Reviews: Iron Man Three
So, I went and saw Iron Man 3 (Three) on its opening night last night and I have a few thoughts about the movie. I'm trying my best to keep things vague, as a misplaced word could ruin the film (I went in having, mostly, avoided trailers and pre-publicity). But a few vague critiques lay under the cut.
The short version is that I probably enjoyed the movie more than Avengers. Do I think it was a better or more finely crafted movie than Avengers? That's open to debate. But for sheer thrill-and-laughs ratio, I warmed to it more.
Firstly a word of caution, though - if the publicity had fooled you into thinking this was going to be Pepper's movie, prepare to be disappointed. If anything, Pepper's agency suffers more from the narrative of this film than it did in the previous Iron Man outings. Sorry.
Because, basically, this is Tony Stark's movie. It's very much a film about the man, not about the iron suit.
Much praise for Shane Black's script. I'm a big fan of his work and both script and direction are full of great moments. There's much to enjoy there and it's very, very funny. Especially from a Brit-centric point of view.
And the light touch is impressive, considering that the story is basically set up as "the dark days of Tony Stark", which leads us to...
The film succeeds admirably in playing with expectations. While Whedon's trick is to confound expectations with a literal punch-line, Black's screenplay is much slyer.
Especially where the gung-ho patriotism of previous movies is concerned.
There was a lot of discussion as to whether The Mandarin could work as a contemporary villain and, for the most part, he does. Ben Kingsley's one of the best things about the movie.
While Iron Man 2 and, to a degree, Captain America felt like setups to a greater narrative, this is far more its own beast. It references other spin-offs without existing to serve them.
It's undoubtedly the best of the series (so far). And has a good chance at being proclaimed the most fun of the Marvel movies so far, IMHO.
Although I'm still a little bemused why it's set at Christmas. The movie's out in April/May and presumably DVDs will hit the shelves long before the seasonal period. Was it meant to be released earlier?