Post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety attacks, a feeling of a loss of security—some of the conditions a trained soldier can expect coming back from war.
Now imagine being a civilian scientist, who’s never trained for combat, is protected only by revolutionary technology no one else understands, and is fighting a horde of aliens for which no one could have prepared.
“Iron Man 3” shows us a Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) who has been psychologically scarred by the events of “The Avengers.” After a harrowing battle in the streets and skies of New York and flying a nuclear missile through a wormhole barely escaping the void of space beyond by only the rarest of luck, he is not a well man. He hasn’t been sleeping. He’s been making suit after suit of armor, for every eventuality.
He’s been neglecting the one woman he’s found to be his constant.
The movie shows a man deeply in pain, feeling very vulnerable, and coping with these feelings poorly. It also presents a new world threat, a terrorist known as The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), and his weaponization of a biotechnology known as Extremis. Extremis hotwires the body’s repair mechanisms to give those who carry it rapid healing, as well as a body heat high enough to melt steel, and seriously damage Iron Man’s mythically durable gold-titanium alloy.
The movie was very enjoyable. It wove together the trilogy into a single unified story, showing past events, which had only been referenced such as the meeting of Tony Stark and Ho Yinsen, as well as picking up threads from those movies, with the main opposition coming from the Ten Rings. It also brings in additional comic elements with the introduction of Advanced Idea Mechanics, or AIM, Iron Man’s earliest comic book opponents, and the character of the Mandarin. It also foreshadowed future possibilities. In the comics, one of the Mandarin’s associates is a draconic alien being. In the movie an Extremis enhanced soldier breathes fire and has ornate dragon tattoos.
Part of the reason I enjoyed the movie so much was the multiple times in which Pepper Potts (Gwenyth Paltrow) had the opportunity to rescue Tony, in exchange with the times he rescued her. I’m a sucker for the mutually protective couple.
Overall, I would give “Iron Man 3” five stars. It is a smart, emotional, character driven summer blockbuster, and proof that “comic book movies” can stand next to, if not above, any film.
