Iron Man Should-be-Free

Iron Man 3 is now the second film in recent history which I have regretted spending any of my time watching, the first having been Frozen.  If you’re one of those busy people who doesn’t have fifteen minutes to waste reading a guy’s rant against a lame movie, I’ll just sum it up here and now:  Iron Man 3 sucked.  It was lame.  Don’t waste your money.  Don’t waste your time.  Skip it.  Don’t even bother watching it.  Really.  It wasn’t even bad enough to be funny, ala The Last Airbender.  If you’re one of those sadistic people who get pleasure from listening to a guy’s woes and watching as a terrible film gets ripped to shreds by said woeful person, and happens to have a bunch of free time to burn, feel free to stick around. 

One should note before reading further that this synopsis is going to be riddled with spoilers, so if you mind learning that that Mandarin’s not really a true villain, you shouldn’t read any farther… Oops, did I just write that?  Oh well.  Iron Man 3 opens some twentyish years before the actual story begins, explaining how Tony Stark turned down an offer to join a high-tech company that planned to create some serum that is later revealed to turn people into fire-breathing, limb-regrowing, everything-surviving supersoldiers.  Anyway, fast forward through a bunch of junk… Tony Stark gets attacked by the spooky terrorist Mandarin after threatening him and giving out his address to the world.  Tony jumps into his suit, or rather, doesn’t jump into his suit, survives the attack, then he gets into his suit and for whatever reason lands in, uhhh, some Podunk town where his suit is conveniently wrecked, and he is attacked by more superpower enhanced bad-guys.  Fast forward ten more minutes.  Tony Stark infiltrates the Mandarin’s lair in Miami without his suit and figures out that the Mandarin is really just some stupid actor hired by Aldritch Killian, leader of the, umm, bad-guy corporation I guess.  So Tony learns that the Mandarin is fake, then he gets captured, then he breaks free, then the president gets captured without any forewarning, then Tony rescues the president.  Oh wait, rewind a bit.  Oh yeah, here we are.  It turns out that bad-guy leader Aldritch Killian has the whole fire-breathing package too, but he gets defeated anyway…  Oh, and at the very end of the film, Tony decides to get the shrapnel removed from his heart, so I guess he’s not even Iron Man anymore.

"Some people may call me a terrorist.  I consider myself a teacherer"  Mandarin could have been so awesome...

You know, I really don’t want to be too hard on the film.  Seriously, insulting stupid plot, boring, poorly-developed villains, lack of action, fake Mandarin, and mediocre acting aside, this is a pretty kick-butt awesome movie.  Well, as kick-butt awesome a movie with nothing in it can be.  I cannot list one good thing about this movie.  There is hardly any of the humor seen in the first Iron Man and The Avengers, making the film seem heavy, dull, and overly serious.  The movie was made even more excessively dull by the lack of action.  Whose idea was it to make a superhero movie with no fighting in it?  Tony hardly ever wears the Iron Man suit, his buddy, War Machine/Iron Patriot hardly ever wears the suit, and even in the epic final battle with all the Iron Man suits flying around and shooting up the fire-breathing bad-guys, Tony can’t seem to stay in his suit for more than twenty seconds before his suit breaks and he has to run after another.  When at last Tony suits up and flies up to Air Force One to rescue the president, and ends up saving thirteen some people freefalling back to earth it turns out that Tony is in a simulation, and none of what you just watched actually happened.  When Tony Stark’s mansion is attacked by the Mandarin, he’s barely able to survive, let alone fight back against the invaders, and the assault lasts less than five minutes. 

The pacing of the film in general is dreadful.  Tony spends the first half of the film digging up clues about mysterious explosions that might be linked to the Mandarin while the audience has already witnessed the truth first-hand.  The entire flashback at the beginning of the movie was completely unnecessary, as was the Air Force One simulation, which was probably just there to fill time so as to have a two hour movie.  In the final battle, Aldritch Killian takes forever to die, surviving countless blows from Iron Man (yes, Iron Man.  Tony finally uses one of his numerous suits), an explosion from a self-destructing Iron Man suit that Tony attaches to him, a huge fall down into an inferno, and finally dying when, of all the people in this movie, Pepper hits him with a big, metal pole.  All the other fire-breathing villains take forever to die, withstanding explosions, electric shocks, and lots and lots and lots and lots of bullets.  Yet all of them seem to die fairly easily when all the Iron Man suits start to rough them up at the end.  

And as I draw near the one thousand word mark, I shall conclude my angry tirade with a request; nay, a plea.  Don’t pay to watch Iron Man 3.  Don’t even watch Iron Man 3 if it’s free.  I watched Iron Man 3 for free and I was disappointed.  So don’t.  Under any circumstances.  Watch.  Iron Man.  3.   Ever.  

Grade Rating: D

Afternote: I would have put in the Honest Trailer for Iron Man 3 somewhere in the post, but my good friend Josephos Rex already put it in his review at The Author's Files.