An excellent action packed blockbuster

Rating: 9/10 (22 May 2013)

Typically, blockbusters work on two levels: An economic model for studios to make immense profits, and to provide a crowd pleasing cinema for the masses, laden with witty one liners, explosive visceral thrills and spectacle.
Themes, film techniques, and the imprint of a collaborative film-making process, are deliberately veiled under the crafty illusion cinema affords. The Director goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure that their film reads like a product, not a work of artistic prowess.
Why Iron Man 3 perplexes me as a blockbuster, is that it not only provides the aforementioned thrills, but for a cine-literate film student, a depth of analysis.
Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, delivers a superb nuanced portrait of the cynical, egotistic billionaire, with director Shane Black attempting to eschew the iron suit for the majority of the film, and instead portraying the human complexities and weaknesses of the superhero. The theme of identity, separates the man from the suit. Stark, ceremoniously, contemplates the difference between him and the suit, the idea that the suit is a product of industry, and he a product of human life. The ending therefore, may be seen in light of Hollywood's enduring populist love for human sentimentality over the embrace of advanced technology. Warning the planet of the threat such powerful innovations pose.
I don't know whether 21st Century Hollywood reveres or continues to look down upon women, but Iron Man 3 certainly postulates an ambiguous relationship between feminism and cinema. Pepper Potts functions both as an autonomous female, worthy of running a successful multinational conglomerate, and yet acts as the stereotypical damsel in distress, needing rescue from Tony on multiple occasions. Yet the ending when Pepper Potts, ultimately kills the main antagonist, warrants a merit for strong female characters. Though arguably the strength of the woman comes from science rather than natural means, meaning that Black discredits inherent female power. However, it is also safe to argue that Stark is powerless without the suit.
The playing with the representation of the villain is one that both annoyed, and surprised audiences. The supposed malevolent villain Mandarin is nothing more than fake; an actor making viral videos, much like one does on Youtube. How does this bode for the audiences? It bows down to disgust, anger from the comic book demographic polarising them from the film, while conversely ensnaring regular audiences in the questions of identity and duplicity.
Overall, the film proved to have decent action, direction, editing, and story. A worthy blockbuster for our time.