Marvel and Disney have been doing a stellar job marketing Iron Man 3 over the last couple of weeks by putting out new images and character posters as well as publicly counting down to its newest trailer, making sure everyone is aware that the film is almost upon us. With this final trailer released, the studio heads into the last stages of promotion as we’re only about two months away from Tony Stark’s latest adventure.
This trailer gives us our most extensive look at the Mandarin yet, but it’s still not enough, for this reader at least. What we do know is that Tony’s up against someone very serious as Ben Kingsley’s character seems to strike on a national level. Of course, this makes me wonder why the rest of the Avengers aren’t there to help, but I’m certain we’ll get an answer to that at some point.
Marvel Studios producer Kevin Feige has constantly reminded us that this was going to be a self-contained movie, but that doesn’t mean we won’t get little hints and nods about the rest of the Marvel Universe. For instance, fans have noted that the tattoo on the Mandarin’s neck appears to be similar to Captain America’s shield, but unfortunately we’ll have to wait to see if there’s a connection or not.
As with the other trailers, we don’t see too much of Aldrich Killian or Maya Hansen, but they seem to be as important a presence in the movie as they were in the comics, especially Killian. Another central character is War Machine, who with his new armor seems to be making even a bigger impact than he did in the last film.
There’s a lot of action in this trailer too, including the plane scene that we saw in the previous two trailers and more of the house destruction. The visual effects in these scenes are nothing short of stunning and I can’t wait to see it on the big screen. There’s also a nice, quick surprise at the end when you get to meet some of Iron Man’s ‘friends’.
Finally, we get a better look at the story propelling the film. While the Mandarin’s motivations are still unclear, Tony Stark is out for revenge. There’s probably some connections here to the Ten Rings too, the organization that kidnapped Tony in the first movie. It seems like the Mandarin puts both Tony and Pepper through more hell than Loki ever did in The Avengers. Under Shane Black’s direction, the movie is clearly darker than any of the other Marvel films, but there’s still some humor to be found as evidenced by the trailer.
Iron Man 3 hits theaters on May 3rd, 2013 and stars Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Don Cheadle, Rebecca Hall and Jon Favreau.
Check out the trailer below and let us know what you think of it in the comments.
