Staff Writer
Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr., manages to save the president of the United States from a terrorist plot in Iron Man 3 while experiencing horrific anxiety attacks. Magically, he is less a machine and more of a man in this episode of the trilogy. According to Christopher Orr of www.theatlantic.com, “He removes the slit-eyed helmet and headlamp breastplate, ruby-red gauntlets and boot-jets–and left just the man.”
Iron Man’s sense of humor is exemplified throughout the film by using superhero satire and some clichés. Downing Jr., through his cleverness with words and actions, brings excitement to the film in a very humanizing and entertaining ways.
“There is no actor working today who is better suited to deliver pop-fused banter as well as Downey Jr. does in this film,” Orr said.
Complete with a cast of superstars, including a girlfriend named Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), a villain named the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), another more powerful villain named Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) and a best friend and comrade against evil named “Rhodey” (Don Cheadle), the characters battle good over evil, from beginning to end.
The Mandarin, an Osama Bin Laden type character, continually appears on everyone’s television screen disrupting their programs to show random bombings. The bombings are initiated because he hates the United States, although for no apparent reason. Iron Man invites him to a confrontation at his own house. That’s a big mistake because the Mandarin sends warfare to destroy Iron Man’s home, triggering the use of weapons not seen in any of the other Iron Man movies.
The plot thickens as Iron Man is thrown helplessly into an unknown neighborhood, and he has to hide in a garage. A boy who lives there and is intrigued by electronics later discovers him. The two work together to get Iron Man back in his armor, just in the nick of time. He discovers the Mandarin is a fake villain and an actor paid by an anonymous source to play the part of by a villain.
Killian is discovered as the true villain, and his grand plot to “control supply and demand of war on terror” at any cost must be thwarted by Iron Man and his team. Together, the boy, his comrade “Rhodey” and his girlfriend battle Killian and save the president and the planet.
The relationships throughout the film show innocence and genuine love and caring between the characters, making Stark appear to be the hero and not Iron Man. Because Iron Man spends most of the movie as a man and not dressed in his armor as a super hero, he appears to be more human. He goes as far as to call himself a “mechanic” when he speaks to the boy for the first time, and to his girlfriend when he explains why his was more attentive to the robots instead of her.
As villains have changed since the original Iron Man during the Cold War, the heroes have changed to be more modern and identifiable for today’s family audience. After the film, several people made comments about how much they liked the movie.
“Iron Man 3 is great, but I liked the first Iron Man better because it was original and it started out fresh. I work here and I get to see a lot of movies free, so when I say Iron Man 3 was good, It was really good,” Cameron Denny, 18,said.
“Iron Man 3 gets my vote. I liked it because it culminated with many Iron Men fighting the villains instead of just one and I thought that was real creative,” Manny Evangelista, 21, said.
