Iron Man 3 - Now With More Tony!

The third installment in the Iron Man series contains a whole hell of a lot of Iron Men. However, you get to see way more of Tony Stark in this one, and that's a good thing. The Robert Downey Jr. factor is what made the original Iron Man such a hit, and in my opinion, he added the much needed levity to The Avengers. Having a lot more Robert in the movie is great, though, I've heard some people complaining. Those people are entitled to their own wrong opinions!

Iron Man 3 - Poster

Anyway, I saw Iron Man 3 twice in theaters, in 3D and in regular D. With this particular movie the 3D didn't add anything, just gave a bit more depth, so if you're worried about the shekels in your pocket, go ahead and skip the 3D costlier version, you'll still get lots of awesome explosions.

The plot here is pretty standard for an Iron Man flick, someone is really pissed at Tony Stark. In this case it's The Mandarin, played interestingly by Ben Kingsley. When I first saw the trailer for Iron Man 3 and heard him say, "You'll never see me coming...", I thought the delivery of that line meant that this villain would be like Heath Ledger's Joker, however Ben Kinglsey comes off a bit more like Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow, which is great. So, The Mandarin doesn't like Tony Stark and goes after him. That's pretty much the plot in a nutshell, but a few fun twists make the story play out really well. One of the twists is that following the events of The Avengers, Tony is suffering from a bit of PTSD. This makes the snarky Tony feel a bit more human, which is a welcome change from the ever wise-cracking Tony that we're used to.

Fret not, there are still plenty of wisecracks. Don Cheadle plays Colonel Rhodes, the guy in War Machine suite, except this time around War Machine has been re-branded by the United States government to give him a more "fluffy" name, Iron Patriot. Gags like that are plentiful, and Jon Favreau along with Gwenyth Paltrow provide some fun side-commentary as well.

One of the biggest surprises of this film was the writing. A lot of the little sub-plots and scenes get little throw-away lines of dialog to explain them, and I didn't even notice them until my second viewing. It's the little things that matter in big-budget movies like this, and writing one line of dialog that helps guide folks from one scene to another is something that I greatly appreciate.

4.5/5 from me. If you like the first two Iron Man movies, you'll like this one. I enjoyed it a bit more than two, but a bit less than The Avengers (which I think is one of the most well put together super hero flicks ever concocted). Go see it with some popcorn and a soda, and stay until after the credits, there's a fun little Easter egg.