Self-referential struggle with machinery

Rating: Null/10 (24 August 2013)

This works for me, if only a bit, in spite of all the superhero trappings, which are tired even by Marvel standards. Typical post- 9/11 hero plot, with a bit of harmless shuffling of sides but pressing the same business as the White House movies earlier this year: for all its technologic might and security, poor America is at the mercy of chaotic, evil forces and needs war machines from the skies.
What if the Osama-lookalike is really a puppet and a disgruntled American is behind the plan? Tony Stark's assertion that it's not about politics but good old-fashioned revenge stays. The bombings and televised messages stay, tapping into a more visceral fear than logic can dress in retrospect. Those images register closer to televised reality, while the actual villain is a more removed cartoon, a genetic supermutant.
But moving on. This time they got Shane Black to write and direct and he brings a sensibility of equal parts deflating and indulging the iconography that he has honed in previous films and that Downey knows and can support. In fact that's his main job these days in this and Sherlock. A punch and a wink.
And one reason why many didn't like this is that it's really a Tony Stark movie, which means a Robert Downey movie.
Probably it came down to a simple practical matter for the makers; more Iron Man time needs a faceless robot (and Downey pretending he's in a suit) which minimizes Downey's charming draw as actor.
So he spends most of his time outside the suit, improvising. And many of the situations this time revolve around the fact that his gadgets won't work, those that would yield the Iron Man movie. Sporadically they do, so we get bursts of uninteresting Marvel noise. But often, only parts of the suit will fly to him performing only part of their task. Often, they'll blow up in his face revealing a flummoxed Downey like a silent era comedian, a Lloyd or Chaplin, mystified at some thingamajig that won't work.
It's all about a screwy actor feigning a struggle with machinery he's built. Clever and amusing. Along the way, we meet another screwy actor inside the story with drug problems. But that is all continuously swallowed up in the larger Marvel contraption he has to deliver, where the comedian's soulmate and world peace alike are grandiosely threatened in the dull way of Marvel.
Interestingly, Marvel's grandiose aims with functional mechanics are reflected in the visual map of mind Guy Pearce shows early in the film. Impressive to look at but merely an embroidered function. For a brief time, neurologists thought they could come up with a computational model of mind that would explain all. No dice. Consciousness is its own space.