Most modern superhero movies are devoid of culture and don't have as much of what I love about superhero movies which is heroes saving people. Most modern superhero movies are more individualistic and deal with these cosmic villains and the heroes fighting them in some abandoned field. There is no culture and no heroes interacting with people in the real world. Iron Man 3 was made back when these movies had more heart to me. There are some great action scenes that check all of the boxes. Tony Stark saves people. The action scenes when his house is destroyed, on the oil freighter, and the action scenes in Tennessee are all scenes that would be in normal action movies. That is Shane Black's influence where every action scene has stakes and set pieces. It also has buddy cop elements and Shane Black's trait of sassy children. While it does not have the most Christmas ambience, Tony Stark goes through a journey that characters normally go through in a Christmas movie and he narrates the story. While some of the twists involving the villains still aren't executed well I do like how this movie shows that someone like the Mandarin is never as scary as just a television broadcast shows him to be.
Synopsis: Plagued with worry and insomnia since saving New York from destruction, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), now, is more dependent on the suits that give him his Iron Man persona -- so much so that every aspect of his life is affected, including his relationship with Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow). After a malevolent enemy known as the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) reduces his personal world to rubble, Tony must rely solely on instinct and ingenuity to avenge his losses and protect the people he loves.
The movie starts with a narration of Tony Stark talking about his past. I enjoy this because other Christmas movies such as A Christmas Story and It's a Wonderful Life do things like this. They tell a linear story letting you know you are in the past with narration. It couldn't be more obvious that Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) will end up being a villain just because he starts off as this obsessive fan of Tony Stark and Tony leaves him abandoned on the roof of the building. Tony talks in the narration about his past coming back to haunt him and that is a big part of this movie. Tony goes through a journey. We see the party animal, playboy side of him in 1999. We see the more PTSD ridden, irresponsible version of him in the present. Lastly, he goes through a journey of showing woh he really is without the suit and the isolated, billionaire house near the water. While I used to not enjoy how much he was out of the suit in this I now see it as a positive. Tony is more relatable in this movie. He is a workaholic using his suit and hobbies to mask his issues and his inability to cope with them. On date night with Pepper he sends up his suit that he isn't in to talk to her. While he has a nightmare his suit comes to interfere and sees her as a threat. She is mad because he can't seem to separate himself from the suits and he thinks he can use them to solve all of his problems.
Early on in the film I like how they show Tony to be impulsive. As soon as Happy is attacked and made comatose by an explosion he gives an interview telling where his home address is and that he will kill the Mandarin. I do like this early storyline of Happy first, and then Tony being detectives. Happy getting the license plate off of Killian's car and then following his henchman, Savin (James Badge Dale). At the explosion scene he points at the dog tags, which Tony then reconstructs the crime scene digitally and sees that. Tony uses the outlying result of military people being killed with the extreme heat signature to deduce that another Mandarin bombing happened in Rose Hill, Tennessee which is where the suit is programmed to go. Around this time another figure from Tony's past, Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall) shows up. She was in the flashback sequence and she was talking about trying to create a way for the body to heal itself called Extremis. She worked with Killian to create it. At this point gunships lead by Savin come to Tony's house and destroy his house as he gets into a prototype Iron Man suit and survives. What I liked about this scene was how it felt like a real action movie scene. I enjoyed the slow-motion editing when the magnet suit attaches to Pepper to save her from the explosion. Just like Lethal Weapon 2 another Shane Black action scene with gunships near a seaside home. I also enjoyed seeing Tony improvise, like launching the desk at one of the helicopters to destroy it.
The next part of this movie I find fun as well. The suit goes to Tennessee because of the programming. Tony takes shelter in a shed near where a kid, Harley (Ty Simpkins), lives. Like the kids in other Shane Black movies, Danielle Harris in The Last Boy Scout immediately comes to mind, this kid is sassy but he also acts as a way for Tony to seem more relatable. He needs help repairing his suit and Harley helps him. He shows him the location of the explosion. Tony eventually tracks down the dead soldier's widow and one of the Extremis agents goes to that meeting and handcuffs him but Tony is able to fight her to standstill inside a restaurant and uses dog togs in a microwave to blow up the building and kill her. Savin shows up wanting the same file the other agent was after and Tony, with help from Harley is able to knock him out. This was the second great action scene in the movie. I enjoyed the town setting and some of the small town culture it brought to the film. This was the sequence with the most Christmas ambience because of the lights, decorations, and snow. I do like how Tony has one of his arc-reactor beams left and uses it against Savin. Same thing goes for the weapon he gave Harley and using that to distract Savin. Shane Black just knows how to put those action-fist-pump moments in at the perfect time.
Tony tracks the Mandarin's broadcast location to Miami. I enjoy Tony getting primal and building some quick weapons like potato guns and these electric shocking gloves on the fly. I thought him going into a building with a bunch of armed guards and taking them out like a ninja was a bit much. One thing I don't think of Tony as is stealthy. I have to get on Killian for this also. If you want to protect your anonymity why not have Extremis soldiers guarding the person that helps you be that way? These guards seemed like they were less equipped and less able than me to guard this place. While this is going on, Pepper is found by Killian and the first of two twists happen in this movie where Maya is revealed to be in league with Killian. She wants Tony to help complete her formula so that Extremis will no longer have the side effects and be more controllable. Killian reveals a plan to capture and kill the President because his administration disapproved of his research. Me, having seen a lot of movies, seeing Miguel Ferrer as the Vice President let me know immediately he was the bad guy and planned to betray the President. In a cameo by a young Jena Ortega, playing his daughter, we see she is missing a leg and Extremis can help her get it back. Tony's friend Colonel James Rhodes, AKA War Machine and now the Iron Patriot is tricked into getting captured at the hands of an extremist agent.
Tony finds the Mandarin and he reveals himself to be an actor named Trevor Slattery. This whole scene is funny because you see that he is just a man living his best life with women and beer all around him. I have not read Iron Man comics. Some say that they were not doing the real Mandarin because they were afraid of political incorrectness and the reception it would get in China. I actually like this twist because it shows that things and people like the Mandarin are never as scary as we make them out to be. It is scary when someone can hack into all of the televisions across America but that is not what that person is like all of the time. What they were doing could have been a response to the Christopher Nolan Batman movies as well because those movies never made this subject matter comedic in any way.
Hansen is killed by Killian after threatening to kill herself as Tony had changed her mind about wanting to fix Extremis. Tony eventually escapes and rescues Rhodes. The two of them find out where Pepper and Killian are going from Trevor. Tony uses one of his suits to get on board Air Force One. Savin has all ready taken the Iron Patriot suit and captured the President. Tony kills Savin by blowing a whole through his torso with an arc reactor blast. Tony however, manages to save the other workers. I really enjoy this action sequence. As I said before I enjoy heroes saving people. I like how Tony uses Jarvis to identify who the people are and how many he can hold onto and how they all hold on together. The only thing that takes away from this is I wish he had actually been in the suit. The twist is cool but not having him in the suit lowers the stakes a bit. Now for something that Shane Black does best: an action scene on a giant oil freighter.
Tony calls in around 30 other suits from his house and has many of them fight the other Extremis agents. I do like this sequence and how Tony runs around on different parts of the freighter to get to a suit. Rhodes throughout this movie does some really cool action stunts. The scene where he hangs on the crate, shoots the cable and holds on to the wire and saves the President who is tied up in the air and then repels and shoots the cable so they don't fall, is an awesome sequence. I like how Extremis is shown to be so powerful that it can break through an Iron Man suit. Tony going to fight Killian and then sliding so he can get the suit is awesome. The final fight is cool as Tony uses his new magnet technology to attach to Killian, and then blows up the suit. Since Killian is so juiced up on Extremis that he is like a Resident Evil villain he comes back and now Extremis-Pepper fights him and kills him with an explosion. Tony blows up all of his suits and gets the shrapnel taken out of his heart as he wants to show he doesn't want to rely on technology to live. He also sends Harley a bunch of money and gifts.
I haven't even talked about some of the Shane Black elements I enjoyed in this. The buddy cop moments and some of Tony's lines are better than they have ever been because of his writing. I enjoy the moment on the freighter when Tony is using a gun and asks for another magazine and Rhodes says he has another gun that his magazines won't fit his. Tony also says he can't hit the spotlight the guards are near from where they are proceeds to rise up and shoot it with ease. Some of the banter between Harley and Tony is fun like when he asks for a sandwich and when Harley talks about his Dad leaving. Tony in response that says, "Dads leave, no need to be a pussy about it." Later when Tony is captured he asks the guards how many miles between Tennessee and Miami and holds his hands up for his armor which does eventually come. When he fights the Extremis agent in the restaurant there is a great exchange where she says "that's all you got, cheap tricks and a lousy one liner." Tony says back, "sweetheart that could be the name of my autobiography."
I remember really enjoying this movie when I saw it in the theater. I had cooled off on it in more recent viewings but this time it just clicked for me. It doesn't go as hard on incorporating other superheroes into the story like more modern Marvel movies do. It is primarily about Tony. It has culture and superheroes doing heroic things. It reminds me of Spider-Man 2 in that it is about a hero trying to find out what makes them a hero more than just their abilities and persona. It makes Tony more relatable than the genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist that he is. It fits as a Christmas movie because it is a character learning a lesson, going back into their past and ending with them appreciating what they have, which is what Christmas is all about. The Maya Hansen twist is pointless. The Mandarin twist is pointless though I still like what they did with his persona and how they made him ridiculous. Guy Pearce is good but the character isn't great. Those are the weaknesses but they aren't bigger parts of the movie than Tony's journey so they never seem to drag the movie down much.
Rating: 9/10
Trivia: The first day Robert Downey Jr. and Ben Kingsley met on set they took a picture to send to mutual friend, Richard Attenborough.
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