Iron Man 3
Apr. 25th, 2013 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hilsBe warned there will be all the spoilers under this cut. All of them
It’s taken me some time to fully wrap my head around what I think about Iron Man 3 and to be honest I’m still processing some of it. But here we go. I am going to attempt to put my thoughts, feelings and questions into some sort of coherent post.
I’ll start with a question. Is this going to be the last Iron Man solo movie? There was an air of finality to it at the end that made me think possibly from now on we’ll only be seeing Tony in Avengers related movies or possibly as a cameo in some of the other solo movies.
Okay, let’s look at the movie. I’ll be honest and say it left me with mixed feelings. But I felt the same way about Iron Man 2 for the longest time and I love it now so I’m not saying my opinion won’t change down the road.
So, we start with a flashback. As soon as the text said they were in Bern I knew we were going to have a little flash of Yinsen and the movie didn’t disappoint. It’s nice that they included that little nod to the first movie and I’m sure I wasn’t the only fan made happy by that.
With Tony narrating we find out that the smallest action can have consequences as we see him true to his old ways and acting like a dick. From the start we know this is going to come back and bite him so part of the interest in this movie is seeing how it happens.
Flash forward to present day and Tony can now control his suits remotely. I may have missed it but I don’t think they really fully explained how this is possible. I think it’s just one of those ‘Tony is really smart and this is just a natural progression’ sort of thing. We also find out that since New York he hasn’t seen sleeping and that he’s also suffering from PTSD which manifests itself in the form of panic attacks when people mention New York. Interesting aside but from what I recall the only people to trigger panic attacks in Tony during the movie are children. Once in the diner with Rhodey and twice when he’s talking to Harley.
I should also mention that it’s Christmas since that gets mentioned A LOT. I don’t know if there was a delay in releasing the moving and it was originally intended for a Christmas release but it was more than a little weird to keep having Christmas mentioned in April.
So, Pepper gets a visit from Aldrich Killian who apparently used to work with Pepper and kept asking her out (not sure when this occurred as it was my impression that Pepper had worked for Tony forever). Co-incidentally he’s also the nerdy dude that Tony met in Bern who he left standing on a roof in the snow as part of a dickish prank. Killian runs AIM which, for anyone who has read the comics or seen the cartoons, has bad guy written all over it.
At this point we find out that Tony and Pepper’s relationship isn’t all sunshine and puppies and he confides in her that he hasn’t been able to sleep since New York and that all he wants to do is protect her. Unfortunately this manifests itself in his nightmares when he calls the suit to their bedroom subconsciously.
Meanwhile Happy is tailing one of Killian’s men and is caught in an explosion caused by a man actually blowing up. Fuelled by anger and lack of sleep Tony publicly vows revenge and gives out his address to The Mandarin.
I think we can all agree that providing your home address to a known terrorist is not the smartest idea and it’s not long before several helicopters descend on Tony’s house.
Time for a confession. The most emotional response I had to this movie was when Tony’s robots wound up in the ocean. It sounds silly, I know, but those robots are characters in the Iron Man movies and I love them. It was like watching Tony’s children die. I’m getting teary just thinking about it now.
Through my tears there’s a cool scene where Tony calls the armour to Pepper to protect her and she, in turn, shields him from falling debris.
Again, though, this scene add to that finality feel I was talking about at the start of this long and rambling post. In the space of a few minutes Tony loses the home he’s had since the first Iron Man movie, and the robots he’s had since he built them as a teen. Slowly but surely everything is being stripped away from him.
Tony starts following the leads left by Happy and finds himself in a small town where he strikes up a friendship with a boy named Harley. This is one of the things I really loved about this movie. I’ve always had it in my head that Tony would be good with kids. Not in the traditional sense but his own upbringing (being basically left to his own devices because his parents never had time for him) means that he talks to kids like they are adults which I think is what most kids want.
Tony tracks The Mandarin to his mansion and here we have the best plot twist I’ve seen in a long time. I almost don’t want to talk about it in case someone has wandered in here without reading all the spoiler warnings. Let’s just say that Ben Kingsley is fabulous and all my questions about his portrayal of The Mandarin were answered brilliantly in this scene.
And then comes one of the other things I loved about this movie. Tony and Rhodey teaming up to take down the bad guys. It was perfect. Lots of banter and snark and badassery. It was perfect.
Most of the things I wasn’t so keen on occurred towards the end of the movie. It gets a bit too similar to the Terminator movies at one point with melting metal, people walking through fire etc.
And I’m not sure if we were supposed to genuinely believe that Pepper had been killed but I didn’t buy it for a second so it wasn’t a surprise when she showed up and kicked ass (the ass kicking was pretty awesome though).
And, again with the finality but we end with Tony blowing up all his suits and having the shrapnel removed him his chest so he no longer needs the arc reactor.
This was the biggest problem for me. If fixing the issue with his heart was a case of just having surgery WHY DIDN’T HE DO THAT SOONER? It sort of renders the other movies a bit redundant, especially the speech he gives to Bruce in Avengers about making the most of what has happened to him. It just really bothered me.
But, at least, we see Tony going back and retrieving his robots so at least the kiddies will be okay.
And the post credit scene had everyone in the cinema laughing. It was brilliant.
Overall I did like it. Like the previous movies there was a nice blend of action and comedy. I think the hospital scene in the end is what really brought it down for me and I’m hoping someone will have some really intelligent answer for that which I haven’t thought of.
I’ll be interested to see where we go from here. Will there be an Iron Man 4? Or is Avengers 2 the last we’ll see of Tony Stark in the MCU. Will Iron Man even be in Avengers 2? It’d be hard to imagine it without him but we’ll see I guess.
So, there we have my thoughts on Iron Man 3. Rambling and incoherent as they are. If you made it this far you deserve some sort of reward so go and have a cookie or something.
It’s taken me some time to fully wrap my head around what I think about Iron Man 3 and to be honest I’m still processing some of it. But here we go. I am going to attempt to put my thoughts, feelings and questions into some sort of coherent post.
I’ll start with a question. Is this going to be the last Iron Man solo movie? There was an air of finality to it at the end that made me think possibly from now on we’ll only be seeing Tony in Avengers related movies or possibly as a cameo in some of the other solo movies.
Okay, let’s look at the movie. I’ll be honest and say it left me with mixed feelings. But I felt the same way about Iron Man 2 for the longest time and I love it now so I’m not saying my opinion won’t change down the road.
So, we start with a flashback. As soon as the text said they were in Bern I knew we were going to have a little flash of Yinsen and the movie didn’t disappoint. It’s nice that they included that little nod to the first movie and I’m sure I wasn’t the only fan made happy by that.
With Tony narrating we find out that the smallest action can have consequences as we see him true to his old ways and acting like a dick. From the start we know this is going to come back and bite him so part of the interest in this movie is seeing how it happens.
Flash forward to present day and Tony can now control his suits remotely. I may have missed it but I don’t think they really fully explained how this is possible. I think it’s just one of those ‘Tony is really smart and this is just a natural progression’ sort of thing. We also find out that since New York he hasn’t seen sleeping and that he’s also suffering from PTSD which manifests itself in the form of panic attacks when people mention New York. Interesting aside but from what I recall the only people to trigger panic attacks in Tony during the movie are children. Once in the diner with Rhodey and twice when he’s talking to Harley.
I should also mention that it’s Christmas since that gets mentioned A LOT. I don’t know if there was a delay in releasing the moving and it was originally intended for a Christmas release but it was more than a little weird to keep having Christmas mentioned in April.
So, Pepper gets a visit from Aldrich Killian who apparently used to work with Pepper and kept asking her out (not sure when this occurred as it was my impression that Pepper had worked for Tony forever). Co-incidentally he’s also the nerdy dude that Tony met in Bern who he left standing on a roof in the snow as part of a dickish prank. Killian runs AIM which, for anyone who has read the comics or seen the cartoons, has bad guy written all over it.
At this point we find out that Tony and Pepper’s relationship isn’t all sunshine and puppies and he confides in her that he hasn’t been able to sleep since New York and that all he wants to do is protect her. Unfortunately this manifests itself in his nightmares when he calls the suit to their bedroom subconsciously.
Meanwhile Happy is tailing one of Killian’s men and is caught in an explosion caused by a man actually blowing up. Fuelled by anger and lack of sleep Tony publicly vows revenge and gives out his address to The Mandarin.
I think we can all agree that providing your home address to a known terrorist is not the smartest idea and it’s not long before several helicopters descend on Tony’s house.
Time for a confession. The most emotional response I had to this movie was when Tony’s robots wound up in the ocean. It sounds silly, I know, but those robots are characters in the Iron Man movies and I love them. It was like watching Tony’s children die. I’m getting teary just thinking about it now.
Through my tears there’s a cool scene where Tony calls the armour to Pepper to protect her and she, in turn, shields him from falling debris.
Again, though, this scene add to that finality feel I was talking about at the start of this long and rambling post. In the space of a few minutes Tony loses the home he’s had since the first Iron Man movie, and the robots he’s had since he built them as a teen. Slowly but surely everything is being stripped away from him.
Tony starts following the leads left by Happy and finds himself in a small town where he strikes up a friendship with a boy named Harley. This is one of the things I really loved about this movie. I’ve always had it in my head that Tony would be good with kids. Not in the traditional sense but his own upbringing (being basically left to his own devices because his parents never had time for him) means that he talks to kids like they are adults which I think is what most kids want.
Tony tracks The Mandarin to his mansion and here we have the best plot twist I’ve seen in a long time. I almost don’t want to talk about it in case someone has wandered in here without reading all the spoiler warnings. Let’s just say that Ben Kingsley is fabulous and all my questions about his portrayal of The Mandarin were answered brilliantly in this scene.
And then comes one of the other things I loved about this movie. Tony and Rhodey teaming up to take down the bad guys. It was perfect. Lots of banter and snark and badassery. It was perfect.
Most of the things I wasn’t so keen on occurred towards the end of the movie. It gets a bit too similar to the Terminator movies at one point with melting metal, people walking through fire etc.
And I’m not sure if we were supposed to genuinely believe that Pepper had been killed but I didn’t buy it for a second so it wasn’t a surprise when she showed up and kicked ass (the ass kicking was pretty awesome though).
And, again with the finality but we end with Tony blowing up all his suits and having the shrapnel removed him his chest so he no longer needs the arc reactor.
This was the biggest problem for me. If fixing the issue with his heart was a case of just having surgery WHY DIDN’T HE DO THAT SOONER? It sort of renders the other movies a bit redundant, especially the speech he gives to Bruce in Avengers about making the most of what has happened to him. It just really bothered me.
But, at least, we see Tony going back and retrieving his robots so at least the kiddies will be okay.
And the post credit scene had everyone in the cinema laughing. It was brilliant.
Overall I did like it. Like the previous movies there was a nice blend of action and comedy. I think the hospital scene in the end is what really brought it down for me and I’m hoping someone will have some really intelligent answer for that which I haven’t thought of.
I’ll be interested to see where we go from here. Will there be an Iron Man 4? Or is Avengers 2 the last we’ll see of Tony Stark in the MCU. Will Iron Man even be in Avengers 2? It’d be hard to imagine it without him but we’ll see I guess.
So, there we have my thoughts on Iron Man 3. Rambling and incoherent as they are. If you made it this far you deserve some sort of reward so go and have a cookie or something.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-25 09:25 pm (UTC)But the film as a whole? Loved it. The Mandarin was priceless, the end sequence brilliant, and Pepper and all the characters and everything was just great.
At the very end, it said that Tony Stark would be back, so I'm guessing he'll be in the second Avengers movie at the very least. Maybe he and Bruce can team up and do a spin-off together?
no subject
Date: 2013-05-03 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-03 10:33 pm (UTC)Loved all the snark between Tony/Rhodey and Tony/The Kid Who Will Always Just Be The Kid Even Though He Had A Name.
Kinda dug how they sort of looked at "big man in a suit of armor. Take that away and what do you have left?" - or however Cap said it. You have the mechanic left, the one who makes things in order to make things better. Forget the billionaire playboy philanthropist - it's all about the genius, doing genius things with common household stuff.
Happy loving Downton made me happy (heh). Although when I saw Lady Sybil again, it made me sad. (Thanks for those feels, IM3!)
And I may have nearly yelled "ScienceBros FTW!" at the screen at the end.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-06 04:47 am (UTC)I loved the movie and thought they did a nice job of tying up the trilogy. Doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see another Iron Man movie though.