Nerd Movie Reviews

Iron Man 3 Review

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I know the new trend is to inject products into media in order to offset the fact that no one bothers to watch commercials anymore, but the product placement for these companies in this movie is pretty rampant.  Given the fact that this film is destined to probably make a billion dollars from ticket sales it strikes me as a little on the greedy side and honestly denigrates the quality of this film.

That aside, I tremendously enjoyed this film last night.  Granted I am a huge comic book movie, Iron Man, and Marvel fan, which tends to make me more forgiving of film elements that are less than optimal.  There were parts of this film that danced dangerously close to the edge of the suck cliff and were I less well disposed towards the franchise I might have happily pushed it over (or, depending on how you feel about me or my reviews, pulled it in.  Marvel logo courtesy of the Marvel Comic T Shirt category).

The third movie in a trilogy is rarely the best.  Normally the series tends to have a killer first movie followed by crap (the Matrix, the Hangover, Robocop) or it has a mediocre first one but enjoys a rebirth with a better sequel (Star Trek).  In most cases you get a couple decent ones and then the creativity pump runs dry for the third (Spider Man, Star Wars, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Godfather, Mad Max) or later.

I honestly don’t know what happens.  Maybe we the audience just get jaded and the characters become blase?  Perhaps they literally burn up all their cool ideas in the first couple movies and leave you with ideas lifted from the land of lame or just retreads of old hats?  Something is running on fumes, resulting in most third movies sucking.

The point is Iron Man bucks this trend by having a movie that is way better than the second film, but not quite a good as the first.  This is actually a rousing endorsement as 80% of the first film still puts this movie way ahead of the movie pack.  It is fun, exciting, visually stimulating, and has Robert Downey Jr. playing his best role ever as Tony Stark.

Again, not flawless and on a less happy day I might harp on these things in more detail.  Throughout most of the film I kept asking “What is the villains actual plan?  What does he hope to accomplish with his terrorism plot?”  This is the sort of question one hopes to have resolved by the end of the movie but it is pretty much ignored.  As far as I can tell the villain is motivated by the fact that he is an a-hole and in order to give Iron Man a reason to kick ass.

The film also almost pushed itself off the cliff by introducing a cute kid sidekick.  I blame Disney for this and in most cases this is a sure indication of suckitude.  However, I will give the director Shane Black (who did Lethal Weapon 1 and 2, BTW) credit for making this kid actually add to the film rather than anchor it down.  He was kind of funny and they didn’t have him do something stupid like ninja kick some adult in the face.  Also Tony Stark’s interaction with him was hilarious, and the kid they cast actually has some acting talent (Ty Simpkins-Insidious, the Next Three Days, Little Children).

The story.  I am not going to get too deep into this as I expect you all to see this film anyway.  Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr-Iron Man, the Avengers, Sherlock Holmes) is working on more an more suits while haunted by memories of his extremely near death experience at the end of the Avengers and is suffering from massive insomnia.  Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow-Contagion, Thanks for Sharing, The Avengers) runs his company but now lives with Tony.  A guy Tony treated badly in 1999 Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce-Momento, Hurt Locker, Prometheus) now has his own think tank and wants to partner up with Stark Industries.  Pepper passes on moral grounds.

Meanwhile, the news is full of coverage of bombings by a terrorist called the Mandarin who blows people up in the advancement of something(?).  His trick is there is never a trace of the bomb components after the explosion.  He blows up Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood and managed to catch long time Stark employee and friend Happy (John Favreau-Swingers, Made, Iron Man).  Tony challenges the Mandarin who responds by blowing up his house.  Tony has to save Pepper and an ex one night stand super hot scientist (this is the part where I get frustrated with my life) Maya (Rebecca Hall-the Prestige, The Town, Dorian Gray).  He gets beat up and knocked unconscious and ends up in the town where the first explosion happened (somehow.  Jarvis sent him there based on the last flight plan programmed but really it was to make up for a lack of connecting plot devices).

There he meets the kid Harley who helps him rebuild the suit and find out some information regarding the first bombing.  He then gets attacked by a couple henchmen who have red glowing heat healing power (still not sure what that was about.  They really didn’t bother to explain it.  Red glow=melt steel, super strong, and heal anything.  For the record the main henchman was James Badge Dale-the Grey, Shame, the Departed and his assistant was Stephanie Szostak-the Devil Wears Prada, Dinner for Schmucks, We Bought a Zoo).

At this point going much further would kind of spoil things so I won’t.  Pepper gets kidnapped.  Tony has to rescue her.  We meet the Mandarin played brilliantly by the great Ben Kingsley (Ghandi, Sexy Beast, Hugo).  Stuff starts blowing up, Jarvis does a lot of the action heavy lifting, and Tony gets to show off a bunch of the new suits he has been creating.

The Stars:

Comic book movie.  Two stars.  Great action.  Two stars.  Flawless CGI and effects.  Two stars.  Excellent acting all around, even the kid.  Two stars.  If Rebecca Hall ever wants to give up the acting life and marry a guy who sells t-shirts and reviews films she should call me.  Heartbreaker.  Gwyneth is easy to look at too.  One star.  While they were kind of lacking in motivation all the villains were super bad ass and cool.  One star.  Pacing was excellent for a long movie.  One star.  Some of the suit dynamics and choreography they worked out was really cool, even War Machine.  One star.  Overall a fun, exciting movie.  Two stars.  Total: Fourteen stars.

The Black Holes:

While the action was cool, it labored under the burden of PG-13 (Disney style PG-13) like a man with massive elephantitis of the testicles.  One black hole.  The confusion surrounding what the villains hoped to accomplish drained a lot of the believability from the plot.  Being evil for evil’s sake does not enhance a movie villain.  One black hole.  While the movie was long (130 minutes) there were a lot of missing connective scenes.  You could almost see the directors hand gently pushing the plot along.  One black hole.  I am going to hit this movie for the fact that the trailers (which as a reviewer I have seen about 40 times.  No joke) included a lot of scenes that indicated really cool angst or desperation from Stark but when you got to them in the film they were a lot more trivial.  There was a lack of motivation for them.  The scene where Tony is dragging his suit through the snow could have been fixed had he made one phone call to any of the thousands of Stark employees, and they never established why he didn’t want to make that call.  One black hole.  This is about as petty as I can get, but at one point Tony has a blood stain dripping from his left eye.  However, in a scene a few seconds later it’s on his right side.  Then, one more scene later it’s on his left again.  I’m willing to put this on the editor for reversing the image, but you would expect a film with a $200 million budget to hire a continuity checker.  One black hole.  Finally, product placement a go go.  One black hole.  Total: Six black holes.

A grand total of eight stars and my recommendation that you see this film.  You will enjoy the heck out of it.  See it on a big screen or you will lose a lot of the visual appeal.  A good film, but if you are looking for my vote for best sci fi film so far this year I am still going to go with Oblivion.  It had a plot symmetry that this film lacks.  Date movie?  Sure.  However, if your date gets turned on by Robert Downey Jr. be sure to grow a goatee beforehand in order to take advantage of her mental state afterwards.  Bathroom break?  There is a scene where Pepper is talking to Maya on a bed in a hotel room that could be missed with impunity about 2/3rds of the way through.  I’d try to hold it if you can however.  You don’t want to miss much of this.

Thanks for reading.  Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu.  Post comments on this review or movie here.  If you have off topic questions or suggestions feel free to email me at [email protected].  Talk to you soon.

Dave

Tags: Iron Man 3 Review, Marvel Comics T Shirts