I suspect the subset of the Earth’s population which includes the intersection between those who read this blog and those who want to see Iron Man 3 but who have not yet done so is an empty set, but just in case I have warned people not to read further.
We see my older daughter, Miriam, who lives in Brooklyn on a fairly regular basis; either Ellen or I (or both of us) go up to New York. However, we do not see our younger daughter, Tamar, who lives in Northern Virginia as much. It occurred to me it was because of our geographic proximity we just act as if we will randomly run into each other. And, of course, we do not.
Therefore, I setup a deal with Tamar to at least plan to see each other every two weeks, typically on a Sunday morning. This last Sunday was the first of our getting-together sessions and it proved a great success, even taking into account Tamar’s tweet that she had changed place with her parents, she coming early and her parents coming late.
The ‘date’ was to see Iron Man 3 (not in 3D which I read was not such a big deal).
The reviews I read said it was really (really loud) but fun. I would agree with both characteristics. Robert Downey Jr really fits the role well, sarcastic and off-center. His angst over having to face all of these dangers and possibly losing made him more interesting, his panic attacks reasonable (at least to me).
The CGI effects were quite good, the fact that the suits could be made to fly in the air and attach themselves to the wearer provided the opportunity for a lot of great sequences. In general, many things blew up and/or fell over and/or exploded. Gwyneth Paltrow, who I have never felt was that super an actress had little to do, other than to look well-dressed. Don Cheadle, a fine actor, was mostly wasted though he did get to wear an Iron Man outfit. Guy Pearce and Rebecca Hall were fine villains, especially Pearce.
I did want to say a few other quick things about the film.
Ben Kingsley, who seems to be the Mandarin and thus the lead bad buy from the trailer, is in fact playing a British actor pretending to be a terrorist. The real bad guys, Pearce and Hall, were defense contractors planning to make money by both causing terrorism and then solving it. I joke that evidently that the admission price for most Hollywood Directors is to make sure there is at least one scene in every movie they make where they make fun of the military or US foreign policy (or in particular the viewpoints of political conservatives). It is so normal that at some level it gets a bit boring.
Also, during the film, Pepper Potts (Paltrow) says that their research was pure until they started taking Defense funding. The US President is mocked by Kingsley (the Mandarin) for not doing anything to clean-up an oil spill.
Finally, I would point out that this was one of the films made recently that was co-produced (sponsored?) with China. Evidently this impacted how the Mardarin character was portrayed and, in fact, in the Chinese version of the film a number of additional scenes are added. Most important the Executive Producer for the partnership with China was Dan Mintz, who runs a production company, CMG, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-06-05/entertainment/sns-201306051800reedbusivarietyn1200492311-20130605_1_second-largest-film-market-co-production-iron-man-3. Sadly, however, that is one of the ‘other’ Dan Mintz’s.