[Inglewood Jack]

spoilers are ok now right? k, so as a fun summer popcorn ride, 8/10. as a cohesive and complete treatment of the Iron Man character and his story? maybe 5 or 6/10. warning, this is TLDR territory.

good

- RDJ continues to happily devour every scene as Stark, and despite the issues (described later) it never gets boring or awkward watching him in this role

- the sequence where he's fighting with just a suit arm and leg was a nice variation in the action

- the part in Tennessee where he's fighting off the lava assassins with quick thinking and everyday objects. it's nice to be reminded once in a while that even without the suit he's still a dangerous super genius

- Don Cheadle is good, brings the right amount of energy to Rhodes. I never sit there wishing that it was Terrence Howard instead

- Guy Pearce was effective even if his character got a little silly by the end. weirdly reminds me of Kevin Bacon in X-Men First Class

- Rebecca Hall = nice to look at, kind of a weird mix of Jennifer Garner and Liv Tyler

bad

- the story feels like it was either written once without some needed revisions, or rewritten too many times. there's a whole bunch of things that happen that just don't lead anywhere significant. for example Tony's PTSD, when that first happens I'm like, oh that's gonna cause him trouble later on and he'll have to do something to resolve that at the last minute...nope he just cures himself after the kid gives him a pep talk. and then his PTSD starts affecting his relationship with Pepper...that's ok, they'll get separated soon after for the rest of the movie and ruinite at the end without any problems. hey that botantist girl from his past, look Pepper is jealous, and now it turns out she's bad, but having a change of heart...dead. other than inventing the extremis tech for Killian, she has absolutely no effect on the outcome and how the good guys win. there's more, maybe it's cause they tried to do something complex and profound, but in the end it would have just been easier to have one clear bad guy for Tony to focus on without all the weird plot tendrils.

- the tone has these weird fluctuations that don't seem right. dark violent stuff happens like an explosion on a public street, a live TV execution, both Stark and Pepper being presumed dead by the other. and then you have fake Mandarin stinking up his bathroom and falling asleep while talking...stuff straight from the Hangover series or something. some of the dialogue of other characters was oddly slapstick that way too. the other Iron Man movies were funny, but it was a lot of quick witted stuff that felt like it belonged more.

- there's not a whole lot of Iron Man for an Iron Man movie. he spends most of his time struggling to get Mark 42 working properly, and not enough time kicking ass in his super high tech gear. I'd argue Avengers is actually a better Iron Man movie than this one was. I get that they want to give him a different challenge, but would have killed anyone to at least once have him do something cool like shoot a laser or other new weaponry from a shiny prototype? in fact the only substantial sequence where Iron Man is doing stuff in full gear is falling out of the plane, which we saw almost all of in the trailer anyways...and it turned out not even to be him inside.

- Stark in his own words is a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist...action stuntmaster? there's some sequences where he does stuff that feels more Jason Statham than a rich smart guy who likes to build stuff. Like when he breaks into the Mandarin's mansion with his homebrew weapons, against a dozen armed guards. I feel that I should have liked that sequence more but I just don't know if I believed he's that quick and agile with the out of suit combat. and then there's a lot more wild jumping and sprinting and balancing during the finale. I haven't read a lot of Iron Man comics so I dunno, maybe he has the training, but it was strange to me anyhow.

- I didn't like the finale of Iron Man 2 because it was at night and so fast and frantic it just looked like a bunch of lights and sparks zipping across a black background. they did that same thing again with the end of this one, except added even more sparky things and made them faster. the best action sequences in the trilogy were the ones from the first, shot in broad daylight with not too many objects to focus on. plus there were real people involved in those fights...what was that last battle about in this one? bunch of unmanned robots against a bunch of nameless lava drones. makes for a nice theme park ride, but not much else.

- other small plot oddities. there's 9 terrorist bombings on US soil but everyone seems to be just living their lives as if nothing bad's going on. given today's sensitivity to that stuff, you'd think there would be soldiers enforcing curfew on every street corner and fighter jets (or SHIELD!) patrolling the skies 24/7. but no, bad choppers can casually fly up to Tony's house on live TV and blow it up without any outside intervention. I guess everyone in this world is now totally helpless and dependent on superheroes. and was Killian trying to kill Stark in his house, even though he was needed to fix Extremis? oh and his rickety Mark 42 armor can only carry 4 people according to Jarvis, but he successfully breaks the fall for 13...Jarvis must be super conservative? and wasn't the power source for his suit originally the chestpiece? maybe he's got arc reactors inside all the suits now but they can be charged up by plugging them into an outlet in a Tennessee shed, or a speedboat battery?

I still think this movie is required summer viewing, because it's the kind of thing we do when it warms up outside. I just wish I wasn't expecting a fine-tuned Marvel masterpiece.