Iron Man 3

Wanna see me act like a little kid on Christmas Morning?

POSSIBLE SPOILERS

Then give me a great super hero trilogy.  I don't know what its about telling a story over the course of three movies structure, but I've gotten super excited every time one of my favorites has had a trilogy made with their name on it.

I got super excited for Spiderman 3.  The black suit!!! VENOM!!!! I got midnight release tickets, dragged a bunch of friends, got there two hours early.

Halfway through the movie I wanted to borrow my friends shoe to beat myself over the head with it.  It was god awful.

I got excited for X3: The Last Stand.  Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I liked it. When I think X-men, I think "Good mutants and bad mutants fighting" and that's exactly what I got.  Best movie ever? No.  But it gave me something I had looked for in the first two movies and hadn't gotten enough of.  Not bad, but nothing to write home about.

 Then, comes The Dark Knight Returns.  It was never going to live up to The Dark Knight, but it could at least give me something satisfying? Well, I saw it twice in theaters.  While I'll admit to the plot holes and ridiculousness of large portions of it, it's exactly what I wanted.  Batman's story, brought to an end, on an epic scale.  This is the first time for me that the trilogy ender lived up to my own hype.  It was fantastic and one of my favorite movies I've seen in a while.

So that brings us to the current superhero trilogy being finished: Iron Man.

I was never a huge Iron Man guy.  When given the choice, I tended to lean towards Captain America or Vision in the old school Avengers arcade game.   I knew little to nothing about him.  One summer for my birthday my mom had found some cheap comics from one of those times Marvel decided to reset everything.  Fantastic Four #1, Iron Man #1, and a few others.  The one I read repeatedly?  Iron Man.  There was just something about this selfish smartass choosing what was right rather than saving his own skin that spoke to me.  After a few years I gradually forgot how much I liked this comic and Iron Man floated to the recesses of my brain as a mostly irrelevant character.

While I was in college, I had no idea they were making an Iron Man movie (I didn't keep up with things because I didn't have cable).  My buddy said it was getting great reviews and we should go see it. Reluctantly, I agreed. Who likes Iron Man enough to make a movie? From the moment Robert Downey Jr. speaks as Tony Stark, you knew they were going to nail it.  It was exactly perfect.  The attitude, the choices, the suit, the back story (modernized slightly).  It was all perfect. The best thing about Iron Man? He has no memorable villains (argue all you want, it took them three movies to get to his "nemesis"). He doesn't need them.  He is his own worst enemy.  All the things he's trying to stop: he created.  All of his choices fall in "Do I take the easy way or the right way?" It can be pretty great when done correctly.  And the first movie nailed it.  Maybe Robert Downey Jr. is just that great of an actor, but suddenly a C-list character was now in the spotlight and becoming many's favorite.

Then Iron Man 2 happened and it got ripped to shreds.  I'm not really sure why.  Was the plot with the villains stupid? Sure.  But as I just said that's not the point of Iron Man.  Tony dealing with his own mortality was the message here and still, Tony had to choose the right way rather than the easy way and fix the problems he created.  Add in War Machine (think Iron Man but more firepower/ammo) and I thought the sequel was good fun, but not nearly as deep or as well done as the first.

We finally reach Iron Man 3.  I'll admit I was concerned.  The creative team changed (writers/director) and the movie was supposedly going to have more of an espionage/spy feel than "robots fighting robots" feel.  The commercials showed Tony's suits all being destroyed by the Mandarin and it was revealed for a large portion of the movie Tony would be without his "superpower" his suit.  Uh oh.  How can you have an Iron Man movie without the suit?

By making Tony be pushed to the brink and revealing his power isn't in his suit, but in his intelligence and willingness to keep fighting even when he thinks he's already lost.  By showing Tony not just as a hero, but as a guy just trying to do the right thing.  By showing Tony as a guy falling apart at the seams since the Avengers because of his near death experience in nuking the aliens.

I have to give credit where credit's due.  This isn't what I think of when I say "superhero" movie. And it was better for it. They didn't try to hammer things in to make them fit, there wasn't little fan service nods where you can hear the writers going "Get it? Get it? He said...<insert obscure character name here>"  They focused on Tony and his relationship with everyone around him: Rhodey, Happy, and especially Pepper.  The effects were awesome and felt like a summer blockbuster, but not overdone.  Hell they even managed to elicit true emotion out of me (something the first two didn't manage as much as I loved them).  I was concerned for Tony (even though I knew I was stupid because Avengers 2 is coming). I felt his stress and his heartbreak.  I felt his sheer love for those around him and how he'd give up everything, including himself to protect them. That's pretty much my definition of "superhero" right there.  There's a nice full circle moment at the end that is pretty damn satisfying.

In my immediate reaction after seeing it, I didn't think Iron Man 3 was better than the first.  But after a few days to process?  I think this movie "got it" the best.  The first one is more what you expect when you talk about a superhero movie, but in 3 he finally becomes a true hero.  He has literally nothing left.  But keeps going.  He has every reason to bail, but doesn't.  He could save himself at any time, and chooses to save others.  This is the "coming of age" for Tony Stark as a hero.

Kudos Iron Man crew.  This is the first time since Star Wars I can say the third installment is my favorite and lived up to the hype.  If you havent seen it (although looking at the numbers most of you have), go this week. It's fantastic.

Was only disappointed by the lack of AC/DC songs
-Oz