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Created May 11, 2013 08:24PM PST • Edited May 12, 2013 05:19AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   The end of a trilogy is always a great place to start if you seek perspective, and Iron Man III would have done for Robert Downey Jr what Indiana Jones did for Harrison Ford had this trilogy been released at the beginning of Hollywoods Golden Age instead of its action-packed purple patch. It is nice to see the good guys win in a setting that is unbelievable if not impossible to imagine especially after a decade where there are no good guys, there are no clearly conclusive endings and men are feminized and women are masculinized to the point where folks wander to the wrong restrooms after the show. Granted cars have rear view cameras and proximity detectors now, but Tony Stark’s world has his gear flying to him and empathy from computers with a wife who wants more quality time. America is unfamiliar to many of us now, but a few hours with Tony Stark and it is again.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   There are no academy award performances in this one unless the Academy starts to recognize the genius of how friends talk to each other. The dialog between Tony Stark and the lad is as endearing as any and if in 70 years a socialogy graduate student chooses to pursue a thesis entitled “Communication styles among the few remaining males not working at McDonalds in the early 21st century” then they need to look no further than Tony’s dialog while visiting the far away place called Tennessee.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

   Yeah look, Robert Downey Jr somehow enjoys the achievement of consistently surprising each time in this trilogy. And it is due mainly to the hope that he is the one standing with you in the Frequent Flyer line at the boarding gate sharing the duty of complaining about the lack of customer service by the airlines. He is funnier than I think I am and you think you are. Yet in his spare time he is Iron Man.

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

   I am starting to worry about Gwyneth Paltrow. She is a wise lass married to an alchemist and long proven as a mother and highly capable actress. But I sat through this movie for the first time wondering will she ever elevate again wtih an academy award winning effort. In the meantime, there are enough dirty old short men in Hollywood who like me are delighted to see her shaven, long beautiful legs on the big screen. I suppose the idea of putting Gwyneth in an Iron Man uniform hiding the full length of her attributes shades my review a touch.

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

   It was nice to see Rebecca Hall again after The Town but in the era of Jennifer Lawrence, Emily Blunt, and Emma Stone, it is just going to be hard for actresses. Here’s hoping Rebecca keeps trying.

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

   So in the supporting roles you see some of the depth that adds to the richness of experience. Don Cheadle is just great and has long left the image of him holding his junk next to an electronic magnet in Oceans 11 and Guy Pierce continues to recite his lines effortlessly and well in his various villianous roles. Throw in a humorous role by Sir Ben Kingsley with a script that accomodates these three guys and Downey Jr, and you quickly see why this movie is going long and big at the box office.

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    The one aspect of the movie that does leave some questions is the truncated development of the security director “Happy”, supposedly the motivation for Iron Man to chase Mandarin in the first place. Happy starts out strong revealing his over zealous pursuit of the bad guy only to land in the hospital where he sits out the rest of the movie until the end. We wind up knowing more about the boy in Tennessee than we know about the guy that puts Iron Man in motion.

11. Direction Great 4.0

    The whole deal about how Iron Man is assembled is genius and the movie is filled with adaptations of this sort. Old action heros required a telephone booth to transform themselves. We dont need telephone booths now. We fly the parts to the action hero in self-assembly; one part Power Point fly-ins, one part nano-technology. Its just great.

12. Play Great 4.0

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    The visuals were great from the dirty, filthy mess that was Mandarin, to the thermal veination of the villains, to the luster of the Iron Man uniforms the range and detail made it all exceptional.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.9

17. Sex Innocent 1.5

18. Violence Fierce 2.5

19. Rudeness Salty 1.8

    Slightly salty because I haven’t talked to a 12 year old boy as rudely as Iron Man did since 1974.

21. Reality

    Fantasy 4.3

22. Circumstantial Surreal 3.0

23. Biological Fantasy 5.0

24. Physical Fantasy 5.0