Five years after Iron Man kicked off the current glut of Marvel Comics superhero films, John Favreau’s 2008 feature is still the MVP of the team by a wide margin. Not only is Iron Man that rarest of things—a witty, energetic origin story that doesn’t feel like an obligatory slog—it manages to hit the sweet spot of technophilic glee and light moralizing that is essential to Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) appeal. Favreau and Downey didn’t quite recreate the same bottled lightning with 2010’s Iron Man 2, but this naturally didn’t prevent Marvel Studios from pressing on with Iron Man 3, which unfortunately proves to be the weakest entry in the franchise.
The new film’s director Shane Black—re-teaming with Downey from 2005’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang—doesn’t have Favreau’s facility for slick action sequences, and the script by Black and Drew Peace seems to enhance the most conspicuous flaws of the earlier sequel. Characters get murkier, the story lurches forward a lot more roughly, and the science-fiction gobbledygook gets sillier. Between these disappointments, the wall-to-wall product placements, and a clumsy attempt to turn the film into a Serious Issues feature about PTSD, Iron Man 3 feels remarkably hollow.
As one might expect, the film’s saving grace is Downey’s effortless portrayal of Stark, which still manages to be ridiculously entertaining after three jaunts through the Marvelverse. The rest of the cast acquit themselves well, too, despite the often groan-worthy dialogue—most notably a game and agreeably hammy Ben Kingsley as Stark’s nemesis the Mandarin. And, admittedly, the otherwise faulty screenplay pulls off some genuinely fine twists and reveals, none of them remotely original, but still executed in a gratifying manner. This, coupled with Downey’s magnetism, is just enough to keep Iron Man 3 from toppling over.
