Movie Review: “Iron Man 3”

Bringing in the same actors as the last couple of movies, and of course, adding a couple like Kingsley, Pearce, and Hall being brought in to play some of the more primary roles, this certainly seemed like a fine sequel to the Iron Man movies. Although, after the release of Iron Man 2, the director decided not to return and in-response, Shane Black was brought in to direct the movie. Perhaps best known for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, you can certainly see a change in cinematography from this movie.

The movie seems more explosive and more expensive, albeit at the same time seeming much sillier. The score for this movie didn’t feel all that right at times, in-fact, it was sometimes bizarre, and that, along with some of the action-scenes, made this seem more like a secret agent film than a superhero film at times.

I don’t mean for it to come across as inexplicably negative, but when everyone was anticipating this movie, I was probably among the most hyped and excited for it. I wasn’t expecting something better than Iron Man 2, I was expecting something up there with The Dark Knight or The Avengers, I thought that the cards had finally fell into place in a way that would allow for Iron Man to start bringing in some great movies of his own.

Although, he had already done that with the first Iron Man movie.

The point is that I was excited for this movie, and what I got wasn’t the caliber of what I was expecting, but something seeming about the same as Iron Man 2. The story tells us that Tony Stark remains intellectually obliterated from the results of being in the wormhole and because of this, he has anxiety attacks. The anxiety attacks are some of the most over-the-top and unrealistic portrayals that I’ve seen in a movie with him supposedly being tormented and yet, he makes a couple of jokes, and then suddenly he’s fine and ready. Anyway, meanwhile there’s an individual named the Mandarin who runs a terrorist group, in a flashback, Tony Stark recalls meeting a scientist names Maya Hansen, inventor of an experimental regenerative treatment and meets a crippled scientist named Aldrich Killian.

The story unfolds from there, the pieces being arranged in whichever way that they’re arranged, and let me just say that the antagonist-side of this movie is atrocious. I am not only talking about what they did with the Mandarin which I consider to be a middle-finger to the comic-book fans, because I don’t really care too much about that as long as it’s done well, which is wasn’t. I thought that the idea was kind-of unique and different, refreshing and ballsy, but the movie went too far with it.

The movie is riddled with flaws and one of them happens to be Robert Downey Jr. himself. Now, let me just say this, I think Robert is perhaps one of the most gifted actors in all the land when it comes to his humor, and by the way, he’s absolutely hilarious in this movie. However, unlike the first Iron Man movie, I don’t believe he was able to mesh in the emotion as well as he needed for it to work.

Robert Downey Jr. never really brought the emotion to the point that I wanted him to. The anxiety-attacks were poorly done, but there’s also a scene towards the conclusion of the movie where he thinks that something very bad happened and yet, instead of getting angry, and instead of crying, he remained as the same guy that he was before it happened.

I don’t think it’d be reasonable for the character to be broken-up, but maybe lose himself a little bit, and get angry, but that never happened.

He does, however, remain as being the same witty, confident, charismatic, and brilliant character that he was in the previous installments but the time had come for something more with the Iron Man character, and we didn’t really get it.

The movie was based entirely too much off of comedy, and while, it was most certainly enjoyable to see in theaters, hilarious even, it wasn’t what this character needed and it wasn’t a very good movie. The action-scenes were awesome, like toward the end where Tony Stark is basically pretending to be the hot-potato, jumping from Iron Man costume to Iron Man costume in the air.

In-conclusion, I don’t think that I have ever walked out of the movie theater with as much disappointment as I had after seeing this movie.

I’m not saying that it was a bad movie, rather, I’m saying that it wasn’t a great movie, which is what I was expecting.

The movie’s funny, it’s entertaining, and even a little sentimental, but that all comes at the expense of what I wanted it to be.