2 ½ stars (out of four)
“You know who I am,” reads a name tag worn by
multi-billionaire and generally charming egomaniac Tony Stark (played for a
fourth time by Robert Downey Jr.) in Iron Man 3. After two Iron Man
movies and last summer’s super-crossover mega-hit The Avengers, there will be few in the audience who do not
already know this character.
This flippant, you-know-the-deal attitude runs throughout
the film. The script, written by Drew Pearce and director Shane Black, takes a
number of shortcuts, assuming (correctly) that we have seen enough superhero
movies in the last ten years to fill in the blanks.
When an international terrorist known as The Mandarin (a
bearded Ben Kingsley looking like Osama bin Laden) hijacks the nation’s TV stations,
we only need to see a brief glimpse of viewers’ shocked reactions. The rest we
can remember from when the Joker did the same in The Dark Knight. And when a brilliant geneticist named Aldrich
Killian (Guy Pearce) begins talking about tampering with human DNA to enhance
the body’s regenerative powers, we know to be suspicious of him after seeing
the mad scientists in Batman Begins,
Captain America and just about
every Spider-Man movie.
We have also heard enough of those concisely worded nuggets
of advice that were so eloquently doled out by Michael Caine’s Alfred in the
Batman movies. So Iron Man 3 does not
subject us to any more of those. In fact, the characters in this film are
particularly dismissive of that sort of pithy, fortune cookie wisdom. (The
movie even takes an unintentionally silly moment to decry the very existence of
fortune cookies.)
Part of this resistance to flowery phrases and grand themes
comes from the brazen playboy persona of Tony Stark, who has no patience for
sentimentality. The rest is the result of this movie’s sheer laziness. Like
most of the Marvel Avengers movies before it, Iron Man 3 is almost pompously devoid of any real substance.
This light-as-popcorn approach has worked in the past, notably in the first two
Iron Man movies, but it is
becoming less effective. This movie cannot cover up its own hollowness.
And as for Tony Stark, Robert Downey Jr. is still the best
part of this franchise but there are signs his shtick is getting old. We can
predict the rhythms of his witty comebacks before he says them and his dialogue
feels written when it used to feel
ad-libbed. We do see a few new angles to the Tony Stark character – he has a
terrifically badass moment of James Bond gadgetry wearing not a suit (iron or
otherwise) but a black hoodie, and he even does a bit of Sherlock Holmes
sleuthing (a role Robert Downey Jr. is very familiar with) – but little real character development. There is a sudden
shift in the final scenes that tries to give the character an arc but it feels
forced and I didn’t buy it.
So should you spend your money to see this movie in theaters?
Marvel Studios has gone through a great deal of effort and untold millions in
marketing to convince moviegoers that every film in the Avengers franchise is
essential and should be watched in order. This is, however, little more than a
way to hide the fact that these movies’ plots are virtually interchangeable,
that they are derivative of one another, and are each wholly disposable
entertainment.
This is not to say that Iron Man 3 is bad entertainment but that at this point in the series a critical review of it is less applicable than a Consumer Reports
checklist:
Love Interest: Good.
Pepper Potts, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, underused.
Villain(s): Fair.
Mostly forgettable.
Sidekick: Poor.
Colonel James Rhodes, played by Don Cheadle, underused and unimportant.
Humor: Good.
Frequent and usually funny.
Action scenes: Fair.
Muddled and difficult to follow but plentiful.
If you are shopping around for a decent superhero movie at
an affordable price, Iron Man 3 is a
solid option. If you are looking for a movie that surprises and engages, this
is not your movie. This movie is… Well, you know what this movie is.
- Steve Avigliano, 5/6/13
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