IRON MAN 3: Trailer 1 Analysis


Ladies, children, sheep. Some people call me a terrorist. I call myself a teacher. Lesson number one: heroes. There’s no such thing.’

And so begins Phase Two of Marvel Studios’ all-conquering Cinematic Universe.  It’s been the best part of a year since The Avengers smashed box office records to pieces, fighting its way to third place on the great leader-board of Movies That Made An Awful Lot of Money™. The superhero team-up ended Phase One of the MCU, but it’s time for Phase 2 to begin. And said phase begins with Iron Man 3, Tony Stark’s third solo outing. So, to celebrate the launch of the first, awesome, trailer, I’m putting the teaser under my virtual microscope.

The Stark Knight Rises

It’s easy to see the direction that Shane Black and Marvel are taking Iron Man from the first clip of the trailer, which shows Iron Man being dumped in what looks like a snowy forest. His suit (which is Mark XLVII, by the way – yup, that’s forty-seven) is battered, so I’d put this scene as being after the attack on Stark’s house we see a bit later.

Shadows on the wall

This is one of the most intriguing clips in the trailer – wreckage, with a couple of shadows burnt onto a wall – which is a side effect of nuclear attack, fact fans. This seems to be part of the Mandarin’s scheme, as a few months back, we saw a couple of set photos showing a town in wreckage and the noticeboard you can see on the right (in the set photo, the board has a sheet of paper saying ‘Christmas will never be the same again’ on it). I’m not sure what, if any, connection this has to Tony Stark, but it’s looking bad for the residents of Generic American Town.

In Extremis

This shot shows the metal glove flying into Tony Stark’s hand at will, which ties neatly into the Extremis arc, which Iron Man 3 is based upon. It looks like that as with the comic, Stark will be able to control his armor with his mind, which will be… er, handy for getting his armor on, that’s for sure.

Iron Man fights back… against Iron Man

Interesting. As you can see, this shows the Mark XLVII suit attacking Pepper in bed, with Tony peacefully sleeping beside her. Credit to Tony, you have to be a pretty heavy sleeper to sleep through that. There’s been a lot of speculation as to why Iron Man is attacking Pepper, but it’s pretty likely that it’s either Ashley Hamilton’s Firepower, or no-one at all – just the suit acting of its own accord. Or – Tony is sub-conciously controlling the armor in his sleep.

Goodbye suits, goodbye house

Oh dear. In this shot, which is almost certainly part of the destroying of Tony Stark’s Malibu home (the shot showing the house itself being blown up has been done to death, so it’s not here), the previous armors in Iron Man’s Hall of Armors are being blown up, one by one. You can see Mark VII (used at the end of The Avengers) being destroyed, followed by Stark’s Iron Man 2 suits. Even Batman got to keep his gadgets when his life was torn apart…

Some people call me a terrorist…

No trailer breakdown would be complete without mentioning the introduction of Ben Kingsley’s gargle-tastic Mandarin, who’s set to join Bane in the pantheon of Villains That Speak With A Weird Voice™. Some people call him a terrorist, he likes to consider himself a teacher. And despite the weird (bear in mind that Kingsley’s English) American drawl, which is oddly fitting for a villain with a beard like that, the Mandarin’s set to be the best screen Iron Man villain yet. Not that that’s hard or anything, seeing as his competitors are a guy in an Iron Man suit and another guy in another Iron Man suit.

And if all that’s left you wanting to watch the trailer again:

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Iron Man 3 hits UK cinemas on April 26, 2013, and US cinemas on May 3.