MCU: 10 Things You Learn Rewatching Iron Man 3

10. Its Action Is Incredibly Inventive

Iron Man 3 Escape Scene
Marvel Studios

Shane Black is Hollywood's preeminent action aficionado, but not even his biggest fans could've predicted that Iron Man 3 would be as clever as it was with its big set-pieces.

For the vast majority of Iron Man 3 Tony actually spends most of his time out of the suit. That in itself holds great thematic importance for the character, but it also allowed Black to experiment with the film's action, making Tony's new Mark XLII armour a unique part of Iron Man's wardrobe. Now, when Tony suits up, he need only point towards a target in order to ensconce it in the armour, whether it be himself, his partner Pepper (during the attack on his Malibu mansion), or an enemy on the verge of going supernova.

It makes a massive difference for a series that struggled with action scenes in the past, but by far one of the film's best sequences occurs when Tony is attempting to escape from Aldrich Killian's hideout. With the Mark XLII trapped 800 miles away in a barn in Tennessee, Tony is forced to adapt while his suit flies at him one piece at a time, ultimately being forced to dispatch Killian's men with one repulsor, a boot, and a nearby submachine gun.

It's just really clever, and while it's not the film's best action sequence, it does intimate the qualities of Black's direction with added gusto.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.