Iron Mang 3

I saw Iron Man 3 this weekend and it was pretty good.  Probably the worst of the trilogy, but still a good movie.  As a final capstone to the journey of Tony Stark from rich douchebag to rich douchebag dating Gwyneth Paltrow, it functioned admirably.  Lots of stuff blowing up, some good character moments, pounding music, and actors that bravely left no bit of scenery unchewed.  Let’s take it apart, shall we?

The Good

1. Robert Downey Jr.  is still awesome as Tony Stark.  He’s wearing a bit thin in this one, but still does a good job.  I just hope they stop with the Iron Man movies after this and only do Avengers films.
2. Ben Kingsley.  There is nothing this man cannot do.  Literally nothing.  He does my taxes.  He threw the British out of India.  He is all ethnicities and none.  Ben Kingsley.  He is the end goal of human evolution.
3. Don Cheadle.  Dude makes a great James Rhodes.  All of the War Machine/Iron Patriot stuff was brilliant.  He also comes across as a very capable, trustworthy badass.
4. Guy Pearce.  Always a good villain.  I think when he gets a bit older he’s going to be the new Brian Blessed – all unneeded scenery will be shipped to him to be chewed and reprocessed.
5. The final fight scene did not disappoint.  At all.  I usually hate the final fights in sequels, because they’re nothing but trying to one-up the final fight scenes from the previous movies.  This one was different enough that it really stood out as awesome.  Flipping from suit to suit, being forced to rely on the skills he learned from Billy Blanks, Tony gets kicked around for basically the entire movie, including the final fight.  I was very appreciative that Pepper Potts got the last few hits in, though.
6. The Kid.  I usually hate the introduction of the helpful sidekick in movies, but they pulled it off with this kid.  He was smart and self-driven without being precocious.  It was a lot of fun to watch him push Stark’s anxiety buttons on purpose.  Fun enough that it made me overlook the fact that a 10 year old fixed the most advanced piece of technology in the world.  And he wasn’t even in a cave.  Seriously, what the fuck were Obadiah Stain’s engineers even DOING in the first film?  A 10 year old repaired the Iron Man suit, and they couldn’t even figure out how to fucking power the thing?
7. Pepper Potts as Iron Man.  Great, great scene that said a lot about both Tony and Pepper.  Also, Paltrow in the Iron Man suit pushed all of my Samus Aran crush buttons.
8. The sense of finality.  The movie really felt like it ended the individual story of Tony Stark, and now it’s just a clear stage for the Avengers 2 and 3.

The Bad

1. Gwyneth Paltrow.  I love Gwyneth Paltrow.  She and Charlize Theron are 2 actresses in Hollywood that I feel really rose above the “cute blonde” stereotypes that Hollywood forces actresses into and have done some GREAT work.  Sadly, they basically ignored her acting capabilities in Iron Man 3.  How about this:  Pepper Potts gets shot full of super soldier serum, escapes on her own, and saves Tony, Rhodie, and the President.  The End.  I’d watch that movie like 16 times.
2. Don Cheadle.  All the same reasons as Paltrow.  Wonderful actor, badly underutilized.  I’d love to see a War Machine spin off.  If Cheadle do justice to Captain Planet, he can hold up his own movie.
3. Jon Favreau.  Jon, you are an awesome writer.  You are a fantastic director.  While I enjoyed this Iron Man, it was the worst of the 3, at least in part because you didn’t direct it.  Please, stop acting.  You are bad at it.  There is nothing to be ashamed of.  I’m not a great actor and the only thing I can cook is Kraft dinner.  Not everyone can do everything.  Hang up the acting spurs and get behind the camera.  You make fucking awesome movies and I want to pay you all of my monies to see them.
4. Movie logic.  This movie has the most movie logic I’ve seen in a movie in quite a while.  Characters arrive at locations in a few moments that would have taken them days to get to, if they could even FIND them.  People are thrown around by huge explosions and bleed a little bit from the forehead.  But, by far the WORST example is when Stark’s flying armor suit crosses the 800+ miles to reach him in about 3 minutes.  In order for the armor to reach him that fast, it would have to be flying at over 16,000 miles per hour.  That’s almost orbital velocity.  It may seem like I’m going to great lengths to argue a scientific piece of ridiculousness in a movie where a guy breathes fire, but I’m really not.  The only reason we know or remember that the armor is over 800 miles away is that they use that line to give some of the goons some depth.  That’s just bad writing.
5. Fake feminism.  People are writing columns about how the movie really flipped the usual action movie misogyny on its head.  Bzzt.  No it didn’t.  Pepper Potts still functions as the damsel in distress, even if she’s the one that finally kills Killian.  The evil scientist lady (who was such an important character that I can’t remember her name) was driven into a life of crime because Tony Stark was a womanizer.  The women in the movie spend all of their time either waiting for, working for, or reacting to the men in the film.  The movie DOES take a step forward in that the two major female roles in the film actually have a conversation with each other that doesn’t involve Tony Stark, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but actually is.  Still, the movie is more dressed up like it’s feminist rather than actually BEING feminist.
6. William Sadler and Miguel Ferrer.  These guys have serious villain chops.  They are GOOD nerd actors.  Ferrer was the bad guy in half the movies I saw during the 80’s, and Sadler will forever be the evil agent Sloan from Section 31 for me.  Sadly, they got dick to do in the movie other than be cardboard cutouts.

So there you have it.  The downsides are pretty small irritants for the most part, but they keep the movie from eclipsing its predecessors.  It’s still definitely worth your monies to see it in the theatre (at least as much as ANY movie is worth the money they charge these days).  I wouldn’t necessarily buy into the hype surrounding the movie, but it IS good and you’ll enjoy it.