"Iron Man 3" begins the second phase of the Marvel movies leading up to the next Avengers outing. The Avengers have gone back to their “normal” lives after the fiasco in New York. The threat is over, but Tony is not adjusting well. That's an understatement, Tony is falling apart. He suffering from panic attacks, nightmares, and a need to work in his lab until he can barely function. He feels like a little man in a world full of gods and overpowered aliens.

 

Enter the Mandarin, essentially a terrorist striking at targets from the proverbial shadows and taunting the U.S. Government with his destructive ways. Nobody can figure out where he's hiding, where he'll strike next, or how he's able to cause such destruction without traceable bombs. When Tony stands up to him the Mandarin strikes back hard essentially taking away Tony's ability to use the Iron Man suit.

 

Tony will have to be the hero without the “super” if he's going to stop this madman, but he's up against villains who can generate heat to rival the Human Torch and regenerate at speeds that make Wolverine look slow. Now that Pepper's life is on the line Tony will have to be Iron Man with or without the “iron” if he's going to save the woman he loves.

 

The concept is great. Make Tony prove himself. Show that he has become a true hero even without his protective exoskeleton. What I really enjoy about it though is the character elements involved. We tend to take our superheroes as confident even when faced with impossible odds. They have their moments of doubt or weakness, they falter, but usually only at the end of the second act (or beginning of the third) of a story. We don't typically see them doubting their worth as a hero, we don't see them comparing themselves to other heroes and feeling insignificant especially after such a victory as the one in "The Avengers." Tony's doubt in himself is not a brief faltering, it's a defining characteristic. He will have to prove himself to himself in order to work though it.

 

Even though that particular inner demon is a tough one, he's still got some very powerful external villains to fight as well. The villains are various combinations of classic characters. Maya Hansen, Aldrich Killian, and (of course) the Mandarin along with some other henchmen come out of the comic books through their ties to the Extremis technology (which is essentially what gives the villains the ability to face off against Iron Man).

 

While trying to avoid major spoilers I should say that many comic book fans will walk away mad at the treatment received by a long-standing character. I'm not even that much of a fan of this character and I was still annoyed by the shift which took away something I had been very much excited to see in this film.

 

The writers do Iron Man fans a disservice by the handling of some characters, but the larger problem is that the story isn't written as tightly as it could be. People throw around the term “plot hole” like Mardi Gras beads at a burlesque show. I think that's taking it too far, and yet even defenders of the movie struggle to explain the reasoning behind moments like Tony keeping an ace up his sleeve for as long as he does.

 

Others (which I can't mention without spoilers you don't want) are explained but so subtly that many viewers miss it. Is that the fault of the movie not being clear enough or just a sign that people need to pay more attention?

 

Acting is solid. Downey brings his best to the role of Stark once again. He has a lot to handle with Tony having panic attacks and then having to be heroic. Paltrow could not be any more perfect for the role of Pepper. Cheadle gets a chance to shine as Rhodey, and War Machine gets a chance to kick some butt. Newcomers Ben Kingsley and Guy Pierce are on the mark. And we get some child actors who handle their parts well.

 

Effects are as amazing as we would expect from this kind of movie. They look impressively realistic and rarely if ever scream “CGI!!!” One more nitpick: I miss the rock flavor of the past movies. Both the score and the song choices are missing that AC/DC edge that has defined Tony up until now. Instead he gets a groove on to some pop-Christmas music. Not to say that Tony should be bound to a single musical genre, but to remove that flavor all together is too sudden a shift.