Iron Man 3 revisited – / Movie

(Welcome to Road at the end of the game, where we review the 22 films from the Marvel film universe and ask, "How did we get here?". In this edition: Iron Man 3 brings a personal style to the MCU, even if it stumbles in the homestretch.)

After six films culminating in an unprecedented crossover, the Marvel film universe had arrived. The Avengers has set a new standard for summer blockbusters, although the future concern (for skeptics and presumably for studio executives) is that of diminishing returns. Iron Man's first solo release after the Battle of New York was aimed at attracting more audiences, while building Marvel's ability to tell new types of stories. Indeed, it was necessary to dramatize the pbadage of the world of the The Avengers, taking place entirely within it.

In short, the question Iron Man 3 had to answer was, "What will happen next?" Marvel would she almost compete with the show of his first team? Well no. Again, maybe it was not necessary. Iron Man 3 is nothing like The Avengers. In fact, it has almost nothing in common with Iron Man and The Iron Man 2, although what he owns – despite another vaguely defined character arc – can boast only a handful of Marvel movies.

He has a unique sense of identity.

Black in the essential

Outside the odd oblique inclination in Thor (and some silent and autonomous dramas in The incredible Hulk) Captain America: the first avenger was probably the only "Phase 1" film to avoid the visual pitfalls of the genre. You can thank Joe Johnston for The Rocketeer For this, not all Marvel movies have the luxury of a sandbox of the era.

same The Avengers, which has delivered some of the finest blockbuster shows of this decade, did not particularly make use of visual storytelling until its final battle. His major third-act beats worked because they translated character into action; for example, the long fluid where the Avengers fight for the first time in tandem. One of his only non-action scenes, where the subtext was expressed visually – Captain America's silent walk into an unknown world – was cut from the film.

In most cases, Marvel movies rely on a direct dialogue to convey emotional information. Iron Man 3 however, looks like the first entry in the series where filmmakers had visual leeway. For once, the final result was not, as the critic Matt Zoller Seitz, a "Flavored product in the cinema".

Despite the studio notes, he was forced to join (for example, swapping his villain for a villain). sell more toys), Iron Man 3 is a Shane Black movie from start to finish. Its tonal consistency is entirely a function of its history. Black often places his films around Christmas because he feels the holidays "Represents a little stuttering in the march of days, a silence in which we have a chance to evaluate and retrospect our lives." When Christmas arrives for Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), he is alone in a remote location in Tennessee, far away from Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), the dear ones he's put in. danger.

The story of Stark began with the construction of armor to escape an isolated cave. Here, for the first time in the series, he is forced to find a way out of his isolation without the help of his combination. The table is ready for Stark to reflect on his decisions and aftermath.Avengers identity with regard to the character of Iron Man. The film does not really reach the point when it comes to these themes, but he finds an exciting momentum in the way he articulates them.

Black and the director of photography John Toll (The thin red line, the cloud atlas) start from the light pallet of The Avengers to offer a darker entrance, visually and emotionally. The whole movie is frozen before Stark gets stuck in the snow. Cold lighting defines the texture of each space and the attenuated tonalities of the design of the production are interrupted only by explosions of a deep red. The film is dull without being hard, and the characters must constantly fight their way out of the shadows.

In several scenes, the camera observes instead of empathy. We see Pepper Potts meeting with Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) through Happy Hogan's eyes as he sits in the distance and transmits the information to Stark over the phone. Black, like Hogan, observes people and the visual framing constantly prevents Stark from connecting with those who surround him. After Stark's home was attacked, he was forcibly ejected from his own story and launched thousands of miles away. Physically and emotionally, he could not be more distant.

Fluid cinematography, combined with the fluidity of Black's action and dialogue (the screenplay was co-written by Drew Pearce) gives Iron Man 3 a distinctly "kinematic" texture – that is, one that relies heavily on audio and visual elements without dialogue to convey content – the kind that few Marvel films can claim. Downey Jr. emphasizes the case with his arid mind, as usual, and his emotional separation becomes necessary so that Iron Man can (re) define himself in relation to other people.

Despite the distanced quality of the group scenes, the film exceeds the observational exercises at the right time. His point of view changes dramatically when P.T.S.D. from Stark comes to the fore. The frame closes on him furiously, until all we can see, or feel, is panic. Iron Man 3 is most powerful when exploring the psychological effects of The Avengers on Stark, though, unfortunately, there is also a time when this essential thread of history is swept at random.

Nothing has been the same since New York

Tony Stark was once dubbed the alcoholic superhero of Marvel – Demon in a bottle (1979) is his most instrumental story – and although the character's alcoholism is never found in the movies, Stark's addicting nature manifests itself in different forms. In Iron Man 3, its addiction is to build protective armor, exacerbated by trauma.

Clinical Psychologist Dr. Andrea Letamendi supports that the Stark symptoms could, in fact, be interpreted as a post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D. It seems to display four key factors for diagnosis:

• Avoidance of potential trauma triggers that lead to anxiety.
• Hyper-excitation (he has been awake for 72 hours at the beginning of the film).
• Memories alive through dreams and visions.
• Functional impairment with respect to personal relationships.

More pertinently, Tony Stark is also more vulnerable to P.T.S.D. the average human being, because of what Letamendi calls "redeployment". Stark has lived and felt trauma since the very first scene of Iron Man. His car was bombed, shrapnel was lodged in his chest, he was kidnapped and tortured, and he spent the rest of the series in a violent conflict. Iron Man armor is as addictive as a symptom, a bit like soldiers afflicted with P.T.S.D. sleeping with guns near their bed (Stark even calls one of his costumes in his sleep).

There are now 42 versions of Iron Man armor, each created for different eventualities. The 42North Dakota, that Stark operates at a distance from his workspace, has even begun to replace him in his interactions with Potts. It is frozen as it crosses the wormhole over New York City, and its technology consumes it.

The film dramatizes Stark's symptoms with aplomb. The far-away, distracting camera is exchanged for quick zooms and uncomfortable close-ups when anxiety arises. Visual changes are inevitable. the lens becomes another wall that is close to Stark as we, the public, we pile and sink his psyche, invading both his personal space and his most traumatic memories.

Stark's experiments in The Avengers collectively called "New York". This, coupled with his vengeance and self-destructive attitude towards the vaguely Middle Eastern terrorist, The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) evokes the American political tenor of post-9/11, with no real purpose, despite the exploration potential of paranoia in times of war.

However, Stark's specific path to recovery makes Iron Man 3 a remarkable suite. In the context of Marvel's shared universe, his role in this film is to leave aside his own story, and his journey in that direction means going beyond the events of The Avengers. As much as Iron Man 3 This is to define Iron Man apart from his costumes, but also to define this larger story outside of its most recognizable moments.

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