Iron Man 3
2013  PG-13  ACTION  2h 10min
CAST— Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, Stephanie Szostak, James Badge Dale, Jon Favreau, Ben Kingsley
MUSIC— Brian Tyler  DIRECTOR— Shane Black  BASED ON— Characters appearing in Marvel Comics

     Instead of being billed as an Iron Man sequel this could be advertised as a Tony Stark spin-off, seeing as how Iron Man is treated as a separate, secondary, often remotely-driven robotic character. Let’s consider the story. Iron Man 3 begins at the beginning: Switzerland, 1999. Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) is a flamboyant womanizer floating in booze, whose genius is matched only by his ego. But surely everyone remembers this side of his personality. Iron Man history truly begins when he brushes off fellow genius Aldrich Killian, founder of Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.), a think tank that will leave an indelible mark on Stark’s future. In the present Stark is an eccentric mess after the Battle of New York (see The Avengers [2012]). But he’d better shape up if he’s gonna take on Earth’s newest super threat: The Mandarin, a gruesome terrorist determined to blow America to heck and back. But after a devastating attack Stark is left to combat this new threat with naught but the clothes on his back. What is a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist to do? A somewhat empty exercise in super heroics that may fail to satisfy even the Marvel diehard, yet it is what it is: a now permanent addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Onscreen title: Iron Man Three.
OUR RATING— **
PRECEDED BY— Iron Man (2008), The Incredible Hulk (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), Thor (2011), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), The Avengers (2012)
FOLLOWED BY— Thor: The Dark World (2013), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Ant-Man (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Doctor Strange (2016), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Black Panther (2018), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)