Iron Man 3by Katie FrankReviews may contain information that could be considered 'spoilers'. Readers should proceed at their own risk. Studio
Credits Grade: 6 1999 - Tony Stark flashes back to a New Year's Eve party in Switzerland, where he had a brief fling with brilliant botanist / geneticist Maya Hansen and ignored a strange man wanting to propose a think tank to them in the elevator. While events like these are par for the course for Tony in 1999, this particular night will end up changing Tony's life forever. How is this night connected to the rise of a mysterious terrorist called The Mandarin, and how can Tony protect those he loves without alienating them?Iron Man 3 revolves mainly around Tony Stark's relationship with Pepper Potts, and how difficult it is for him to balance being Iron Man with being a good partner and friend. After the events of The Avengers, Tony is also suffering from anxiety attacks and not sleeping, instead spending most of his time in his lab creating new Iron Man suits (he's invented approximately twenty-seven in the time between the two films). His reticence to discuss his problems with Pepper (or anyone) leads to friction between the two, but an attack by terrorist warlord The Mandarin ends up putting the conversation on hold while Tony is stranded, sans functioning armor, in Tennessee, and Pepper tries to protect Maya, who may know what the Mandarin is up to. As I imagine many viewers were, I was most curious to see what the writers and director would do with the character of The Mandarin. While The Mandarin is Iron Man's greatest foe, the best-known comic version of the character is also an exceedingly offensive stereotype, based in shameful Fu Manchu yellow-peril imagery. The filmmakers explained in multiple interviews that they didn't want to perpetuate racist imagery, and were thus trying to go in a new direction with The Mandarin. In the film, "The Mandarin" is a character made up by Killian to manipulate Americans' fears of foreign terrorists, and is played by a drug-addled actor. While the dialogue definitely calls out the Orientalist impulses behind the Mandarin character and his imagery, the film also makes a buffoon of actor Sir Ben Kingsley, who was the first person of South Asian descent to win an Academy Award. It's a bit of a no-win situation with the character -- either he is a bad stereotype or a joke being manipulated by a powerful white man. It doesn't help that Killian is not a very interesting villain, nor is the Extremis technology particularly compelling. We also don't get much insight into the operations of Advanced Idea Mechanics, Killian think tank, or what else they might be working on. The film does have some definite highlights, particularly the snappy and witty dialogue. While the first two Iron Man films also had entertaining banter between Tony and other characters, Iron Man 3 seems to have taken some cues from The Avengers and incorporated some of Joss Whedon's trademark dialogue style. This works particularly well for the scenes between Tony and Pepper, and Tony and James "Rhodey" Rhodes; it also keeps the section of the film where Tony relies on a scrappy young boy for help from becoming corny or overly sentimental. Pepper and Rhodey also get to kick a lot of ass and not just play damsel in distress and second fiddle for Tony, particularly toward the end of the film -- in fact, it's Pepper, and not Tony, who ultimately defeats Killian. However, the ending of the film didn't really come together. Tony decides to give up being Iron Man in order to devote more time to his relationship with Pepper; this involves him having surgery to remove the shrapnel in his chest so he no longer has to rely on the arc reactor to keep him alive. However, if this surgery was possible, why didn't he have it upon returning from Afghanistan in the first place? There's no explanation for why this surgery is suddenly possible, or why, if it was possible all along, Tony waited until now to have it. It's also a bit unsatisfying for Tony to give up being Iron Man, since the audience knows he will be right back at his heroics eventually (at least by 2015, when The Avengers 2 comes out). Iron Man 3 is entertaining and made for a fine movie outing, but the main villain wasn't particularly intriguing, the ending was a bit anticlimactic, and it just didn't leave much of an impression afterward. Hopefully the upcoming sequels to Thor and Captain America will provide a bit more interest in terms of establishing antagonists and building the Marvel Cinematic Universe's mythos. Written: May 5, 2013
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