<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t frame this post as a movie review.\u00a0 I won\u2019t synopsize the plot or provide a detailed opinion on it as a movie.\u00a0 Instead, I\u2019ll use watching the movie as the launching pad for a rant.\u00a0 Because rants are fun (for the writer).\u00a0 Unloading on a movie that disappoints and especially one that trades on the good reputation of an earlier installment feels like a noble action.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll start out by saying I really enjoyed the original Iron Man movie.\u00a0 Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges and the supporting cast; Terrence Howard and Gwyneth Paltrow, provided plenty of entertaining content to this comedy\/adventure movie.\u00a0 That movie was fun, exciting and highly entertaining.<\/p>\n
Alternatively, Iron Man 3 is none of those things.\u00a0 It\u2019s a complete waste of time.\u00a0 The plot is confusing and essentially meaningless.\u00a0 All of the characters are annoying and uncompelling.\u00a0 Even Downey\u2019s Tony Stark is surprisingly uninteresting and poorly written.\u00a0 He is suffering from anxiety attacks based on his experiences in the Avengers movie that occurred before this film.\u00a0 He has several of them during the movie and they just seem so contrived and pathetic that it feels like really lazy writing.\u00a0 So, by the end of this movie, I\u2019m feeling fairly unhappy with the time I\u2019ve wasted watching this crapfest.<\/p>\n
So, this is what you get with these movie franchises.\u00a0 The first one is probably very good.\u00a0 There\u2019s good writing, good acting and an original idea.\u00a0 But two or even three sequels down the road you end up with a crappy director, hack writers and a much less talented supporting cast.\u00a0 And voila, an awful movie.<\/p>\n
Now it doesn\u2019t have to be this way.\u00a0 There have been movie series where the quality was more or less maintained.\u00a0 Downey, himself for instance, was in one such.\u00a0 His two Sherlock Holmes films were almost equally interesting and entertaining.\u00a0 But in general, Hollywood has an equation where sequels are a money-making strategy where quality is abandoned after installment one.<\/p>\n
So, what\u2019s my point?\u00a0 Well, there isn\u2019t one.\u00a0 Except that I was so annoyed watching this movie that I wanted to carp and moan about my outraged sensibilities.\u00a0 Robert Downey Jr. is an amusing actor who can carry a picture to great effect if you give him a decent plot and some good lines to recite while he mugs for the camera.\u00a0 It would have been entirely possible to allow his character to carry this movie without any expensive supporting cast if they had only invested in an actual story!<\/p>\n
And so, the takeaway is \u201ccaveat emptor.\u201d\u00a0 Do your homework when it comes to sequels and make sure you don\u2019t pay for a movie that is just a pale shadow of its predecessor.\u00a0 Luckily, I watched this for free on my cable service.\u00a0 But I did waste more than two hours of my, at this point, limited time left on this mortal coil.<\/p>\n
And shame on you Robert Downey Jr.\u00a0 You\u2019re better than that.\u00a0 Now go make the third Sherlock Holmes movie.\u00a0 And don\u2019t let them phone it in!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I won\u2019t frame this post as a movie review.\u00a0 I won\u2019t synopsize the plot or provide a detailed opinion on it as a movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237,4,243],"tags":[335,4129,1082,43,38,1355,3405,464],"class_list":["post-24201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-movie-reviews","tag-hollywood","tag-iron-man-3","tag-marvel","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-robert-downey-jr","tag-sequels"],"yoast_head":"\n