Dir. Shane Black
130 Minutes
Rated PG-13
The Avengers, love it or loathe it, changed the landscape of superhero films. Warner Brothers is now trying to play catch-up with a Justice League film that has disaster written all over it and Disney has a chokehold on superhero properties as it gradually sucks up more and more famous comic book characters (Daredevil and Ghost Rider just passed on over to the House of Mouse). So now with The Avengers under their belt, that gives the company virtually unlimited directions to head in, and it will be interesting to see how some of these big ideas play out - especially with James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy. But to usher in the second chapter for Marvel Studios is the hero that started it all: Tony Stark. In his fourth big screen adventure, Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) is going solo again. After the events in New York (the whole wormhole opening up a rift in space thing), Stark is suffering from a little anxiety. Sure he has his girl, Pepper Potts (Gwenyth Paltrow), by his side and his partner, Rhodes (Don Cheadle) at his back, but a new terrorist force, the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), is causing a ruckus. Throw in a mentally unstable scientist (Guy Pearce) with a 10-year grudge against Tony, and the crock pot is fully stirred for action.
A lot of people were disappointed with Iron Man 2 (although I think it's totally underrated), but this third entry may be the best one yet, or at least pretty damn close to the first one. The trailers had me worried that they were borrowing too heavily from The Dark Knight by making everything darker (and not to mention how eerily similar Mandarin is to Bane), but never fear, because this one is just as funny as the others, if not moreso. Some of the lines that come out of Downey Jr.'s mouth are priceless, and the script in general is really well conceived. Shane Black, who worked with Downey Jr. previously on Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, clearly knows how to get the most out of his actors and directed a film that stands just as strong as its predecessors. It does have dark moments, but almost always they are counteracted with comedic relief, which we thankfully didn't lose with the loss of Jon Favreau (who has a hilarious guest role as Tony's bodyguard).
The action scenes were great too - and even at this point they are still able to come up with new uses for the iron suit. There is a new element introduced where Tony strikes a pose and the parts of his suit fly onto him, and that concept is used ingeniously throughout the movie. One sequence involving an airplane was particularly intense - not an original idea, but it worked here. The end battle scene also had plenty of "wow" moments and made up for the lacking final battles of the previous films. That being said, I think the end sequence's location was pretty generic looking (just a big "rig" type of place), but the incredible aerial action going on all around more than made up for it. And for some reason, I felt that this movie didn't seem as "colorful" as the others - it felt a lot more grey and toned-down. I would've liked to have seen a more 'comic book' aesthetic, but other than that everything was solid.
Really, this is as good a movie as I could've hoped for. In terms of pure popcorn entertainment, it doesn't get much better. Some of the decisions they made regarding the characters may be controversial among comic book geeks (especially with The Mandarin), but not being a real purist for that stuff, I thought it worked great within the story this specific film was telling. It may not break any boundaries within the genre, like The Dark Knight or even The Avengers, but it's just a wallop of fun. The time just flew by and I'm looking forward to what Marvel has in store next.
Rating: A-
Just thought I'd share this cool poster I found on the Internet. I want one.
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