"Iron Man 3" Review and Discussion Thread (spoilers)
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What I found interesting in that regard is that the movie made no direct connection between the Mandarin and the terrorist organization in the first film (unless it was as blink-and-you-miss-it as Stan's cameo). The likes of us might be expected to make the connection from the information given, but they could have spelled it out for the audience. However...
I don't think that there'd be another, "real" Mandarin out there, because if there was, he easily could have blown the high-profile fake's scam.
A couple of random observations:
1) It's just not AIM without the beekeeper outfits;
2) Based on the casting, it seems that the filmmakers had money on Romney for the election.
Also IM3 seemed to be driven more by the jokes, but it wasn't quite a full on comedy. But I do prefer the drama of the first IM though.
I think Killian's motives were rather clear, kill Tony Stark for humiliating him and then sell Extremist based super soldiers to the government to deal with a terrorist threat Killian himself manufactured. Your typical profit and revenge motives many villains have.
While I realize that suspension of disbelief is key to these type of movies. I just don't buy being that humiliated by Tony Stark after you accost a drunken version of him in an elevator on New Year's Eve, and then he doesn't show up that you need this great revenge.
This. As a moment to motivate one's career in villainy, it made the old story of Superboy blowing out Luthor's hair seem Shakespearian by comparison. (For that matter, did anybody really spend Millennium Eve at a science conference...?)
Given his crippled and nerdy appearance in '99, I suspect Stark's spurning of him was just the last straw on the camel's back - a lifetime of pain, torment and humiliation (in short, being bullied) finally ignited on that rooftop. Tony was the personification of everyone who had made Killian's life a living hell up to that point, and hence made the natural target for his revenge.
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At which point 5 years of speech and physical therapy made him a sexy media sensation. He could have done that any time...
What actually happened, according to script, is that Hansen called his number when Tony didn't sign on to her work.
If Hansen hadn't called, IM3 wouldn't have happened, and possibly IM1 and IM2, depending on how we interperate "10 rings."
Between the two of them they realized that they needed a "face" to promote the concept. Stupidly, they didn't go with the attractive woman, and wasted years creating an attractive man out of nothing. Cue suspension of disbelief.
It was the Extremis that did it for him, the physical therapy thing was just his excuse for it.
I guess Christopher Nolan did too, then.
Or maybe these guys haven't lost track of the concept that the film is set in a fictional universe.
^The second person to take my obviously facetious comment about the casting of the prez way too seriously....FWIW, I actually thought this particular actor bore a stronger physical resemblance to Romney than the next fictional CIC out of central casting.
I'm going to blaspheme here...I liked IM2 better. The story was a more relevant follow-up on the first film, dealing with the consequences of Tony's actions in that film. Here, the only hook to what had gone on before was the Mandarin, and they didn't even bother to drop a line of dialogue to make the connection with the terrorists in the first film. To the average viewer, this was for all appearances a new villain who came out of nowhere.
As I reflect on the movie, this is my main problem with it. A good villain can make or break this type of film, and this villain's motivation was too juvenile/clichéd. It was way too generous of Stark to actually take moral responsibility for his and his partner's actions. Being stood up/one-night-standed by a drunk billionaire playboy with a very public reputation for that sort of thing during a New Year's Eve party is no justification for conducting unethical research on other human beings and starting a terrorist organization. If either of them had just made an appointment with Pepper in 2000, a lot of innocent lives could have been spared. They were obviously psychos without any help from Tony.
I'm going to blaspheme here...I liked IM2 better. The story was a more relevant follow-up on the first film, dealing with the consequences of Tony's actions in that film. Here, the only hook to what had gone on before was the Mandarin, and they didn't even bother to drop a line of dialogue to make the connection with the terrorists in the first film. To the average viewer, this was for all appearances a new villain who came out of nowhere.
No blaspheme. Some of us actually prefer IM2. We understand the alchololism metaphore, we understand the bottoming out, we understand the need for a relationship with his father, we understand the role of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the Iron Man mythos. We understand the appeal of Scarlett Johansen in tight Kevlar.
IM 1, Jeff Bridges/Stane was probably the strongest villian, with a charismatic, believable villain who had a strong connection to Tony that was well integrated into the plot.
IM 2, Rourke was under utilized, but the story made logical sense. Rockwell/Hammer was a great secondary antagonist and is underappreciated.
IM 3, Killian is just a poor mashup of Rourke and Rockwell, he doesn't add anything, he just replaces villians that were already defeated.
In the first two films, Tony is is his own villain. In the third, we lose this motif. Fine. We don't, however, replace it with anything. There is no compelling reason for Tony to wander alone with nothing but some building store home made IED's, but he does it because, well, all of us geeks would love to believe we could do that.
What the movie loses from the first two is that Tony isn't facing down himself. It tries. The PTSD anxiety attacks try to be the inner demon he must face down. The problem is, unlike the first two films, the story doesn't rely on Tony's inner demon to move forward. Take away PTSD and you still have the same movie. It isn't integral to Tony's character development. He doesn't have to defeat this, in the way he had to defeat his own issues to grow into a hero in the first two films.
I agree IM2 had much better themes and villains, but to me the random, aimless storytelling (with RDJ just kind of... riffing his way through most of the movie), was still just too big of a issue and kept the movie from working like it should.
IM3 may have had a weaker villain, but the story still seemed to flow a lot better and the added humor helped make the whole thing a lot more watchable in the end. At least for me.
My father was a set designer for TV, and he would take me to the Director's Guild screenings, where they don't allow refreshments and everybody stays through the credits.you're a pretty big fan so you'd be aware that at the end of Marvel films there's a scene after the credits. Yet so many people left right as the film ended
Oh, I can explain it....the gimmick is stale. It was novel in the first Iron Man, still had some life in it by the second movie. But by the time Thor rolled around people were getting tired of having to sit all the way through long credit sequences. And why should they when they can just watch it on YouTube. I know I did.
While Green Lantern was a clusterfuck, the one thing they did right was showing their stinger about a quarter of the way into the final credits.....as did Avengers with the Thanos reveal. I figured that even Marvel understood that as time passed, the willingness to sit through the entire credits just to see 30 seconds, would decrease with even the hard core audience.
They need to just go the GL and Avengers route in the future.
To this day, I don't get up to leave until the curtains close and the lights come up. Hell, even when watching a DVD, I sit through the whole credits.
For some reason, the "Marvel Movies Wiki" claims Raza ( played by Faran Tahir a.k.a. THE ROBAU ) was a subordinate of Killian's. There's an Iron Man 3 prequel comic featuring War Machine which supposedly involves the Ten Rings, so maybe some kind of connection is established there ( I wouldn't know because I haven't read it ).
Plenty of people stayed for the post-credits scene in my showing, and it got a good reaction. They should have worked you-know-who into the Extremis story a little...he is that kind of doctor....
Iron Man 3 was a great movie but I did feel it had some quite large flaws:
--Why didn't Tony call SHIELD? Nick Fury? Cap? Banner? Hawkeye? Black Widow? He discovers the location of the Mandarin, and rather than alerting the authorities and bringing in some super powered muscle, he goes in ALONE with MAKESHIFT weaponry he made in a garage?!?!
Granted, this is a complaint you can levy against any comic book story, but being the first post-Avengers movie, I really feel they needed to directly address this issue.
--
--I also thought that too much time was spent with Tony being completely cutoff from his technology and friends.
--And I also thought the AI running the suits like that stretched the semi-plausibility a little bit. Was the single Jarvis operating system running 41 different suits at once? Why not just get SHIELD agents in there?
--Why didn't Tony call SHIELD? Nick Fury? Cap? Banner? Hawkeye? Black Widow? He discovers the location of the Mandarin, and rather than alerting the authorities and bringing in some super powered muscle, he goes in ALONE with MAKESHIFT weaponry he made in a garage?!?!
Granted, this is a complaint you can levy against any comic book story, but being the first post-Avengers movie, I really feel they needed to directly address this issue.
--
As hilarious as Kinglesy was as the washed up actor, the Mandarin is Iron Man's greatest foe and I was deeply disappointment that he was a paper tiger in this story. Killian was not a good secret villain. He wasn't bad but he was no Mandarin. I was so excited to see an Iron Man movie with such a great villain, so that was extremely unfortunate.
--I also thought that too much time was spent with Tony being completely cutoff from his technology and friends.
--And I also thought the AI running the suits like that stretched the semi-plausibility a little bit. Was the single Jarvis operating system running 41 different suits at once? Why not just get SHIELD agents in there?
what they did to the Mandarin was pretty disappointing-when I read how they were going to "re-invent" or "re-imagine" the character, I thought they meant improve, not cheapen.
The "comes when he calls" Iron Man suit makes it way too easy-it's almost like magic now, like Thor's hammer or something.
overall, above average-more action than the previous two, but my least favorite of the trilogy.
The "comes when he calls" Iron Man suit makes it way too easy-it's almost like magic now, like Thor's hammer or something.
overall, above average-more action than the previous two, but my least favorite of the trilogy.