My Initial Thoughts about Iron Man 3

Here there be spoilers! I watched this movie the other day, but for various reasons I don’t feel like it’s quite time for me to write a review for it just yet. It’s left me with some questions, and I’m just not entirely sure how I feel about the movie, I think it requires another viewing before I can really get to the heart of the movie for myself. But I wanted to get some of my initial thoughts out there now while everyone else is talking about it. And again, I won’t be treading lightly on the spoilers, so steer clear if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

I’m going to start out with the big twist in the movie that have some people upset, and others relieved. I’m talking about the man behind the curtain of the Mandarin. He’s set up as being the big villain in this movie, that is until it’s revealed that the wool has been pulled over everyone’s eyes and the Mandarin is merely a funny little drug addicted English actor hired by the real villain of the movie Guy Pierce. I recently watched the Invincible Iron Man, the animated origin story released a year before the first Iron Man who had a much closer to the comics version of the Mandarin in it, and I did not like that version at all. I’m glad that’s not the version that we saw here, but I also wasn’t entirely thrilled with the misdirect in this movie. His later scenes after the reveal were funny, but they never really amounted to much. He kind of turned sides, and it was kind of a satirical jab at the media and the war on terrorism where we need to have a face to rally against. But I don’t truly know how I feel about it.

Then there’s the whole Extremis henchmen that can regenerate and turn massively hot to melt metal and other things, but occasionally explode. They seem Terminator 2 unstoppable at some points in the movie, but much more easily dispatched towards the end of the movie. And at one point Guy Ritchie, or Aldritch Killian even shoots molten fire out of his mouth. It feels slightly ridiculous, but it also occasionally looks badass. And then there’s the dozens of unmanned Iron Man suits that seemed to play a big part in the marketing/merchandising campaign, and yet never really got any big play in this movie outside of the final battle. Most of the time is spent with his experimental Mark 42 suit, the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Of course. While I do like the fact that he spends a lot of time away from his armor, and much of the time he spends in his armor is this not-quite-finished model, when he does bring in the big guns, it has me wondering why he wasn’t able to bring them out a long time ago.

And finally I have to mention the kid sidekick. Often in a movie like this, the kid sidekick smells of desperation and a cheap attempt at adding something for the kid audiences that are clamoring to see this movie just as much as the adult comic book fans. I will say that this is one of the most enjoyable kid sidekicks that I’ve seen in recent memory. He’s not annoying, he’s actually funny, and Tony Stark treats him just like he would anyone else. He doesn’t put on the kid gloves except for a couple moments, like the part about the bullies, and the billionaire presents at the end.

There’s also the scenes with his PTSD over the events that happened in the Avengers. I felt like it was an excuse to give him some sort of weakness akin to his alcoholism that is very prevalent in the comics, but turned down I believe by Disney. It doesn’t come up in the movie very often, but when it does it’s a major impact on what he’s doing at the moment, but in the end it just kind of goes away in a blink, and never really comes into play in any sort of major way, it just kind of slows the scenes down when it shows up and then goes away until it happens again the next time.

So I think I will hold off a little while longer to write my full review for this movie, but I will say that I enjoyed it, I’m just not entirely sure how much. I don’t think it fell into the Curse of Three that I talked about a while ago, but I don’t quite agree with many people saying that it’s the best of the trilogy.