24/05/2013

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Film: Iron Man 3
Release: 2013, theatrical
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley.
Directed by: Shane Black
Previous in the series: Iron Man 2
IMDB Page: link opens in a new window
Description: Tony Stark is once again forced to done the red and gold armor to protect those he love and care about. Picking up after The Avengers, Stark is spending every waking moment in his workshop making new suits of armor, trying to cope with the events of The Avengers. Events soon spin completely out of control when a terrorist calling himself The Mandarin suddenly appears quickly making it personal.

Hans' thoughts:

I'm big on comic books, and seeing them turned into movies has over the years has been met with mixed results. That is, until Marvel started making their movies themselves. Say what you want about the decisions Marvel is currently making in the comic book universe, their movie division certainly knows what it's doing and thus far the cast choices has been amazing. While the Thor movie and the former Iron Man 2 movie were in the good-but-could-be-better category (Mostly because they suffered for having to setup the amazingly well made Avengers movie) Iron man 3 had to remind audiences why the Iron man movies are the Marvel movies flagship-franchise. And man did it do that. Continuing the story rather than just rehashing what happened in the first movie by just bringing in some random bad guy and Stark learning to not party quite as hard any more, the Stark of this movie is actually still in the reactionary phase of what happened the last time we saw him (The events of The Avengers). A nice change to the movie is also the absence of S.H.I.E.L.D. letting Tony focus on growing as a person and re-learning how to fix things himself, personally S.H.I.E.L.D. to me was also a major distraction in Iron Man 2 as it made the whole thing feel like a movie trailer. Stark does not try to shun help completely though, as he was taught not to in the second movie, as he actually accepts the help of friends and allies this time around. The movie actually played a lot like an actual comic book arc, with the entire second act feeling like you could pick it up as a magazine in your local comic book store and get right into the action, not having to have read the comics that made up act one. Don't know what I'm talking about? Try going to the library and looking through a tradeback collection of a major comic book event (personally, I like to recommend the X-men story "The Messiah CompleX" for beginners.). Overall, the acting was also top notch and you will probably find (as I did) that Ben Kingsley will completely steal every scene he's in once he's properly present.

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