Iron Man 3 (2013)
Directed by Shane Black
When Tony Stark's world is torn apart by a formidable terrorist called the Mandarin, he starts an odyssey of rebuilding and retribution.
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36 films that influenced Iron Man 3
What critics say influenced Iron Man 3
Such iterations are the stuff heated, frivolous arguments with friends are made of (and have been since shortly after Elmo Lincoln donned a loin cloth and grabbed a vine in 1918’s Tarzan of the Apes.)
They remind a bit of Robert Patrick in Terminator 2.
They pass as regular people but can morph and re-form like the T-1000 in " Terminator 2 ," their core substance looks more like molten lava than molten steel and their eyes glow a hellish crimson.
The script, by director Shane Black and Drew Pearce, is set shortly after the events of “The Avengers,” though there’s a brief prologue referencing a New Year’s party back in 1999.
And, as the Mandarin, Ben Kingsley (2012's " The Dictator ") is a sobering vision of sociopathic radicalism until his character takes a sharp turn toward over-the-top, reminding in a bad way of his villain in 2004's embarrassing " Thunderbirds .""Iron…
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Right down to its holiday setting every scene is sprinkled with festive (and patriotic) Christmas lights Iron Man 3 is a slick late-80s throwback, with a bad guy (Guy Pearce) whose mullet and glib smile recall Val Kilmers Chris Knight in Real Genius, except this real genius is bent on domination via manipulating the terrorist market.
In many ways Iron Man 3 is a companion piece to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises (2012), albeit a far simpler take on the themes.
Where the similarly themed The Dark Knight Rises took to its story of resurrection in the shadow of great evil with an earnest (but a never dreary) seriousness that made it not only a visually spectacular watch but also an powerfully emotional one, Iron Man 3 is void of any empathy for its characters and their plight.
The Dark Knight Rises was a character-heavy disappointment after th astounding The Dark Knight, X-Men: The Last Stand couldn’t hold a candle to the brilliant X2: X-Men United, and Spider-Man 3 paled in comparison to the superb Spider-Man 2. Black and his co-screenwriter Drew Pearce kept the excessive number of villains to a minimum, one of the reasons many of these third chapters fail so frequently.
(Imagine The Dark Knight Rises with less apocalyptic hot air.)
Ridley Scott's Alien is different than James Cameron's Aliens, which is different than David Fincher's Alien 3, and so on.
None of the Iron Man movies has been as good as The Dark Knight (2008), but their mix of spectacle and droll comedy goes down a lot easier than the other franchise's thumping Sturm und Drang.
In fact, “Iron Man 3” takes the best pages from many other films like “The Dark Knight” trilogy and “Superman II.”
Compare Iron Man 3 to The Dark Knight and you'll understand what I mean.
Now I am certainly not opposed to the genre taking on some weightier issues and I still consider “The Dark Knight” to be the finest superhero movie ever made.
I got the same feeling from the end of Iron Man 3 that I got from the end of The Dark Knight.
The Dark Knight Rises was a character-heavy disappointment after th astounding The Dark Knight, X-Men: The Last Stand couldn’t hold a candle to the brilliant X2: X-Men United, and Spider-Man 3 paled in comparison to the superb Spider-Man 2. Black and his co-screenwriter Drew Pearce kept the excessive number of villains to a minimum, one of the reasons many of these third chapters fail so frequently.
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When we think about films written by Shane Black — “Lethal Weapon,” “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (which he also directed) — several things come to mind: Christmas imagery , rapid-fire banter, over-the-top pyrotechnics.
Downey is less obnoxious than he was in The Avengers and more vulnerable, partly because Black knows how to modulate his leading man’s shtick — Black's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) was a jolly vehicle for the sardonic, freshly sober Downey and the opening salvo of the actor’s triumphant comeback.
He then disappeared for close to a decade, resurfacing in 2005 with his writing/directing debut Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a clever and funny homage to detective mysteries starring Robert Downey Jr. Thus, like Favreau, Black is a somewhat off-handed choice (especially since this is only his second directorial effort), but he stays in sync with the material, playing up the comedy to just the right pitch and using it to both offset and enhance the ever-increasing moments of action spectacular.
Writer/director Shane Black — who wrote the original Lethal Weapon and the excellent Kiss Kiss Bang Bang — takes over the writing and directing duties and has produced a three-dimensional comic book character masterpiece.
(If you haven’t seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and you think I’m overdoing it with the compliments, just watch the movie.)
It's essentially just provocative images in the service of a vanilla plot and becomes, in that way, something very much like a middlebrow-pleasing exploitation flick in the vein of a Titanic or a Pearl Harbor .