What would you do if you had copious amounts of shrapnel in your body, ready to pierce your heart at any given moment? Could you react the same way Tony Stark does, and use a battery-powered electromagnet to keep the metal at bay? “Iron Man 3” is a 2013 Marvel Studios movie produced by Kevin Feige and directed by Shane Black. It is the last installment in the franchise itself, that is besides the “Avengers” and some other Marvel cameos.
Starring Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man/Tony Stark), the movie explores the PTSD Tony suffers after the first “Avengers” movie. Early on in the movie he admits that he is falling apart to Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). Some of his symptoms include insomnia, panic attacks, and an obsession with building new suits. His underlying fear is developed as losing Pepper, or rather, specifically not being strong enough to protect her. The movie takes a classic cinematic approach and aims to add suspense to the backstory of one of the most-loved Marvel characters.
As the movie begins, we get a flashback to Bern, Switzerland 1999, where Tony is attending a party. At this party, Tony meets two of the most important characters, a ‘botanist’ named Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall) and Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce). After Killian attempts to gain Tony’s interest in his upcoming company (A.I.M.), Tony invites him to meet on the roof later. Instead of meeting with Killian, Tony goes to rendezvous with Maya. As they are talking, they get into the topic of her research and its setbacks, and Happy (Tony’s head of security played by Jon Favreau) touches a plant, which makes it explode. Tony then leaves Maya a note the next morning to contact him about her further research.
The movie then cuts to current time (around Christmas) and Tony is in his basement/laboratory creating more suits. While doing so he injects himself with a serum of some sort in order to allow his newest prototype to find and connect to him much like a heat seeking missile. During this time there is a news story on the television depicting a new terrorist making threats who calls himself the Mandarin. As we find out, Tony’s obsession helps to fill his mind and keep him distracted, causing strain on his relationship with Pepper. While he is working, Happy is in charge of personally protecting Pepper and finds it odd when Killian shows up out of nowhere for a meeting with her. Soon after, it is discovered that Killian wants Pepper on board with his newest A.I.M. investment, EXTREMIS. Once Pepper gets home, Tony shows a bit of jealousy while confronting her about Killian and then reveals his fear of losing her to a power he is not strong enough to hold off. Happy, however, continues to follow through with his suspicions of Killian and runs into some trouble in which one of Killian’s guys explode and Happy is left in a coma. After Tony visits Happy in the hospital, the paparazzi will not leave him alone, which leads to him threatening the Mandarin and giving out his home address. Soon after, Maya (from 1999) shows up and there is a missile attack on his house, which leads to his mission of finding and destroying the Mandarin.
While I enjoyed the movie overall and loved how action-packed it was, I feel as though it may be hard for some people to follow the amount of information given in the two hour time length. Some of my favorite highlights would be Tony’s robot arm, Dum-E, and how their relationship is a dose of humor to break up the heavier topics. I also enjoyed the addition of Harley (Ty Simpkins) and how having a young kid in the movie causes hilarious banter due to Tony’s sarcastic humor.
Although this movie is rated PG-13, there are some more serious undertones that I would be aware of. Overall, I would recommend this movie to anyone who enjoy a good action-comedy movie with some sci-fi elements.
4.5/5
