Iron Man 3 is a 2013 production from Marvel Studios. The movie is directed by Shane Black, who also co-wrote it together with Drew Pearce. The screenplays star, of course, Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr. himself, together with numerous other actors, a few returning from earlier iterations and some new. These include Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce and John Favreau. The movie currently sits at 7.1/10 stars on IMDb and scores a 62 Metascore.
A Summary
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) has plunged himself into his work after facing anxiety issues due to the events in New York during The Avengers. Meanwhile, the United States is facing a new threat, a terrorist by the name ‘The Mandarin’. He believes the US war methods are inhumane and therefore wants to give them some payback trough numerous bombings.
Since Tony made Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) the CEO of Stark Industries, she has to take the meetings with industry leaders and new visionaries. One of these is Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), who tells Pepper about his think thank ‘Advanced Idea Mechanics’ and their newest experiment called ‘Extremis’. It uses the brain’s previously unused parts to change human DNA. The new head of security at Stark Industries, Happy Hogan (John Favreau), tells Tony about this meeting as Killian is someone they met 13 years earlier at a science conference.
Back in 1999, Killian wanted to speak with Tony about his ideas, but Tony let him wait on the roof, only to never show up. A then geeky and stumbling guy has turned into a sleek businessman, with no disability. Happy doesn’t trust the situation and decides to follow one of Killian’s guards. However, Happy gets caught up in the next bombing as the guards gave someone a device to inject in himself, which let the man explode.
Happy is left in a coma after the bombing as Tony goes to visit him in the hospital. When he leaves the hospital, he declares that he will kill the Mandarin, the man behind this attack. Maybe not the best idea as Tony gets attacked by three choppers armed with rockets. His house gets blown up, but Pepper, a guest and Tony all manage to survive, barely. Tony passes out as JARVIS flies his suit to Tennessee, a flight plan that they planned just before the attack.
The MK42 Iron Man suit has no power left after this flight and Tony is forced to carry it to a nearby city. There he meets a kid who helps him fix his suit and carry out an investigation into an earlier bombing in this city. That investigation gets abruptly stopped when Killian’s acquaintances arrive, trying to kill Tony with their overheating powers. They escape and Tony leaves for the location where the Mandarin broadcasts are happening, in Miami, Florida.
In the meantime the US army has been trying to find the Mandarin as Colonel Rhodes (Don Cheadle) has visited numerous sweatshops in the Middle East as the Iron Patriot. At one of them, he gets caught by surprise and he gets captured by one of Killian’s, giving them access to his suit.
Tony finds the Mandarin in Miami, but it turns out he is just an actor, a front for the operations. Tony, Rhodes and Pepper are all captured by Killian at this point. Pepper even gets infused with the experimental treatment to give Tony an incentive to work together with Killian. Firstly, Tony escapes by summoning his MK42 suit from the kid’s garage in Tennessee. He frees Rhodes and they find out about Killian’s plans, he will use the Iron Patriot suit to enter the President’s plane and take him captive.
The MK42 suit is not at full power, but he manages to take out Killian’s acquaintance aboard the plane, too late to save the president though. Several employees fall out of the plane and are saved by Tony. After that successful save, Tony gets hit by a truck and his suit falls apart. They find out that Killian intends to kill the President aboard a container ship on live television and head there immediately.
Tony, without a suit, enacts the ‘House Party Protocol’ which summons all of Tony’s previous Iron Man suits, forming a whole army of Iron Man suits. Rhodes saves the President, while Tony tries to save Pepper, but she falls 200 feet down into a sea of fire. Meantime, Tony needs to take of Killian, who proves a real challenge against Tony and his suits, destroying multiple during their fight.
Remember that Pepper got the experimental injections as well? Turns out they worked as Pepper walks out of the fire and finishes Killian, right before he can kill Tony. After that Tony lets all his suits explode, proving his dedication to Pepper, who thinks Tony has been working too much lately. During the ending, we get a voice-over from Tony, telling us how he cured Pepper of the overheating and himself from the shrapnel near his heart. He also gets the kid a few gifts.
The Story
Tony has grown throughout his last three movie appearances to an American idol. Incredibly famous, but he has scars. I like how they don’t skip over that fact. During events of The Avengers, he flew into a closing portal to another galaxy, to make sure an atomic bomb doesn’t blow up New York. Such an event should have a huge impact on any human being and the writers have done an excellent job of showing that struggle.
I was less intrigued by the antagonist. While Killian does have an interesting weapon alongside a new approach to the whole villain thing, his intentions and backstory do lack. Tony turned down an opportunity to speak with him and let him wait on a roof for a few hours. That supposedly turned him into an evil mastermind who wants to take control of the world. They address his thoughts on that roof during a scene in the movie, but I feel like that only made it worse. He says some philosophical lines that don’t make any sense and poof, a geeky, shy man becomes dead set on becoming a successful business owner and evil mastermind.
Tony’s relationship with Pepper also proves to be a challenge for both of them. During the first two movies their romance was building, but now they’re in a committed relationship and need to act like it. I think the movie did a nice job of showing their dynamics. Tony hasn’t changed over the years, apart from his panic attacks, he still has a large ego and seems to care more about himself than anybody else. However, he tries his hardest to be a good boyfriend, buying a giant rabbit as a Christmas gift. You can see that Pepper also tries to make the most of this relationship, while she sure does have moments where she isn’t happy with how it’s going.
The Characters
Tony Stark / Iron Man
As I said before, the movie did a great job of acknowledging and handling Tony’s fears. He has been through some tough situations and that is shown. Those experiences make him the man he is today and as Tony learns to accept it, you see him grow to be a better man. He still has lots of moments where you think: ‘Go to Pepper!’ or ‘Listen to Happy!’ However, when it comes down to it, he is there for them.
I do have a major complaint though. At the end of the movie, Tony tells us that the shrapnel near his heart has been removed. Why would you write that in or why does he only do it now? Apparently, he was able to do something that made doctors able to heal him. We’ve just seen Tony spent entires days on end, without sleep, working. Why would he not figure out his shrapnel problem before making 42 new Iron Man suits? As a writer’s decision, I don’t understand it either. The arc reactor in his body made him who he was to me. I don’t see any reason to take that away as it isn’t a major problem for him to wear the arc reactor around. Now it seems like he is back to being Tony Stark before the events of the first Iron Man movie.
Aldrich Killian
The man behind The Mandarin. He met Tony twelve years before the events in the movie. Tony stood him up, probably because he looked too desperate for his attention. Somehow that single event set his life on a completely different path. He turned from a bit of a weird geek to a sleek man with the money, nice hair, suits and all. To me, this seems a bit far-fetched. How does he manage to make such a turn in his life and all because he was stood up by Tony Stark? It takes away from his character and therefore the story of the movie. Using another man as the face of his campaign of terror does make for an interesting situation. Alongside his burning body serum, he does make for an ok villain.
The Production
As we already know by now, the Marvel Cinematic Universe always delivers on production value. These big-budget blockbuster movies are expected to push the boundaries of film making for their time. Iron Man 3 also delivers on that front. Featuring an insane battle with tons of Iron Man suits flying around, helping out where they can. All while trying, but not succeeding, to not blow up a container ship.
All the suits flying to the rescue as well as the attack on Tony’s home are to me some fine pieces of production.