Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is now a shadow of his former self. He’s overwhelmed by the reality of seeing aliens; he’s struggling with the fact that he nearly died during Marvel’s The Avengers; and he can no longer seem to to put himself in his Iron Man suit. He’s a manic, depressed man, suffering from crippling panic attacks and insomnia. Even his relationship with the woman he loves, Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow), is on the rocks. This should have been the most interesting take on Iron Man ever: Tony Stark in denial that he’s a good person, obsessed with making sense of the inexplicable things he’s been through over the last few years, and coping by constantly trying to improve his Iron Man alter ego.
But this is not the most interesting Tony Stark we’ve seen – far from it. With one line of dialogue, Tony is reminded he is a “mechanic” who fixes things, and all of a sudden he goes from being in desperate need of therapy to a competent hero in seconds. And herein lies the problem with Iron Man 3 – none of its good ideas ever seem to pan out into anything substantial, making this outing feel hollow when compared to its predecessors. This is a bad way to start off the second round of Mavel films, which presumably will culminate in another Avengers' flick sometime in the future — and that future is looking bleak.
