Hitting the Triple

When Robert Downey, Jr., donned the red and gold armor of Iron Man in the 2008 movie of the same name, his performance was hailed but was also a kind of unobserved landmark in superhero movies. Christopher Reeves had shown that superhero stories could be told in ways that recognize some of their sillier aspects but still say serious things when he first played the Man of Steel in 1978's Superman. Michael Keaton proved that so-called quirky or comic actors could convince as heroic figures, even those containing as much darkness as the Batman mythos, in 1989's Batman.

Downey's Tony Stark/Iron Man rests on both of these pillars. His arc of transformation from a fairly callous billionaire arms manufacturer to a wounded hero forced to confront the reality of his past work is a reframing of an old question: Am I my brother's keeper, and if so, how? Does a man with Stark's kind of technical knowhow and resources have a responsibility to the people who might be harmed by the things he builds? How will he exercise it if he does?

Iron Man 3, which kicks off the 2013 summer movie season, continues to dig into the character of Tony Stark, building mostly on events in last year's blockbuster The Avengers. On the surface, things look good for Stark. He's a hero who saved New York City, his relationship with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) has found some stable footing and his business is going well. But below the surface, turbulence threatens. A kind of post-traumatic stress following his work with the Avengers brings on anxiety and panic attacks. He refines and re-invents his suits of armor with a manic intensity, and those twin troubles are wearing on Pepper. It may not be the right time to tackle a shadowy terrorist called the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), but events make the Mandarin's campaign personal and so Stark challenges him. A business competitor, Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), poses more potential problems as he develops biological agents that might produce people powerful enough to rival Iron Man.

Large parts of the movie reduce Stark to working without his armor, which forces him to confront how his obsession with it has been alienating him from those around him and even from himself. Downey uses the unmasked "down time" to good effect, and Paltrow also doesn't waste the additional screen time and opportunities she's given to build her character. Kingsley is properly menacing as the Mandarin and Pearce gives an excellent sketch of what a Tony Stark who never found a conscience might be like.

Iron Man 3 is probably the movie that Iron Man 2 should have been, but Marvel Studios' decision to use 2 as a building block for The Avengers blurred its focus so much and sapped so much screen time that the story -- building off Warren Ellis's "Extremis" story arc in The Invincible Iron Man comic book -- could not have developed as well as it did. The earlier movie's palladium poisoning is a more urgent dilemna for Tony Stark than his emotional turmoil, but given the latter to use, Downey makes the most of it. Superhero movie series have usually had trouble by the time the third movie comes out, but Marvel seems to have dodged the jinx, thanks to good performances by Downey and Paltrow, solid direction from Shane Black and a good story from Black and Drew Pearce.