Iron Man 3 is both familiar and a film that makes up for the hokum of Iron Man 2. This is not to say that the third installment in this franchise is hoke-free. It begins with snark – like many Robert Downey Jr. vehicles – and an explosion that functions as a tool to grab the audience, forcing them to wonder why so many Iron Man suits are being destroyed, and one that allows the narrative to dip ten years sharply into the past.
However, these explosions aren’t as much of a Macguffin as they would seem. Our generation presumptions play into the overall theme of the film. It’s a tired theme based around deceptive appearances, but made slightly novel in the comic-book film genre as it investigates the media for its role in villainy.
Now, the media is not the only villain in this film. Iron Man 3 isn’t as clever as, say, Wag the Dog, in that its hand is blatantly played – a bit quicker than necessary, I think – but still in a “what the hell?!” sort of reveal. The spoiler will be avoided here, but there are a number of hints leading to the first twist and turn that are elided, perhaps in a way to expose the audience as just as malleable during a film as we are during the nightly news.
As the Mandarin, one would think that Ben Kingsley is a curious choice. He’s British, not in any way East Asian. His makeup transforms him much more into an Osama bin Laden-typed figure than anything else, and this seems to be the point. While he is the Mandarin, his voice is far from the appropriate accent. His British lilt is guttural and slightly muttered. His dress is something out of a Genghis Khan retrospective, which, in the comic book lore is appropriate, but his facial features are well-short of anything remotely resembling Mongolian.
As a villain, he is devious – the live killings attest to this – but his appearance is a contradiction to the moniker and label assigned to him. He is, in short, a product of what we wish to see as a villain. This is not something lost on director Shane Black, whose previous directorial experience with Downey Jr. is in the equally snarky Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
After a number of twists and turns, the primary villain turns out to be Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), a chemical engineer who was once spurned by Tony Stark on New Years Eve in 1999 and has now come back to reveal how far his projects have come. There is an eerie familiarity here to Jim Carrey’s the Riddler in Batman Forever. Even the hair and wardrobe are similar, which makes me wonder how Pearce studied for this role, or how the writers built their character, but I digress.
Regardless, Aldrich becomes the “demon” that Stark laments creating in the opening voiceover, but this isn’t nearly as interesting as Black’s use of Pearce in the role of villain. Certainly, he’s been a villain many times over, but this time, he’s the blonde-haired, sharp-dressed villain who is seen as tertiary behind the Mandarin and the Mandarin’s entourage.
Despite the rather familiar story here, the most intriguing moments of the film are those that explore Stark’s PTSD. And while you might need to have seen The Avengers to understand the depths from which Stark fell while battling aliens, the anxiety that Stark feels is palpable, as are his attempts to leave his own skin by turning himself, essentially, into a cyborg, injecting himself with suit-controlling chips that command the movement of his armor from a distance. This certainly leads to some solid action sequences here, but the tension within these moments relies on Stark wanting to be anyone but himself.
And this leads to something refreshing. Stark, in effect, becomes the action hero, while the suit is merely that. It definitely has its usefulness in victory and such, but we get to see Stark leaping between burning scaffoldings and battling Aldrich, not just his virtually indestructible suit. In effect, the focus on Stark cures the ills of Iron Man 2. Iron Man 1 was fun because of its focus on Stark’s origin, learning to fly, etc. And in the end, he battled a larger version of himself in fight of good technology versus bad.
In Iron Man 2, he did the same thing, only this time, Mickey Rourke donned the “bad.”
Iron Man 3 doesn’t pit Stark against himself. Sure, Aldrich is above human-grade physicality, and there’s a touch of the “in the wrong hands…” trope, but overall, the film is much more about Stark’s inner conflicts and about our perceptions.
