Iron Man 3 is a 2013 sci-fi superhero film directed by Shane Black. It stars Robert Downey Jr as the titular hero Iron Man, Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, and Ben Kingsley co-star. It's based on the comic book hero of the same name from Marvel Comics.
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| This is my preferred poster |
Iron Man 3 follows on from the events of the Avengers film and sees Tony Stark, the superhero known as Iron Man, suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after nearly dying in the climax of that film. He's dealing with the associated anxiety and insomnia by building new suit after new suit.
Meanwhile, a new terrorist calling himself The Mandarin has claimed responsibility for a series of explosive attacks across the US. After Tony's friend Happy Hogan is injured in one such attack, Tony publicly challenges the Mandarin. The ensuing conflict at first sees Iron Man defeated and stranded in Tennesee, presumed dead, and with a non-functioning suit. But with some help from a local boy, he's able to repair his suit, track down the Mandarin and face his own demons.
Robert Downy Jr continues to be the perfect Tony Stark - eccentric, supremely charismatic, manic even in his expression of anxiety, and charming even in his most obnoxiously narcissistic moments. Gwyneth Paltrow's sassy, self-assured, and much put-upon portrayal of Pepper Potts is still the best version of that character we've ever seen. Ben Kingsley and Guy Pearce both play villains and both do great jobs, but Ben Kingsley steals the show and plays into the dramatic reveal of his character perfectly.
As an action movie, Iron Man 3 is easily the greatest in the series. The action beats are creative and varied, Robert Downy Jr is given the occasional opportunity to show off his actual skills as a martial artist, and the climax in particular takes the possibilities of Iron Man and his super suits to their full potential. Even Gwenyth Paltrow gets in on the action and it's great to see Pepper finally let loose.
Okay, that's all that surface level, standard movie review praise done. The movie is six years old and its part of one of the biggest media franchise ever; everybody should have seen it by now. You already know it's good and if the fact that it's well acted, well directed, well choreographed, well written, and just all around a technically proficient entry into the MCU hasn't convinced you it's a good movie worth your time, I don't know what to tell you. But if you're on board with me so far, let's get into the meat of Iron Man 3.
Because Iron Man 3 isn't just a good action movie and an enjoyable super hero film, it's a legitimately great movie. Iron Man 3 is the kind of film that justifies the entire genre. And not just that, Iron Man 3 is culturally significant in the same way Black Panther and Wonder Woman are culturally significant.
But let's begin the proper rambling with the Mandarin, because this is - or at least was when it came out - somehow controversial. If you're not familiar with the Mandarin as a comic book character, all you need to know is he's Fu Manchu with super science rings. He's a racist caricature that has no place in modern pop culture. Iron Man 3's decision to divorce him of that origin and instead re-imagine him as a kind of global villain was nothing short of genius. He's a cyber terrorist able to hack national broadcasts, his name, lair and clothing evoke a vague Orientalism, but his tactics and his video messages are distinctly Al Qaeda. He is an amalgam of various foreigner nightmares the US media has conjured up in the last fifty years. There's even a touch of the domestic: he sermonises like an extremist southern preacher, speaking with an un-placeable drawl. Oh, and he's also genuinely terrifying as a villain. Seriously, Ben Kingsley is amazing.
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| Not Featured: A Racist Caricature |
But it's all fake. Ben Kingsley's Mandarin is an act, a character he puts on to cover for the real mastermind, Aldrich Killian (Pearce) and the terrorist attacks aren't attacks at all, they're accidents caused by Killian's research. The Mandarin is non-specific foreign fear, but is all American made. And while that's a great twist in the narrative, it's entirely consistent with the world of the Iron Man films.
Let's look back: The first Iron Man film begins with the Ten Rings as a pretty generic terrorist group in the Middle East kidnapping Tony Stark so he can build them a weapon, but we find out that it was American Obadiah Stane who hired them to kill Tony, and who has been selling them weapons.
Iron Man 2's villain Ivan Vanko is motivated by the wrongs committed against his father by Tony's father, but he's quickly defeated and imprisoned by Iron Man. He only becomes a real threat once the American villain Justin Hammer recruits him and puts him to work in his own vendetta against Tony Stark.
In every Iron Man movie, the villain is a foreigner or foreign organisation that on the surface reflects America's anxieties, they are the enemies created by a historically militant foreign policy, they are the ghosts of its global conflicts (IVan Vanko is the ghost of the cold war, in case you missed it) but in reality they are all backed by corporate America.
And this is especially true in Iron Man 3 where it plays into the central theme of the movie.
A good story will, in general, establish everything from the main characters to the main conflict to the central themes in the early parts of the story. Iron Man 3 establishes its core theme in the opening moments of the film, via monologue. "We create our own demons." The threats to America in the Iron Man films are made by America. They are its home grown demons.
And the threats to Tony Stark are made by Tony Stark. The major villains in Iron Man 3 exist because of Tony Stark's mistreatment of people in his earlier life. That much is clear in the text. But there's another demon Tony Stark has to confront in Iron Man 3 and that's Iron Man.
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| Nothing demonic about this imagery |
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| No sir, no symbolism here. |
Tony Stark projects all his anxiety and his trauma onto the Iron Man suits. He sees them as his protection, and his salvation, but they are at best a dependency and at worst a literal dead weight. Despite the Iron Man being a literal part of him (by way of the arc reactor and magnet in his chest), Tony Stark is so out of sync with the suits (and thus himself) that at one point his latest suit attacks Pepper in her sleep. The Iron Man suits are a false salvation, and at Tony Stark's lowest point, the film provides us with a beautiful visual metaphor of a cold and isolated Tony Stark literally dragging his Iron Man suit through the snow and darkness. This is the perfect synthesis of narrative, sound, visuals, and subtext that makes film such a unique art form.
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| This right here, this is art. |
It's nothing new or revolutionary for a woman, particularly a love interest, to help the manly hero of a story with the power of love and emotional support. But how often do you see that play out on screen as the female lead being the actual physical hero of the story's climax? How often does the superhero's girlfriend get to be that awesome in general, whether or not its a visual action packed metaphor for the development of the relationship between her and the main character? Why aren't we talking about this more? Why hasn't Gwyneth Paltrow got her own MCU film yet? Where's my Rescue* film, Marvel? Huh? Where's my Rescue film? (I believe the answer to this is in part because she doesn't want her own solo film, and the world is worse off for it.)
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| Action Hero Pepper needs to be a thing! |
Way back there near the top, I said that Iron Man 3 is significant in the way that Black Panther and Wonder Woman are significant and now that I've talked at length about how well written and how well made Iron Man is, let's look at that old hobby horse of mine: diverse representation in fiction.
Iron Man 3 is the best portrayal of mental illness in a super hero film. Ever.
Okay, so, there's nothing new in pairing super heroes and mental illness. That's basically the 80 year story of Batman. That's basically the story of every modern incarnation of Batman's super villains. It's the largely unspoken defining trait of every character in Watchmen. But Iron Man 3 is different.
Tony Stark isn't Iron Man because of some unresolved mental illness or emotional turmoil. I mean, arguably that's still part of his origin, but he works through it pretty quick and while it might still be part of him, it doesn't define him. He's comfortable working off the sins of his past as a super hero, and he clearly enjoys it most of the time. No, the mental illness that eventually afflicts Tony Stark is a result of being Iron Man. And it's a problem.
And let's be clear: without any disrespect to people who live with mental illness, mental illness is a problem. That's kind of what defines it. And for many people, it will always be a part of who they are and how they live, and it's important to be sensitive to that and realise those people can live with it and have full, productive, even happy lives. But mental illness is a problem that a lot of people must manage every day.
And that's where we come into Tony Stark's life in Iron Man 3. He's suffering a mental illness: PTSD. And it is a problem, and he's managing it poorly, and not only does it guide many of his bad or misguided decisions, it actively manifests as panic attacks through the film, as insomnia, as a compulsion to build. There's some argument to be made about how realistic this portrayal is relative to the lived experience of real people in the real world, but I don't see that as significant to this discussion. What's important is that it is internally consistent with the world and the character of Tony Stark.
And Iron Man 3 doesn't glorify it like we so often see with Batman's trauma, nor does it demonise it as we often see with comic book villains written as mentally ill. And perhaps most importantly: it doesn't stop Tony Stark being a hero who fights badguys and is, with a lot of help, ultimately victorious in broad terms. And when we leave Iron Man 3 and go into the later MCU films where he appears, his PTSD is down played but it is clear he's not suddenly "cured" at the end of Iron Man 3, he's just managing it a lot better now that he has faced it, owned it, and found salvation in his relationships instead of his machines.
Diversity and representation of more people with more life experiences is important. I'm not going to say that seeing a mentally ill hero is as important or significant as seeing people of colour, LGBTQI+ people, or women in those roles and being welcome into a space they have traditionally been excluded from or marginalised within. That is not for me to decide and I'm not interested in deciding it.
But what I can say without hesitation is that people with mental illness have existed in a similar place and far too often mental illness is presented as being the reason for villainy in the worst forms. To see a hero suffer but still live as themself, still be a hero, and not find a magical cure like "Hey, you should just decide to be better and get over it," is incredibly meaningful.
There's a lot that goes into making a film, and a lot of ways to measure its quality. Iron Man 3's plot has a few twists, but it's nothing special. But as I've said, it's not about being something we've never seen before, it's about doing something unique and special with what you've got. It's the difference between a jacket off the rack and a tailor made jacket. They're both just jackets, the same general shape and purpose, but one is made with a lot more skill, care and purpose. That's Iron Man 3. In my opinion, there hasn't been a film as good as Iron Man 3 in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since. And maybe you won't feel so strongly about it, but it's kind of weird how often it gets overlooked when it's genuinely fantastic.
If nothing else, it's a fun, exciting, technically proficient film with some outstanding action scenes and almost perfect casting. It's also saddled with the task of being the end of a trilogy, the halfway point of a character arc (Tony continues to develop right up until Endgame), and the sequel to two different movies. The fact that it accomplishes all that without being a total mess is kind of amazing in itself. There's no argument it's one of the greats in the ever expanding and ever improving super hero film genre.
But it's also a damned fine film in its own right, apart from what it accomplishes in the wider view of the MCU. It is what super hero movies as a whole should aspire to be in quality and significance. I suspect it is overlooked because sequels, as a rule, are considered inherently lesser, and the super hero genre has saturated the cinema landscape for over a decade now and most of them are enjoyable but unremarkable, middle of the road films.
But Iron Man 3 deserves a whole lot more because it is a whole lot more.
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| Grab a buddy and go watch it again! |
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