The Mid-Air Rescue In Iron Man 3 Is The Best Action Scene Ever

(Welcome to Best Action Scene Ever, a column dedicated to breaking down the best, most effective action sequences throughout the genre. In this edition, we're strapping on our arc reactor to celebrate one of Marvel's greatest set pieces ever: the mid-air rescue in "Iron Man 3.")

A little over 15 years ago, Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark stood at a podium in front of the cameras and announced to the world, "I am Iron Man." Almost 10 years ago to the day, we finally found out what that phrase actually meant to the most popular hero of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Okay, fine, let's address the elephant in the room: Shane Black's "Iron Man 3" made over $1 billion at the box office upon release, was widely enjoyed by critics and general audiences, and stands tall as one of the most effective examples of Kevin Feige hiring a supremely talented writer/director pair and simply letting them do whatever they wanted (for the most part, at least). But since it also includes a plot twist that comic book purists got very mad online about, it's become commonplace to cautiously describe the threequel as "divisive" or "controversial." Similar to another recent blockbuster, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," the question becomes whether we allow the loudest voices on the internet to dictate the conversation or not.

So a decade later, let's take this anniversary as a much-needed excuse to help get the discourse about "Iron Man 3" back on track. Not only does it boast one of the most character-focused and filmmaker-driven stories of the franchise, but it also happens to feature some of the best all-around action that the MCU has ever seen. There's plenty to choose from, but let's focus on one: Stark's mid-air rescue of the Air Force One passengers.

A lot of Marvel movies (and superhero movies in general) tend to rely on all-powerful villains with world-ending agendas, which naturally gets world leaders swept up in their life-or-death stakes — you know, to show that this time a movie means business. But as much as that's a common trope, it's much rarer to find a blockbuster that actually engages with politics in any real way. While "Iron Man 3" isn't entirely successful in that regard — this is still a movie that literally weaponizes disabled war veterans who were abandoned by their country, turns them into fire-breathing super-villains, and then has our heroes slaughter them in droves without fully thinking through the optics of that scenario — it's still leaps and bounds more politically charged than most (if not all!) of its contemporaries.

The film's take on the United States' so-called War on Terror doesn't just stop at James Rhodes' (Don Cheadle) star-spangled new paint job as Iron Patriot or the idea that President Ellis (William Sadler) has a target painted on his back after several threatening videos released to the public by the "Mandarin" (Ben Kingsley). No, Black and his co-writer Drew Pearce go even further. They put that idea into action by staging one of the most stand-out sequences in the entire film in and around Air Force One.

When Stark and Rhodey discover the full extent of Aldrich Killian's (Guy Pearce) nefarious plan, they realize that the President's life is now at risk. With James Badge Dale's Extremis-laced henchman Savin commandeering the Iron Patriot suit and posing as his bodyguard Rhodes, only Tony's intervention in his own ramshackle Mark 42 prototype can save the day. But that, of course, turns out to be ... slightly more complicated than that.

How often do you hear about Marvel movies feeling frustratingly "samey" these days? A large part of that comes from the fact that so much of the action from movie to movie involves various Avengers as the aggressors, either attempting to murder or punch their enemies into submission in a frenzied haze of energy blasts, sky portals, and other pixelated fluff. But for once, "Iron Man 3" flips the script entirely and puts our hero on his back foot, forced to use his ingenuity rather than rely on his suit — a prevailing theme of the movie — to save the day by actually saving others.

The scene kicks off when Savin, ensconced in the Iron Patriot armor, turns on the Cabinet members and Secret Service on the plane and puts each of them down until only the President and a handful of innocents locked in a room are left. By the time Tony arrives, the remote-controllable armor has already taken the President away to parts unknown. Faced with another frustrating fight with Iron Man, Savin blows a hole in the aircraft that sucks out those civilians and eggs Stark on to abandon the fight and rescue the people. In a shocking but effective burst of violence, Stark instead delivers a kill shot right through Savin's chest. (The camera whipping to the right to follow the arc reactor blast into the next room really sells the shot.)

Here, the sequence truly reaches new heights (pun 100% intended) when his AI JARVIS (Paul Bettany) delivers the cold hard truth: the Iron Man suit is capable of holding four people, but 13 are currently plunging to their deaths. Without even hesitating, Stark flies out anyway and attempts his daring "Barrel of monkeys" rescue.

This might be slightly cheating, but we're going to pinpoint a moment in the actual filming of this sequence that makes it far more effective than most other franchise action scenes. In the "Deconstructing the Scene: Attack on Air Force One" behind-the-scenes featurette for "Iron Man 3" (you can check it out under the "Extras" tab on Disney+ when you queue up the movie), Marvel presents a surprisingly in-depth look at the extent to which the production team went in order to pull this scene off with a clever balance of both visual effects and practical stunt work. The final result proves how lacking recent Marvel movies have been by resorting to either soundstage shoots, all-CGI settings with awfully muddy color grading, or the Volume.

As the most visceral and thrilling moment of the film to that point, the choice to actually film skydivers plunging at terminal velocity towards the ground works wonders when paired with the digital imagery of a painstakingly gussied-up Iron Man in action. Switching back and forth from point-of-view shots of Stark inside his helmet interface, JARVIS' insistent countdown as they fall closer and closer to Earth, and the breathtakingly immersive footage of the stuntmen and women, the entire sequence ends up evoking similar sort of thrills that the "Mission: Impossible" movies have mastered so effectively.

If there's any negative aspect to address, it's that the final reveal that Tony was never actually in the suit in the first place undercuts a lot of the heroics we just saw. But even with that (admittedly funny) gag, we still were able to bear witness to one of the coolest and most ambitious hero moments in all the MCU — one that reminded us why the insufferable Stark is a flawed hero worth rooting for.