Written by Shane Black And Drew Pearce
Directed by Shane Black
Tony: "I'm Tony Stark. I build neat stuff, got a great girl, occasionally save the world. So why can't I sleep?"
With this movie, two things happened. Not only did we get our first installment in the second phase for the MCU but a superhero got to complete his trilogy first. This was also the second film in the MCU to also get over a billion at the box office.
Now, was this the best of the Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) movies? I don't know. I think they've all been on the same level. For me, they're good movies but compared to other heroes, they're not as easy to rank them individually.
Anyways this third movie had a terrorist by the name of the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) popping up on camera, making threats, carrying them out and for a good portion of the movie he had everyone convinced that Tony Stark was dead. Even for 2013, the character was written in a fairly stereotypical way.
Then the twist was that the Mandarin was actually a hammer actor named Trevor Slattery. I will give Ben Kingsley his dues because he did alternate between the Mandarin and Slattery quite well without it feeling too off. Fortunately a later movie in 2021 would do some lifting in making the Mandarin a lot better.
As for the actual Mandarin, it's really an ex-boyfriend of Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). Yup, Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) was the one pulling the strings and he did have some help from the likes of Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), Ellen Brandt (Stéphanie Szostak) and Eric Savin (James Badge Dale). The latter especially being responsible for putting Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) in the hospital for most of the movie.
As a group of villains, they worked. Saying that, Maya was more on the conflicted side of things and ended up being killed for that. There was also Iron Patriot (Don Cheadle) having his suit taken out of control, some President (William Sadler) kidnapping, Pepper suiting up herself and a much needed comeuppance for the baddies while Tony got a protege with Harley Keener (Ty Simpkins) and dealt with his own existential crisis throughout the movie.
- Tony narrates the events of the movie, only for the post credit scene to reveal it being a therapy session of sorts with Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo). The latter didn't retain anything Tony told him.
- Horror fans can briefly spot Jenna Ortega as the daughter of the Vice President (Miguel Ferrer) in the movie. JARVIS (Paul Bettany) also got some nice scenes here. Yinsen (Shaun Toub) also appeared.
- Cameos ahoy from the likes of Joan Rivers, Bill Maher and George Kotsiopoulos as well as Stan Lee as a beauty pageant judge.
- Despite playing huge roles in the previous movies, there's no Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) or S.H.I.E.L.D. here.
- This movie largely pulled from the Extremis storyline.
- Chronology: Despite being released for the start of the summer, the movie itself took place during Christmas 2013.
Iron Man 3 did make a good third movie. Yes, there's some horrible stereotypes with the Mandarin story but other than that, the action's good, Tony does get some growth as a character and I quite like the Christmas setting.
Rating: 7 out of 10
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