Movie Review: Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3 [2013]

Okay, this movie... it's a weird one, huh? It's branded as the first movie of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's "Phase Two", although it honestly feels more like an epilogue to "Phase One", rounding out perhaps the sequence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that features Tony Stark as its heart and soul. And this movie is... it's honestly a weird one. It's probably one of the more 'episodic' movies in the MCU, and while we do get a lot of great acting moments, it's also probably the one that you could remove from the MCU lineup and don't really change a whole ton. And this movie is, as I gather, originally written as a possible 'out' in case actor Robert Downey Jr. decided to not continue with the rest of the MCU. Obviously he stuck around for much longer, but I remembered back in 2013 when the Avengers were just starting off and the marketing around Iron Man 3 skirted around the question of whether Tony Stark would remain with the rest of the MCU. 

I also remember this movie as being one that I really enjoyed when I first watched it in the theatres, but my opinion about it really kind of waned over the years. And unlike most of my MCU reviews, I think I'll just rip the band-aid off at the beginning of the episode -- it's the Mandarin twist. Now, I'm writing this in 2021, where we have the very welcome revelation that, hey, all the Mandarin in this movie is a huge impostor. We had the DVD short All Hail the King that revealed that a real, proper Mandarin exists, which finally shows up in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. And that's awesome. But then there's also the problem of the Mandarin as he's depicted here. I normally don't like to talk about this sort of topic, but the Mandarin stuff is worth noting.

Now the original concept of the Mandarin from the comics is something that's hard to bring into a live-action setting. Obviously you really can't have too much of the yellow peril tropes -- the Mandarin in the comics have been reinvented multiple times over the years into a far less racist character. But, rather obviously, out of fear of offending the Chinese market, they didn't go for a movie showing Tony Stark beating up a Chinese sorcerer in ancient emperor robes. That part's understandable. Hell, even casting the half-Indian Ben Kingsley as the 'Mandarin', and he's sold as a terrorist of ambiguous ethnicity? Okay, an interesting move, and Sir Ben Kingsley is an awesome actor that could definitely make it work. And then turns out that halfway through the movie, Ben Kingsley's Mandarin is "Trevor Slattery", an actor that's hired to play the role of the Mandarin, who's just a figurehead for the real villain of the movie to profit off of.

Which, by the way, is a pretty neat twist. But then turns out that Aldrich Killian walks around yelling that "I AM THE REAL MANDARIN!" at the climax of the movie and... okay, Guy Pearce does a pretty great job at playing Aldrich Killian. He was honestly not the most memorable villain, but the actor did a pretty good job at playing a smarmy businessman-Bond-villain character. But I dunno. The fact that they race-lifted a character called 'The Mandarin' twice is kind of bizarre. And for all the concessions that they did for the Chinese market. Wouldn't a better way to do so be by casting someone ethnically Chinese? It's bizarre. It's like they jump through all of these hoops just to get 'The Mandarin' on screen, but the eventual product is kind of so far removed for the sake of a meta-twist that it ended up really feeling bizarre... and at this point, wouldn't it be better if they had just adapted a character like Ezekiel Stane or something instead? I dunno. 

Toss in the conclusion of the movie that ended with Tony Stark blowing up all of his armours as a grand gesture that he can still be Iron Man without the armour... something that the MCU sort of handwaves quietly as 'he got over it' when Tony shows up not only with a fancy new armour in the next movie. It makes the climax of this movie feel a lot less impactful than it had been in 2013.

That said, though, ignoring all that... the movie is a relatively solid standalone entry. The movie is relatively self-contained while building up to its own plot. We get a brief prologue of douchebag pre-Iron-Man Tony Stark being kind of a jackass to people in a convention in Switzerland, where he meets a bunch of the side-characters that will be relevant in this movie. Scientist Maya Hansen, who is creating a regenerative treatment called Extremis, done on plants; as well as awkward geeky fanboy nerd Aldrich Killian, who is founding a company called Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.). Stark blows off the latter and was pretty rude to the former, though he did help Maya perfect Extremis. 

Then we flash-forward to around half a year after the events of The Avengers, where we move into easily the strongest part of the movie -- Tony Stark's breakdowns. The movie originally was supposed to adapt Tony's comic-book 'Demon in a Bottle' alcoholism storyline, but it was changed into dealing with a lot of PTSD after the whole alien-fighting thing, and this is easily one of the best parts of the movie for me. Too often we jump into these superhero shows (and frankly, most works of fiction) talking about explosions and aliens and superheroes, while in any realistic setting a civilian like Tony that is tossed into such a high-tension situation would be suffering from something like this. As someone who personally had suffered from panic attacks and anxiety, it was pretty surprising and very welcome to see mental health addressed in a huge-budget superhero movie. The panic attack that Tony suffers while signing a picture for a young fan; the obsession that Tony feels as he throws himself into work and obsession in making new models of Iron Man suits, putting some friction in his relationship with Pepper...

And while the middle part of the movie where Tony pals around with the little kid (he's called Harley Keener; I genuinely forgot his name and I watched the movie less than a week before writing this review) I actually do like the sequence in principle. Him bonding with a young geek and being a fatherly figure -- in a way that he thinks Howard never had been to him -- is actually cute. It's just paced so slowly and takes up so long that makes it feel like we probably could've done with a bit less of it. 

There's also a less-obvious underlying theme of Tony thinking that all he can do is be Iron Man. The suit is what put him in the same level as international spy networks, super-soldiers and literal alien gods of thunder. And relatively quickly into the movie, he loses almost everything. His house gets blown and sunk to the bottom of the ocean, his newest suit gets broken, and even faithful old JARVIS is taken offline. And on principle, it's kind of cool to see Tony basically reinvent everything wholesale with his ingenuity and a bunch of MacGyver'd gadgets brought from a 7/11. And that, I guess, makes him feel super-confident that he can be a superhero without being Iron Man... a confidence boost that makes sense for Tony's character development. It's just that, well, we all know that the MCU moved forward with him still being Iron Man, which just kind of makes the ending of this movie pretty weird. 

Anyway, the plot of this movie! A series of bombings is caused by a mysterious terrorist called the Mandarin, who is so far-reaching that he could even put a number into President Warren Ellis' phone. We get some brief sub-plots with James Rhodes being re-branded as America's "Iron Patriot" (a title that's actually associated with Norman Osborn in the comics), while Aldrich Killian tries to talk to CEO Pepper in seeking a deal with AIM. Meanwhile, good ol' Happy Hogan goes off to investigate the bombings and ends up being injured heavily and put into a coma. All this ends up pissing Tony Stark and in the move that everyone who watched this movie agrees is the dumbest thing to do, goads the Mandarin into attacking his home on live television. 

(And since we know that Tony has the 'House Party Protocol' literally in his basement', it's kind of dumb that he never thinks of ordering JARVIS to deploy it).

And attack Tony Stark's home is what the Mandarin does, courtesy of missiles attached to news helicopters. The action scene is pretty cool, actually, with the capabilities of Tony's Mark 42 -- an armour who can split apart into individually flying pieces -- shown in a pretty cool sequence as it rescues Pepper. And at one point JARVIS takes control of a glove to pull Tony out from being buried under rubble. 

But then the unconscious Tony ends up flying on a flight plan and lands in Tennessee, where his armour gives out and we get the aforementioned sub-plot with him befriending little Harley while he continues to investigate the explosions connected to the Mandarin's attacks. I actually do like the reasoning here -- the Mandarin's organization, tied to AIM, has been experimenting on soldiers using the Extremis program to regenerate their limbs... but many of these Extremis subjects end up blowing up when their bodies reacted badly with the Extremis. And the subsequent terrorist speeches by the Mandarin is essentially an elaborate cover-up. 

We get the arrival of several stable Extremis warriors -- Erik Savin and Ellen Brandt -- and their Extremis powers essentially means that they can heat their bodies up and have super-strength. Which... okay, sure, it makes for pretty easy CGI, I imagine. Again, a lot of the actions sequences here basically show off that Tony can be innovative, and he manages to kill Brandt without a suit and escape from Savin. Also, turns out that Maya Hansen, who's hanging out with Pepper, is evil, and she and Aldrich Killian (who also has Extremis powers) kidnap Pepper. Also also, Iron Patriot gets lured into a trap, and AIM basically steals the armour. Again, all the set-up to the Extremis plot is actually pretty well-done!

We get one of the two signature action scenes of the movie at around this point, where Tony Stark, armed in nothing but improvised weaponry, infiltrates the Mandarin's mansion and basically Assassin's Creed's his way and beats up a bunch of goons. Killian captures Stark, and kills Maya Hansen when she starts to get turned ever-so-slightly to Stark's side, and injects Pepper with Extremis. Stark summons his armour, and confronts 'the Mandarin'. Turns out that 'the Mandarin' is a British actor called Trevor Slattery. And... and okay, Sir Ben Kingsley is absolutely hilarious as Trevor. I don't actually have any complaints here. 

Stark and Rhodes escape, and find out that Killian plans to attack President Ellis on Air Force One -- the vice president is an ally of Killian, and would take over to be a puppet leader. We get a rather well-executed creepy scene where Savin, wearing the Iron Patriot armour, basically just infiltrates his way into Air Force One, kidnaps the president, and punches a hole in the airplane. Stark kills Savin with a uni-beam, before we get the elaborate scene of him catching every single person that got jettisoned out of the airplane... I'm not sure whether the 'I will electrify your muscles' excuse would really work, but okay, I'll buy it. 

Then we get the final battle, where Stark and Rhodes arrive in an impounded oil tanker, a pretty cool final battle location. Stark plays his trump card, the House Party Protocol, summoning the rest of his Iron Man suits and... and you know what? It's very, very cool to see all the suits swoop in one by one, facing off against Killian's army of Extremis soldiers. None of the suits really stay on screen for too much, but each of them has a unique design and name (that is really generous to the accompanying toyline and media) and I certainly appreciate that. Tony just swoops in and out of his many many suits as he fights the Extremis soldiers, before eventually getting into a confrontation with Killian and the captive Pepper. 

And... okay. It's an action sequence showing off like thirty-something Iron Man suits with unique designs shooting repulsor blasts at burning super-soldiers on an oil rig. I know the story and acting is more important and this review focuses more on that, but there will always be a small part of me that gets excited over the huge giant robot action scene. 

(Meanwhile, Rhodes frees President Ellis and while Rhodes does get a couple of cool action scenes taking down Extremis soldiers, he really doesn't do anything cool with the Iron Patriot armour, huh?)

Ultimately, we get an action scene of Tony versus Killian, and there's also a brief sequence where Pepper falls down to her seeming death before it's revealed that she survives like ten minutes later. Killian gets killed by Pepper mid-rant, and then we get the infamous finale where Tony blows up all of his suits as a sign of his love. And... and we get an epilogue that basically wraps up everything in the Iron Man movies. The vice president gets arrested; Happy wakes up from his coma; Pepper's Extremis condition gets cured almost off-screen; Tony's whole 'shrapnel around his heart' condition is cured; and Tony drives off into the sunset with the triumphant note that even without his tech and suits, he will always be Iron Man. 

And, overall... I don't know. Iron Man 3 has a lot of things that are good going on for it. The PTSD stuff is well done and Robert Downey Jr's acting is absolutely excellent whether he's dropping one-liners or having a panic attack. The investigation for the Extremis/Mandarin conspiration is actually done pretty well. Action scene wise, the House Party Protocol and Tony's Solid Snake assault on the Miami compound are great. Plus we got a lot of great visuals with the Mark 42. But Killian is ultimately kind of a flat one-note villain that's only memorable because of Guy Pearce's performance, and a lot of the side-cast like Pepper, Rhodes and Happy honestly feel like they're just there to be rescued, which makes me feel like they certainly could've done better. All in all it's honestly still a very solid movie and I spent an enjoyable evening watching it, it's just that... well, over time I feel like I ended up losing a lot of enthusiasm for this movie. A lot of people like this movie a lot more than I do and I can't blame them! I just can't really get behind this one, is all. 

(This took a bit of a while to publish. I basically waited until I've done all the reviews for the Phase Two movies and it took me quite a while before they're all ready for me to publish sequentially. I actually wrote this all the way back in April or March, because I thought Iron Man 3 was a Phase One movie.)

(I was about to do a Black Widow review in July, but ended up putting off watching the movie and I think ultimately I'll just review it whenever I have the time to)

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Post-Credits Scene: Tony Stark is talking to Bruce Banner about the events of this episode, treating Bruce as his therapist. 
  
• Stan the Man: Stan Lee is an overly excited judge of a beauty pageant.
• Future Movies Foreshadowing: This movie was meant to be a way for the studio to write out Iron Man, so there really isn't much -- other than maybe some vague similarities with the Iron Legion in Age of Ultron (which is frankly kind of reaching) this movie doesn't actually build up anything for the future movies. And there's the Mandarin, of course, but it's clear that they weren't planning for the version that showed up in Shang-Chi.
• Past Movie Continuity: Ho Yinsen gets a cameo in the prologue, and in Iron Man Yinsen had noted that he met Tony Stark in a conference in Switzerland. Trevor's Mandarin wears the same ring that Raza of the Ten Rings wears in Iron Man. And, of course, the events of Avengers is the catalyst for Tony's PTSD. 
• Movie Superhero Codenames: 'The Mandarin' is spoken multiple times, though it's mainly used to refer to Trevor Slattery's fake Mandarin persona. Aldrich calls himself the Mandarin at the final battle, though. Rhodes also gets a rebranding into 'Iron Patriot', which is spoken out multiple times in the movie. Many of Tony's suits are references to suits he wears in the comics. Eric Savin ("Coldblood") and Jack Taggert ("Firepower") never get their names spoken out loud, however. Ellen Brandt in the comics is the ex-wife of Man-Thing, but she doesn't have a codename. 
• Favourite Action Scene: House Party Protocol, natch.
• Funniest Line: "Whoa, whoa, whoa, bloody 'ell, bloody 'ell." I don't like what they did with the Mandarin, but Ben Kingsley's performance is golden.
• Happy and Pepper briefly name-drop someone called 'Bambi'. In the comics, Bambi Arbogast is Tony Stark's secretary.
• The circular basement with a series of armours is a homage to one of the key visuals from the '90's Iron Man cartoon. Various armours are references to specific looks in the comics, either by name or by appearance. Most popularly, 'Igor' is based on the Hulkbuster armour from the comic; though the MCU's Hulkbuster Armour would debut in Age of Ultron. 
• The whole Extremis storyline is very loosely based on the Extremis arc in the comics. Aldrich Killian and Maya Hansen are characters that originated and mostly limited to that arc (Killian dies in the same issue he debuted in). President Ellis borrows his name from Warren Ellis, the writer of the comic-book arc. 
• Happy being put in a coma is a reference to his comic-book counterpart's death, where comic-book Happy was put in a coma and eventually died after protecting Tony. This Happy, thankfully, survives.