Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to my next post in my series covering the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We are now in Phase Two of the MCU. The first movie in Phase Two is the final movie in the Iron Man trilogy: “Iron Man 3”. Directed by Shane Black, this movie shows Tony Stark suffering from PTSD that came from the attack in New York the year before. It also deals with The Mandarin and the Extremis. For those who don’t know, the Mandarin is the leader of the Ten Rings, which was the people that kidnapped Tony Stark in the first movie. The Extremis are enemies that can burn through metal and can blow up stuff. Let’s get into detail on how this movie went down.
The first thing we see is the Iron Man suits blowing up while Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr) is narrating. After that, we see the Marvel and Paramount logos pop up on the screen. The movie then starts with a flashback to New Year’s Eve 1999 in Switzerland. We see Tony Stark talk with a couple of people, including Yinsen and a lady scientist named Maya Henson (played by Rebecca Hall). Tony then meets a guy named Aldrich Killian (played by Guy Pearce) who wants to get Tony to go to his company AIM, which stands for Advanced Idea Mechanics. Tony says no and leaves Killian at the rooftop while Maya talks to Tony about her invention of Extremis, which in theory would help people heal from injuries. We see a little example of this with a plant re-growing a branch. Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) protects Tony from an explosion that came from the Extremis experiment. After Tony slept with Maya, we cut to present day where we see him at his home. Since the attack from New York, he has built a lot of extra Iron Man suits. Some Christmas music (Jingle Bells) plays as he tests the Mark 42 suit. One by one, each piece of the suit gets to him, with some errors in between. As soon as he gets the full suit on, another piece tears it apart in hilarious fashion. After that, we see footage of the 10 Rings and the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) giving a speech while some bombings are shown. The Mandarin concludes with this saying: “You’ll never see me coming.” After that, we see that the War Machine was given a paint job and renamed the Iron Patriot. Tony and Rhodes (Don Cheadle) talk about the suit change and the bombings before a kid shows Tony a drawing of Iron Man. The little boy mentions the New York attack to Tony, which causes him to have a panic attack. Tony then flies away in his suit. We cut to a scene with Happy Hogan and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) at the Stark Industries office building. Potts then talks with Killian in a room. Happy keeps reminding people about showing their badge in this scene. Killian shows Pepper a hologram showcasing the Extremis. Meanwhile, Happy calls Tony about what is going on. He reminds Stark about the time they met Killian in Switzerland in 1999. Pepper then tells Killian that she is not interested in the Extremis. Killian then leaves with his driver, but not before Happy takes a picture of the car. Pepper drives to Tony’s house where she sees a big inflatable Christmas bunny and Stark in the Mark 42 suit. Pepper then goes downstairs to discover that Tony is not in the suit. He then tells her that he is a hot mess and everything hasn’t been the same since the attack on New York. He says that he wants to protect Pepper as much as he can. After that talk, Tony joins Pepper in bed, but has visions of the attack. The Mark 42 suit surprises Pepper and Tony stops the suit from hurting her.
Meanwhile, we cut to the Chinese Theater in Hollywood where Happy is looking at sunglasses. Happy then walks to help someone with a spilled suitcase. He then gets badly hurt in an explosion that happened thanks to one of the Extremis soldiers. We cut to another video montage involving the Mandarin. He crushes some fortune cookies and mentions the bombing at the Chinese Theater. After that, we see a brief scene of Happy in the hospital with Tony in the room. Tony then talks reporters about the incident and stupidly sends his home address to the Mandarin. Tony goes home and does some detective work on the Mandarin and some of the bombings. He then highlights the attack in Rose Hill, Tennessee. The doorbell then rings and Maya Henson shows up. Tony is in his Mark 42 suit while talking with her for a brief moment before he sees bags go down. Pepper is angry about Tony giving the home address to the bad guys. Before they get to go anywhere, the house is destroyed by a few missiles shot from helicopters. Tony tells Pepper to get Maya to safety. Tony then takes the suit away from Pepper and suits up. He is able to get a couple of copters down before seeing his suits blow up. He falls down to the water, but Jarvis is able to help him fly out of the water towards Rose Hill, Tennessee. Tony wakes up and screams as he crashes down to the snow. With the suit at low power, he drags it in the cold all the way to a gas station. In a payphone, he calls Pepper to apologize about everything. Tony then drags the suit to a garage where he puts the suit on a couch. Tony is then pointed at with a potato gun made by a little boy named Harley. Harley is amazed at the suit and messes with it. Tony then gives him a flare weapon that will discourage his bully from messing with him. We then cut to Pepper putting on an Iron Man head and listens to Tony’s voicemail before she talks with Maya in the car. Maya then reveals that she is working with Killian, who is then shown setting up a broadcast with the Mandarin. Before we see that broadcast, we see Tony and Harley look at the bombing incident in town. Tony reminds Harley that he has an anxiety issue. Tony then freaks out after Harley talks too much. Tony then goes to a local bar to talk to a lady, who gives him some information about the Extremis stuff. Tony is then handcuffed by a lady disguised as homeland security. Tony is able to escape, but then has a fight with that lady, who turns out to be an Extremis soldier. He gets out of his handcuffs and sets up an explosion that kills the lady. After that, he sees a water tower going down thanks to the driver that was with Killian earlier. Tony is then stuck in the debris and sees Harley kidnapped by the guy. Harley uses the flare to escape his clutches and Tony hits the guy with a repulsion beam to knock him out. Tony tells Harley to go home and protect the suit before driving away.
During the broadcast, the Mandarin tells the president to call him or the guy who he kidnapped gets shot. The president calls the number, but the Mandarin ignores the call and shoots the guy anyway. The president then tells his guys to call Rhodes to find this guy. Meanwhile, Tony is driving while looking at the files. He calls Rhodes while he is busy infiltrating an evil facility. Rhodes gives Tony his password that makes the guys laugh before he points the machine gun at them. After that, Tony turns around and goes past a beauty pageant where Stan Lee gives a lady a 10. Tony then logs in to something before a guy interrupts him and tells him that he is his biggest fan. The guy shows Tony a tattoo that resembles him. Tony tells him to recalibrate some stuff so he can log in to AIM’s stuff. He then sees a video of people getting the Extremis injections. In the video, one of the guys blows up and sets the room on fire. After that scene, we see Maya and Pepper talk with each other in a hotel room before Pepper gets kidnapped by Killian. Rhodes then flies to somewhere, where he rescues some people before he is knocked out by an Extremis lady. Harley is helping with getting the Mark 42 suit back online in a phone call with Stark. The suit is charging slowly as Tony suffers another anxiety attack. He then buys some stuff and builds weapons with them as he drives all the way to Miami, Florida. He is able to sneak by thanks to his weapons. One of the weapons is an ornament that is a bomb. He gets in the house and encounters the Mandarin, who is actually an actor named Trevor Slattery. He points the gun at him and questions him about a lot of things. Tony then realizes that Killian is the real guy behind all of this stuff. Tony is knocked out and his hands are tied up in a dungeon. Maya is working on the computer before she talks with Tony briefly. Tony tells her that the Extremis is not stable. Killian then enters the room and tells Tony about the night in Switzerland. He also shows him Pepper being exposed to the experiment before shooting Maya for betraying him. Killian then leaves the dungeon and sees Rhodes in his Iron Patriot suit. He burns the belly of the suit, causing Rhodes pain. Tony then eventually suits up in his Mark 42 suit and escapes the clutches of the kidnappers. Rhodes gets out of the suit and is knocked out by one of Killian’s henchmen. The suit gets to Tony and he gets past the guards. A fun action scene follows as he fully suits up and sees the Iron Patriot suit flown by someone else. Stark and Rhodes then interrogate Slattery. They convince him to tell them about the plan. Stark and Rhodes get on a speedboat and call someone to alert him about the plan. The Iron Patriot (controlled by the guy named Savin) gets on the plane and melts a doorknob. Savin intends to attack the president on the plane. Savin kills some guys on the way to the president. Savin then gets off the suit and flies the president to somewhere. Stark then fights Savin for a bit. During the fight, Savin blows up part of the plane and sends some people flying down. Stark kills the guy and rescues all 13 people in a barrel of monkeys style. After Stark gets all of the people safe in the water, his suit gets destroyed by a truck. Stark then tells JARVIS (Paul Bettany) to activate the House Party Protocol (which means get all of the suits to Stark).
We then see Pepper in captivity talking with Killian before the president arrives in the Iron Patriot suit. The president is then held hostage while in the Iron Patriot suit. Stark and Rhodes arrive at the scene and sneak past security. They go upstairs before the backup arrives in the form of all of Stark’s suits. The suits then attack all of the Extremis guards and soldiers. Some of the suits don’t survive, with one of them causing an explosion. Tony gets in one and flies up to find Pepper. He tries to save her, but is stopped by Killian, who sneaks up from under him. Stark gets past him and runs away while asking JARVIS to get him another suit. Rhodes rescued the president and flies him away from the big explosion. Tony then runs and jumps to get Pepper. She falls into the fire before Stark runs into Killian. Stark gets into multiple suits, but Killian destroys them due to his Extremis abilities. Mark 42 then arrives, but falls apart again. Stark has the idea to get the suit onto Killian and blows him up before sliding down into another suit. Killian somehow survives and says that he is the Mandarin before getting hit and killed by Pepper, who survived the fall. Tony then tells JARVIS to blow up all of the suits for Pepper. We then see a montage of a few events: the vice president and Slattery being arrested, Tony getting the shrapnel out of his chest, Tony getting nice jewelry for Pepper, Happy waking up from his coma, Harley getting some presents from Tony, and Tony throwing the Arc Reactor into the water near his old house in Malibu. Tony then says that he is still Iron Man before the credits roll. There is a nice montage of scenes from the three Iron Man movies before the credits. The post-credits scene reveals that Tony has been talking to Bruce Banner all of this time. Banner tells Tony that he slept through some of it, and Tony starts all over. After that, the movie is over with the reminder that Tony Stark will return.
Despite its flaws, I thought that Iron Man 3 was a great movie to watch. Some scenes were tense, especially the ones involving Tony Stark/Iron Man dealing with Killian and the other Extremis soldiers. Other than the explosive finale at a dock, my favorite scene was the one where Iron Man saved all of the people that fell off the Air Force One plane in a style of a barrel of monkeys. Robert Downey, Jr delivers another stellar performance as Tony Stark. It was interesting to see him have anxiety attacks at certain moments over the attack on New York that happened the year prior to this movie. Pepper Potts was played well by Gwyneth Paltrow, as was Colonel James Rhodes by Don Cheadle. As for the Iron Patriot suit, I still prefer the War Machine one to that. Thankfully, it changed back to War Machine for future movies. Ben Kingsley was intimidating as the Mandarin, but silly when it was revealed to be a fake. Ty Simpkins played Harley well enough to get himself a cameo later in the MCU. Guy Pearce was a good threat as Killian, especially when he was showing off his powers (including breathing fire).
My biggest gripe with this film was that it was like the plot of “The Incredibles”. The Mr. Incredible role was done by Tony Stark and the Syndrome role was done by Killian. Killian had his feelings hurt in Switzerland, which made him jealous of Stark. 13 years later, Killian had Tony kidnapped for a bit until Tony escaped from his clutches via his suit. I know that the difference is that Killian breathed fire while Syndrome didn’t. Other than that similarity, Killian was a threatening villain to Tony and all of his suits.
Overall, this movie is an enjoyable watch 10 years later. It is easily my second favorite movie in the Iron Man trilogy. It had some great fight scenes, some funny moments, and some good drama. It was a great sendoff to the trilogy, even though Tony Stark would be in plenty of other movies after this. The musical score by Brian Tyler was solid. Weirdly, it was missing AC/DC as the movie focused more on the score and a couple of Christmas songs. In that sense, I can call Iron Man 3 a Christmas movie. The ending in which the suits were blown up was a little odd at first. I kinda thought that Tony Stark was retiring from the universe until I saw that he will return. He will make his return in “Avengers: Age of Ultron”. For now, the next movie in this series of posts will be “Thor: The Dark World”. Have a great day, everyone.
(Here is the video from How It Should Have Ended on this movie.)
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