I watched Ironman 3 today. I usually check Rotten Tomatoes after seeing a film. Not this time though.
Yes, I'm taking Ironman 3 personally. Yes, I find the feelings of the movie more compelling than the nitty-gritty stuff other people would probably be raving about. I'm not doing that, because with Ironman films, it's a given: they're all good--great, actually--technically and story-wise. Perfect action scene choreography, stunning visual effects, witty dialogues, and so on and so forth.
It goes without saying that Ironman 3 was better than its predecessors in a lot of ways. As expected, it was darker and more mature. Usually, this works. In this case, it worked perfectly. It was no longer a brainlessly entertaining, technically superb action movie. This one's a work of art. It was more grounded in reality vis-a-vis its superhero-movie counterparts. It had an attempt to be socially critical. I'm not sure if that was intentional or if it was just to make a good plot. (With Hollywood films, you never know--with "Hollywood" being the operative word. Case in point, The Hunger Games.) Nevertheless, it did the movie and the entire humanity a favor.
The film started out establishing Tony Stark's weaknesses. That he was after all, like all of us, human. It wasn't like in the first two installments where his character was designed to purposely invite idolatry (like all superheroes) in spite and including his decadence and other negative virtues. In this film, Tony Stark's character and emotions were vulnerably exposed in a very precise and brilliant storytelling (straightforward but not overly dramatic, unlike the the portrayal of Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker, Clark Kent--you get the idea.) Notable was his battle with trauma and anxiety over what happened in New York. Most of us have had to deal with something like this, and like all of us, he was scared to deal with it and the stigma that comes with it. We are, after all, including the great Tony Stark, subjective beings. The movie was filled with scenes and layers reflective of this and although they were not hard to miss, they were very subtle, tightly told, and never excessive.
Having said that, the main protagonist in this movie was Tony Stark, not Ironman.
Now, the problem, in so many ways--Aldrich Killian. We all get the character. He's both stereotypical and not. We've seen him before. Only this time, there's that political spin. He was the good-guy-gone-bad type of villain, except he happened to take advantage of the current global issues with "terrorism". In real life though, it's not the regular guy. It's the people who are actually seated in power who commit these types of crimes. It was a good spin to the story, that much I can say. Anonymity and the power it gives to a person is a very timely concept to tackle. His character could have been more established though. Really, a fan who had his heart broken by his "idol" who stood him up? That just sounds like Syndrome in The Incredibles. Killian was just so typical that the portrayal of Guy Pearce was so bland his were the only boring scenes of the movie. Because we all knew what he was going to say, we could predict what he was going to do. He was the only one who made an attempt to explain why he's doing the things he's doing. Duh. Fine, he was smart, but not cunning. He lacks the charm of a villain. He's not even that much hate-able, he was just there, a villain performing his villainous duties. This exactly is his human factor, though told poorly.
Pepper Potts was something else though. First off, you must know how much I have always hated the character of Mary Jane. She's the pretty girl the awkward boy bagged because he was nice. Her only role was too be sad, complain about her life, and be rescued. We all know the damsel in distress trope runs rampant and can be found in almost every superhero story. Then there's the shallow Black Widow portrayal of Scarlett Johannson whose sole purpose was too be a beautiful foreign girl who kicks ass. On the other hand, there's the hero's female servant who was just there to provide support and sometimes information and words of wisdom (e.g. Moira MacTaggert in X-Men: First Class). And in comes Pepper Potts, a strong, powerful, and confident female character, with all her charm and brains.She stands her ground and has never regarded Tony Stark as her hero. In this movie, she herself was a hero. A very humble, grounded, and humane hero.
What hits hard in the story is the relationship of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. It was too real that we never expected something like it to be found in a superhero movie. We usually see these kinds of romantic relationship and emotional struggles in films that are actually dedicated to romantic relationships and emotional struggles. I don't want to spoil the ending but it was so epic (yes, I'm using the word epic) I cried.
After everything, I cannot classify Ironman as a superhero movie anymore. Sure it was, if you want to be technical. But it was also much more than that. It was even much more than most films we've seen lately.
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EDIT: A follow-up here.
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