Remember That Time When Marvel Made a Transformers Movie???

Rating: 5/10 (31 March 2015)

Over the past couple of months I've been preparing for "Avengers 2" by rewatching all of the MCU Marvel movies--partly due to my own OCD tendencies, and partly due to the fact that I'm introducing them to my girlfriend. This week we made it up to "Iron Man 3", which I had to track down on Blu Ray because Disney has made it so hard to rent online.
I came to this week's viewing hopeful that this movie would leave me with a better impression than it did when I saw it in the theater two years ago. It's been 22 months, so I didn't remember exactly why I didn't like the movie the first go around--I just remember having the depressing feeling as I was leaving the theater of "Well, Marvel has officially beat that dead horse into the ground."
Seeing the film the second time didn't do much to improve my opinion. I will say, though, that I feel like I have a bit more of a grasp on why this film just doesn't work than I did when I first saw it in the theater. It all boils down to too much action and not enough story telling. Marvel essentially made this movie in the format of the Transformers movies.
Let's dissect that a bit. What does it mean not to have good storytelling in an Iron Man film? Well, in this particular movie the problem is that there's not enough development of certain aspects of the plot. Instead the plot is kind of just thrown at you. Take the Mandarin for example. You don't really get any explanation of the Mandarin before he first appears on screen. All of a sudden the Mandarin's home movie that is taking over every TV set in America flashes up on the TV screen and you're supposed to know who he is.
Now, the caveat to that is that it is true that it's easy enough to figure out who the Mandarin is as the movie goes along. It's not that this film leaves you completely in the dark. It's easy enough to follow--but the problem is that it just simply doesn't work as GOOD storytelling. (Although I must say, while up till now I've been speaking about the Mandarin in regard to how the film introduces him to us in this movie--for the comic book fans out there, no spoilers here, but they really did a huge disservice to the Mandarin as this movie goes along...just terrible).
Another example of poor storytelling in this film would be the villains along the way who have the uncanny ability to regenerate wounds and also seem to have nuclear reactors built into their guts somehow. When they first appear on screen we're given no indication of who they are or why they have this amazing ability. That wouldn't be a problem if the tension between the initial ignorance and the suspense of wanting to know that was eventually resolved well with a clear cut explanation of what is going on there. But that is never really given. Yes, yes, I got it--I know how they received their powers (I'm trying not to write a spoiler here). I understand completely what accounts for these strange characters. But, again, the problem is not that the audience isn't smart enough to "get it". The problem is that even if you do get it, the movie still just doesn't do a good job of telling its story.
Then you couple that with the gratuitous, grandiose action scenes, and basically what you have here is a Michael Bay film. The action is just over the top in an extreme way. It's not balanced. There's too much poorly explained story crammed into too little of a chunk of time, with very little cohesive storytelling and too much emphasis on explosions and special effects.
All that said, this is one of, if not the, worst movies in the MCU line of films. It's not that the story wasn't good in and of itself--the concept was fine and could have been made into a very good film overall. But it wasn't made into a good film. It was made into "Iron Man 3".
That being the case, I've given this movie a 5/10 stars, albeit with thoughts of giving it a 4 or a 3. I've given it a 5 just purely based on the fact that I enjoy the characters in the film and the overall concept of the film in spite of everything else I've said in this review. It's watchable in a mediocre, "that wasn't the best" kind of way. Fortunately Marvel recovers from this well with its next three films.