"Iron Man 3" Review and Discussion Thread (spoilers)

[Captain Craig]

I just find it odd that people respond as if the caricature Fu Man Chu original 60's version of Mandarin was expected. Was the only serious route possible.

The character has evolved like others over the decades. It may be that the Chinese co-financing is to blame for us getting a Mandarin in name only. They may have had a clause saying that in no form will a Chinese man be the serious bad guy. Shame really cause The Mandarin deserved to be taken seriously and the notion that Killian was also actually Mandarin, while working within the movie, is just weak.

 

[shapeshifter]

We went to a matinee in hopes of beating the crowds, didn't happen. We wound up in a 95% sold out 3-D screening so audience noise often interrupted the show but I still managed to have a rollicking good time. Beat IM2 by a mile.

Above Average.

 

[davejames]

--I also thought that too much time was spent with Tony being completely cutoff from his technology and friends.

Yeah the movie was really pushing the "back to basics, cut off from the world" idea, but I'm not sure I totally bought it.

I mean, this isn't the 1930s. All Tony had to do was make a quick phone call and a private plane could have flown him back home. And are we really supposed to believe he kept ALL his suits at his mansion, and didn't keep any stowed away elsewhere in case of emergencies (like say at the Stark Tower in NY)??

Hell, he can fit a suit in a freakin suitcase; you'd think he'd have 3 or 4 of those tucked away in different places.

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.

Agreed. I realize this is a superhero movie, but it still strains credibility to see him popping in and out of suits in seconds now, with just a simple wave of the hand. Or to see the suit magically transforming over his body.

What was cool about the first movie was you got the sense these were pieces of real mechanical engineering that could almost exist in our world. And that you actually needed a bunch of assembly line robots to bolt the thing onto you.

 

[BillJ]

The wife and I both enjoyed it.

 

[Rhaven]

I saw IM3 over the weekend. Above average from me as a review. I do have to say, I enjoyed this one much more than IM2, but not as much as IM1.

 

[USS Mariner]

I just find it odd that people respond as if the caricature Fu Man Chu original 60's version of Mandarin was expected. Was the only serious route possible.

The character has evolved like others over the decades. It may be that the Chinese co-financing is to blame for us getting a Mandarin in name only. They may have had a clause saying that in no form will a Chinese man be the serious bad guy. Shame really cause The Mandarin deserved to be taken seriously and the notion that Killian was also actually Mandarin, while working within the movie, is just weak.

I love that no one's even mentioned the implications of Maya Hansen's "demotion" in terms of the plot. I sense Lapis would have a field day given how the original comic (which is miles better than any Marvel move to-date) treated her.

Keeping her as the actual villain would have actually made things far more interesting, given how Tony has treated women (both familiar and public) over the course of three films.

 

[DigificWriter]

I just find it odd that people respond as if the caricature Fu Man Chu original 60's version of Mandarin was expected. Was the only serious route possible.

The character has evolved like others over the decades. It may be that the Chinese co-financing is to blame for us getting a Mandarin in name only. They may have had a clause saying that in no form will a Chinese man be the serious bad guy. Shame really cause The Mandarin deserved to be taken seriously and the notion that Killian was also actually Mandarin, while working within the movie, is just weak.

Handling the Mandarin the way they did was all the writers' idea; it had nothing to do with any 'political correctness' sensitivity.

 

[sonak]

I just find it odd that people respond as if the caricature Fu Man Chu original 60's version of Mandarin was expected. Was the only serious route possible.

The character has evolved like others over the decades. It may be that the Chinese co-financing is to blame for us getting a Mandarin in name only. They may have had a clause saying that in no form will a Chinese man be the serious bad guy. Shame really cause The Mandarin deserved to be taken seriously and the notion that Killian was also actually Mandarin, while working within the movie, is just weak.

Handling the Mandarin the way they did was all the writers' idea; it had nothing to do with any 'political correctness' sensitivity.

riiiight. Because of course the writers would admit it if they WERE influenced by such considerations...

 

[The Wormhole]

I enjoyed it. It was an entertaining movie that doesn't try to be anything else. It wasn't pretentious with a message or any crap like that. You walk in expecting to see in a robo-suit fight some bad guys, that's exactly what you get. But while it wasn't some pretentious attempt at being artistic, it also wasn't mindless and pandering to idiots. The proper way a pop-corn flick should be.

It's as good as the first Iron Man, and better than the secoond, which in all honsety just felt like a two hour trailer for The Avengers.

The movie had some great one-liners, and Ben Kingsley's character ends up being hilarious as the movie goes on. It was good to see they managed to have a kid befriend Tony Stark without being annoying, or more accurately his annoying traits were actually an intended part of the character. Still, "dads leave, don't be a pussy about it" was an awesome line. Mind you, I never once believed that Pepper was actually killed.

On the complaint end, it didn't really feel to organically fit with the other two the way those two fit together, or other movie trilogies do. But I'm of two minds on that. It can be a bit irritating, but then it probably best to make these movies as stand alone as possible, especially given it and all the other Marvel movies aside from the Spider-Man and X-Men series are all interconnected and part of the same continuity.

 

[JD]

--I also thought that too much time was spent with Tony being completely cutoff from his technology and friends.

Yeah the movie was really pushing the "back to basics, cut off from the world" idea, but I'm not sure I totally bought it.

I mean, this isn't the 1930s. All Tony had to do was make a quick phone call and a private plane could have flown him back home. And are we really supposed to believe he kept ALL his suits at his mansion, and didn't keep any stowed away elsewhere in case of emergencies (like say at the Stark Tower in NY)??

Hell, he can fit a suit in a freakin suitcase; you'd think he'd have 3 or 4 of those tucked away in different places.

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.

Agreed. I realize this is a superhero movie, but it still strains credibility to see him popping in and out of suits in seconds now, with just a simple wave of the hand. Or to see the suit magically transforming over his body.

What was cool about the first movie was you got the sense these were pieces of real mechanical engineering that could almost exist in our world. And that you actually needed a bunch of assembly line robots to bolt the thing onto you.

Yeah, I was kind of surprised that there was no mention of Stark Tower in IM3. It played such a huge role in Avengers that you'd think they would have worked some kind of a mention in this movie somewhere.
As for the suits, doesn't alot of that come from the comics?

 

[Dream]

I realize this is a superhero movie, but it still strains credibility...

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtntTvuv8Aw[/yt]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtntTvuv8Aw

But seriously, I do agree with you that the suits did seem a bit more realistic in the first IM1. I wish we had Tony explaining to Pepper how he had implanted magic nanotechnology into his blood to able to call parts of his suits to him, instead of just implying everything.

 

[The Old Mixer]

^I was under the impression that they were subcutaneous implants that served the same function as the bracelets that summoned his mobile suit in The Avengers.

But I missed the fact that we didn't get one good glory moment of Tony in a definitive, fully-functional suit kicking ass. What we got was a malfunctioning prototype and a musical suits climax.

 

[Snaploud]

"There were a lot of WTF moments in this movie. For instance, Tony was willing to face a terrorist strong-hold without armor (using make-shift weapons from Home Depot), and we later find out that he has 41 suits ready to go at a moment's notice."

I think this was explained in the movie. It took awhile for Jarvis to get fully operational again, and for the construction crews to clear enough wreckage to uncover the opening to the Iron Vault.

yeap, Jarvis definitely updates Tony saying that the wreckage has been cleared away.

Fair enough. Though, I wonder why Tony didn't just hire more people to speed up the wreckage-clearing. He obviously had access to funds.

 

[Dream]

^I was under the impression that they were subcutaneous implants that served the same function as the bracelets that summoned his mobile suit in The Avengers.

When you think about it, Tony developing the skill to call the armor pieces to him is the logical conclusion to this tech. It is even from the comics.

But I'm really glad they didn't go with Tony being able to call the armor from his own bones, and being able to control computer systems with his brain like in the comics. That would have been WAY too out there.

But I missed the fact that we didn't get one good glory moment of Tony in a definitive, fully-functional suit kicking ass. What we got was a malfunctioning prototype and a musical suits climax.

I missed that too. Even Iron Patriot got a chance to be a badass taking down the first group of terrorist, and Pepper delivering the final kill to the main villain while wearing a sports bra (Loved it even though it was so over the top).

But Tony did take down a group of those thugs with his hardware tools and capture the Mandarin. Tony got way more action in IM3 than the first two movies.

 

[LaxScrutiny]

But seriously, I do agree with you that the suits did seem a bit more realistic in the first IM1. I wish we had Tony explaining to Pepper how he had implanted magic nanotechnology into his blood to able to call parts of his suits to him, instead of just implying everything.

Well it's worse than that. I didn't get into that part in my first post, but it kind of bugged me through the last half of the movie...

The implants in Tony's arm were somehow able to contact each suit piece in Tennesee from Miami. So utilizing some kind of satellite uplink? That is forward thinking...

Now each suit piece has sufficient propulsion to allow it to fly from Tennesee to Miami. The CGI made it appear that they had little jets... fueled by what? Every try launching a model rocket that far?

The complete suit's propulsion is supposed to be repulser based so that it doesn't need fuel. Fine, and this is actually a brilliant update from Stan Lee's original design. But these suit pieces aren't blasting repulsers to make themselves fly, and there would be no possibilty of them controlling their flight that precisely and decellerating like they did. (The joke of Tony taking the hit from codpiece notwithstanding.)

It just couldn't work that way according to the way the armour is depicted as working. So I have to suspend my disbelief, and then suspend my disbelief of that first suspension.

If the armour flew as one piece and then cracked open to encase Tony, I could have handled that.

 

[Set Harth]

^I was under the impression that they were subcutaneous implants that served the same function as the bracelets that summoned his mobile suit in The Avengers.

What I don't get is, if Tony needs these implants to call the suit to him, how is he able to make the suit go onto Pepper or Killian?

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

The implants in Tony's arm were somehow able to contact each suit piece in Tennesee from Miami. So utilizing some kind of satellite uplink? That is forward thinking...

Now each suit piece has sufficient propulsion to allow it to fly from Tennesee to Miami. The CGI made it appear that they had little jets... fueled by what?

Unstable molecules. Magic. Pixie dust.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Maybe all the pieces do have repulsor jets and little palladium batteries.

Which brings me to a WTF concern I had when his malfunctioning suit lost power as he was getting to TN...since when does the movie IM's suit have a separate power supply that runs out of gas? I thought his suits were run by his palladium / IM2-ium chest piece? Even if they have separate power supplies that allow them to be operated remotely or worn by other people (as they clearly do), why couldn't he keep power going with his chest unit?

(Granted, this point will be moot in future films.)

 

[Snaploud]

Which brings me to a WTF concern I had when his malfunctioning suit lost power as he was getting to TN...since when does the movie IM's suit have a separate power supply that runs out of gas? I thought his suits were run by his palladium / IM2-ium chest piece? Even if they have separate power supplies that allow them to be operated remotely or worn by other people (as they clearly do), why couldn't he keep power going with his chest unit?

It really only made sense to use the heart-power-cell when no other options were available (in the cave and/or when he had not yet mass-produced the power cells). He was draining a vital function everytime he got in the suit, and it's probably not healthy to constantly be performing surgery on one's self.

Granted, the heart-power-cell did have the benefit of added security (limiting the ability of non-heart-power-cell-wearing individuals to use the suit), but it sounds as if Tony beefed up other types of security on the suits.

As for using the heart-power-cell as a back-up: it may have simply been a case of the new suit being incompatible with the heart-power-cell (at least, without heavy modifications or taking the heart-power-cell out of Tony's chest).

 

[Chu'lak]

Which brings me to a WTF concern I had when his malfunctioning suit lost power as he was getting to TN...since when does the movie IM's suit have a separate power supply that runs out of gas? I thought his suits were run by his palladium / IM2-ium chest piece? Even if they have separate power supplies that allow them to be operated remotely or worn by other people (as they clearly do), why couldn't he keep power going with his chest unit?

It really only made sense to use the heart-power-cell when no other options were available (in the cave and/or when he had not yet mass-produced the power cells). He was draining a vital function everytime he got in the suit, and it's probably not healthy to constantly be performing surgery on one's self.

Granted, the heart-power-cell did have the benefit of added security (limiting the ability of non-heart-power-cell-wearing individuals to use the suit), but it sounds as if Tony beefed up other types of security on the suits.

As for using the heart-power-cell as a back-up: it may have simply been a case of the new suit being incompatible with the heart-power-cell (at least, without heavy modifications or taking the heart-power-cell out of Tony's chest).

Yeah, we've known back as far as IM 2 that the chest arc isn't neccesaary to run a suit, becuase War machine's had its only intneral power supply.