Unlike the Phase One films, I'll likely be following these in terms of release rather than personal preference.
And, of course, with the release of Thor: Ragnarok, doing the third movie in one of Marvel's franchises seems topical enough, so let's crack into this steaming pile.
1. Dramatis Personae
So, we've got Robert Downey, Jr. back as Tony Stark, Don Cheadle back as Rhodey, and Gwyneth Paltrow back as Pepper Potts. Par for the course. We also have Jon Favreau back in the role of Happy Hogan, but sadly not as the director which is one of the things that contribute to this being a really, really bad movie. Now I'm not saying that putting in the man who is only notable achievements have been writing the first two Lethal Weapon movies and being in Robocop 3 in the director's chair was a misstep. What I am saying is that the chemistry that Jon Favreau had with the actors, particular RDJ, showed in almost every scene. A great deal of the first Iron Man film was, by Favreau's own admission, a collaboration between them to make a fine product. It worked well, and Marvel had already just taken their big risk with The Avengers the previous year.
This was not the time to be breaking up the formula, particularly for what may be the last solo Iron Man film before the inevitable reboot in a few decades.
But we have Shane Black, a man who is actually a fairly good screenwriter (again, Lethal Weapon 1 and 2), being forced from the realm of action and buddy cop films into the realm of superheroes. I would love to see him direct something like The Punisher or maybe something that's a bit more grounded in realism. However, his writing and directing choices before this time do not put me in mind of the depth that they were going for with this movie. It's akin to choosing Michael Bay to direct a children's television show, and then wondering why there are explosions and hookers all over the place.
You also have Guy Pierce playing Peter Wey-I mean, Aldrich Killian. I'm sure you comic nerds out there know who that is.
There's also Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin. The Mandarin in the comics was a super badass scientist of Asian descent who was descended from Genghis Khan, was trained in various sciences and combat techniques, and found an alien space ship that gave him magic rings that could do superpowered things. Now, given the MCU's bizarre obsession with "realism", you could understand why Marvel might have a few qualms about introducing alien technology in the form of "magic rings" to the canon.
Three years later, they would give us a movie where a foul-mouthed raccoon wields a chain-gun.
The worst part about the Mandarin for me, however, is that Marvel didn't have the balls to actually cast an Asian actor. Yes, by the way, I am aware of All Hail the King and I really don't care, mostly since that was damage control done after the fact. I'd honestly have more respect for them if they stuck behind the choice...no, actually, I wouldn't, because it was really, really stupid.
If you're wanting to avoid stereotypes, just avoid stereotypes. The Netflix series did this fairly well (more or less) with Luke Cage, so what gives?
And this is something that could be taken entirely out of the film and wouldn't be missed in the least. Yes, having Ben Kingsley in a film can be nice, but it's like having a plate of perfectly prepared steak and potatoes. If you don't do anything with it, it's not really worth having. He's honestly just a very mean-spirited character, though used for comedic humor, thrown into a situation that's so much bigger than he is and is clearly in way over his head. You honestly feel very bad for the guy by the end.
I mean Ben Kingsley, not Trevor.
I'm sure Marvel didn't want to offend China with a racist portrayal of the Mandarin, which is understandable - they like money. But what is more respectful? Casting an Asian actor who could take on the role of the Mandarin with dignity and grace - Maybe someone like Collin Chou? Chin Han? Maybe even B.D. Wong in a stretch? - or replacing him with an old, white guy for the sake of having a comic relief element to the film?
That is more respectful?
Also, insert your own joke about Ben Kingsley's career here. I'd honestly be mad, but he keeps picking really, really bad roles. The fact that he ends up just being a bad actor hired by Killian almost comes across as the screenwriter taking a swipe at him.
2. The "Plot"
So, the entire plot of Iron Man 3 exists for two reasons - the second is that Tony Stark was an asshole. The first reason is also the same. On New Year's Eve 1999, Tony snubs Guy Pierce on a business idea. After the events of the Battle in New York, Tony's got some issues. He and Pepper aren't getting along because of his suits, Happy has a meta joke about getting another job at Stark Industries, Guy Pierce is making the moves on Pepper while trying to screw over Stark's company, and some asshole named the Mandarin blowing things up in third-world places.
When he's a dumbass enough to give his home address, Tony has the balls to be surprised when he gets attacked and his house completely destroyed. Escaping, Tony ends up in Tennessee (because, sure, why not?) and befriends a ten year old boy in order to get his bearings and then go kick the Mandarin's ass.
Simple enough, if a little absolutely bizarre. Where it gets messed up, however, is in the execution.
3. The Execution
Sadly, I lack an ax readily available to put this film out of my misery. The film's plot revolves around Killian's discovery and development of Extremis, a wonder drug that gives you superpowers which I'm sure was a thrilling plot device in 1963.
(Yes, I know that Extremis comes from a fairly recent comic)
But Extremis is apparently very powerful and highly volatile, being used by the Mandarin to cause terrorist attacks because a nasty side effect of it is that it burns out the human body...rather explosively. Again, it's important to remember this is what realism looks like. With this drug, Killian manages to hatch a plan that involves hiring an actor (who, apparently, not even people he worked with before know), using a series of terrorist attacks to test his new chemical body, either killing Stark or taking over his company, and kidnapping the President of the United States in order for the Ten Rings to act as puppet masters.
However, here is where we run into a number of problems: namely Tony Stark's character and the inter-connectivity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Now, I'll preface this with the following statement: PTSD is something that affects people that have been in traumatic situations, sometimes in a manner that is very crippling. It is something that can ruin people's lives and they can spent years after an incident recovering from it, and that's even if they get the treatment and support they need in order to do so. In the real world, it is a very, very serious issue.
That being said, why is Tony Stark having a panic attacks?
Oh, the wormhole thing? Yeah, he almost died, but after this movie it never really comes up again and we don't really get any resolution for it, either. Just Tony declaring that he's Iron Man at the end of the movie after he throws the Arc Reactor into the ocean, which is itself a problem. I'm supposed to be feeling for Tony like never before, when I'm wondering why he's not pulling up his frilly stockings, getting into his suit, and kicking ass. And I wouldn't mind (again, refer to my previous tirade on how PTSD is a very serious condition and affects many people), except that it only seems to happen at random points and Tony is not otherwise changed by the experience.
He's still a snarky, wise-cracking jackass. And people have said that later films like Age of Ultron and Civil War justify this, but again - it's not brought up in those, either. Instead, he just makes incredibly rash decisions without using logic, berates other people for not falling in with his line of thinking, and doesn't really receive any consequences for this new and wondrous strand of stupidity outside of Cap rather pleasingly handing him his own ass in the latter film. He'd be a shoe-in for the crew of the U.S.S. Voyager!
Now, I can understand that need to show characters moving on and the established iconography being either altered or destroyed to make room for the new. This was done well enough in Ragnarok with Mjolnir and even in Civil War as Cap threw down the shield.
The problem was that Ragnarok had Thor learning that his true power came from within in a literal "you didn't need the feather to fly" moment, and as for Civil War, well...
This is something that has bugged me for a really, really long time and I'm just going to come out with it: I could take everything, and I do mean everything, else in this movie if they had just left out the scene of Tony getting his arc reactor taken out and then throwing it away. The emphasis on it that was placed in the first two movies alone should have been the argument for keeping it. The arc reactor was originally a crutch. It was a metal ring and a car battery that was keeping some shrapnel from piercing his heart. What it eventually evolved to become was the physical manifestation of Tony's mission, a promise to himself and the world that he wanted to make up for his mistakes and do whatever he could to defend the world.
Here, at the first opportunity, Tony has it taken out and then chucks it into the freaking ocean like it was some rock!
No, I'm not saying that he should have continued to live with the shrapnel in his chest. What I'm saying is that the arc reactor should have stayed because it's literally the reminder of who he is and what he stands for. The reason why Thor's hammer and Cap's shield could be destroyed or discarded (respectfully) is because neither item fully defines who they are. Thor's hammer is something carried over from the mythology, yes, but there were just as many stories in Norse lore about him kicking ass without the hammer than there were with it.
As for Cap's shield, it's a symbol of the person is he as Captain America. Much like the Clark Kent/Superman dynamic, however, he's Steve Rogers first. Despite Stark's really, really stupidly uninformed comment in The Avengers, Steve Rogers was special pretty much from the jump. All the Super Soldier Serum did was enhance the qualities that were already there. He was a good and decent person before he was ever injected with it, then fought in World War II and killed Nazis for our sins. He drops the shield because of Stark being a whiny bitch about needing something to hold over him after Steve gave him the biggest assbeating of his life.
Before he got the arc reactor, Tony was an asshole. There's really no other way to put it. He was egotistical, he
After spending this movie seemingly having issues dealing with the fact that he saw space, he drives his girlfriend to insane ends, doesn't have to pay for the consequences of snubbing some guy who comes back looking for revenge, and then throws away his own mission and insists that he's Iron Man when he's really not Iron Man anymore. Then, he creates a rage-filled robot being that threatens the entire Earth (Age of Ultron) and somehow doesn't end up in prison afterward, screws over his entire team by not pulling an Iron Man 2 on the Sokovia Accords and then being confused when they don't agree with it, and also manipulating an impressionable teenage boy into serving as his lackey in a conflict that would have been easily solved if he had listened to Steve (Civil War). He then continues on to further manipulate and control the teenage boy to the point of casting him out of the garden when he slightly displeases him and then taking credit for what said young man did entirely on his own and then gets to marry the girlfriend who rightfully left him because he had lost his damn mind (Spider-Man: Homecoming).
And, would you believe, there are some dumbasses who fucking laugh at me when I say that Tony Stark is the MCU's biggest villain and that it's he, not Steve Rogers, who's lost the plot in the movies following the first Avengers?
Now, don't get me wrong, RDJ is a delight and I do actually like Tony on the whole. I'm just not willing to overlook the fact that he went from being someone who was on the right path and then fell from it to become an even more gigantic asshole than he was to begin with. It's a disservice to the character and the actor who portrays him, and it started right here in Iron Man 3.
Take your iconoclasm and please put it back up your rectum where you got it from.
The other problem is in the fact that the MCU is interconnected. Now, I am aware that other heroes do not generally show up just out of the blue in the pages of another hero's comic (usually). However, there is always a great deal of inter-connectivity between the heroes of the 616 Marvel universe. Spider-Man once often had the likes of the Fantastic Four and Doctor Strange appear in his comics on a semi-frequent basis, The Avengers touch on just about every segment of the Marvel universe at one point or another, the X-Men basically have enough members and various teams spun-off from them to have a mythos all their own and completely independent on the rest of the Marvel universe (which FOX has been enjoying for a number of years), and so on.
With The Avengers being the film proceeding this, it brings up a great deal of trouble for trying to explain why nobody shows up to help Tony. Not necessarily the attack on his home, but that combined with the later incident where the President of the United States got kidnapped should have seen Captain America get involved, or at least S.H.I.E.L.D. in some capacity. At least some throwaway line about why they can't be there, even Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. bothered to give us that...even if it was complete BS.
Mind you, I also have this same problem with both Winter Soldier and Thor: The Dark World, but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.
It doesn't have the excuse that the Guardians of the Galaxy movies have, being halfway across the galaxy and the Earth-bound heroes having no way to get to where they are. If you go through the trouble of having a broad, interconnected universe and then don't do anything with it, what was the point of having it all interconnected at all?
Oh, right. To hell with logic, we got money to make! Cha-ching!
4. Some things I actually like
....
...yeah, no. I got nothing. The film is a huge dumpster fire that started the path that ruined Tony Stark as a relatable character for me in the MCU. The fact that anyone cheers for him or wants to see him succeed after this point is truly confusing for me.
There's no AC/DC, the film barely has any Iron Man in it, the villain's plan is stupid and convoluted and Guy Pierce really is the textbook example of a villain who isn't Loki in the MCU - ultimately forgettable.
5. Conclusion
Iron Man 3 is a very polarizing film. The general audiences didn't have a general consensus, all reactions to it being anywhere from loved to loathe. I'm pretty sure my reaction is clear.
It sucks!
And I hope if you're one of those people who does like it that you'll now understand why, while I respect your opinion, you're stupid and wrong.
After so many good films in the MCU, this was a severe misstep and I'm glad to see that it hasn't been repeated since (at the time of this writing). With Infinity War looming in the future, I am cautiously optimistic. However, the shadow of this film still looms, however small, with a reminder that while all great trilogies come in threes - you aren't necessarily making a great trilogy.
Iron Man 3 is available from Marvel Entertainment wherever movies are sold.
For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.
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