By Henry Hernandez—
Yes, I will admit it. I fell asleep during one of the most anticipated movies of the year. It was also a movie that was on my own most anticipated movies of the year. So there I was, after paying my twelve dollars to Clifton Commons, to sleep. Don’t let me give you the wrong impression. I loved this movie. (I have finished seeing it since going to the theater.) It was just a mistake to go to the late show after going to school all day. Every other show was sold out and I just wanted to see this movie so bad.
Marvel’s Iron Man 3, puts Tony Stark (the Iron Man) against a new enemy who seems to be untouchable. As you might have expected the special effects are awesome. The performances by lead characters are good. The story line is surprisingly developed for a superhero movie, especially for the third installment of a franchise.
The biggest let down in this film is that the Iron Man’s arch nemesis, the Manderin, is actually a drunken British moron. It is actually the geeky turned suave Aldrich Killian, played by Guy Pearce, who is the real brains behind the villainy. He does a good job of being menacing enough to ruffle Iron Man’s feathers.
How does Marvel create an interesting movie after the mega-blockbuster Avengers, last summer? How can a single hero film hold a candle to that giant assault on your senses? First you make the next film Iron Man, and then you make the story smaller. It is not about the whole world and aliens, but about a few key characters and how they relate to each other. There is an intensity in seeing just a few characters doing what they do best.
Of course there are enough explosions to fight a modern war, and not just one Iron Man, but a battalion of Iron Men, to entertain the masses. Some have suits have men in them and some do not. (You’ll just have to see the movie.) It takes a mechanical suit, without a human in it, to see a softer side of Toni Stark. In this installment his character evolves from the beginning to the end.
It is no big surprise that the key to winning the day is the technology that Stark creates, even if he didn’t work all the bugs out yet. He finds his world destroyed at the hands of a scorned enemy that he didn’t even know he had. This tests his skills, much like the first film, where Toni was forced to work in less than ideal conditions, a terrorist cave in the first film and a North Carolina garage in this film.
In the end the bigger question for Stark is, does the man make the suit or does the suit make the man? I think that this was a fitting continuation of the Marvel universe and I can’t wait to see the next installment, which is Thor 2 coming out this fall. I promise I won’t fall asleep in that one.
