(Source Marvel.com)

So if you haven’t seen it yet, do it. It’s fantastic.

I’m going to try and give as little spoilers as possible, because you can’t say much about this film without ruining the plot. Unfortunately. My recommendation: watch the movie ASAP, before someone ruins it. I’d say it’s arguably the best Iron Man movie in the trilogy, and here’s why:

1) They went away from the usual Iron Man bad guy

(Source GeekTyrant)
In the first Iron Man movie, Tony Stark ultimately has to fight Obedia Stane, who was originally his friend, but in the end, Obedia steals Tony’s designs for the first suit, and makes his own to try and kill Tony with. In “Iron Man 2”, Ivan Vanko, a Russian who recently lost his father (who was at one point betrayed by Tony Stark’s father), starts building his own suit that includes two electric whips to, again, try and kill Tony Stark. But in “Iron Man 3”, the main bad guy actually has “super powers”, instead of just their power being a technological suit like Iron Man’s. I will admit, a tertiary bad guy dons the Iron Patriot for a short period of time.

2) Tony Stark was full of himself again, but this time it was really funny

(Source GeekTyrant)
At the beginning of “Iron Man”, before he decides to be Iron Man, he’s just Tony Stark: genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. He doesn’t really care about others, he’s just a weapons manufacturer. Then he gets kidnapped, and after a couple days, escapes using his first Iron Man suit. When he comes back to his normal life, he becomes more giving, and he decides to become Iron Man to save people, and be selfless. But then at the beginning of “Iron Man 2”, we see Tony Stark at the Stark Expo, where he drops in and proves that he’s awesome. Between the first and the second movie, his ego skyrockets… and it didn’t help the movie

3) Sir Ben Kingsley
(Photo from GeekTyrant)
“You don’t know who I am… you’ll never, see, me coming…” 

Bringing Kingsley in to play the Mandarin was fantastic. After you see the movie, you’ll understand why Kingsley’s performance is absolutely what the movie needed. I can’t say anything more than that. just brought this specific element to the table that made the movie feel right.

4) The Kid – At a low point (trying not to give any spoilers), Tony needs to rebuild his suit and this kid Harley (played by Ty Simpkins) helps Tony out. Him and Tony end up having a “connection” as Harley puts it. And the back and forth between the two of them is hilarious.

5) Rhodes made a mistake but made up for it by being bad*ss – In Iron Man 2, and Iron Man 3, Col. James Rhodes a.k.a. War Machine accidentally trusts the bad guy to upgrade his suit. But in Iron Man 2, Rhodes spent most of his screen time unable to control his suit, because Ivan Vanko a.k.a. Whiplash was controlling it, and trying to kill Tony Stark. Rhodes had a small 3-4 minute scene with Tony where they fight off the attacking drones, but not much else. In this movie (Iron Man 3), Rhodes accidentally trusts the company A.I.M. to upgrade his suit, who in the third act, steal his suit and (SPOILER) attack the President. But, instead of just sitting there and doing nothing because he doesn’t have a suit, he fought off 2 henchmen and saved the President with only a handgun… Pretty bad*ss.

6) Pepper Potts was actually important: “Rescue”

(Source Screencrush)
Now, you might think I’m too critical on Pepper Potts because I generally don’t think she’s an important character… sorry. I would understand if she was more of a love-interest for Tony Stark, but even though they’re dating (in Iron Man 3), they only show they have a relationship 3 or 4 times. I’ll put it like this: Rebecca Hall (who plays Maya Hansen) had more of a relationship with Tony Stark in the opening scene, than Pepper Potts has gotten  over 4 movies (Iron man 1-3 and The Avengers). Anyway, I’ll stop talking about how unimportant she was, and onto how awesome she was in this movie. There’s one scene (SPOILER) where Tony has to save himself and Pepper, and he commands his suit to form onto Pepper so she can withstand a rocket… I think this means that one day soon, we’ll be seeing Pepper Potts become “Rescue”, a character in the Marvel comic book universe (her first appearance was in The Invincible Iron Man #10 in 2012). She seems right now, like an underdeveloped character who’s going to become a lot more important in the next movie. I don’t know, maybe I’m just confused about what exactly she does… In first Iron Man movie, she seems to be Tony’s secretary/super-personal assistant, and then she’s promoted to C.E.O. of Stark Industries in Iron Man 2 (why? It appears to have been a way for Tony to say he really loves Pepper, and it works), but then in Iron Man 3, Pepper has a meeting with Aldrich Killian (Guy Pierce) and she makes a comment before entering the room, that makes me wondered what exactly it is she did before getting Starks coffee… She says to Happy (Jon Favreau): “I have to deal with this very annoying thing.” and he responds “How so?” Then, Pepper says: “I use to work with him, he use to ask me out all the time. It was awkward.” So… when did they work together? Guy Pierce was quoted saying:

“When Killian started his organization A.I.M., however many years ago, Pepper was somebody whom he employed to work there. Obviously, from the outset he was very keen on her. She’s smart, she’s attractive, she’s a great girl. But Killian was someone that she was never interested in. When we meet Killian early on in the film, everything about him is unappealing on some kind of level and she always kept him at arm’s length. Then years later when he goes to her to basically look for funding and to get her involved again, she’s completely taken aback by how charming he is and how wonderful he now looks, plus his attitude’s changed. So she is kind of taken by him; she doesn’t quite know what’s happening to her and her reaction to him. And obviously, she and Tony Stark have a relationship, so this causes a little rift between those two.”

7) The Trilogy is complete!
Source: Wodumedia.com

In the opening scene of Iron Man 3, we see Tony Stark in Bern, Switzerland, in 1999, where he briefly meets Yensin (who saved Tony in “Iron Man” and helps him build his 1st suit to escape the terrorists cave). And for some reason, bringing Yensin back for even the brief couple seconds made it the best cameo yet, except for Stan Lee, of course. It also helped bring everything together. It brought the trilogy together, almost as if, the story went back to when it began. Even though it probably wasn’t, it felt like the entire Iron Man trilogy was planned from the beginning, and it was because of Yensin showing up in Iron Man 3.

8) The suits, and the new technology
(Source FlicksAndBits.com)

You’ll understand why, after you’ve seen the movie, but basically, I’ll say it without spoiling anything: Tony implants little microchips into his skin so he can control Mark 42 (his newest suit), and command it to assemble onto himself, and at two different points in the movie, onto other people.

Skip to 30 seconds in:

9) The Hulkbuster 
(From Cineslam.com)

So for those of you who didn’t notice this big guy in the movie, he showed up in the trailer, and fans were going nuts, but it turns out, “Igor” (as Tony Stark calls him) had one purpose: hold up the falling cranes… LAME. Comic book fans know this guys real name and purpose: He’s called Hulkbuster, and his purpose is busting the hulk… sounded better in my head. Anyway, (SPOILERS) at the end of the battle, Tony blows up the remaining suits in the sky like they were Christmas fireworks or something… but if I counted right (and we’re going back a step now), 17 of the suits got destroyed during the big fight, and 16 got destroyed at the end (when Tony told Jarvis to self destruct all the remaining suits), but the Hulkbuster suit (Igor), was holding up the entire platform the big fight was taking place, and when the other’s self destructed, the platform didn’t fall, so… The Hulkbuster lived? Perhaps the Hulkbuster is going to return, hopefully.

10) It was well scripted, and well, it was scripted

Here’s a segment of an article from io9: Read full article here

“They had no script, man. They had an outline. We would show up for big scenes every day and we wouldn’t know what we were going to say. We would have to go into our trailer and work on this scene and call up writers on the phone, ‘You got any ideas?’ Meanwhile the crew is tapping their foot on the stage waiting for us to come on.”

Bridges, director Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. would literally act out sequences during primitive rehearsals, Downey taking on Bridges’s role and vice versa, to find and essentially improvise their way to full scenes, the actor recounts. Bridges says that the entire production was probably saved by the improv prowess of the film’s director and star.

“You’ve got the suits from Marvel in the trailer with us saying, ‘No, you wouldn’t say that,'” Bridges continued. “You would think with a $200 million movie you’d have the shit together, but it was just the opposite. And the reason for that is because they get ahead of themselves. They have a release date before the script, ‘Oh, we’ll have the script before that time,’ and they don’t have their shit together.

“Jon dealt with it so well,” Bridges continues. “It freaked me out. I was very anxious. I like to be prepared. I like to know my lines, man, that’s my school. Very prepared. That was very irritating, and then I just made this adjustment. It happens in movies a lot where something’s rubbing against your fur and it’s not feeling right, but it’s just the way it is. You can spend a lot of energy bitching about that or you can figure out how you’re going to do it, how you’re going to play this hand you’ve been dealt. What you can control is how you perceive things and your thinking about it. So I said, ‘Oh, what we’re doing here, we’re making a $200 million student film. We’re all just fuckin’ around! We’re playin’. Oh, great!’ That took all the pressure off. ‘Oh, just jam, man, just play.’ And it turned out great!”

So I’m glad that Iron Man 3 had Shane Black writing it, because it turned out really well.

Related Posts:

– Iron Man 3 – What To Know

– Summer Movies to see

– Iron Man 3 newest poster

– Everything you need to know before seeing Iron Man 3

What did you guys think of my review? How’d you guys like the movie? How about the Easter Eggs within the movie?

Let us know below!

5/7/2013 – 10:44 pm

by James