Follow

    Iron Man 3

    Movie » Iron Man 3 released on April 25, 2013.

    Iron Man 3, released on May 3, 2013 (USA). It stars Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce and Sir Ben Kingsley.

    thecannon's Iron Man 3 review

    Avatar image for thecannon

    I Don't Know...

    I got back from the film not too long ago (a few hours ago). I was so exited for the movie, watching all kinds of trailers and stuff. I was so hyped up for this film. It's been a year since The Avengers hit theaters (though chronologically it's set a month after the Chitauri [or however they spell their name] invaded, but I'm getting off-topic), and now we get our first look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe after The Avengers.

    Anyway, I was so hyped up for this movie. I knew it couldn't match The Avengers, but I really thought it could at least match Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger.

    Well, I've learned not to get my hopes up so high. I honestly don't know what I think of this film. Part of me thought it was really fun and entertaining, while the other part of me was so p*ssed off I wanted to leave the theater. And I'm one person who never wants to walk out on a movie (even though I didn't like X-Men: First Class, I still didn't want to walk out on it). But with what they did in this, just...

    I'm going to try to put my complaints into coherent thoughts. This will be done differently from my usual format, so let's just see how it goes. I'll make sure this is spoiler-free.

    Cast

    The film had the main cast returning with Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man/Tony Stark, Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Don Cheadle as James Rhodes (who is now Iron Patriot, but I'll go into that in a minute), Paul Bettany as the voice of JARVIS, and Jon Favreau (who also directed the first two movies, though is replaced by Shane Black here) as Happy Hogan. All of them did very well with their roles, as expected. We were able to see some real character development in this film from the cast, which I thought was good.

    As for new cast members, they included: Guy Pearce as Aldrich Killian, Rebecca Hall as Maya Hansen, Ty Simpkins as Harley (a little boy I don't recall appearing in the comics), and Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin. My first thing to do would be to go into either how awesome Mandarin was or how much he sucked, but I need to make sure my rant is a bit coherent, so I'll wait. Overall, the new cast members all did great. I'll start by saying how Harley was. He was defenitly different from the usual Iron Man movie characters. He seemed like a nice kid, even if he was a bit annoying at times. Overall I though he was good. Not my favorite character, but still good. Maya was also pretty cool. Not much to say about her without going into plot details, but still cool.

    Overall, I thought the cast was brilliant, and that most of the problems were with the script. But we'll go into Killian in a second and Mandarin a little later.

    Aldrich Killian

    I'm gonna be honest, I have NEVER read the Extremis story in the comics, so I have no clue if this guy was accurate to the comics or if he even appeared in the original Extremis story. But that really didn't stop me from enjoying him. First off, Guy Pearce simply did the role amazingly. Pearce was simply spectacular in the role and I don't see any other way to put it. Secondly, the villain was simply written amazingly. I can't go into much detail about it without going into Plot spoilers, but he was simply written beautifully and I find him possibly the best villain of the trilogy.

    Armors

    I won't go into too much detail here, but I can cover two main things that shouldn't be spoilers since they were seen in trailers, advertising, commercials, etc.

    No Caption Provided

    First off, Tony gets a new armor which he wears most of the film. I personally think the main design is a bit stupid and doesn't feel very Iron Man like, I do like that we can see how far the armor has been upgraded. We went from basically a pile of scrap metal made in a cave in Iron Man to something so high-tech that Tony can now summon it to him.

    No Caption Provided

    And Tony isn't the only one with a new armor. War Machine gets a new costumes, and even a new name. He now goes by the name "Iron Patriot" and is painted up in the red, white, & blue (I shouldn't have to explain why). It looks... okay. To me it looks a bit more like a toy commercial than an Iron Man movie, but whatever. Though I can understand Iron Man's change, I don't get the change for War Machine. I understand Norman Osborn is owned by Sony (plus him being in an IM movie would be pointless), but why does War Machine have to use the name and armor? They did give a story reason, but it still feels way too forced and gimmicky.

    Also, this really isn't a flaw, but it's just something I kept thinking while watching the film. In the first Iron Man movie, Tony had the MK 1, 2, and 3 armors. In Iron Man 2, he was the MK 4, 5, and 6 armors. In The Avengers, he has the MK 7 armor. All of that makes sense. And there's six months between the first two IM movies, and what I assume is about a year between IM2 & The Avengers (it's what I can piece together from the MCU timeline). So, in a year & a half, he was able to build 7 armors. But now, in a month, he's built 35 armors? Just seems weird to me.

    Mandarin

    And now we come to my biggest problem with the movie: The Mandarin.

    When Mandarin was appearing earlier in the film, I simply loved him. I thought he was the perfect villain, and if this was the final Iron Man movie, the perfect villain to end on. So what if he didn't look anything like the comics (and I haven't read anything with Mandarin in months, but I'm pretty sure the character himself was also changed)? So what if he wasn't using the rings to do cool stuff? He was still going to be more epic than Loki, Joker, Bane, Magneto, and Ra's al Ghul combined. He was going to be the most epic villain in cinematic history!!!

    There's a scene in the movie where Tony goes to confront Mandarin. We know the film isn't over yet and this isn't the final battle, but it's still exciting. I won't go into detail of what happened, but it just really p*ssed me off and almost made me walk out of the theater, which is something I've never done. If you want to hear my full rant, feel free to PM me.

    All I'll say is: People can complain about Fox ruining Deadpool, Colossus, Juggernaut, Dr. Doom, Galactus, and countless Daredevil characters all they want. But if they want to see a true example of a character treated with no respect and turned into a joke, look no further. Seriously, Mr. Freeze in Batman & Robin was done better than Mandarin.

    Post-Credit Scene

    Won't go into too much detail about it, but remember all the post-credit scenes in Phase 1 of the MCU? All of them (with the arguable exception of Iron Man 2) had some larger goal that was building towards The Avengers? Well, this one was the first post-credits scene I've ever seen that I can say is completely and utterly useless, and made me feel like I wasted my time sitting through the credits.

    Action

    On the more positive aspect to end the review, the action scenes of the film were simply spectacular. They looked good, were written good, were acted good, and I can't think of any bad action scenes in this movie. Everything they set out to do with this movie in terms of action they succeeded at. This by far has the best action in any Iron Man movie, and I'd almost say the film is worth watching just for the action scenes.

    Conclusion

    I honestly don't know what to think of this film. Part of me loves it and wants to rank it above the previous two Iron Man movies and rank it about #5 on my favorite comic movies list, while part of me hates it and wants to say it's worse than The Amazing Spider-Man (and people who know me know how much I hate that movie). On the one hand, I really though the acting was great, a lot of jokes were good (not all, but a lot), and the action was excellent. On the other, I really hated how they treated some of the characters in the film, and a lot of the jokes would be sad if they weren't so pathetic. I've been going back and fourth on whether I'd recommend this film or not. Overall I'd say give it a shot if you want, but don't expect some two hour epic that's as good as you'll think it'll be.

    It Probably does deserve better than this, but for now, I'll give it 3/5 Stars. It's a little over half (Comic Vine took away the ability to give half star ratings, which sucks), which I think is fair until I can decide whether I liked this or not. Oh well, hopefully Thor: The Dark World helps Phase 2 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe be somewhere close to quality to Phase 1.

    My Overall Rating (until I decide whether I liked this or not): 3/5 Stars.

    Other reviews for Iron Man 3

      The Many Armours of Iron Man 0

      I've been looking forward to this film for ages, and with the previous Marvel Studios film, The Avengers being awesome I was expecting it to continue in this one.PlotSPOILER FREEIn 1999, on New Years Eve Tony Stark is at a convention where he meets Maya Hansen. In the present Tony is still dealing with the events of the Avengers, and the America's being attacked by a terrorist called the Mandarin. Also Aldrich Killian is the head of the company A.I.M., and is using Maya's Extremis development.Re...

      25 out of 25 found this review helpful.

      Good Movie? Good Comicbook Movie? Or Both?(A Spoiler Free Review) 0

      As you can see with the 5/5 rating, I loved it. So at least, it's a good movie. But anyway, let's start talking. I'll begin with the cast, then go to the plot/script, then the directing, swinging into my disappointments/movie shortcomings with the Conclusion last. 1st the Cast.The Cast:I have to say I loved the cast. As everyone knows, Robert Downy Jr. is arguably the most accurate, beloved portrayals of a comicbook character ever, and is ranked in the Top 3 for almost everyone's list, if not 1...

      6 out of 6 found this review helpful.

    This edit will also create new pages on Comic Vine for:

    Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.

    Comment and Save

    Until you earn 1000 points all your submissions need to be vetted by other Comic Vine users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll send you an email once approved.