There’s so much dumb stuff in “Iron Man 3” that I expected the credits to say, “Written and directed by Thor.” The villains are all wrong, the motivations are muddy, even the gadgetry is off. And the swaggering genius at the center of it all has become a preening fool. It’s like watching a great company switch CEOs from Steve Jobs to Donald Trump.
Tony Stark, still jumpy with post-traumatic stress from his “Avengers” visit to New York City (I guess this town ain’t for California cream puffs, pal), challenges a terrorist (Ben Kingsley) called the Mandarin who murders Americans on live TV. Meanwhile, an inventor-turned-magnate (Guy Pearce) whom Tony once insulted has developed a system for regenerating human limbs. But that has the side effect of turning its beneficiaries/victims into human bombs. There’s also Tony’s scientist ex-girlfriend (Rebecca Hall), who can’t seem to make up her mind whether to be good or evil.
Tony (Robert Downey Jr.), giving out his Malibu home address on live TV, invites the terrorists to attack him. So they do, destroying his house. Oops. Why invite an onslaught if you’re unprepared for it? And why is the world’s smartest man blindsided by helicopters? Is he unfamiliar with the 1940s technology known as “radar”? Tony is supposed to be arrogant, not moronic.
Ben Kingsley in “Iron Man 3” (Zade Rosenthal)
Unintentionally, Tony winds up in snowy Tennessee, far from his kidnapped ladylove Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and his friend Col. Rhodes (Don Cheadle). While his Iron Man suit is recharging, the movie stops for some twee interaction with a fatherless boy (Ty Simpkins) who has been cooking up inventions in his garage.
Previously the series has been one of the more grown-up superhero franchises, but “IM3” is aimed straight at middle school. Gone are all of the actual ideas (such as Tony’s robust defense of capitalism), gone is the witty dialogue, gone is anything like character development (Tony and Rhodes barely share any screen time and when they do they’re ducking and running). Instead we get about 20 minutes of adorable kid. What next, a little Chihuahua in Tony’s pocket?
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The Mandarin is even more unbearable than the boy. Though his logo features Arabic writing and swords like the one on the Saudi flag, and he is wearing a big bushy Islamist beard, he speaks in a bizarre accent that seems to be Kingsley’s idea of what rural Americans sound like. The effect is like Osama bin Laden meets Waylon Jennings. You don’t know if you’re supposed to think Taliban or “Hee-Haw.”
What’s the message here? My guess: There isn’t one. Writer-director Shane Black, the author of “Lethal Weapon” who was essentially laughed out of Hollywood after writing the flops “The Last Boy Scout,” “The Long Kiss Goodnight” and “Last Action Hero” — and who has never before directed a film except the campy faux noir “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” — is not the man to deliver cultural resonance.
The blurring of the Mandarin character is meant to cover up his Chinese origins in the Iron Man comics, so as not to offend the real-life mandarins of Beijing. Meanwhile, Black borrows from (and hence trivializes) the savagery of the real-life Taliban’s bloody videos. Also: He plays the character for laughs. The Mandarin (to quote a cliché that pops up twice in the script) is a hot mess.
Pearce is a splendid actor but he overacts to compensate for the generic writing of his inventor character Aldrich Killian. Are we supposed to believe his evil derives from being dissed in an elevator? And what is Hall, as Tony’s ex, doing here except to satisfy some focus group’s call for more feminine presence? She fails to threaten Tony’s relationship, and no clue is given as to why she would be allied with a psychopath.
As for the other woman, Pepper is reduced to cringing at Tony’s gift of a stuffed bunny with giant hooters (an instance of sophistication giving way to middle-school humor, as is a toilet gag involving a villain). Pepper also gets to wear the Iron Man suit, but if anyone can use it, why do we need Tony? It’s like Marion picking up Indiana Jones’ bullwhip, or Lois Lane putting on the super-spandex.
Moreover, thanks to a new remote device, Tony doesn’t even need to be in the same state with the Iron Man suit. He just sticks his hand out like he’s hailing a cab and the parts fly to him, wherever he is. This is cheating. Iron Man isn’t supposed to be a magician. This wrinkle makes things too easy for him.
By the time the climax arrived, I had lost interest, but it disappointed me anyway with its senseless clutter. What is the president of the United States doing in an Iron Man suit? There’s also a platoon of remote-controlled Iron Men randomly showing up to save the day and just as randomly disappearing before being randomly blown up. Tony’s suit pops on and off, in pieces, for no reason except the director likes the way the special effects look, even the 10th time around.
This movie has a bad case of Iron Man inflation: When you’ve got a hundred disposable ones zipping around, they start to seem as special as Aluminum Dudes.
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