Iron Man 3 (4½ Stars)

This is the seventh film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, released in May 2013. The sixth film, "The Avengers", was the end of the first phase of the MCU. All the main characters were introduced in the first phase. Now there are new films about each of these characters, except for the Hulk. His solo film was the only financial failure in the MCU so far.

Stan Lee plays a cameo as a judge in a beauty contest. We only see him for 2½ seconds, but he seems to be overly excited by one of the contestants. I wonder what's so special about her. Maybe he reacts the same way to all of the girls? I've never been a big fan of beauty contests. The girls considered beautiful are always too thin for me. They're not as bad as the anorexic models who do silly walks at fashion shows, but they rarely have the big breasts and the big butts that I prefer.

As far as actresses go, Ai Shinozaki is the most beautiful woman I know. She has a perfect hourglass figure. Curiously, she's said in interviews that she doesn't consider herself attractive. Women are weird. Some women, anyway. They look at themselves in the mirror and see flaws, but the men who look at them just say Wow! If Stan Lee had seen her in the beauty contest he would have been too excited to hold up his score card.

I've been promising my readers an Ai Shinozaki gallery for more than a year. Here's another photo to keep you happy until I finally keep my promise.

"Iron Man 3" introduces the Mandarin, Iron Man's deadliest foe from the comics. Unfortunately, he's only a fake Mandarin, an actor hired by AIM to be the face of global terrorism. That was a big disappointment to me when I first saw the film in the cinema. I've gotten over it now, after hearing that the real Mandarin will appear in a future Iron Man film.

What makes the fake Mandarin even more tragic in my eyes is the fact that the actor Ben Kingsley looks perfect as the Mandarin. He looks just like the comic book character. Who can possibly be chosen to play the real Mandarin?

What's remarkable about "Iron Man 3" is that Tony Stark spends more than half of the film doing battle without his suit. There's a 45 minute sequence in the middle when his suit is damaged after AIM destroys his house, and there's about 20 minutes at the end of the film in which the Iron Man suits fly around under remote control while Tony chases the AIM leader Aldrich Killian with a gun. This emphasises that the real hero is the man himself, not the Iron Man suit.

For most of the film Tony Stark is suffering from anxiety attacks after flying through a portal into a far distant galaxy at the end of "The Avengers". This is rounded off by an unusual after credits scene in which Tony Stark is talking to Bruce Banner as if he were a psychiatrist.

Success Rate:  + 4.1

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I've been adding my little box with links to Amazon since 2016, but I've recently noticed problems when I click on them. Some links are broken, because the products I've linked to are no longer on sale. Even worse, some DVDs are out of print and are only available from Amazon Marketplace sellers for exaggerated prices. For instance, the Blu-ray disc that I recommended from Amazon.com in my last review of "Iron Man 3" now costs $49.99. Ouch! The triple pack of Iron Man 1–3 in the box for this review is only $24.99. Much better. I can't go back and change the links of old reviews, but I recommend that my readers check prices before they buy.

I've started to take more time to watch the television series I'm interested in. Until further notice I'm going to watch a maximum of one film each day, with the exception of film festivals. I'll use my additional time to watch one or move television episodes each day. Yesterday I watched six episodes of "Supergirl", today I watched three episodes of "Agents of SHIELD". It's a long-standing problem with me and television series. There's so much that I want to watch, but since I give films priority I have so little time.