Hello everybody and welcome back to MCU Review Month! Today we leave behind the early days of Phase One and enter Phase Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Iron Man Three! If you have not already, please check out my last review, which covered The Avengers. And remember folks, spoilers are ahead so read at your own risk!
Iron Man 3 premiered on May 3rd, 2013 and is rated PG-13. It runs for a total of 130 minutes.
“My armor was never a distraction or a hobby, it was a cocoon, and now I’m a changed man. You can take away my house, all my tricks and toys, but one thing you can’t take away – I am Iron Man.”
Tony Stark, Iron Man 3
Recap:
New Year’s Eve party, 1999, Tony Stark meets a scientist named Maya Hansen, who is working on a regenerative treatment called Extremis. A disabled scientist named Aldrich Killian offers both Stark and Hansen a place at AIM, his think tank company, but Stark turns him down. We then jump to December 2012, just seven months after the Battle of New York, and Tony is suffering from PTSD and panic attacks. To cope, he’s not sleeping and building Iron Man suits by the dozen.
There have been an increase in bombings by a terrorist called The Mandarin, who is claiming to be working with the Ten Rings terrorist organization – the same one that kidnapped Tony in the first Iron Man movie. Happy, Tony’s head of security is injured in one of the bombing while following an associate of Killian, who had met with Pepper earlier in the day. Stark is swarmed by the press outside of the hospital and publicly threatens the Mandarin, giving out his full address. Hansen shows up to warn Tony of a threat but notices an incoming attack while Tony and Pepper bicker. Fight scene, Pepper is briefly in an Iron Man suit, and Tony disappears in the rubble of the house while Pepper and Hansen have survived. JARVIS pilots the Iron Man suit Tony is wearing to Tennessee, where they were researching a previous Mandarin bombing. Tony’s new armor doesn’t have enough power to bring him back to California and he’s left stranded in Tennessee.
Tony ends up teaming up with a 10 year old boy named Harley and investigates a bombing in the town that he suspects was a Mandarin attack. He learns that the man who was believed to have built the bomb had undergone Extremis and reacted poorly. Tony is attacked by two of Killian’s agents and one has an Extremis explosion. Meanwhile Hansen has delivered Pepper to Killian, claiming she needs Tony in order to fix the Extremis code. Rhodey, who has now been rebranded from War Machine to Iron Patriot, falls into a trap by Extremis to steal the Iron Patriot suit.
Tony makes his way to Miami, headquarters of AIM, with Harley’s help and some handmade weapons. He finds “the Mandarin,” who turns out to be an actor named Trevor Slattery. Slattery explains that AIM uses videos of him pretending to be a terrorist to cover up Extremis explosions. Killian captures Tony and kills Hansen, then revealing he’s injected Pepper with Extremis to motivate Tony to fix the Extremis explosion problems.
Stark manages to escape and find Rhodey in the complex, who reveals that Killian plans on attacking Air Force One to kidnap the President, using the Iron Patriot suit. Tony manages to save the crew of Air Force One but the President is still kidnapped. The follow Killian to an old oil tanker where he plans on killing the President in the Iron Patriot suit. Tony tries to save Pepper as he calls JARVIS to send in all the suits he’s made while Rhodey goes to save the President and get his suit back. Pepper ends up falling “to her death” and Tony fights Killian. Pepper, who’s body has survived the Extremis, uses her new strength to kill Killian.
Stark tells JARVIS to blow up all the Iron Man suits and they all go home. Tony figures out how to stabilize the Extremis in Pepper and he undergoes surgery to remove the shrapnel near his heart, removing the arc reactor from his chest. Our movie ends with Tony deciding to cut back on the superhero life but reminding us that even without the suit, Tony is still Iron Man.
Our end credits scene features Tony finishing his voice over narration to a sleeping Bruce Banner, who has been subjugated to this entire story. Banner explains he’s not a therapist because he “doesn’t have the temperament.”
Review:
Some MCU fans say that this is a better movie than Iron Man 2. While I agree that the story does an excellent job focusing on the internal struggles Tony Stark faces in a post-Avengers world, it’s just too damn boring for me. Half the movie is exposition, Killian is not an interesting or entertaining villain, and I don’t necessarily care about the outcome of the film. The Ten Rings stuff at this point is boring, we’ve just seen aliens in The Avengers and now we’re dealing with a pseudo-terrorist organization? Yawn!
It’s fun to see Tony have to deal with threats outside the suit, which is basically the majority of the fight scenes in the film, even in the final boss fight where there are literally dozens of suits just flying around in the background. While I’d be usually be fine with this, I’m usually good at suspending my disbelief, we’ve almost never seen Tony do any type of training or exercise outside of the suit. But here he’s punching people and jumping around, I just have a hard time believing it. Now Rhodey is a training military man so I can get onboard with him being a badass with no suit on. But Tony? It’s just hard for me to see it.
If you’re looking for a superhero movie that’s less action and more character driven, this is your film. But if you’re like me and you want your superhero movie to pack a punch as well, be prepared to be slightly bored.
Why is this important?
We really get a good sense of where Tony’s mind is after the events of The Avengers. Flying a nuclear missile into a wormhole to space isn’t going to leave no scars behind, mentally speaking. He’s nervous, can’t sleep from the nightmares, and is building suit after suit to protect his loved ones – mostly Pepper. The events from this movie bring him out of the panic and allow him to see clearly. He’s made a decision to slow down on the Iron Man life and focus on being Tony Stark. He gets the arc reactor removed, meaning he’s no longer in threat of death from the shrapnel of the first Iron Man film. His mental changes are reflected in the physical changes he makes, it’s a physical representation of who he wants to become. These character changes help explain where Tony’s mind is in Age of Ultron and to an extent, in Civil War.
Do I need this for Endgame?
Interestingly enough, maybe. The actor who played Harley, Ty Simpkins, has a credit on his IMDB page for Endgame, where it says he will be reprising his role as Harley. Simpkins also signed a three movie deal with Marvel, starting with Iron Man 3. What does this mean for Endgame? No idea. But for us viewers, it means a rewatch of Iron Man 3 may be a good idea after all.
Rating:
This may be a controversial choice. As I always say, the rating is being updated with each MCU film I watch. The current rating board looks like:
- The Avengers
- Captain America: The First Avenger
- Iron Man
- Iron Man 2
- Iron Man 3
- The Incredible Hulk
- Thor
This doesn’t beat Iron Man 2 for me, and yes, I can hear the booing already. Listen, I just want to have some fun when watching superhero movies and you can’t say that Iron Man 2 wasn’t fun.
What did you think of Iron Man 3? Is it a better film to Iron Man 2? Let me know in the comments below. Don’t forget to tune in next for the next film up in Phase Two, Thor: The Dark World. Will I survive through this next movie? You’ll have to check back and see!
Jen Pereira 