Iron Man Three Review

It's been a long time since I've written a review.  I've been through a lot but there are no excuses.  But I'm inspired to come back again and hopefully for good this time. Iron Man 3 marks the end of the Iron Man trilogy and has him facing his arch nemesis the Mandarin.  The Mandarin is to Iron Man as The Joker is to Batman... a violent sociopath with powers bestowed onto him by rings that can warp the very nature of reality.  It's a match of magic versus technology that defines Tony Stark as both a man and as a hero.

Unfortunately, it's spoiler time boys and girls so do not read any further if you haven't seen the movie and intend to see it without bias.  I'm not kidding... skedaddle, shoo... alright you can stay.  But don't say I didn't warn you.  The movie drops the ball in that The Mandarin isn't the villain of the movie, some nobody declares himself The Mandarin but the epic, evil, egomaniac that Ben Kingsley sold to us in the trailers wasn't present.  This would be a big twist and good storytelling if these weren't established characters but they are.  Iron Man 3 is a great movie but it is an awful comic book movie.

The element that makes good comic book movies is the dynamic bigger than life characters.  Robert Downey Jr is Tony Stark, he is Iron Man, he plays his role to the hilt and delivers an amazing performance every time.  If you've seen the trailers you know that Ben Kingsley does a fantastic Mandarin, he owns the character, right up until the moment that it's inexplicably taken from him.  As it turns out the Mandarin isn't real, he's a figure head used as the "face of evil" while the real bad guy runs the show.  You know like in Batman Begins but instead of being the "real Mandarin" the new guy is a weak mustache twirling villain that is literally upset that Tony Stark stood him up when they had a date.  He is the weakest villain that has appeared in a Marvel Studios movie and was a pathetic excuse for the ending of a trilogy.

In the first Iron Man movie the Ten Rings is established as a terrorist group and like myself most people thought this was an allusion to The Mandarin.  In this movie we find out that the terrorist group the Ten Rings isn't real... *skkkkkrrrrtt*  Huh?  The side villains of the first movie aren't real?  The huge terrorist organization isn't real?  Iron Man 3 throws away so much history and established characters just for an overdone cheap fake out that I didn't see coming only because it was really really dumb.  Iron Man 3 is still a good movie but it is not a good comic book movie.  It gives the middle finger to fans of the comics and replaces a dynamic character with one that is shallow and forgettable.

I know this is a good movie but anyone who is a fan of the comics is likely to be a lot disappointed. The friends that I went to see it with who didn't know who The Mandarin was loved it.  As a fan of the comic I found the whole thing to be a slap in the face and overall disappointing.  

Time for the Five Bees!!!!

Blood:  Tony Stark gets plenty banged up this movie and the violence is a little over the top.  People are turned into living suicide bombs, plenty of people are shot to death, limbs are chopped off, and on more than one occasion someone has a fist rammed through their chest.  I'm surprised the movie got away with a PG-13 rating with the death count being as high as it was. 

Babes:  Rebecca Hall and Gwyneth Paltrow are both looking beautiful and both end up briefly scantily clad though maybe not as scantily clad as one might like.  Speaking of clad it was cool to see Gwyneth Paltrow wearing a suit of armor if only briefly.  

Baddie: This is where the movie falls flat on it's face.  The new guy coming in and declaring he is the Mandarin at the end would be like if Killer Croc showed up during Dark Knight Rises dressed in a skin tight leather outfit and claimed that he was Catwoman.  It was a bad twist and left a sour taste in anyone's mouth who was looking forward to the fight between Iron Man and The Mandarin that was foreshadowed since the first movie. 

Boom: No complaints here, there are so many good explosions.  Even at the end, Tony Stark blows up his suits for no good reason.  As a grand gesture to his girlfriend who has just expressed an understanding to why he wears the suits. 

Bad Acting: Guy Pearce was hamming it up like you wouldn't believe.  If he had a mustache he would twirl that mother.  Snidely Whiplash would have been a more subtle villain. 

Overall Rating: 6.5

I am Iron Man

I'm not going to be doing many reviews of movies that have just come out in theaters. No one is paying me to do these reviews but maybe some of your delightful readers can start "borrowing" money from your mom's purse and I'll review whatever perverted morally debasing thing you want me to. Iron Man was the best comic book movie to come out since Spider-Man 2. I'm not including V for Vendetta in this statement because V is something very special to me. That was so much more than a comic book movie. It was Hugo Weaving's voice and violence all in one little package... little could arouse me as much as that.

I can not say this enough... Iron Man is worth dropping the cash for. As much as I've found the comic book Iron Man positively repulsive (pun intended), especially as of late, the movie version was everything I liked about Iron Man but better. Robert Downey Jr. was hilarious as Tony Stark and heroic as Iron Man. There wasn't one flaw that I could readily pick out in the movie. I'll be the first to admit that I am a critical bastard that has made many a young child cry with shouts of "That drawing looks nothing like a pony... it looks like a walrus with a horrible case of the hymroids!". Err... what? Robert Downey Jr. was born for the role of Tony Stark and not just because both of them are well known for self medication and substance abuse. He somehow is the most likable jerk you could possibly meet. Sure you want to throw him down a flight of razor sharp stairs but you can't help liking him.

The movie starts like every comic book movie starts, with an origins story. I like it when the movie tries it's best to stay true to the comic book no matter what. Nothing grates on my nerves more than when they change something crucial and it snowballs out of control. Iron Man had everything down to the two pieces of shrapnel being held in place by an electromagnet to keep them from going into his heart. A lot of directors would say "That drawing doesn't look anything like a pony?". And crush my dreams of one day becoming an artist. What?... the important thing is to not question the source material out of hand.

The chemistry between all of the actors felt real. Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) really did feel like a mentor and his interactions with Tony felt just as natural as when he was fighting him as Iron Monger. Jim Rhodes (Terrence Howard) seemed to be his friend just as much as he was a sidekick and on a sidekick side note I'm looking forward to seeing War Machine tear it up on the next Iron Man movie.

Before I go on to the 5 Bs I figure I owe an explanation for the rating of 11. It is on a 10 point scale... the problem is that I gave the movie a 9 out of 10 rating for near flawless cinema magic. Then Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury showed up on the big screen. And, Samuel L. Jackson bumps up any movie by 2 points. Which is why xXx: State of the Union got a 2 out of 10. Oh Ice Cube why do they keep putting you in movies?


Blood: There is a little bit of blood, nothing all that gory. Tony Stark gets hit, infamously, with one of his own weapons. Irony! The violence in the movie felt very real... except for the cheap laughs we got while Tony was designing the Mark II/Mark III. I would suggest seeing this movie just for the slapstick moments.

Boobs: Oh no nudity, but there was quite a lot of eye candy. Women seem to just throw themselves at Tony Stark. Even a life saving electromagnet the size of a christmas turkey sticking out of his chest didn't seem to keep the ladies at bay.

Baddie: Obadiah Stane was more menacing in Armani suit than he did in a suit of robotic armor. He made a good bad guy because he seemed to make since. He seemed like such a nice guy, even though the foreshadowing in the movie kept saying different (not to mention my previous knowledge of the character in the comic books). Not many people can pull off being more of a bad guy than a Islamic terrorist cell and a kindly uncle in the same scene. The little terrorist group is referred to as the Ten Rings which hopefully is a foreshadowing for The Mandarin... Iron Man's arch-nemesis lurking in the shadows of this movie.

Boom: The movie had boom by the gallons. Seeing the Mark III in action was almost a thing of beauty. It looked almost real as he blew up tanks, slammed terrorists into walls, and fought Iron Monger on a busy street. Things go boom.

Bad Acting: All the acting was amazing in this movie. There wasn't a moment when the suspension of disbelief was broken for me.

Overall Rating: 11