Not trolling, just being honest

Rating: Null/10 (15 May 2013)

Iron Man 3 is... screw it, you know what Iron Man 3 is, you know who Tony Stark is. Anyways, Iron Man 3 picks up after the events of Avengers: "what happened in New York", as the movie refers to that movie. I know there's a lot of every-which-way hype over this movie already but hopefully I can navigate my way through that and just give my unaffected view.
But let's get down to brass tax, Iron Man 3 is an Iron Man movie, for better or worse. For me, mostly for worse because that FIRST trailer, (and none of the ones after it) promised a much edgier tone, and a finally not on-top-of-the-world Stark, giving the series a vitally necessary change of pace. I'm not saying I wanted The Dark Knight or anything, just something with more gravitas and a little less fizz. And the film dismisses the notion almost immediately. Yes, Tony does have some post-traumatic stress/sleep-deprivation stuff going on here, but it's not treated with any measure of depth or significance. Like everything else in the film, (EVERYthing, the characters, the plot, the fight scenes), it's treated as a throwaway gag, and has one of the most laughable half-baked resolutions I have ever seen for any plot arc.
And lets face it, the mile-a-minute barrage of repartee-esque dialogue, and the infamous glib Stark one-liners which were so fresh and fun back when Iron Man came out... are all really tired and stale now; and that's pretty much the first half-hour of this movie.
Once the film kicks into summer movie gear, it becomes an insipidly endless barrage of self-referential humor, broad slapstick, and lots (and LOTS) of noisy, flashy set pieces. And I'm not some action-hater or anything. I loved The Avengers. I just found the throw-downs in this overly bombastic, not particularly interesting, and pervasively noisy. That's not to say there weren't moments then and again that I thought were cool or found somewhat amusing, they were just drowned out by the rest.
Iron Man 3 feels and plays much more like G.I Joe than any marvel movie. That especially goes for the ludicrous plot that stole it's villain origin story from an animated kidpic from ten years ago, it's baddies from (yes) G.I. Joe, and The Terminator, (sooooo Terminator, oh my gosh!!) and every cliché' from every buddy action flick ever. I feel like somebody's gonna be like "NO! that's cuz it was a throwback, look at who directed it jerk!". But when your plot is derivative AND ridiculous... yeah, that's all.
Some people will definitely enjoy IM 3 just fine. It's certainly one of the most ambitious superhero films thus far in terms of the amount and scale of action. But I would say, even Thor was much better as a movie because of its solid script and well-drawn characters. (Avengers miraculously managed to have both).
Iron Man 3 is a mediocre film, which I happened to see coming off another mediocre film...so there's that. But my overall opinion stands that it's garish excess, endless self-referential commentary, and disregard of potentially interesting plot elements, (not to mention some completely squandered characters) renders it an underwhelming film-going experience. It might just be me, but I find "good" films to be entertaining. But oh well... it's gonna make sh**-loads. Oh I forgot to mention: my favorite part of the movie... Jon Favreau!! Did anyone else notice his unmistakably Vincent Vega getup in the first scene?? **/*****