Luke Owen discusses the first trailer for Marvel’s Iron Man 3…
The first stage of “Phase Two” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is underway with the release of the trailer for Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 [watch it here]. Promising (figuratively) to ‘take Stark back to the cave’, the trailer certainly shows a much bleaker Iron Man movie than we’ve seen before and perhaps were expecting.
The trailer starts off slow and shows Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) troubles of coming to terms with Loki’s attack on New York as well as the responsibilities of protecting Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) now they are in a relationship (something that was sort of teased in Joss Whedon’s The Avengers). We also get a brief look at some of Stark’s new tech and Rhodey (Don Cheadle) as the Iron Patriot before the poop hits the fan and stuff starts blowing up.
And I mean a lot of stuff gets blown up. We see the suits get destroyed, his mansion get destroyed and (more importantly), Tony Stark as a man getting destroyed. I get the feeling that Black wasn’t messing around when the writer-director said he would ‘take Stark back to the cave’ as Iron Man 3 seems to be a movie more about Stark’s inner demons and troubles than it is about Iron Man fighting the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley).
Which brings us to the villain of the piece. When Ben Kingsley was announced as being cast in Iron Man 3, everyone guessed right off the bat that he would be Mandarin and, to be fair, it’s a bit of genius casting. He isn’t shown a great deal in the trailer in the flesh, but we do get a good amount of voice over about not being a terrorist but a teacher and how he will bring Gotham’s reckoning destroy Iron Man and superheroes in general (can we expect small cameos?).
I also get the feeling we won’t be seeing as much of Aldrich Killian who could possibly play the Justin Hammer supporting role, despite the Extremis story arc. However this trailer was designed to show off the large spectacle explosions and the threat of Mandarin rather than the Extremis armour side of things so I will reserve judgement on that call just yet.
Overall, I’m excited. Any trailer that can make me write over 500 words on it has to have done something right. The Iron Man 3 trailer showed us a lot more than I’d anticipated and I’m very happy about that. The fanboy inside is oozing with excitement and the film lover in me thinks we’re in for one hell of a ride come next April.
Originally published October 23, 2012. Updated December 13, 2019.
