Iron Man 3 on Blu-Ray - Mobile Edition

Comics Movie Reviews
Iron Man 3 on Blu-Ray
By Hervé St-Louis
September 19, 2013 - 19:45

Studios: Marvel Studios, Paramount Pictures
Writer(s): Drew Pearce, Shane Black
Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Gweneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Rebecca Hall, John Favreau, James Badge Dale
Directed by: Shane Black
Produced by: Victoria Alonso
Running Time: 130 minutes
Release Date: September 24, 2013
Rating: PG13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned)
Distributors: Paramount Pictures

The first thing you’ll notice when inserting the Iron Man 3 Blu-Ray disc is the creepy Mandarin logo pasted on a standard broadcast colour sheet that stays on screen just long enough to ask yourself if you have some kind of pirated disc on your hand. But the rest continues in the same vein, with Jarvis welcoming you as if you were Tony Stark to use features of the Blu-Ray. One major annoyance though, is that you can’t bypass the previews and the ads easily. Blu-Ray developers need to understand that there is a fine limit to people’s patience. Spamming them about another movie, whenever they start their player is annoying.

The movie, as I mentioned in a past review, was looking at Tony Stark and treated Iron Man as a mere shell. By the end of the movie, Tony Stark, having removed the shrapnel in his heart, declares that from now on, he is Iron Man all the time. This is a similar exploration of the Batman dichotomy explored in several Batman films but mostly in the Val Kilmer’s Batman Forever. The problem is that Iron Man has never been a separate persona from Tony Stark. There is no split personality here. Iron Man in the Marvel film universe is Toy Stark wearing a suit. This is not the Tony Stark of the comics which for years maintained the secret identity cover. So this sudden change in Tony Stark in this movie did not convince me.

Elsewhere, it is mentioned that Iron Man 3 is really the sequel to the Avengers’ movie, in that Tony Stark deals with the post-traumatic effects of having travelled in another dimension. This is interesting, but it’s more publicity masquerading to tie-in the Marvel universe rather than something genuine. Yes, Tony Stark deals with the consequences of the New York invasion, but nothing in the villainy of the Mandarin built on the legacy of the alien invaders from the Avengers’s movie.

Still the movie is good with enough funny moments that remind fans why they liked the first Iron Man so much. The extras in the Blu-Ray are comprehensive. There are many scenes deleted that are engaging on their own. I understand why they were edited for length, but they do add to the story. I’m glad that I watched this movie another time, as it featured several armours from the comics. However, one scene didn’t make sense to me. At one point Aldrich Killian chops Iron Man’s thigh, but in the next shot, both of his legs are intact.

Rating: 8.5/10