Iron Man 3 is not as good as Iron Man (it set the bar in terms of comic book movies for me) but far better than Iron Man 2 (really abysmal). It does suffer from a need to keep the attention of the audience through seemingly endless action sequences (as most follow-up movies do). The first movie in the Iron Man Trilogy to be directed by Shane Black (instead of Jon Favreau), Iron Man 3 has a different flavor than the others (and a lot more narrating). It is obviously “bigger and better” than the previous two, but it also is a lot more fraught with drama/tension.
The plotline itself is entertaining and interesting enough (I’m convinced that Robert Downey Jr. can make a telephone book sound entertaining), and the action sequences (though perhaps too frequent) are intense and visually pleasing. In Iron Man 3 Tony Stark’s world is torn apart by a mysterious terrorist called the Mandarin, and without his suits he must use his intelligence to rebuild and get revenge. Without spoiling anything, it has some seriously cool moments (ones that will make comic book nerds like me jump up and down in their seats), especially “The House Party Protocol” (seriously look out for it).
Aside from the very entertaining action-y bits of the film, the movie also has a serious element to it. One of my favorite things was the way they handled Tony Stark’s anxiety attacks as a result of the events of The Avengers. Robert Downey Jr. handled the subject matter perfectly with just the right amount of humor and gravity (Can you tell I love him?). I was also really impressed with the bad-arse (Solution to censorship: be British) moments that the female characters got. I don’t want to reveal anything…but Pepper Potts (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) got to do some pretty cool things and flip the whole “damsel in distress” thing a bit.
Now, for the complaints (sorry, I have to)…I often find the villainous plots in movies like these to be almost completely nonsensical, and this was no exception. I don’t want to reveal the plot points, because there are some (maybe?) surprising twists, but the villain’s motives made absolutely no sense and there were some major plot holes that had me sitting in the theater going “WHY?” The film definitely overused the “revenge” motive in order to explain away the illogic of the villain’s moves. (I can’t go too into detail, find me if you want to discuss the spoiler-y things).
Iron Man has a very intelligent plot and it simmers. It builds slowly without worrying about dazzling the ADD audience with constant action. In contrast, Iron Man 3 is the classic three-quel that fears that the audience will become bored of the characters and weaker plot and so amps up the action. Despite this, Iron Man 3 has enough charisma (thanks largely to RDJ) and unadulterated entertainment to mark it as one of the better three-quels.
Runtime: 2hr. 10min.
Rating: PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence throughout, and brief suggestive content