Iron Man 3

If you look past (i) Robert Downey’s quirky charm as narrator and as ironic hero, and -- this is even harder -- (ii) the spectacular noise of the sci-fi technology and its massive destruction, then Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 is a handy summary of current currents of American paranoia. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. As has been noted, the price of liberty is eternal belligerence. Pointedly, Stark’s new armour shell -- a red white and blue homage to Captain America -- is named The Iron Patriot (originally one name of Spider Man’s nemesis). When the kidnapped President Ellis (William Sadler) is carried off in the Iron Patriot suit one flashes back to soldier President George W. Bush in his Mission Accomplished photo-op. 

The plot interweaves a host of American anxieties: freelance terrorists, the radical global mass murder organization, the oil spills and the political system that defends them, the dread empowerment of women, the infiltration of federal government by self-serving traitors, fatherless children who turn to weapons and charismatic leaders, and the apparently unstoppable seduction of innocence and idealism by which every technological advance breeds a new weaponry. In the face of all this, this Iron Man is still the super-powerful -- both in intellect and wealth -- force but here debilitated by self-doubt, even anxiety attacks. He’s so insecure that his security head Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), promoted from bodyguard, after a few scenes of efficiency spends the rest of the film in a coma. As Hogan is played by the director of the earlier Iron Man films, Stark is left unprotected by not just his guard but his earlier maker.

There are two key battles in this seemingly nonstop cataclysm. After Stark challenges the vile Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) by publicly announcing his own Malibu home address, the villains destroy the house and apparently all its sci-fi tech. (Really, Stark’s gadgetry is still ahead of the neighbour’s top-line Lexus. Unbelievable.)  In the climactic blow up Stark seems doomed by the self-regenerating Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce). The hero prevails by unleashing from the depths below his destroyed mansion an army of robot Iron Man replicants. The suit he used to fill can operate empty, with his direction. They’re humanoid drones. Summoned from the deep, they’re emblems of his subconscious, figurations of his will. In an entertaining nod to world peace, Stark has them blow themselves up after the major battle is over. Come peace we won’t need weapons. Yeah, right. 

The villain’s arch power is to turn the physically disadvantaged (what we politically incorrect used to call cripples) into self-regenerating superpowers. He wins over Vice-president Roderiguez (Miguel Ferrer), who has a one-legged little daughter whom he could thus empower. This replays the assumption that global terrorism is rooted in the frustrations of the disadvantaged, whether physical, economic or societal. That may be reassuring but it flies in the face of the fact that so many recent terrorists -- from Ben Laden to the Boston bombers -- have left lives of full comfort and advantage.

As the virtuous hold back, anxious, the evil forces regenerate themselves (as Al Qaeda survived the loss of its ostensible head, Ben Laden). In this science the villains can grow new limbs and reunite their severed parts, threatening an eternity of recomposing villains. Yes, like the endless sequels of action hero flicks. Exactly.

The Mandarin is a short Ben Laden with a wispy beard, hooded robe and calculated mystique.  But he’s actually a false front, a British actor (whose Lear was the toast of Croydon), cast to deliver stentorian threats on highjacked TV. Ben Laden goes to Oz. Stark dismisses him as Sir Laurence Oblivion. The real villain is Killian, a brilliant blond scientist still resentful that Stark disdained him at their first encounter. 

The two women are Stark’s long-suffering blonde live-in Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), his dark-haired Ex, who betrays Stark and Potts in hopes of recruiting him to Killian’s cause. Neither are passive characters. Hansen led the discovery of self-regeneration. Pepper survives a plunge into a fiery death  by herself becoming briefly robotized. Like Stark and his sidekick Colonel James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), Potts is made vulnerable by sensitivity but turned into steel by the flying armour. Stark, of course, is electromagnetic from the schrapnel in his heart (from another movie). His acerbic wit and detached air are like that steeled heart. But even he runs out of wit: After Pepper saves his life he admits “I got nothin’.”