Iron Man 3 review

IRON MAN 3: 
IT ISN’T THE AVENGERS BUT STILL VERY AMUSING AND A BLAST OF FUN!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** out of 4

MARVEL STUDIOS

Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man in Iron Man 3

With the success of The Avengers last year, how would Marvel be able to top that? Well, with The Avengers 2, of course, but that won’t be until 2015. In the meantime, there’s Iron Man 3, the third installment of the Iron Man trilogy and by far the best out of them.

Most of the cast from Iron Man 2 reprise their roles in this movie including Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man/Iron Man 2/The Avengers, Sherlock Holmes, Tropic Thunder) as billionaire and weapons developer, Tony Stark/Iron Man, Don Cheadle (Iron Man 2, Flight, Hotel Rwanda) as Col. James Rhodes/Iron Patriot, Gwyneth Paltrow (Contagion, Iron Man/Iron Man 2/The Avengers, Shakespeare in Love) as Pepper Potts, former Iron Man director, Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Iron Man 2) as Tony Stark’s wacky assistant, Happy Hogan, and Paul Bettany (Legion, Margin Call, Priest) as the voice of J.A.R.V.I.S and under new direction by Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang). New to the Iron Man cast is Ben Kingsley (Shutter Island, Searching for Bobby Fischer, The Dictator) as the villain, The Mandarin and Guy Pearce (Prometheus, Lockout) as Aldrich Killian, The Mandarin’s assistant and former friend of Pepper.

            Shortly after the events of The Avengers, Tony Stark is experiencing horrible memories of going through the Wormhole in The Avengers to defeat the alien army. He can’t sleep at night because of his nightmares of losing everything he cares about. Suddenly a new enemy known as The Mandarin manages to destroy Tony’s personal world. Tony embarks on a quest to find those responsible for ruining his life and to stop a terrible virus known as Extremis, which can alter a person’s body and make their skin turn fiery hot and give them Pyrokinetic powers, and if critical enough it can make them explode.

With the help of his friend, James Rhodes and a young boy he’ll do whatever it takes to defeat The Mandarin, save Pepper from getting the Extremis virus injected into her, and find out the truth about the one question he’s had for a very long time, does the man make the suit or does the suit make the man.

Iron Man 3 is by far the best out of the Iron Man trilogy, even better than the first one (Yes, I did just say that!), the story is written well, gripping action sequences that will have you at the edge of your seat, eye popping special effects, probably the best climax since the final battle in The Avengers, and a great follow up to The Avengers, don’t get me wrong it’s not better than The Avengers but it comes pretty close.

It’s probably just me but all the upcoming Marvel movies seem to get better and better after the release of The Avengers last year. Besides Iron Man 3 we have Thor: The Dark World hitting theaters in November, which looks amazing. Also, it’s a good thing we only have to wait two more years until The Avengers 2 comes out in 2015.

But in the meantime you might as well grab your armor and check Iron Man 3 out for yourself. It’s the best way to start the summer of movies, just as long as you follow that up with Star Trek Into Darkness on the 17^th.