Iron Man Three

I want to see Iron Man Three again, which is more than can be said for every Marvel universe film apart from Captain America: The First Avenger. Phase 2 of Marvel's attempt to monopolise Summer drafts in Shane Black to work some wisecracking magic. Although Iron Man Three feels truncated and lacks the pure fizz of vintage Black, the co-writer/director puts a stamp on the film that borders on personal. Tony Stark's aimless basement dwelling and endless suit tinkering apparently comes from Black's own post-The Long Kiss Goodnight experiences. After Renny Harlin's film tanked, Black stopped writing and experimented with redundancy.

In Iron Man Three, Stark has become a hermit struggling to contextualise his part in Avengers Assemble. His loss of control over that situation has left him feeling small and prone to panic attacks. Away from the blockbuster bluster, there's a sub-film here about the sapping quality of the creative process and an artist's relationship with their work. Stark trashes his legacy to start again while Black rummages through career slights and missteps, reworking the ideas that got away from him.

Black reconfigures set-pieces from the various drafts of Lethal Weapon 2 - the falling mansion, a dock set conclusion - and amps them up into an anxious abstraction. Somewhere in the CG rubble of Stark's collapsed stilt house is a frightened man trying not to hyperventilate. Black has always used character as a way into action, Iron Man Three is no exception. In both these sequences, Stark has an emotional investment that reads like a weakness, but ends up ensuring his salvation. Pepper Potts juggles damsel duties with an ability to make the most of loaned power sources. Although the final act hinges on Pepper's abduction, she ends up saving Stark far more completely than he ever manages with her - a step-up from Patsy Kensit sleeping with the fishes. Elsewhere Black takes another pass at kid sidekicks, one of the more lamented elements in his redrafted The Last Action Hero, finding mileage in chummy antagonism.

This is the problem with Iron Man Three, it's best enjoyed as an examination of Shane Black's career highs and lows. The film manages to feel both undercooked and padded, while Black's instinct for the unexpected occasionally undermines, rather than enhances, the broad beats of superhero cinema. The film peaks when it's away from the merchandise iconography, especially when Black stresses Starks' back-to-basics approach by arming him with hardware store kibble. This is what happens when a man obsessed with Christmas tries to make a Roger Moore era Bond flick within a strict, corporate framework.