark is still the drunken weapon-maker, and not yet the man of iron. During the celebration, he is approached by a man by the name of Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce, Memento, Prometheus), who appears to be slightly handicapped. He excitedly tells Stark he has an idea to pitch to him, to which Stark agrees, telling Killian to meet him on the roof in a few minutes. Stark predictably doesn't make the meeting, leaving Killian alone on the roof in dismay while he engages in adult shenanigans below. Of course this scene only exists to set up the future conflict, when in the present day, Killian shows up as a non-handicapped, seemingly successful industrialist himself. Also back for this ride are Stark's girlfriend/secretary/conscience Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), Stark's BFF James Rhodes/War Machine/Iron Patriot (Don Cheadle), and Stark's head of security Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau). New to the series is Oscar winner Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin, Iron Man's greatest and oldest foe from the pages of the comics. Here, The Mandarin is portrayed as a bin Laden-esque terrorist, waging a war on a global scale against the Western world with bombings that leave no forensic evidence. After one such explosion injures Hogan, Stark takes it personally and issues a direct challenge to The Mandarin, who promptly blows up Stark's home and his hall of armors with a couple of attack copters. Seemingly dead, Stark actually escapes the fracas, and with the help of a 10 year old bullied kid, begins to do a low-tech investigation into the whereabouts of The Mandarin.

Well, low-tech for Tony Stark, anyway.

 
It has taken me a few tries to do this review, because the words have just failed me each time I tried to write about it. This is one of those movies where you really want to like it, but just can't. Sure, it's a beautiful movie visually, and in my eyes, Downey, Jr. can do no wrong. But knowing what I know about certain characters and story arcs, this one does not work, and barely feels like it fits in the MCU at all. One of the features of the film is Stark suffering from panic attacks brought on by the events he experienced from the alien attack in The Avengers, but that felt like something just slipped into the screenplay to tie it in. Ben Kingsley is wonderful with the character he is given to portray, but that character is NOT The Mandarin from the pages, and may seem like a slap in the face to true, hard-core Iron Man fans. Don Cheadle is also good as Rhodes, but hard-core fans will once again make notice that Iron Patriot in the comic books is another guy entirely, unfortunately a character that Marvel/Disney can't use in the form of Norman Osborne, a main antagonist from the Spider-Man universe. A couple of other mid-level Marvel characters show-up as well, mainly just used as punctuation at best. The addition of the precocious child character who helps the hero and, in tun, receives some help in return of some sort, is one of those movies tropes that just feels tired and unnecessary. The whole plot of the movie actually feels like it's way too convoluted, and yet a tired re-tread at the same time: Stark does somebody wrong, said wronged person tries to get revenge through technology and gets his ass handed to him because you can't fight fire with fire (see: Obadiah Stane, Ivan Vanko). The inclusion of The Mandarin character, who, in the books, is a master of magic and mysticism, should have changed all that, but like I said earlier, this is not the same Mandarin. In the film, Stark has the ability to remotely control his suits, which turns into a great analogy for this film: looks great, and performs wonderfully, but is ultimately empty inside. Even the big twist that reveals everything seems like something they outsourced to Shyamalan.

"Not me, I was helping Will Smith make another crap-fest."

 
So, in summation, suffice it to say that I was highly disappointed with this film. It is, in my opinion, the weakest entry to date in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the only redeeming qualities were Downey, Jr., Kingsley, and the special effects. It was absolutely eye-popping in the 3-D format that I saw it in, but I could have been sitting a bit closer to the screen for the full effect. I just hope that the next two installments in the MCU pipeline stay truer to their respective comic book roots and the only changes are perfunctory at best. 

3.5 out of 10 Fists.