Bask in 18-seconds of Iron Man 3

In theaters Friday: Chasing Mavericks, Cloud Atlas, Fun Size

New on Blu-ray/DVD: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Magic Mike, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Take this Waltz

That headline is sarcastic, by the way. Of course, Marvel Studios would have the world stop to pour over a few new frames of Robert Downey Jr. in heavy metal, and that’s what many did yesterday with the release of a few blink-and-you’ll-miss-them clips to drum up interest in the actual teaser trailer that is set to premiere online tomorrow.

There’s a curious trend brewing among massively budgeted Hollywood fare, and next May’s Iron Man sequel is just the latest example. On Dec. 20 last year, three days before the official release of the first minute-long teaser trailer for the much-anticipated outer space thriller Prometheus, Ridley Scott released this(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af8qd-_CucM), what can only be described as a teaser for the teaser. That’s right, a trailer announcing and previewing the, ahem, trailer. It seems that just to break even, tent pole film’s need so much hype these days that even the hype needs hype. 

Subtitled “Enter the Mandarin!”—this, I’m guessing is the pony-tailed head seen, like everything else here, briefly, and played by Ben Kingsley—the clip at least shows more promise than the tepid and bizarrely idiosyncratic first sequel to the hit movie

Sure, these films are action comedies and not psychological crime dramas—and The Avengers did make a bajillion dollars last spring—but if this series is going to keep up the cultural pace set by The Dark Knight Rises and that is promised by next year’s unique Superman relaunch The Man of Steel, Iron Man is going to have to steel himself for a fight. If not, the film may not live up to all this hype.