Way back in May 2008, Jon Favreau directed a little movie called Iron Man that heralded the beginning of a full-blown pop culture phenomenon. With its effortless mix of lighthearted wit, relentless energy and flashy visuals (not to mention a star performance from Robert Downey Jr.), Iron Man went from a mildly anticipated flick featuring an “obscure” Marvel superhero and a bad trailer to a box office triumph that remains among the best superhero movies ever made. It’s no coincidence that the one-two punch of Iron Man and The Dark Knight launched the current obsession with men in tights: they both showed that superhero movies don’t have to be blandly cartoonish fan service; they can have life and character of their own. If The Dark Knight was gritty, nihilistic and politically charged, then Iron Man was fresh, mischievous and just all-around cool, the James Bond of superhero blockbusters.
It’s
too bad, then, how quickly the genre seems to have gotten worn out. 2012 gave
us three, in my opinion, solid-to-good superhero movies with The Amazing Spider-Man, The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, but none of them were necessarily special or
groundbreaking. Even Rises, my
personal favorite, is exceptional mostly because it gave the landmark trilogy a
satisfying, appropriately ambitious conclusion. Weirdly enough, the most unique
of the three is arguably The Amazing
Spider-Man, which seemed more interested in angst and romance than action
(not to say it didn’t have a fair dose of explosions and CGI), though the tonal
shifts were only intermittently successful. The bottom line is that none of the
new entries into the genre have managed to live up to the expectations set by Iron Man and The Dark Knight.
Iron Man 3, the third and potentially
last installment of the franchise, epitomizes this growing superhero fatigue.
Although not terrible by any means, it is, with a few exceptions, profoundly
mediocre and generic, showing few signs of even aspiring to be something
greater than an obligatory franchise sequel and summer tent-pole. The
disappointing part is that buried beneath the convoluted plotline and seemingly
endless action sequences are the seeds of a compelling, even inspired movie.
Let’s
start with those few exceptions. First of all, Iron Man 3 is a giant step above its immediate predecessor, but
that’s not saying much seeing as Iron Man
2 is by far the worst of the Avengers
movies (yes, even including The
Incredible Hulk), a bombastic mess whose lone saving graces are Scarlett
Johansson’s fight scene and Sam Rockwell’s ability to continually transcend the
shittiness of his material. As appears to be the trend lately, Marvel hired a
relative novice to helm Iron Man 3.
Prior to this, Shane Black was most known for the quirky action-comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which lots of
people liked but I found borderline nonsensical. Given the writer-director’s
background, it’s not surprising that Iron
Man 3 works best when it isn’t taking itself very seriously, such as when
Adam Pally (aka Max Blum on ABC’s wonderful and now-canceled Happy Endings) shows up for a random
cameo or the actors deliver amusing quips (the best line is actually spoken by
a nameless henchman character). Even then, the film isn’t anything spectacular,
but at least it’s fun to watch.
The
best that can be said about the actors is that they do their jobs. Stars Robert
Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow seem somewhat tired of reprising these roles
(now for the fourth time), though they’re entertaining enough to keep the movie
afloat. For the most part, it manages to rescue the Tony-Pepper romance, which Iron Man 2 all but ruined by portraying him
as an ignorant, egotistical man-child and her as a shrill, neurotic harpy who
can’t keep up with his massive intellect and father/alcohol issues, but their
relationship is a shadow of the lively, deftly flirtatious dynamic that was so
captivating in the original; I’d even venture to say they’ve become downright boring. Rebecca Hall has a few nice
moments despite a severely underwritten role, and Ben Kingsley gives an
enjoyably off-kilter performance, albeit one completely different from what
audiences might expect.
Most
impressive, however, are Ty Simpkins and Guy Pearce. At the ripe old age of 11,
Simpkins has already worked with a handful of A-list actors including Tom
Cruise (in War of the Worlds),
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet (Revolutionary
Road) and Jennifer Connelly (Little
Children). As Harley Keener, a neglected boy who befriends Tony Stark, he
exhibits considerable maturity, showing that it is, indeed, possible for a young
actor to play precocious without losing credibility or getting on people’s
nerves. As for Pearce, I’ll admit that he was the main reason why I was looking
forward to Iron Man 3 at all, having
loved his criminally under-appreciated performances in L.A. Confidential and Memento,
so on that level, I suppose I got what I wanted. Suave, brash, over-the-top and
(of course) impeccably dressed, the Aussie actor seems to savor every second of
his screen time, and it would be an understatement to say he’s a blast to watch
(well, except for the scenes where he’s forced to have incredibly fake-looking
long hair). Along with his scenery-chewing swagger, though, Pearce exudes a
sort of cool malice that prevents Aldrich Killian from turning into a
caricature like Rockwell’s Justin Hammer and makes him actually seem dangerous,
the intellectual equal of and a legitimate threat to Iron Man.
That’s
where the first part of the term “wasted potential” comes in. Marvel fans regularly
decry the critical adoration heaped on Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and
it’s true that, to some extent, the Avengers
franchise hasn’t quite gotten the appreciation it deserves. But the detractors
fail to realize that what makes The Dark
Knight so great (and, in many people’s minds including mine, the best
superhero movie of all time) has nothing to do with its realism (let’s face it,
there is very little in that film that could be reasonably considered
“realistic”) or its bleak tone. Rather, The
Dark Knight is great because of three things: its villain, its moral
complexity and its ability to generate tension. These are the kind of things
that make any movie great, not just a
superhero flick, but for the most part, they’ve been lacking in the Marvel
films, which tend to focus more on style than story, characters or themes.
That’s not always a bad thing, but after a while of watching the same basic
formula over and over again, it gets tiresome.
In the
right hands, I honestly think Aldrich Killian could have been a fantastic
villain, charismatic, brilliant and subversive – basically the Marvel
equivalent of Heath Ledger’s Joker. Unfortunately, villains have always been a
weak point in Marvel’s superhero movies, treated more like afterthoughts than
fully developed characters; even Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, by far the best Marvel
antagonist, feels somewhat squandered, particularly in The Avengers. Here, as riveting as Pearce is, he can’t disguise the
fact that we learn next to nothing about Killian – his background, his motivations,
his moral philosophy. The movie hints
at a lot of things, such as his now-cured physical disability and his history
with Pepper Potts, but we don’t get to see any of that. Same goes for the way Iron Man 3 deals with the numerous
social and political issues it raises, including bullying, racism, terrorism,
American exceptionalism, energy depletion and the power of mass media. Many of
these issues are not only timely but also legitimately interesting, and if
explored in a meaningful way, they could have given the movie a nice edginess.
But,
being a sequel and a summer blockbuster, Iron
Man 3 ultimately plays it safe, which brings us to the last and most
important missing ingredient: tension. Stakes are an inherently tricky thing
for superhero movies, since more often than not, they’re set up as franchises
with sequel potential and it’s a given that the heroes will live to save the
day. With The Dark Knight Rises,
Christopher Nolan managed to overcome this obstacle by first showing in TDK that he was willing to kill off
major characters and then by setting up the marketing campaign so that it
looked not only possible but likely
that Batman would die. Of course, that had the benefit of being the finale of a
mostly standalone series, whereas Iron
Man 3 is tied into the whole Avengers
franchise, even if signs point to this being the last solo Iron Man movie.
Still, the stakes don’t have to be life-or-death; there just has to be some incentive for audiences to care
about what’s happening onscreen, some sense that whatever the protagonists are
doing matters or that something will be lost if they fail. Which is hard to
accomplish if your protagonist isn’t
capable of failing. Even the few moments filled with genuine suspense (most
of which involve Guy Pearce and plenty of dialogue) are diluted when Black
decides to start yet another lackluster action scene or when Tony gets
magically rescued by one of the zillion contraptions he has apparently invented
for his Iron Man suit. It’s literally deus ex machina.
At the end of the movie, Tony says
in a voiceover that he is a “changed man”. Yet what exactly has changed about
him? I guess he no longer treats his girlfriend like absolute garbage (cue slow
claps), but other than that… not much, really. He’s still essentially the same
cocky, self-absorbed billionaire he was at the start of Iron Man, except he now uses his weapons for “good”, whatever that
means. In fact, despite the Dark Knight-esque
advertising, Iron Man 3 is the
definition of conventional, and the ending is the definition of anticlimactic.
For a movie that could have gone to some dark, imaginative places, the whole
thing is sadly mundane, just another example of a superficial, forgettable
superhero movie.
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