So I Watched: Iron Man 3 (2013)
In the time since his last appearance, Tony Stark finds himself traumatized by how bad Avengers 2012 was and in a way I find that resonant, as I've spent every other moment since the 19th thinking about how bad Avengers 2012 was.
This one is a pretty solid return to form for the MCU honestly. I can't tell if that's actually true or if it's just bias after enduring the kind of movie you'd fire people for, but c'est la vie.
There's this unfathomably annoying quip that Batman fans love to break out in defense of every Batman story they like: "It's not just a Batman story, it's a Bruce Wayne story". Unfortunately this is a very useful way to describe what makes Iron Man 3 rule, as it is indeed more of a Tony Stark story than an Iron Man story. Shit, the suit's barely even in it.
I complained about the "Big Man in a suit, what are you without it?" scene in my Avengers review and while I don't really like that scene structurally or thematically, it does make sense for that to be the driving question of Iron Man 3. In part because the film opens with a pretty concise answer: Tony is a well-meaning but impulsive and deeply traumatized man whose inability to be emotionally honest is killing him slowly, not unlike the heart-shrapnel.
But the emotional twist of the movie is that it's less interested in answering what Tony is without the suit so much as it is can be. Freshly traumatized from almost dying a horrible death alone in the vacuum of space, Tony throws himself into the world's - and audience's - expectations of him, tinkering on things constantly and perhaps over-optimizing his Iron Man suit, all while still trying to do the billionaire sociliate thing.
And… It doesn't work. He can make 40-odd suits and buy expensive gifts and drive flashy cars, but he's still human and thus he quite literally cannot merely sleep off a near-death experience that coincided with a massive expansion in his worldview. It's important to note, on that last point, that while Banner dealt with near-alien Gamma Rays and Thor is a literal alien from a science-fantasy planet and Steve dealt with Nazi space magic, Tony's prior outings were all mundane weapons tech (in-universe, anyway) so seeing him snap critically under the introduction of things like aliens, wormholes, and interdimensional invasions is pretty compelling.
Of course the cure for his torments is the same cure for most people's; normality. Tony is, in opposition to most of The Billionaire Caste, a human being. He resonates with humanity more than business. It was him encountering naked, unvarnished humanity in Iron Man 1 that started this entire Cinematic Universe and, despite liking it well enough, I chafed against Iron Man 2 putting Tony back in his acquiescent wealth bubble and away from anyone of substance besides Pepper. Well, sure enough, Iron Man 3's best bits are primarily contained in the middle and antepenultimate moments where a suitless Tony is sent (literally) crashing back to Earth and forced to engage with normal people.
One of my few remaining Old Internet Curmudgeon traits is that I still don't really like sidekick-type characters in Superhero movies. They're one part of the Superhero machine I could go without. I like Harley, though, because the writers defy basically every trend of the Kid Sidekick. Harley is a little shithead who's nonetheless sincere and helpful - like Tony himself - and the two of them have an incredible dynamic together. They talk ludicrous amounts of shit at one another, their scenes actually further Tony's growing character development, and they're funny. 'Funny' may seem like a limp note to end on, but you gotta understand: Avengers was so terminally unfunny that Iron Man 3 making me chuckle gives it an extra proverbial star.
On a structural level Iron Man 3 is just vastly more compelling to actually sit down and watch. I've said that Avengers took me 6 hours to watch despite only running for 2 and a half, and that's no joke. This? I gunned it in one setting, minus bathroom breaks and my sudden craving for a Twix. Even the simple fact that the cast visibly seem to enjoy reading their lines does a lot to elevate the experience. That it's went back to the brilliant comedic pacing and physical comedy of Iron Man 1 is just adding sugar on top. The film pulls its punches on action until the climax truly starts but maaaaaaaaan is it engaging to watch. They manage to strike a nice balance with the Iron Men suits where they're simultaneously mini-mechs and fighter jets, which is something that'll be rarer and rarer with Tony's appearances going forward.
Actually, while we're talking about how much more Iron Man 3 has in common with 1, now is as good a time as any to talk about the villain. In the first movie Tony was yoinked from his perch and made to see firsthand what he'd contributed to the War on Terror. It broke him on a deep, fundamental level that he'll spend his entire life healing from, and massively reoriented his life priorities. Killian is the same man, but having come face to face with the War on Terror, decided that it's awesome. He loves it. He knows there's money to be made by restarting a crusade that, at the time the film had released, had many people asking "Wait, why the fuck are we still in Afghanistan?"
This and The Winter Soldier are the last time this MCU saga will ever do proper commentary on America sucking, but it's nice that it's here. There's this amazing joke in the middle of the film where an obviously British guy threatens the US President and their response is to send a guy with a gun to the Middle East. They roll out Rhodey in a massive suit of armor that has miniguns and rockets on it, and then say "We're calling it Iron Patriot. War Machine is too violent" with stoney sincerity. Their immediate assumption that threats are coming from Pakistan is met with the reveal that it was actually being done in Miami. The US agents in this movie are so deferent to authority that they all get killed because they just assume a guy in a warsuit painted in red, white and blue is on their side. It's hilarious.
Like any good story, though, the jokes do lead to a pretty salient point and one that I rarely see discussed even from people who take these movies seriously: The guys being rehabilitated by AIM aren't tragic war vets who gave up everything for their country. They're the much less palatable, much more detestable guys who treat their injuries not as a sacrifice they made for America, but as a barrier to them killing their way through the Middle East. AIM's entire point is to drag them back into being fit for service and then send them off as the pioneers of a brand new, infinitely more destructive War on Terror. They would, in our world, be guys dishonourably discharged from their branch and then sent to Blackwater to slaughter people for money before coming home with substance problems. It's no surprise, then, that unlike the baddies of the previous movies, the EXTREMIS goons get utterly eviscerated on screen. Savin is straight up murdered in one of the gorier MCU deaths and everyone is okay with it, and they should be!
My only real complaint about this movie is the tendency to slap jokes in wherever possible. This will come to be known as "MCU Writing" in a few entries and while it's not bad here, you can see the foundation being laid for a film verse that keeps puncturing its own momentum with quips. Rhodey, a character who people disliked in 1 for being "whiney" and for being a "hardass" in 2, gets the brunt of this and it feels kinda… Mean-spirited, you know? The optics of it all are especially bad because he's functionally the MCU's first Black hero and in this movie he's the brunt of the joke most of time.
Either way, good movie. Straight to the #3 spot on my ranking.
Thor: The Dark World next and… I have never heard any living person say anything good about that movie.