More Iron Than Man.

Rating: 5/10 (29 April 2013)

Let me start of by saying I am a big fan of Iron Man. The first movie as many of us know was gold, followed by a pleasing but lacking Iron Man 2. There was a lot of hype leading up to this third installment of the Iron Man series and I admit I was caught up in it. Having seen IMDb brand it a score of above eight and several movie critics give it a decent score I figured, naively, that it was almost going to be a sure thing to be a great film.
Sorry to say guys, I was wrong.
Iron Man 3 was ultimately a disappointing experience. There are a number of reasons, but the main issues included grandiose action, cop outs in the plot, and a distancing from the comic itself.
Shane Black seems to have taken up the 'Baysplosion' (a term relating to the overuse of explosive effects by director Michael Bay) mantle in a very big way. This is a man with an action pedigree including the Lethal Weapon series, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Last Action Hero, and The Last Boyscout to name a few that he has been associated with. He still managed to create a film with too many action scenes that were often excessive. The result was a disconnection between non-action scenes, leaving plot and character development to be drowned out by fight sequences that became tedious and silly to watch. All of this could have been avoided via Shane Black exercising a lot more restraint which, coincidentally, may have given said action scenes greater impact without interrupting the rest of the film.
Another major offender in Iron Man 3 were the convenient escapes. Multiple times we see Tony or loved ones in danger only to have his suit fly in to save them. While I get it is Iron Man and that the suit will at times save the day, the number of times this occurred sucked away a lot of the movies tension.
Finally without putting too fine a point on it as I have no desires to spoil, there were a number of divergences from what was in the comic to how the story played out in the film. It is a Hollywood film and I understand this will happen, but usually they do it for the right reasons. Here what was changed seemed to be a lesser, more confusing version of what was originally an enjoyable, logical journey. Go figure.
Anyhow,its how I felt walking out of the film and still feel days later. I'm not going to go on about what good points there were as this is more a review of grounding some peoples high expectations for this film, in the hopes it may better their film experience. I write this only wishing I'd had something similar to have read before going in.