Iron Man 3

Okay, I haven’t bothered with any reviews recently – this is becoming a very running/eating dominated blog. So now that I’ve been to the cinema to watch a blockbustery type film I thought I’d opine about it.

Well, Iron Man 3 was about as inevitable as the sunrise. Marvel’s on going movie schedule is as unstoppable as the tide –  to use another meteorological metaphor. The primary-coloured, one-liner filled superhero movies have enough inventiveness and charm behind them to make them eminently watchable without ever really challenging any cinematic conventions or preconceptions (as perhaps the Nolan Batman films have). They don’t worry people, they don’t scare people, they just serve as shiny, mindless entertainment and as such are perfect box-office fodder. Iron Man 3 adroitly continues this tradition and ensures that Downey Jr will be back for more Tony Stark-ery despite his contract being up for renewal. It’s a cash cow and I doubt they’ll stop any time soon.

Now this cynicism should not suggest that I didn’t like the film. As I said, it is perfect mindless entertainment. You sit back and relax, comfortable in the knowledge of roughly where we are in terms of yellow-and-red action heroism and enjoy the wizz-bang action. And I did, I really did. And I enjoyed the one liners, especially the interplay between Stark and the almost-but-not-quite-cliché bullied-kid. And I liked the shiny suits, the big explosions, the gun fighting and the punching. I liked that Shane Black once again set his movie at Christmas time (I love that little idiosyncrasy in his films). I enjoyed all that. But ultimately it did still feel a little hollow. The characters came and went, Rebecca Hall had woefully little to do and I just couldn’t care about what might happen to her character. Guy Pearce does a great job of injecting menace to his mad scientist but even he felt slightly limp as a character. Ben Kingsley provided a surprising amount of charm to his mini-character, so he maybe wins the most points on that basis. Oh, and the final action sequence. It looked impressive (though the logic of it made me wonder *SPOILER ALERT* why, if he had an army of suits just sitting there, did he not use them earlier when he was being tortured or Pepper was being injected with bad stuff? It just doesn’t make sense – and when you question stuff like that in the midst of a giant action sequence something’s wrong) but as with the rest of the film, it felt weirdly… lacking. There was little peril, little tension, and as a consequence the conclusion felt a bit anti-climactic.

But this all sounds very negative. I enjoyed it, and I’ll watch it again. And I’d recommend it to anyone who’s enjoyed any of the marvel films before. It’s miles better than Iron Man 2, and probably Thor and Capt America, but not Iron Man 1 or Avengers. So it’s good, just don’t expect a masterpiece.