Review: Iron Man 3

I had very high hopes for Iron Man 3, considering Marvel brought in Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, The Long Kiss Goodnight) to write and direct the film.  I also had hoped for a more stand-alone story this time around, considering Marvel's Phase One had wrapped up with last year's The Avengers, leaving the main characters to be on their own for their next adventures before Avengers 2 arrives in 2015.

Let me also say for the record that I was completely disappointed with Iron Man 2.  I thought the story had little to no focus and the dialogue felt almost completely ad-libbed from start to finish.  The entire movie was deliberately designed to set the stage for The Avengers with introducing Black Widow and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D., leaving very little for actual Iron Man action (save the finale).

Having said all that, Iron Man 3 is quite an enigma.  There's a lot that I loved about the movie, but there's a crucial story element that really annoyed me.  Unfortunately that means spoiling a major plot twist in the movie later in this review, so be warned.

The film opens in 1999 on New Year's Eve.  Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) is partying it up, and during the course of the evening, he meets Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce, looking like Val Kilmer in The Doors).  Killian has a crazy idea that catches Stark's interest, but Tony blows him off in typical Tony fashion.

Fast forward to present day.  Tony is still dealing with the toll of The Avengers, finding himself unable to sleep at night.  His only venue to distract himself is to continue building more suits while his girlfriend Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) runs Stark Enterprises.  When the U.S. finds itself under attack from a series of terrorist bombings by a man who calls himself The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), Tony wants in on the action.

Tony finds himself on his own midway through the film, with no gadgets or backup to help him.  This is arguably the best stuff in the film, even superior to the action sequences (which are impressive themselves).  Tony has been shown to be incredibly resourceful and intelligent, which hasn't really been since the first Iron Man.  Here, he's got real detective work to do in finding the Mandarin and piecing together the clues he finds along the way.  There's a funny scene of him running through a Home Depot and filling his shopping carts with all sorts of random items that he eventually uses to break into the Mandarin's hideout.  He's a 21st century MacGyver.

Speaking of that break-in, that brings me to the major plot twist in the film that really annoyed me.  If you haven't already seen the film and don't want to be spoiled, skip ahead a bit to avoid what I'm about to discuss.

***SPOILER ALERT***

Eventually Tony finds out that the Mandarin isn't a real guy at all.  He's a persona, a phony character created by the real villain of the film, Killian.  Killian wanted to create the Mandarin as a face for the U.S. to hunt down as a distraction so he can further his own agenda.  There are two major flaws with this twist, one from the source comic book material and the other being from the first Iron Man film.

I'm only vaguely familiar with the comic book, but I know enough about it to know the Mandarin is Iron Man's arch nemesis, much like the Joker is to Batman.  I don't normally mind changes from source material to film, but this idea really undermines the nature of the character.  The first half of the film is stellar in how the Mandarin sets up one attack after another, and such a change undermines all the tension and build up that came before it.  I normally like having the rug pulled out under me with a great plot twist, but this one doesn't fit with the rest of the film.

Second, this twist doesn't make sense when taking into the first Iron Man into account.  When Tony was kidnapped and ordered to build a Jericho missile for a terrorist group, those men were part of the Ten Rings.  The Ten Rings were sworn followers of the Mandarin.  All the bad guys in Iron Man 3 were Killian's henchmen, so unless the Ten Rings from the first film also worked for Killian (which might actually make some sense, given Killian's rivalry with Tony), the connection doesn't work.

***END SPOILER ALERT***

In spite of the plot twist failure, the first half of the film is really excellent, and there's a much stronger story being told here than Iron Man 2.  Shane Black also understands the concept of maximizing excitement from a few action sequences.  An Iron Man movie doesn't need nonstop action, only three or four big sequences to show off the suits.  There's also a good amount of comedy to break the tension of the film, which is to be expected from a Shane Black script.  Overall, I'd say this is a big step up from Iron Man 2, but not quite as good as the first Iron Man.