This is just one of multiple Iron Man 3 reviews that we plan to publish. Finally, Marvel Studios’ anticipated Phase 2 has begun, and it starts exactly the way the first one had: with the Iron Avenger, Robert Downey Jr.‘s extremely popular Iron Man.

We find Tony Stark precisely where we left him, quite affected by The Avengers‘ events and more vulnerable than ever. While our hero tries to deal with the issues in his life, the mysterious Mandarin threats to envelope the entire West in an unprecedented terroristic war. Will our hero, alone and (literally) in pieces, be able to stand against this new menace?

After two chapters directed by Jon Favreau, the directing baton moves to Shane Black, in his second work with Downey Jr. after Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Black has been close to Marvel productions since the very first chapter of the saga, thus he knows quite well the character and the work which has been done on him.

Black and Marvel as a whole have decided to bring the attention back to Tony Stark in order to prove that, even after The Avengers, the single members of the super team still have something to say on their own. Although the idea of it is good, the result sadly is a series of incoherent narratives which do not focus on Stark, but limit themselves to ignoring the universe that has been created around him.

The fact that the USA President is kidnapped by terrorists and you cannot even see a shadow from S.H.I.E.L.D., for example, is something that should have been at least justified. The final coup de théâtre on the villain, then, openly contradicts the continuity that has been built with the first two movies, risking to demolish the width and dignity of the entire mythology.

Moreover, in order to make fans happy (?) Black makes with Iron Man 3 the same mistake seen in Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand, adding many characters relegated to roles that are just brief appearances, a huge waste of potential which could have been avoided by simply reducing the number of cameos. Focusing the attention on Downey Jr. brings to a more-than-reduced use of the rest of the cast, and between never-decently-characterized new entries and old glories coming back without any visible purpose, the scene is only for the protagonist, for better or worse. In this sense, it can be considered irresponsible to have used in that way the otherwise great Ben Kingsley, forced into a mere oddball lacking any sense.

Two hours and ten minutes of running time are apparently too much for Shane Black’s directing, and he’s not able to balance the rhythm. After a fresh and intriguing start, which finds its crowning achievement in the ironic and brilliant sequence with Stark having a confrontation with a teenager and proleterian version of himself (played by Ty Sympkins), the movie goes astrand in an endless pre-final sequence, too slow if confronted to the rest of the movie.

Surely the spectacular final battle, with an army of armors facing the flaming Extremis soldiers, is something worth seeing, but some action is not enough to completely restore that concentration lost after the actual entry of Ben Kingsley (the actor himself declared his disappointment about his character’s twist in the movie).

The only interesting elements remaining are a few unexpectedly anti-imperialist (and anti-American) sparks in the story, condemning in a more or less direct way USA’s economic and cultural expansionism, surely something I didn’t expect from such a blockbuster. Even these elements, however, are anything but hints, never fully explored by a script always uncertain between pure entertainment and something more.

We can take comfort from the fact that the Chinese market didn’t have anything better, quite the opposite: the almost ten minutes shot exclusively for the Chinese version turned out to be nothing but clumsy and intrusive product placements wanted and filmed by the Asian co-production, with a few more seconds featuring the Chinese legends Wang Xueqi and Fan Bingbin. From Phase 2′s opening movie Iron Man 3, I wanted so much more.