The epic film that wasn't

Rating: 2/10 (12 May 2013)

With the multi-movie build up of man invents machine - man becomes one with machine - machine begins to consume man sequence, and an iconic villain played by a first rate actor, I was prepared for an experience equal to The Dark Knight, or maybe better. Iron Man 3 wasn't that film. Instead, opportunity for profound and gripping face-offs between villain and hero was traded for sitcom oversimplification and scene by scene over played gimmicks. The basic premise had good ideas, but the final product looked like it was edited by a studio executive committee with no understanding of the comic superhero world at all instead of a visionary director.
Iron Man should be a regular guy who, through his own invention, becomes a hero through the power the machine gives him, and as a regular human the task takes it's toll physically and emotionally. The narcissist Tony Stark denies to himself the personal decay and revels in the attention Iron Man brings. The denial doesn't change the fact that the machine is taking over and Tony is falling apart as the role of superhero overwhelms and begins to destroy him. Instead, in Iron Man 3, the script forgets this and trades it for scene-by-scene stunts and uncharacteristic nonsensical decisions by what should be a supra-genius.
Also, the villains in Iron Man should be powerful, but realistic using clever tactics in a battle of intellects when the machines prove equally powerful and battle to a stalemate. Instead, in this film, the many iterations of Iron Man suits are destroyed without discretion, like they are not the brilliantly designed symbolic source of power they are intended to be, but just disposable props. The villain in Iron Man 3 could have been an epic and unsettlingly realistic psychopath with the Mandarin, equal to or greater than Heath Ledger's Joker. Instead, what we got in IM3 was a false villain just pretending to be evil and a real villain with unbelievable powers seemingly made up as the film went along just to be invincible only until the end when it was convenient for him to disappear and the movie to be done.
I can ignore the false villain because the concept could have been brilliant, but it wasn't and made the story a joke. I can accept another villain amped up with some type of power, but not when it is so outrageous and inconsistent that one scene has no relation to the next. Tony should be coming up with a brilliant solution to overcome the villain's power when the brute force of the suit didn't work. For that to happen the villain's power must be consistent and in IM3 there was no consistency at all.
The bottom line on this film is that the Iron Man world is still intact if you ignore IM3, and I think you should.