As my summer movie list becomes longer than the number of days in summer, I start to wonder how Phineas and Ferb get everything done. But yesterday I did manage to see both Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness, and I loved both of them.
I know. And honestly, I had high hopes. Iron Man 2 was… forgettable, and Marvel/Disney had a lot to live up to in this post-Avengers period of their superhero films. Seeing as this was the first one since Avengers, they set the film up with a sort of existential crisis that Tony Stark is having after going through the vortex. At points it was heavy handed but in general it gave the emotional depth the film needed to keep from being boring and uninvolved. And I want to give a huge amount of credit for the film’s success to Robert Downey Jr.
We just love Tony Stark. He’s egotistical, superficial, but dangerously intelligent and very loving towards Pepper. His cynicism and sarcastic quips make him hilarious to watch and lift the story beyond just another superhero film. And in one summer with almost five superhero films (Iron Man 3, Thor 2, Man of Steel, Wolverine, technically Percy Jackson 2…), each movie needs to do everything in its power to stand out.
And Iron Man 3 definitely had its clichéd superhero movie moments, but it did them with an originality that I think comes form Tony Stark’s “I don’t really know what I’m doing but I actually have a plan” kind of attitude. He always seems to be outnumbered, or outsmarted, but then suddenly he’ll whip out 40 plus Iron Man suits that run without human bodies and can fight as a little army for him.
And you can’t help but geek out a little when all of the suits are revealed. Because you realize that no one can beat Tony Stark, he’s just TOO good. I just did this in the theater at this scene.
The film is told as a story, where Tony Stark reflects on his mistake he made in 1999, when he didn’t join up with a (mad)scientist who wanted to genetically engineer super humans that could regenerate their bodies after injuries. The plot is familiar (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Captain America, Star Trek Into Darkness), but Iron Man 3 made it complicated, it made it confusing. And it certainly tested Tony Stark in a way that I think the other two movies failed to. In Iron Man 1, he has to build the suit to survive, and then has to fight an even bigger version of the suit. In Iron Man 2… (to Wikipedia!) Iron Man has to figure out how to find Vanka and eventually has to fight a bunch of drones before fighting Vanka in his own arc-powered suit. But this one didn’t involve a villain getting his hands on an Iron Man suit, but a villain that almost took Stark down with terrorism and going for what matters, Pepper Potts.
Not only did Stark have serious PTSD, but it also went into the subplot of how Tony Stark saw himself, as just a filling for the Iron Man suit, or as a man simply wearing a suit of armor. This movie is about Tony Stark understanding who he is and where Iron Man plays into that being, which is what makes the ending so perfect. The film is exciting, hilarious, and this review isn’t doing it justice at all. Everyone should go see it.
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