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patentdragonDifferent town, different cinema, but I have the best seat in the house...
Blockbuster Season 2013 begins with the first installment of Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase II, namely IRON MAN 3...
Sooooo.... you're riding the wave after the third biggest movie of all time, your grand gamble of interconnected superhero movies has paid off in spades - now what do you do next?
Answer: go back to the character who started it all for a third movie.... with an entirely different director.
Sounds like a risky move, but Marvel Studios haven't gotten this far by dropping the ball on a key play. IRON MAN 3 works just fine, I'm happy to report. The choice was to either "go large" or scale things back a bit and try a different approach, and the latter seems to be the plan of attack as Tony Stark tries to come to terms with the events of AVENGERS, in which he very nearly died in an alien dimension, saving New York. Refining his suit(s) is his escape route, even though he now has a steady girlfriend - that is, until a terrorist attack hits a little TOO close to our hero's shrapnel-threatened heart...
Threats of revenge against the mysterious "Mandarin" put Tony and Pepper Potts right in the line of fire, and our hero's reckless past comes back to haunt him as former, and fleeting acquaintances join forces to unleash an enemy the like of which the struggling Avenger cannot fight without help...
Yes, this movie is certainly the darkest of the three, with living bombs the result of a super-soldier program gone not entirely right, and a body-count burnt into the landscape."Put the hero in a corner" HAS been done plenty of times before, and I'm not the biggest fan of it as a story-telling device, but Robert Downey Jr. has invested so much of himself in the Stark character that you believe in the scenario. Some elements may seem a little familiar, such as War Machine (sorry, make that Iron Patriot)'s armour coming under enemy control, like in IRON MAN 2, but what the director and writers do with that takes away that vaguely bitter taste in your mouth left by elements of the second movie.
The story works fine - check. RDJ is excellent as always - check. The film has humour when it fits, not just crowbarred in for a change of pace - check. The action and effects are first rate - check... so what could go wrong? That vague similiarity between this and the previous installment, perhaps, or maybe the child... no, I don't want to say "sidekick", but what else can you call Tony's pre-teen saviour when our hero's crippled armour takes him to the last destination logged in on its flight plan? No, even he's not enough to derail this baby, nor the 3D conversion, for which I do appear to have a delayed-action blind-spot: I get the early 3D scenes, but as the movie progresses, the 3D seems to just pass me by. Thankfully, there's a whole bunch more to this movie that stuff flying out of the screen at you.
What else is there to say? Well, a spoiler that I seemed to have tripped over in the past few weeks, really isn't that much of a spoiler, as the scene it involves happens pretty early on, and is just the start of Gwynneth Paltrow getting a good deal more to do in this movie. She gets what one could see as "the usual superhero's girl's treatment", being placed in harm's way several times despite Tony's best efforts, but then she manages to find her way through the chaos without it seeming out of place for the character. Excellent stuff.
The only spanner in the works you could possibly detect was the end-of-titles sequence, which was more of a closing bracket to the opening bracket of Tony's monologue. Nothing was hinted about the next movie in the sequence, THOR - THE DARK WORLD, coming in October, but by now, the series doesn't really need to dangle a worm for its audience. They WILL be back, and they WILL be satisfied - if Marvel know what's good for them, and their box-office...
The first trailer is out - roll on October, and a return to Asgard! The Marvel Movie Machine starts to pick up speed once more, and we're already strapping in for the ride!
The Final Verdict... Phase 2 starts off strongly, as a new director does NOT mean a nose-dive for Marvel's REAL star. 8.25/10
Next, on Blockbuster Season: Kirk and his crew return, in Star Trek Into Darkness! Another IMAX visit, perhaps...?
Blockbuster Season 2013 begins with the first installment of Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase II, namely IRON MAN 3...
Sooooo.... you're riding the wave after the third biggest movie of all time, your grand gamble of interconnected superhero movies has paid off in spades - now what do you do next?
Answer: go back to the character who started it all for a third movie.... with an entirely different director.
Sounds like a risky move, but Marvel Studios haven't gotten this far by dropping the ball on a key play. IRON MAN 3 works just fine, I'm happy to report. The choice was to either "go large" or scale things back a bit and try a different approach, and the latter seems to be the plan of attack as Tony Stark tries to come to terms with the events of AVENGERS, in which he very nearly died in an alien dimension, saving New York. Refining his suit(s) is his escape route, even though he now has a steady girlfriend - that is, until a terrorist attack hits a little TOO close to our hero's shrapnel-threatened heart...
Threats of revenge against the mysterious "Mandarin" put Tony and Pepper Potts right in the line of fire, and our hero's reckless past comes back to haunt him as former, and fleeting acquaintances join forces to unleash an enemy the like of which the struggling Avenger cannot fight without help...
Yes, this movie is certainly the darkest of the three, with living bombs the result of a super-soldier program gone not entirely right, and a body-count burnt into the landscape."Put the hero in a corner" HAS been done plenty of times before, and I'm not the biggest fan of it as a story-telling device, but Robert Downey Jr. has invested so much of himself in the Stark character that you believe in the scenario. Some elements may seem a little familiar, such as War Machine (sorry, make that Iron Patriot)'s armour coming under enemy control, like in IRON MAN 2, but what the director and writers do with that takes away that vaguely bitter taste in your mouth left by elements of the second movie.
The story works fine - check. RDJ is excellent as always - check. The film has humour when it fits, not just crowbarred in for a change of pace - check. The action and effects are first rate - check... so what could go wrong? That vague similiarity between this and the previous installment, perhaps, or maybe the child... no, I don't want to say "sidekick", but what else can you call Tony's pre-teen saviour when our hero's crippled armour takes him to the last destination logged in on its flight plan? No, even he's not enough to derail this baby, nor the 3D conversion, for which I do appear to have a delayed-action blind-spot: I get the early 3D scenes, but as the movie progresses, the 3D seems to just pass me by. Thankfully, there's a whole bunch more to this movie that stuff flying out of the screen at you.
What else is there to say? Well, a spoiler that I seemed to have tripped over in the past few weeks, really isn't that much of a spoiler, as the scene it involves happens pretty early on, and is just the start of Gwynneth Paltrow getting a good deal more to do in this movie. She gets what one could see as "the usual superhero's girl's treatment", being placed in harm's way several times despite Tony's best efforts, but then she manages to find her way through the chaos without it seeming out of place for the character. Excellent stuff.
The only spanner in the works you could possibly detect was the end-of-titles sequence, which was more of a closing bracket to the opening bracket of Tony's monologue. Nothing was hinted about the next movie in the sequence, THOR - THE DARK WORLD, coming in October, but by now, the series doesn't really need to dangle a worm for its audience. They WILL be back, and they WILL be satisfied - if Marvel know what's good for them, and their box-office...
The first trailer is out - roll on October, and a return to Asgard! The Marvel Movie Machine starts to pick up speed once more, and we're already strapping in for the ride!
The Final Verdict... Phase 2 starts off strongly, as a new director does NOT mean a nose-dive for Marvel's REAL star. 8.25/10
Next, on Blockbuster Season: Kirk and his crew return, in Star Trek Into Darkness! Another IMAX visit, perhaps...?
