The events of Loki’s attack on New York City have left Tony Stark a completely changed man. Now saddled with a severe case of insomnia and post-traumatic stress disorder, Tony spends his sleepless nights the only way he knows how – coming up with new prototypes for the Iron Man suit. But now, new events require Tony to suit up again. A villainous madman known only as the Mandarin has staged a horrible attack on the Chinese Theater in Los Angeles and is coming for Tony. An angry Tony wants to confront the Mandarin face to face. Still, he proceeds to stage an attack on Tony’s Malibu mansion and leaves him with absolutely nothing – no Pepper, no toys except for a defunct Iron Man prototype called the MK42. He’s stranded in the middle of Tennessee. Tony believes the attack on the Chinese Theater and an attack on a small town in Tennessee are related. As he puts the pieces together and tries to get the MK42 working, he discovers far more sinister forces at work than the Mandarin himself. But how does an event from Tony’s past fit in with the events of the present?1
I really loved this movie. Iron Man 3 is a really good Iron Man movie, and a great follow-up to The Avengers. It addresses Tony’s ptsd from the Battle of New York against Loki and the Chitauri, with Tony almost dying in a wormhole, and I really like how they show how much he’s affected by that traumatic experience. A lot of times, movies will never address the stress that comes after life-threatening situations when they really should.
I also really like how they’re able to disconnect Tony from his suit in this movie, so that they’re able to build on his character without the protection of a metal suit, figuratively and literally. The Iron Man suit definitely protects his body physically, but I feel like the suit is also a protection for his name and ego, and without it he gets to actually grow as a person.
Something I also really enjoyed was the reveal of the Mandarin. The reveal that the main villain is actually not the person he’s been hunting the whole movie is done pretty well, actually, and I do really like how the actor for the Mandarin played him as just a dumb British dude. The movie also does carry on the theme of having one foreign villain in the beginning, then moving to the “real” white corporate villain at the end, which definitely works in storytelling, but was pretty predictable in my opinion; the 6 rings were sidelined by Obadiah in the first Iron Man, Ivan Vanko to Justin Hammer in the second, and now the Mandarin to Aldrich Killian.
Aldrich Killian was one of the weaker-written villains in the Iron Man movie franchise so far, in my opinion. I’m not a huge fan of the nerdy guy-to-suave villain, although it does work against Stark and his ego. I also feel like he’s just really underdeveloped as a character, and his backstory of Stark leaving him alone after telling him he was going to meet up is not that impactful for the main villain of the movie.
Tony’s character development in this movie was a really strong part of the movie. In the beginning of the movie, he was still more or less the same person from the last couple of movies, but after being ambushed in his home and his suit malfunctioning and sending him to Tennessee, he’s really able to grow as a character away from the mask of his suit. I love how, in the end, he has surgery to remove the shrapnel from his chest and destroys all of the extra suits he has to end his obsession and focus on his relationship with Pepper, even if it’s contradicted in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Tony’s panic attacks were also a really good part of this movie in my opinion, and I’m upset that it was never really addressed again. The first time he has one of these attacks, he and the audience both think he’s having a heart attack or being poisoned or something like that, and when Jarvis reveals it’s a panic attack, it shocks us again. It’s a really good way to just humanize his character a bit more, and something that kind of just forces Stark to deal with how he’s feeling and not just brush it off again.
Something I’m really disappointed about is how they never really address any of the character development Stark has in this movie. In the next movie he appears in, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Stark is the same tech-obsessed guy, and he gets his chest plate back a few movies after that one, in Avengers: Infinity War. They never bring up his PTSD or panic attacks, and he doesn’t really change from the character he’s been in every one of his movies.
Overall, however, Iron Man 3 is a good movie and a strong addition to the MCU. It really expands on Tony Stark’s character and offers development he’s never been able to really have. I really like how they dive deeper into his PTSD and trauma from all of the fights he’s had. It’s a good film to go after The Avengers and the large cast that movie had, and I like how they’re able to isolate Stark in a rural town with just a kid following him. I recommend that anyone who hasn’t seen this movie and is a fan of Iron Man go ahead and watch it, since it’s a really good character-development movie.
- halo1k, IMDB
Leave a Reply