Review of Iron Man 3 (2013) by Emma P — 23 Apr 2015

Spoilers in this review.

Iron Man 3 is a film that I feel was let down by the fantastic marketing. The outstanding trailers for this movie promised us a dark story that delved into Tony Starks anxiety after the events of the first Avengers while he went up against his most challenging villain yet. However what we got is a mediocre, forgettable and goofy movie. Just like in all Marvel movies the acting is brilliant Robert Downey Jr steals the show as usual. Gwenyth Paltrow, Guy Pearce, Don Cheadle, Ben Kingsley, Rebecca Hall and Jon Favreau are all excellent. There are some really good jokes in the movie, the bit where Tony Stark calls the little kid a pussy is really funny. The action is phenomenal. The mansion raid scene while very illogical is great as is the plane rescue scene. The final action sequence is brilliant unlike in the previous two movies. I also think the last 40 minutes of the film are ridiculously entertaining. The Mandarin is set up brilliantly I love the creepy news footage and he's very menacing in these bits. I also feel the anxiety is handled excellently in the first half. However this film has a lot of bad. The biggest and most obvious one is the handling of the Mandarin. As I've said the Mandarin is handled fantastically at the start of the movie however after he blows up his house and pushes him to breaking point, Tony Stark invades the mandarins mansion with homemade weapons, he reaches the Mandarins bedroom and he comes out of the toilet having just taken a huge shit and we get the stupid reveal that Ben Kingsley is infant a British actor who only portrays the mandarin on the tv and instead Guy Pearce is infact the Mandarin. This is a really stupid move as they had brilliantly set up Ben Kingsley and then just did a huge cop out and made him an annoying drunk druggie actor. Another problem is Guy Pearce as Aldrich Killian or the mandarin, he has a terrible motivation, infact it's the same as Snydrome from the Incredibles or Electro from the Amazing Spiderman 2. While the extremist idea could have worked really well it doesn't and it's laughably hilarious to see Guy Pearce breath fire. Another huge problem is that after Happy Hogan is injured in an explosion caused by 'the Mandarin' Tony gives out his address on the news and the Mandarin attacks in helicopters and blow up the house. However Tony does nothing to stop them or set up any defense when he has around forty suits under his house ready to defend him. I love the plane scene and it's the best part of the film however it is revealed at the end that Tony Stark wasn't in the suit as a lorry hits the suit when he is flying away and it breaks into a million pieces. This brings up two problems as it cheapens the scene as all Tony was doing was sitting in a room and just controlling through a head set. Also in the first movie the Iron Man Armour took a tank missile and didn't break, in the second movie it took Whiplash's electric whips and didn't break, in the Avengers it took Thor's Lightning and didn't break, in this movie a lorry breaks it. All the suits in this film are terrible it's like they're made out of tissues and paper plates. They also fake our Pepper dying which is just pointless. Ty Simpkins (the kid from Insidious) is in the film and while he's good he fairly pointless and slows down the movie. I also think Killian is a terrible villain, he's very unthreatening and has awful motivation. I also hate how when he finally gets a bit badass and yells 'I am the mandarin' he's immediately hit off screen and killed a by Pepper. Tony has anxiety T the start of the movie however it's suddenly forgotten about half way through. I also feel they tried to wrap up this film to neatly, with Iron Man blowing up all his suits and being able to fix himself. You see Shane Black directed this film well however it feels like he wanted to make a action comedy movie with Robert Downey Jr and then had to put Iron Man in it, because as a buddy comedy movie this works, as an Iron Man movie it doesn't. The Unfortunately there are a lot of flaws and it's definatley one of the weakest marvel movies. I will say it's better than Iron Man 2 and Thor the Dark World, but it's nowhere near perfect. However it made.a lot of money. See it if you want but there are so many Marvel movies better than it. B-.