Thank god Christopher Nolan won't have to deal with this sort of thing for Batman 3 (...we hope)!
That write-up certainly doesn't go "in-depth" -- it's 621 words, comes from a single, anonymous source, and contains as much editorializing as it does content. Calling it an "article" is a bit of a misnomer.
That said, this doesn't really tell us anything we didn't already know -- it was reported ages ago that Favreau had contentious negotiations for his Iron Man 2 contract, we knew that production was frenzied because the release date was locked in before any work had begun on the film. The only nuggets of new information here are that Downey didn't care for the movie, and Favreau may not have been happy with having to insert so much Fury / Avengers material, but I didn't have a problem at all with that stuff. As The Avengers gets closer, the Marvel films are going to have more and more material to set it up -- hence Clark Gregg having such a prominent role in Thor.
I pitched an Iron Man 2 rewrite where we learn at the end of the film that Mandarin has been secretly behind the scenes and manipulating things since the first film. In my version he is responsible for the stuff with the Senate and Justin Hammer wanting his own Stark Tech because it sets up the Armor Wars. It's been a while since I came up with it but forgot the bulk of the details. Tasha was Shield plant sent by Fury to watch Stark and make sure he doesn't get out of control. Bethany Cabe had an increased role as Stark's budding new love interest.
I agree with Dream's statement regarding the real villain being Tony's drinking problem with I think was handled great in the film. Whiplash and Hammer were surface villains.
I agree with Dream's statement regarding the real villain being Tony's drinking problem with I think was handled great in the film. Whiplash and Hammer were surface villains.
I pitched an Iron Man 2 rewrite where we learn at the end of the film that Mandarin has been secretly behind the scenes and manipulating things since the first film. In my version he is responsible for the stuff with the Senate and Justin Hammer wanting his own Stark Tech because it sets up the Armor Wars. It's been a while since I came up with it but forgot the bulk of the details. Tasha was Shield plant sent by Fury to watch Stark and make sure he doesn't get out of control. Bethany Cabe had an increased role as Stark's budding new love interest.
I agree with Dream's statement regarding the real villain being Tony's drinking problem with I think was handled great in the film. Whiplash and Hammer were surface villains.
Yeah, it was really weird how Mandarin was pretty much ignored in IM2. He was has a very strong background presence in the first movie, since it's heavily implied that he is the leader of the Ten Rings group that kidnapped Tony which forced Tony to create the armor in the first place.
The writers should have continued building on that, maybe even have Mandarin appear at the very end of IM2 to set up the sequel since they seemed to already be planning to use Mandarin in IM3.
At least one good thing has resulted from all this. Iron Man may be the first superhero movie franchise that ends having it's best villain in it's third movie instead of the first or second. Also the Avengers should also have a much smaller presence in IM3, since the Avengers movie would have already been released by then. There would really be no point to advertising them anymore in IM3.
I can't disagree more. I thought his drinking problem was very underdeveloped as a subplot. Sure, he's imbibing a little too much at the beginning, but then all of a sudden he's in a drunk slugfest with Rhodey, and then he's cured. It was almost cartoonish in the way it was handled.
Every comic nerd dreams of the movies adapting "Demon in a Bottle," and it's never going to happen without becoming "Iron Man meets Leaving Las Vegas / When a Man Loves a Woman." You can't have that as a major element of a movie without it becoming overly melodramatic, silly, or both.
I've said it before, but the best superhero movies have taken the iconic stories and ideas of their respective characters and boiled them down to the most basic plot points, integrating them into the larger story. "Demon in a Bottle," reduced to its essence, is: "I'm not an alcoholic; OK, I'm an alcoholic; now I'm not an alcoholic." I don't disagree that Iron Man 2 mis-handled that element of the story, but audiences don't want to see Tony Stark trying to climb out of a bottle of whiskey -- they want to see the ultra-smooth wise-ass playboy who gives no fuck and occasionally blows shit up in a suit of powered armor.
Then again, I still want to see Tony fuck up as Iron Man by crashing head-first into a government building or blowing up a school bus full of Special Olympics kids or something. Then, he can show up at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the Iron Man suit and have one of the grizzled AA veterans hand him his 24-hour sobriety chip and say, "Tony, it's time to take off your mask and take a good hard look at yourself." And Tony flips up his helmet to reveal tears rolling down his cheeks, and then there's a group hug. This would be better / worse / somehow even more amazing than the lunacy of Batman & Robin.
You clearly missed the point where I was joking about how I would be willing to see a movie ruined just to get something so insanely stupid committed to celluloid.![]()
Actually, Mandarin WAS involved with this movie in a small way: The guy who gave Whiplash his passport was a 10 rings operative.
You clearly missed the point where I was joking about how I would be willing to see a movie ruined just to get something so insanely stupid committed to celluloid.![]()
The only good thing about Batman and Robin was that it sucked so badly that it killed any chance of other superheroes movies being made like that in the future. It was so goddamn awful. It also forced a reboot of the entire Batman movie franchise.![]()
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