Ironclad Trilogy - Robert Downey Jr steels the Show!

Rating: 9/10 (7 May 2013)

This is the first film I ever watched in 3D and I am glad to learn it is no longer one red and one blue lens as that made me close to seasick! I am glad my initiation for 3D was with this movie, I could not ask for better! Fanboys will be irked, and most of them are, while I have both read the original series (when comics used be 20 cents) and watched all three (was not too in love with Iron Man 2), I still appreciated all the effort which was poured into Iron man 3 (IM3) - what Fanboys need to accept is while the Mandarin had a bearing in 1960's USA? Mandarin as he used to be does not make sense in a post-9/11 21st Century.
China is a Superpower in its own right and USA is not in a Cold or Warm war with Beijing, Mandarin was great for the 60's, how do you bring him into the 21st Century? You cannot, North Korea does not have a Mandarin and would not make any sense culturally; Captain America's nemesis from the 70's - Yellow Claw is another antiquated relic and even Shang Chi could fall that way except he is designed to break away from that mould, as the son of Fu Manchu who seeks to do right and not what suits a Middle Kingdom from World War 2...
Mickey Rourke as the Russianised Whiplash was more relevant and yet how Marvel treated the premise in Iron Man 2 for me seemed very cheapened when one considers Gorbachev & Perestroika.
Iron Man 3 was fine, if a book & film are the same then it's boring, it's the adaptation which makes for cleverness or a bomb - "Outland" with Sean Connery is only case where movie was better than the book for me until Iron Man 3.
That is why it is so necessary to throw most of the comic books you know out the window, then Robert Downey Jr in Iron Man 3 was brilliant, it is an excellent capper to a grand trilogy which was part of a larger plan to realise the making of the Avengers.
So making Mandarin as a drugged up patsy for the real villain was understandable, when you consider this is another type of commentary on the War Against Terror, which still channels Fahrenheit 911 & Swordfish but in a different twist which still has mettle.
The whole film is about transformations. Killian started as a greasy long haired geek who can barely walk; Tony Stark began the trilogy as a womanising alcoholic and concluded in IM3 as an Uber-MacGyver who got anxiety attacks because he learned to be in love and care for his staff and even appreciate his "tools" of Jarvis & Dummy. Tony was forced to learn that it's not the armour which carries him through, it is his mind which makes it all pull together.
There are those who watch this from the outside and want to know why Mark 42 armour was so flimsy - when you have a prototype are you placing all the bells & whistles first or making sure the basic functions are coordinated? Using Star Trek: Next Generation the TV Series as a corollary, the NCC 1701-D had fewer weapons than the original Enterprise although it was a better designed ship.
If you knew nothing of the comics this would be great in its own right, this is to draw Non Readers & Fanboys simultaneously. Killian's transformation was the reverse of Mandarin, and his vendetta seemed realistic for me (Guy Pearce's acting on par with Robert Downey Jr when you recall Pearce has been 3 heroes - Time Machine, Lockdown & Count Of Monte Cristo, yet the only other bad guy was when he appeared in Adam Sandler's Bedtime Stories)? If a Comic Book movie follows slavishly to what was printed before, then where is the thrill or surprise in watching?
France did it with an Asterix film (where he met Cleopatra), but what they did was to add not subtract from the book... Marvel used the same treatment of creating an Alternative Universe with Spider-Man, Wolverine and the Xmen and all had satisfying Box Office results! IM3 sews up the development of a petulant rich-kid into a responsible technocrat acknowledging his actions have global repercussions, with Tony Stark's chest now fully healed this allows for superior armour which can fight Thanos or whosoever in Avengers 2, without having to divert as a pacemaker, which is an evolution not peculiar to the films but on par with the comics too! Ironic? ;)