Movie Review: Iron Man 3 (2013)

    Spoilers!

    Sometimes success can be far worse than failure. Let us look at Robert Downey, Jr: he found great success very early on in his career, lived in excess of that success and was almost swallowed whole as a result. Then while on the comeback train, RDJ got probably his biggest success yet in landing the lead role in Iron Man - a truly amazing performance that put him on the map all over again. Fortunately, this success didn’t send him spiraling back into old habits, but it too came with a price. All of a sudden Downey became the go-to guy for charming, egotistical weirdoes; Tony Stark transformed from a performance into schtick. Iron Man 2 was the absolute nadir of this, as Downey gave up the careful tone between playful and serious for full-on yuks and mugging at the camera. It’s to the actor’s credit though that he brings it all around full-circle for this third Iron Man outing - once again imbuing Tony Stark with the swagger, vulnerability, humor and all-around humanity that made us fall in love with him in the first place.   

    Replacing Jon Favreau in the director’s seat is Shane Black, once the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood and director of the modern masterpiece Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, which also starred Downey. I don’t want to undersell Favreau’s contribution; the first Iron Man was important on many different levels - setting up not just one franchise, but a whole cinematic universe - but Black nails it here about as hard as Whedon nailed The Avengers, and more than makes up for Iron Man 2’s rushed and unfocused advertisement of a movie. Working with co-screenwriter Drew Pearce, Black gives us the next evolution of the character, building wonderfully off his previous adventures. It turns out that although he’s saved the world from an alien invasion and is living the dream with his one-true love, Tony Stark still has serious issues. His experiences in New York have left him reeling from increasingly frequent anxiety attacks and sleepless nights, and to compensate he’s spent all of his time building new Iron Man armors for every eventual possibility. To make matters worse, his best friend Happy Hogan has just gotten caught in an terrorist act by the new uber-baddie The Mandarin, who routinely hacks into news feeds across the world and spreads fear and panic throughout the land.

    Downey owns the movie hook, line and sinker, but it’s the supporting cast who have routinely provided the series with most of its charm. Gwyneth Paltrow returns as Iron Man’s long-suffering girlfriend Pepper Potts, and we get to see the actress really get involved in the action here… In more ways than one. The scattershot nature of the plot means that Pepper disappears for a good stretch and becomes something of a damsel-in-distress, but the rest of her scenes are so kickass, it more than makes up for the character‘s shortcomings. Don Cheadle reprises his role as Rhodey, who’s given the War Machine suit a paint job and is now going by the name Iron Patriot (which Stark amusingly notes it not nearly as cool-sounding). I would have liked to see the character more involved, but when he and Stark join up at the end for a mini-Shane Black “buddy cop” scene, I was more than satisfied. And although he’s not calling the shots on set anymore, Favreau shows up again as Happy Hogan, in a slightly expanded role that shows off the actor’s wonderful comedic chops.

    The main villain for this outing is Sir Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin, and it’s here that Black and co. make a decision that will likely make Iron Man purists run screaming from the theatres in a rage. Because, you see, it turns out there is no Mandarin - he’s a boogeyman invented by the real baddie behind the scenes, Aldrich Killian and his AIM Industries. It’s a bold choice, as Iron Man’s de facto nemesis in the comics has always been The Mandarin, a would-be Ghengis Khan with ten magic rings and an appetite for world domination. The film sets him up as a sort of sub-Bin Laden, a devious mastermind who’s terroristic plots leave everyone shaking in front of their television sets. But we’ve seen this character before (Ledger’s Joker, Javier Bardem in Skyfall (and we’ll be seeing it again with Benedict Cumberbatch in the new Star Trek)), so the subversion comes as a most welcome twist to the superhero movie - and Kingsley would wind up being the best thing in the movie if only he had a few more scenes. As The Mandarin, Kingsley generates the perfect amount of menace while delivering speeches of America’s hypocrisy; perfectly encapsulating everything we fear in this modern age. But as Trevor Slattery, the bumbling, drug-addled actor hired to play The Mandarin for Killian’s TV spots, Kingsley really gets to let loose and delivers some of the film’s funniest bits. It’s somewhat understandable that some might feel disappointed by the portrayal, as the previous two films featured the Ten Rings organization and seemed to be building up to the Mandarin’s reveal*, but the twist was handled so well here I could do nothing but applaud the filmmakers’ efforts.

    Guy Pearce plays the real villain Aldrich Killian, and although the character ultimately amounts to a villain from some DTV action movie from the nineties, I found myself greatly enjoying Pearce’s performance. It’s also tied nicely into Stark’s story, where the demons of his past return to haunt him. You see, we find out that Killian was a nerdy, admiring scientist that Tony blew off in his earlier wild and carefree days, who in the meantime has built himself his own technological empire and is looking for revenge on those who wronged him. He does this by enlisting the aid of Maya Hansen, a botanist who Tony beds the same night he shuns Killian, and who also has some radical designs for a drug that can accelerate human biology. This is Extremis, and Killian has developed it to weaponize human beings (as well as himself), either giving them superpowers or turning them into human bombs. The film tries to set up Hansen as a main player, but the character never really gels - she never quite fits in the past-coming-back-to-bite-him-in-the-ass mode like Killian does, but I suppose that would have been one subplot too many in a film that's already quite packed. I did like that the character remained fairly ambiguous until the end, straddling the lines between good and evil. Faring a little better is James Badge Dale, who makes a big impression in an ultimately small role as one of Killian’s Extremis-enhanced henchmen, stealing many of the scenes he’s in. And as an aside, if the film gives us nothing else, it’s the image of a fire-breathing Guy Pearce - a sight which is worth the price of admission alone.

    It’s important to note that while the story deals with some dark, heavy subject matter, the film is never gloomy or oppressive. Tony Stark is dealing with some serious issues, but at the end of the day he’s still got the zippy one-liners we’ve come to love. And although he spends most of the movie out of the armor, it’s not likely many audience members will miss it, as watching Stark rebuild himself from the ground up is far more rewarding (and there’s still plenty of armored suit antics to keep the ADHD crowd satisfied). The movie shines best when Stark’s at his lowest, hiding out in Tennessee and meeting up with a young kid (played by Ty Sempkins) who’s something of an inventor himself. This is where having Shane Black behind the lens helps the film immeasurably - for just about any other filmmaker, these scenes would be unbearably saccharine (nothing hits the death nail into a franchise like a precocious kid), but Black turns it into a thing of beauty. There is an undeniable sweetness to their relationship, but Stark doesn’t get all teary-eyed when the kid tells him his tragic backstory (“Sometimes dad’s leave. Don’t be a pussy about it.”) and the banter between the two is classic Shane Black. Even more important than that, the kid winds up being incredibly important to Tony’s evolution as a character - coming along at just the moment when Tony needs a friend the most.

    And the action - suffice to say, this is easily the most action-packed installment in the series… And that’s even considering the long stretches that go by without Stark in the suit. Taking away what gives Tony Stark his advantage proves extremely beneficial to the film, and provides the film with its most exciting moments - such as when Tony storms The Mandarin’s lair with a bunch of weaponry made from toys and Home Depot supplies, or when he’s forced to fight his way through a bunch of goons with nothing but a single armored glove and boot. It’s exhilarating stuff, but when Tony finally gets his armor back, the scenes just escalate, resulting in possibly one of the best superhero scenes ever put to film when Tony has to save thirteen people in freefall. The only moment where the action stumbles is the final scene, which features forty Iron Man armors facing off with nearly as many Extremis-enhanced bodyguards. It’s a great idea, but ultimately is too chaotic to be completely successful; although it does feature the rather cool bit of Tony jumping from suit to suit as each takes on more and more damage. But more important than the amazing digital effects and the sheer visceral thrill, each action scene both builds and grows out of character; perfectly punctuating Tony’s arc as he evolves through the movie.

    So, Iron Man 3 is another home run for Marvel, and for Shane Black, who hopefully can ride this success into the directorial career promised to us by Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. But the question remains: is this Tony Stark’s swan song? The film ends with him giving up all of his armor, as well as the shrapnel embedded in his chest responsible for this whole hero business in the first place. It’s easy to see how this could be the end of Stark’s journey, but it’s equally as easy to see them continuing the character on through another path of his life… But I guess that all depends on how the rather public negotiations of Downey’s contract with Marvel end up. Regardless of his future, Robert Downey, Jr. created a seminal movie character, played across five different films for over half a decade. For that alone we should be grateful.


    * The film’s depiction of The Mandarin does create something of a continuity conundrum with the previous films - the Ten Rings were the organization responsible for kidnapping Tony Stark in the first place - but we can assume that Killian has been behind the organization since the beginning. Which fits rather well, considering that Killian has apparently devoted his whole life to mucking up Tony Stark’s own.