After the huge events of The Avengers, Tony Stark had not been the same person anymore. Iron Man 3 took a more personal direction as Tony dealt with panic attacks and sleepless nights while a terrorist called the Mandarin started causing chaos across America.
The movie felt a little different from the previous Iron Man franchises. Tony kept building new suits and hiding himself inside his workshop, almost as if the armor had become a way for him to deal with everything that had happened in New York.
I also liked how the movie moved Tony away from his usual high-tech world for a while. The darker lighting, Christmas setting and quieter Tennessee scenes gave the story a more grounded feeling, especially when Tony had to work without his armor for the first time in a long while.
Then came the attack on Tony's Malibu mansion, and that was easily one of the biggest highlights of the movie. After Tony foolishly revealed his home address on television, helicopters arrived and completely destroyed his beautiful cliffside house with missiles.
What made that scene so good was how helpless Tony looked. He tried to use the unfinished Mark 42 suit to protect Pepper, but the armor kept falling apart, and Tony eventually went down with the collapsing mansion.
The shot of the entire house sliding off the cliff and falling into the ocean was unforgettable. That mansion had represented Tony's wealth, success and crazy lifestyle, so watching it disappear felt like the movie was taking away everything he had built.
But the Air Force One sequence was probably the action scene I enjoyed the most. When the plane broke apart in the sky, Tony had to fly through the falling passengers and catch them one by one, creating a crazy mid-air rescue that looked almost impossible.
Robert Downey Jr. carried the movie as usual, but I also really enjoyed Tony's relationship with Harley. Their conversations gave the movie some of its funniest moments, while Harley also helped show that Tony could still be a hero even when he had no Iron Man suit around him.
The Mandarin was where the movie became a little complicated for me. Ben Kingsley played the character brilliantly and made him feel genuinely frightening at first, but the reveal involving Trevor Slattery became one of the most divisive parts of the movie. Some viewers loved the unexpected joke, while others felt it ruined the villain they had been waiting for.
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Still, what stayed with me most was the idea behind Tony's journey. Iron Man 3 showed that the armor had never really been what made Tony Stark a hero. Even when his suits, mansion and confidence were taken away, he still had his courage, intelligence and heart, and that was what made him Iron Man in the first place.
Until next time.
Rating: 90/100
