Excellent news. I seem to be one of the few who really enjoyed IM2 so glad to hear we don't have too long post-Avengers to wait before further adventures. This is such a golden age for superhero cinema...
I'm kind of wondering if maybe since Thor, Cap and the Avengers will be in the can and probably on DVD by the time IM3 is ready to shoot, if they'll kind of make it the sorta "final" movie. Sure they can keep making more if RDJr and the rest of the cast want to continue, but y'know no one's getting any younger. Be kinda cool if they could even bring in Extremis. As sort of the ultimate evolution of the Iron Man and the Mandarin. I think they even sort of set up the Mandarin as a financer of Extremis in the comics too didn't they? So it'd be kinda neat to see this say, Chinese pharma company working on Extremis. The designer of it is an old flame/friend of Tony's and hell you could even work in the origin of Pepper Potts as Rescue. Maybe she's injured in an inital attack by an Extremis powered goon "test subject", Pep gets an RT like Tony's and eventually a suit of her own - would save that for the final act maybe. Meanwhile Tony gets his ass handed to him by an Extremis powered Mandarin - I think the Rings could be technological OR maybe somehow something related to Loki dunno... but in either case, Tony is in rougher shape than ever. Maybe even "dies" on screen for a little bit which prompts Pepper to wear the Rescue armor for a time with Rhodey as War Machine. Tony meanwhile somehow goes into a chysallis state after being pumped with a modified Extremis before he "died" from his injuries and then emerges with parts of the Iron Man inside his bones which can "bleed out" which'd be a cool CGI sequence and then the vectored repulsor powered flying parts of armor coming out of a suitcase. Then, the final act ending up with Iron Man and the Mandarin pounding the living shit out of each other. Maybe with the Mandarin even doing a sorta Armor Wars type scenario where other copycat Iron Man suits start causing terror around the globe, which is when Tony is able to take control of each suit and then we have a massive Iron Legion in the sky. I know it sounds wild but hey that's my dream for an Iron Man movie - pretty much everything cool about the past 3-4 years in the comics wrapped into one movie.
Well it will probably be the final Iron Man movie unless they can lock up the cast for another trilogy. There have been reports that Marvel's plans will be realized in 2017 and that they're going for a Civil War type of crossover movie with all of their franchises. There was a story today that Disney has now targeted Sony and Fox to attempt to buy back their remaining franchises which would be awesome of course but probably unrealistic unless they're willing to spend a boat load of cash.
Well honestly it's not as if Sony and Fox actually created the characters they have the rights to. And y'know what it's not as if they can't distribute the new films. But Marvel Studios should have the right to the ENTIRE Marvel Universe. I mean, I always thought it was so fuckin' stupid to have the MU spread out among 3-4 studios. Paramount honestly wasn't too bad as they pretty much stayed out of it and let Marvel Studios do their thing. Which is probably why they agreed to give it back to Disney in exchange for keeping the previous movies and Cap and Thor. And let Avengers and Iron Man 3 be Disney's. Fox and Sony seem to be far more intrusive and honestly it's hurt the properties. X-Men could really have been an awesome, spanning, complex universe even if you don't touch on the other MU characters, just the X-Franchise but they squandered it. Same as Sony could have let Raimi do things his way like he did with Spider-Man 1 and 2 - didn't they realize what happens when a picture company gets too involved with the actual story? It always ends up more expensive and doesn't get good reviews. Sure people may 'like it' but they don't consider it a 'good' film and piss and moan that they want a new one to "fix' the last piece of shit. So if Marvel/Disney can unify the movie Marvel U, its not to say that we won't have a few shitty movies here and there, but at least they don't have to drastically change existing storylines and such because "Well we don't own the rights to those characters." Of course, then we get animated movies that give us our cake and let us eat it too. So that's funny. Disney can make an animated series with EVERY character in the MU with no problems, but can't do a live action?
I hope not, as they've just started writing it. Maybe they should have the guts to go with a December release for Trek 2, as was the original plan with the first movie. Re. Iron Man 3: The second movie was, in my opinion, quite good but unremarkable. It was kind of rushed, and I think that it suffered a little because of it. Hopefully, the longer gapwill benefit the third movie. Let'salso hopw that Iron Man fatigue hasn't set in by then!
But would those movies really have been better if he'd gotten all he wanted? Was Superman Returns better than X2?
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I prefer X2 over Superman Returns, but I think it has more to deal with Singer's penchant for dealing with multi-character storylines with allegorical themes. He was able to connect more with the X-Men than with Superman, something later on he was able to admit. I think had Rothman allowed him to do what he really wanted to do, he would have really made the first two movies even better than they were. After hearing Michael Dougherty's comments on what their X-Men 3 would have been, I have no doubt had Fox and Rothman given Singer creative control X3 could have been the best X-Men movie, instead of the worst. I guess we'll see with X-Men: First Class, which has Singer involved as a producer with a story credit. I'm not so willing to suddenly write off Singer after one mediocre movie- this is, after all, the man that directed The Usual Suspects and the first two wonderful X-Men movies, and I thought Valkyrie was pretty good as well. I should also add that I absolutely adore Superman Returns, so everything I just said might be null and void ( ), but I don't quite see it as the "mediocre" or "flawed" film that most do. Then again, I know I'm in the minority on that one.
I didn't like Apt Pupil so much. It was a well-made film, but I couldn't quite resonate with it. I should also mention Public Access, since we're on the topic of Singer-directed films, which was Singer's first feature-length film and even though it's hard to find, it was very good.
I've not seen "Public Access" my first Singer film was "X-Men". I didn't see "The Usual Suspects" until after it came out...oh and Happy Birthday Favs!
I hope they do it better this time and keep the storylines a bit on the short side, i.e. too many plotlines make up one messed up movie. The premise of Stark slowly dying by the very tech that's keeping him alive as intriguing yet they copped out of it by inventing some "magic" new element that totally cured him. The same applies to the villain.. every hero needs a good villain. This was what made The Dark Knight so awesome.. Heath Ledger's Joker was just brilliant (in fact he was more interesting than Batman himself ) but IM2's Justin Hammer was just a tool and an idiot and Rourke's Whiplash just wasn't enough to produce real menace. For the movie to work well we need an opponent who is on an equal level with Stark and the Mandarin certainly fits that description. If it's well done keep his original background of finding the alien rings which are so advanced they seem like magic.. make him a chinese industrialist with the backing of China and you got your movie. Or take the Armor Wars storyline.. also an excellent basis for a movie. But whatever they do they need to keep the core team together.. Favreau just gets superhero movies and i have faith him despite the somewhat weaker IM2 as opposed to IM1. Keep the studio meddling low and do your thing.
Yeah IM3 needs to have a plot that is much leaner... cut the extra crap. Build up a good villain. Ditch the Avengers tie-ins. (which really pulled down IM2 - IMO) After IM2 my enthusiasm for the series, which was very high after IM1, is pretty low at the moment. I hope they can get back to the basics of IM1.
I think Faveuru and Thoreux missed the boat by completely avoiding the Mandarin in the sequel and using someone else that is considered a B Level villain in the Marvel universe. They tried to make an emotional connection by having Ivan's father be the person who created arc technology and Howard stole it but that was something that was never really addressed. I contend again that Tony was his own worst enemy in the film and he needed to be dragged down (I do see why fans always bring up the Demon in the Bottle storyline but it really was touched on from the very beginning of the film) and shown his mistakes and arrogance, so that he could realize the heroism inside of him and leadership abilities. It really was a set up for "Avengers". I think that with "The Avengers" out of the way that "Iron Man 3" can go back to focusing on Tony and complete the cycle started in the first film.