Review: Iron man 3

Good day all, Angry Webmaster here with a review of Iron Man 3. Be advised, there WILL be spoilers in this review. (Who cares what River Song ((Melody Pond/River Song)) thinks about spoilers. I don’t)

Still here? You’ve been warned!

I was able to buy tickets to a preview show one day before the general opening. I went to an Iron Man double feature with the Angry Brother In-Law. We went to Chunky’s Cinema Pub and thanks to my getting the preview tickets, we got lots of goodies. (Discounts on food and drink for starters)

The theater was filled almost to capacity, and the two of us got there early. A pitcher of beer, some spicy chicken and the first movie, Iron Man 2 started. I won’t bother reviewing that one since it’s been out for a few years now. First, after the chicken, the Angry BiL and I ordered some dinner. He had a massive Chunky burger and I had steak and chicken….And more beer.

The movie takes place shortly after the Avengers. Tony Stark and Pepper Potts ((Virginia “Pepper” Potts)) are a couple now, but there is trouble in paradise. Tony is suffering from PTSD. His way of dealing with it is to continually build new armor suits, each better then the last. The film opens in Switzerland on New Years eve 1999 and Tony is approached by Aldrich Killian who is trying to get a think tank up and running. Tony is not interested in helping him since he is more interested in boinking Maya Hansen. Hansen takes Killian’s business card and she and Tony retire to her hotel room for a night of mattress bouncing. Tony leaves her in the morning with a formula that helps Maya in her work.

Jumping forward, Tony is now working on the Mark 42 suit. This suit is designed to fly in pieces and attach its self to him. As tony is testing it, he finds a few issues, such as the groin plate screaming in and slamming him in the nuts. The face plate is also “problematical.”

While all this is going on a new villain called Mandarin is setting off bombs. The interesting thing about the bombs is they leave no trace and burn very hot. (3000 degrees centigrade) While all this is going on, Pepper meets with Aldrich Killian. Killian, who had been disabled in 1999 is now in good condition and healthy, which he attributes to surgery and physical therapy. He is showing Pepper a new technology that he would like Stark Enterprises to join in and help perfect. Pepper declines, although she is infatuated with Killian. Tony’s former driver, Happy Hogan ((Happy Hogan)), who is jnow head of security of Stark Industries, notices Killian and his bodyguard/assistant a becomes suspicious of them. Hogan starts tailing Killian’s assistant and see what looks like a hand off of some sort to another man. Hogan goes up to the other man, apparently a former soldier, and bumps him, causing the contents of the case to spill. Hogan picks up one of the objects and is heading away when the assistant confronts him. The assistant throws hogan into a wall. Meanwhile, the former soldier who had the case starts glowing orange, then explodes. Happy Hogan is gravely injured, but sees the soldiers dog tags. He can’t reach them but points at them knowing Tony will understand, then he passes out. As this happens, the assistant, who was blown up as well, is also glowing orange and his injuries are rapidly healing.

Tony goes to the hospital to be with his friend Happy, and grows enraged at what has happened. As he leaves the hospital, he issues a challenge to Mandarin, supplying him with his home address. He uses his computers to rebuild a virtual image of the site, and figures out what Happy was trying to point to. Using that he determines that there have been several explosions similar to the Mandarin attacks that were never reported as such and decides to go to Tennessee, the sight of the first blast to investigate.

As he finishes his investigation, Maya Hansen shows up. She assumes Tony has forgotten their one night stand, but Tony hasn’t. As he is talking with her, Pepper tosses some suitcases over the balcony. She and Tony start arguing. She wants them to leave and Tony wants to stay. While this is going on three helicopters come in and start firing rockets into Stark’s house. Maya is tossed against a wall but the blast and the house starts coming apart. Tony activates the new Mark 42 prototype and has it attach its self to Pepper who then uses it, badly, to get her self and Maya out and to safety.

Once Tony knows she is safe he has the suit disassemble and come to him. The suit is not fully operational, and Tony can’t activate weapons or fly away. Even with those problems he manages to destroy tow of the helicopters, but the house collapses into the ocean, trapping Tony one the bottom. Jarvis, the suit’s AI uses one of the gauntlets to pull Tony free and manages to activate the flight systems.

The next thing Tony knows, he has crashed to the ground in Tennessee. Jarvis reports that this is the flight plan that had been loaded then powers down due to damage and power exhaustion. Tony drags the suit into a barn and is discovered by Harley, a precocious 10-year-old boy. Tony tracks down another soldier who blew himself up. Examining the location he determines this is the first incident. He tracks down the dead soldiers mother, who gives him a file. As Tony is reading this a woman comes up, slams him to the table and cuffs him. When the local sheriff objects, the woman starts glowing orange and kills him. Tony manages to escape and leads her into an ambush, blowing her up.

Killian’s assistant shows up and grabs Harley and threatens to kill him unless Tony comes with him. Harley triggers a device Tony gave him and they manage to escape.

Using the leads he has uncovered, Tony heads to Miami and using jury-rigged weapons, infiltrates Mandarin’s HQ. He fins Mandarin, but discovers that he is actually a drunken, drug addicted actor who has no real idea what is going on, and that it is Killian who is pushing the buttons.

What is going on is Killian has developed a new drug that can regenerate any injury. It has a nasty side effect though. In some people, it causes their bodies to go super hot and explode. This is the cause of the Mandarin terrorist attacks, Killian has been using them as cover for his experiments. Killian shows up and Tony is captured. Maya, who Tony thought was helping him, was actually working for Killian and had kidnapped Pepper.

Killian tells Tony that he needs him to perfect the drug, Extremis, so that it doesn’t detonate people. Tony refuses, and Killian shows Tony a closed circuit picture of Pepper, strapped into a rig and being injected with Extremis. She is glowing orange and in terrible pain from the transformation. Killian explains that this is the point where some of the test subjects explode.

Maya Hansen complains that this is not what she wanted, at which point Aldritch Killian shoots and kills her. He then tells Tony that a senior position has now opened up and leaves him to decide. Tony is strapped up to an upright bed frame with a pair of goons. Tony manages to free one hand and signals his partially repaired Mark 42 suit to come to him. He tells the goons that they had better leave or they will be killed and then counts down from five. At zero he looks around wondering where his suit is. The goons laugh at him. This goes on several times and then one of the gauntlets comes in and clamps on Tony’s hand. He then waxes the goons.

While all this is going on, his friend Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes, using the War Machine suit, now repainted red, white and blue and renamed Iron Patriot, is trying to track down Mandarin. He is led into a trap, captured and forced out of the suit. Killian’s assistant, Eric Savin, uses the suit to infiltrate Air Force One. He then kills several secret service agents, traps other people in another section of the plane and kidnaps the President.

Rhodey, who is also in the Miami hideout, uses Tony’s escape to make his own getaway. They quickly take down the remaining guards and soon determine that Killian is planning to kidnap the President. They contact the Vice-President to alert him. What they don’t know is that he is working for Mandarin. The President is captured and taken to a port and hung up in the deactivated Iron Patriot suit. While this is going on, Tony as Iron man boards Air Force One to get Savin. There is a big fight and Tony uses his thrusters to blow apart Savins chest. This is an injury he can’t recover from and he dies, but not before the surviving passengers and crew are blown out of Air Force One.

Tony goes after them but at most, can only carry 4 people, and there are 11 falling to their doom. Tony comes up with an idea and grabs one passenger and has her grab another. He then puts a small electric charge into her forcing the woman’s hand to lock on the other passenger. This is repeated until Tony has all the passengers daisy chained together. He slows their decent enough and they all drop into the water.

This is when it is shown that Tony was operating the suit via remote control. Tony and Rhodey trace Killian’s location and go after him. When they get there, they spot the President hanging over a large number of oil drums and explosives. The plan is to burn him alive. Rhodey goes for the President and Tony goes for Pepper. As they do this, Tony has Jarvis activate all his remaining suits to come and provide air support against Killian’s group of super soldiers.

Rhodey rescues the President and redons his armor and activates it. The President is now clear of the action. Tony find Peppers and discovers she has survived the Extremis process. However, before he can free her the rig explodes. Pepper is trapped on one section over the burning pyre that was meant for the President. Tony tries to reach her but she slips and falls into the flames some 200 feet below. Tony is devastated that the love of his life has been killed. He dons one of the suits and goes after Killian.

Between him and Rhodey, they wipe out Killian’s super soldiers. However, Rohdey’s suit is wrecked and he can’t use any of the others. As Tony trashes one suit he quickly access another to continue fighting Killian.

Killian, also using Extremis, starts trying to cook Tony on his suit. Tony instead has Jarvis put the suit on Killian and then activates the self destruct, blowing Killian to pieces. However, thanks to Extremis, Killian survives and regenerates. He is about to finish off Tony when Pepper, also lit up and under the influence of Extremis, attacks him. They fight and Pepper finally is able to drive a post into his chest and kill him.

She then cools down to a normal temperature. Tony comes up to her but she backs away, afraid she will burn him. Tony doesn’t care and observes that Pepper is back to normal. Tony then makes a decision to devote more time to Pepper. He orders Jarvis to destroy all the suits.

The next scene, Tony has “fixed” Pepper and is undergoing surgery to remove the metal fragments in his chest. These were the reason he had the arc reactor and magnet. The President, safely back ion the White House, has the VP arrested. After Tony recovers from his surgery, he goes to the remains of his house and tosses his no longer needed arc reactor and magnet into the sea. He then drives off towing a trailer with his robotic assistant in it. As he does so he says that suit or no suit, he will always be…Iron Man. The credits roll and the first thing that comes up is “Tony Stark will return.”

This is the third installment of the Iron Man series, not including the Avengers. Normally, the third movies tend to be a little…tired. Not this one. The director and writer managed to balance the darkness of Tony’s PTSD and anxiety attacks with the humor we have come to see in Iron man. There is also Pepper’s exposure to Extremis and what it has done to her. The writers don’t actually say that she is free of the substance, only that Tony had fixed her implying that she won’t blow up.

This could mean some interesting things for Pepper in future Marvel movies.

Now, do I recommend this film? Oh HELL YES! This is the best movie I’ve seen this year. I strongly recommend it. No, I demand that you go see it. This is already on my “DVD TO BUY” list. I can’t wait now for Avengers 2, which is due out May, 2015. Oh, be sure to stick around until the end of the credits. That is one spoiler I won’t provide.

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~