Review of Iron Man 3 (2013) by Firesparks241 — 04 May 2013

Personally, this was my favorite installment of the Iron Man franchise. Does it feel like an Iron Man movie? Not really.Is it darker than the first two? Yes.

Iron Man 3 is definitely "A Shane Black Movie" rather than "A Marvel Movie" as his trademarks are "All over* this, but I enjoyed it a lot. I've seen other reviews that disliked the fact that it was so heavy and serious, but I have to disagree with that crowd, even though I can understand where they're coming from. The words "Dark and serious" mixed with "Superhero" don't exactly make sense. These types of movies are supposed to be relatively light and filled with nifty action sequences.

But if there's one character in the Marvel Universe that deserves to have the darker side of his story told; it's Tony Stark. They attempted to do so in Iron Man 2 with the hints of alcoholism and impending death, but failed---miserably in my opinion. With Iron Man 3, we get more into the modern day comics (Namely Matt Fraction's first few volumes of The Invincible Iron Man and Warren Ellis' beautifully written Extremis arc).

Again, I've seen reviews that didn't like the tone of the film, but I loved it! I liked the fact that we get to see Tony broken and vulnerable. It proves that, even though he's a superhero with awesome tech, he still still struggles with anxiety, guilt and other things like a "normal" person does. It humanizes him and given what he went through in "The Avengers", I found it to be a welcome change. I'm really happy that they chose to deal with his issues directly rather than sweeping them under the rug and forgetting about them altogether. We see Tony dealing with these issues and feelings all the time in the comics, so why not try it out on the screen?

As for it not following the comics: This is one *Major* gripe I've seen people have with the movie. I'll admit, I thought the plot would focus more heavily on the Extremis virus and how Tony integrates it into himself than it did, but it didn't really bother me too much. The thing I think people are most disappointed in (But nobody is brave enough to say) is both "The Twist" with the Mandarin (which has plenty of critics, but I think the real reason for the disappointment is with Extremis) and the fact that when the word "Extremis" was uttered, everyone thought they'd be getting something closer to Warren Ellis' storyline and they didn't.

About the only thing that bothered me was the use of flashbacks because it messed with the whole cinematic timeline of Iron Man as we know him, so there are a number of plotholes and inconsistencies throughout and if you're a die hard Iron Man comic person, that'll drive you crazy.

However, I still found it to be really enjoyable, plotholes and all. It's a fun and entertaining movie and in my view a great way to get the summer started! So if you can live with the fact there are plotholes and just have fun with it, it's a great movie.