Iron Man 3: A Surprising Sequel (No Spoilers)

Yesterday, I saw Iron Man 3 with my buddies Vash and Justin. The movie surprised me. Boyfriend and I watched the first two installments the day before to gear up for #3, and I was glad we did. Iron Man 3 starts off with a reference to a conversation in the first movie, and it was a delightful surprise. What I found most surprising about the movie was how much it focused on Tony Stark's character as a fallible and often fragile human being, and less on him as Iron Man. Some fans might not like this aspect of the movie as Tony spends a lot of the film outside of the suit. I quite enjoyed seeing vulnerable Tony Stark, it added more suspense and drama to what could have been a predictable action movie.



Tony is clearly suffering from some PTSD after the events that took place at the end of The Avengers. He has insomnia and suffers from anxiety attacks. To combat this, he tinkers and loses himself in an obsession with the distraction of his suits. The downside I found with this in the story was that I personally found it triggering when Tony had anxiety attacks onscreen. Robert Downey Jr. is an amazing actor and plays the anxiety attacks in a very real way. I'm glad he did this, because it felt real and not like anxiety attacks were something to be downplayed. However, he portrayed them so real-to-life that I started getting paranoid that I was going to have an anxiety attack for the rest of the day (thereby inducing one late last night.)

All in all, I think this was a great installment to the Iron Man series and the Marvel movie franchise. I don't want to go too much more into detail about the movie so as not to spoil anything. I recommend seeing this if you liked the first two.  

Iron Man 3 gets 4 out of 5 Iron Man Mr. Potato Heads.