Movie Review: Iron Man 3

It has finally arrived! Iron Man 3, the highly anticipated follow up to the Avengers and Iron Man 2, opens in the US today after already shattering records overseas. Is it all it was cracked up to be? Read on to find out!

PLOT

It's a post- Avengers world and Toby Stark is psychologically haunted by his trip through the wormhole and encounters with other worldly creatures. To cope, he has begun building suit after suit and finding ways of getting into them faster. Meanwhile and quite separately, Happy Hogan, now Pepper's head of security, stumbles upon and is hospitalized by a few bad dudes who work for the Mandarin, a mysterious international terrorist the government is frantically trying to find. Note the hunt for the Mandarin is personal for Tony which gives us our movie.

In short, the first part of the story is not bad. It has it's lows but mostly it sets up a great action movie, leaving the audience anticipating a badass showdown that the second half fails miserably to deliver. Instead of delivering on the awesomeness that fans have been promised, the film opts instead to send a curve ball that ends up being a HUGE let-down.

DIALOGUE

Being an Iron Man movie, you have come to expect a certain level of back and forth from Tony and pretty much everyone else. Iron Man 3 does not disappoint in that regard. The film is at its absolute best when Tony meets a young boy who he must rely on. The chemistry between the two displayed in their dialogue is perfect and way too short.

VISUALS

As always, Iron Man looks great in this outing. The effects are still top notch. The color pallet is a little darker than previous Iron Man films, but that doesn't help or hurt it in any way.

CHARACTERS

Something is off with Tony Stark. Sure, you could make the argument that this is intentional. After all, the story tells us something is off with him. But even after Tony gets his groove back, there's something missing. Whether it's Robert Downy Jr's boredom showing through or Shane Black's direction, but Stark ends up both cartoony and flat at the same time if that's possible. The rest of the characters were excellent, with the exception of the one I can't tell you about without spoiling the movie. That one was just...no.

ACTION

While Tony Stark is more the star here instead of Iron Man, you don't lose much action. There are several great scenes that make it a very good action film, and it was good to see Pepper Potts get in on some of it as well.

Overall, Iron Man 3 had a huge act to follow and honestly it failed. With a better story, the one it promised us, it could have been epic. Instead, it was decidedly average.

PLOT - .5
DIALOGUE - 2
VISUALS - 2
CHARACTERS - 1
ACTION - 2

DUSTY'S SCORE - 7.5 out of 10