Iron Man without Iron Man (or the Mandarin)

Rating: 4/10 (3 January 2016)

Clearly Robert Downey Jnr wanted to make this his last Iron Man movie so a story was contrived to allow him to drive away with honour as a happy man with a fixed heart, both in terms of his love life and his physical injury.
Blockbuster movies these days are designed around demographics. IM 3 is no different. Women have to be empowered so Pepper ends up with super powers. Women don't need men so Tony Stark doesn't save Pepper from her plummet to death. An Asian audience must not be offended so the Mandarin is converted into a white Caucasian. An African American saves the Presidency (i.e. Obama). British actors overwhelm Hollywood movies so a few jokes are thrown in about British theatrical actors playing roles in superhero movies. The esteem of scientists and DNA engineering has been lowered so the bad guy is a scientist who alters DNA. Fallen American soldiers in the Middle East have to be honoured so we are given a young boy who has lost his soldier father. Returning vets from the Middle East suffering from the effects of war are represented by Stark's anxiety attacks. Engineering is too clever a subject for most audiences so Tony Stark becomes a mere mechanic. The super rich are largely detested by the public so Stark's Malibu home gets blown to pieces. Hard drugs users are used as the prototype for the villains who can either handle an overdose or explode in an inferno.
The final message is that there are no superheroes. There are just men and machines. As with modern day drones, the Iron Man suit becomes an unmanned drone that can be lost in battle without harm to its operative.
Very little of the comic book super hero is left. But the makers knew this would appeal to a wider audience of non-superhero fans so they experimented with that path. The comic book fans will wonder if the real Iron Man is still out there somewhere. I'm sure he is and will return one day, slightly dirtier and more hardcore than before.
Unfortunately, once again the editing is dreadful, resorting to the modern craze for 1 second or less camera shots.