Finally got around to seeing Iron Man 3 · 11:23pm Oct 17th, 2013
As soon as I heard they were making a third Iron Man film I just shrugged. The first Iron Man was great, the second one was like an OD, and The Avengers was like Iron Man 2.05 so all I could think about another dose of Tony Stark was, "Why?"
The first reviews came out and people were hailing it as better than The Avengers but I still was unconvinced and so when the family went to the theatre they all headed to see Robert Downey Jr. and I opted for Tom Cruise, God, and Jaime Lannister in "Oblivion". They told me it had it's problems but was still fun, and of course you couldn't avoid the spoilers about the arch reactor and the Mandarin. So when I finally sat down today to see it I didn't have high expectations, I was pretty much anticipating a mess maybe on par with Iron Man 2.
And still I wasn't prepared for this film.
I really cannot fathom how a film riding the high of The Avengers (which has it's own issues but is still a legitimate roaring good time) could be so impossibly unfocused, devoid of all true drama or emotion or message, and nothing happens.
Where to begin? But seriously, I can't even think of what frustrated me most in this film.
Ok, I'll start with what shocked me most: The Mandarin. You've heard everyone complain about this: they took one of Iron Man's most iconic villains, gave him a massive build up, and then made him a poor punchline. But what really felt insulting to me about the entire situation was that the film built the Mandarin as a blatant and unnervingly realistic mimicry of real-life terrorists that the public has had a very strong exposure to in the past decade. To put an audience through the emotions and anxiety such images and terminology (they mention by name actual terrorists) will most certainly provoke in them and then with no warning whatsoever turn around and basically tell them, "Ha, we had ya goin' there didn't we?" is utterly disrespectful and disregarding the feelings and mindset of your audience who all have in varying degrees experienced at some point the fear such very real people have wreaked upon this modern world.
It would be like showing a movie in Israel whose main antagonist was a Nazi, show footage of him committing atrocities, then in the last third of the movie revealing he was just a theatre actor with a drug problem who an unstable and petty scientist used to fulfill some megalomaniac fantasy he developed after a possible investor gave him a raincheck.
Which leads me to Guy Pearce. I just don't understand how such an hailed and accomplished actor would deliver a performance that Lifetime would reject as too smarmy, forced and transparently evil. His reveal, lit up like Ghost Rider crossed with one of the dragons from Game of Thrones, is so underwhelming and ridiculous it's offensive, especially as said above considering the buildup.
The next big issue I heard was Tony's removal of his arch reactor. I'd heard a lot of defense of this and I might (with the biggest emphasis possible on "MIGHT") understand the argument that arch reactor wasn't really what made him Iron Man etc, etc.
But according to this film--
--It makes no sense. Literally none.
There's no warning, no hints, no foreshadowing, just BAM arch out. Even in the voiceover (which was exceptionally irritating and unneeded) he states that the root of his problem was the "armor" which, if you've seen the first film, is completely separate from his armor and serves an entirely different purpose for his character personally and physically than the armor. So why remove the arch reactor, which in the first film was the symbol of his redemption from a vapid warmongering billionaire playboy to a genuinely repentant selfless and self-sacrificing hero, when he states more than once it's his "armor" that was his emotional/psychological crutch? And if in someway using the word "armor" was supposed to be some kind of metaphor for the arch reactor why then put so much emphasis on the armor, there is nothing done or talked about that somehow doesn't lead back somehow to a scene with Tony's armor flying at him (which looked stupider every single time it happen. And it happen A. LOT.) The arch reactor was never spoken of, glanced at, motioned to, there was not a single shot devoted to it until it was pulled from Tony's chest and then chucked into the sea along with all the character development that object stood for, so I personally consider it tossing out the entirety of the first film.
The rest of the film is just a very unengaging and speedy collection of scenes that feel disconnected and pointless because there is no emotion to hold them together and only the tiniest most microscopic threads that seemingly supposed to serve as "plot points" and "character development".
Ms. Paltrow is utterly spiritless at Pepper Potts, she looked wasted in every scene and she acts it. RDJ is basically running on autopilot so all his fast talking and witticisms fall flat and become just a constant drone in the back of your brain. I have no idea was Don Cheadle is doing here, he had no business being in Iron Man 2 and here he just is doing a repeat of his utter pointlessness and lack of presence in this franchise. The kid from Insidious has no purpose either but at least he isn't putting on that pseudo hustler personality they make kids do in movies these days to pass off as charming and precocious rather than gratingly bratty and unbearably obnoxious. He feels genuinely vulnerable and endearing for his brief and useless scenes, which is more than I can say for any of the other actors in this movie except for maybe Rebecca Hall who, despite having one of the worst death scenes in a superhero film since Talia's in The Dark Knight Rises, at least puts conviction into her performance and clearly is trying to inject her character's actions with as much reason and depth as the film will allow her, which isn't much at all.
The Extremis virus is a plot device that not only lends itself to some of the worst CGI I've seen in a modern action film but looks totally out of place with the tone and universe the film has set up. Also, does it make it's victims mad or something because it just looks like all these poor disabled veterans were infected and became inanely blood-thirsty puppets for Guy Pearce, or is the film suggesting these men and women who were irreparably damaged from putting their lives on the line for their country were just stupid, cruel and mindless drones to begin with? Because after the whole not-terrorist thing I wouldn't put it past them. Was this whole movie some bizarre commentary on American soldiers and Middle Eastern terrorism disguised as a Iron Man film? Because if so, it failed at that too.
Also, minor quibble, why do they show the President and his veep in this movie? Why do you need to state so clearly that this is some alternate universe and introduce archetypes that will be forgotten before their scene is even finished? It really just feels like they're forcing us into another universe rather than allowing us the tantalizing hopeful fantasy that maybe in the not so distant future this might end up happening.
But actually, after this movie, I suppose I have to thank them since that means none of this stupidity has or ever will happen in my lifetime.
To be honest the movie did have it's flaws, *cough* Mandarain *cough*
, but it was still a good movie
. My personal like of this movie, hell my only like, was the Mark 42 armor that thing kicked flank.
Wow I was not expecting this
and it's awesome.
Well, I'll be an honest man, I was very disappointed. Almost every point you have makes sense.
But...I'll admit, I liked the performances of Rebecca Hall and Ty Simpkins and the over the top performance of Guy Pearce. Extremis was handled here better then in the comic of it's origin. And it was cool to see. At times, not always. I like that Happy showed intelligence and I felt there was two missed opportunities with Maya: a movie-long redemption arc and a friendship between her and Pepper. I liked John Toll's cinematography as well as some funny dialogue and Ben Kingsley was awesome.
But it was still a disappointment. Shane Black did a great job on the Lethal Weapon movies. Iron Man 3 just wasn't the movie for him.
And I didn't feel it was a useless film because IT IS a good setup FOR a sequel if we weren't indulged with Tony Stark in The Avengers. Get a different writer and director (I vote Quentin Tarantino) and you could have gotten one heck of a kick-butt sequel.
1429235 I think it had the possibility to be really great, in fact I told my brother if at the very end instead of having Tony talking to Bruce they had some grainy footage that showed the Ben Kingsley saying something sinister into the camera like "You missed me" or something so it turned out he really was the Mandarin and this was all part of some grand chessmaster scheme that we'd have to wait until the next Iron Man or Avengers film or whatever to see
. That would have gone miles to redeem it.
1429310 True enough but you have to admit though that Mark 42 was a pretty cool idea.
1429310 THAT WOULD HAVE WORKED!
1429310 I won't say I hated the movie as much as you seem to have hated it, but you did touch on most of the problems I had with it. The Mandarin, the ARC Reactor being removed. I honestly hated that they tried to include the Iron Patriot. If you don't already know the comic origin behind that character I can go into further detail, but it was like the producers were all "Hey you guys remeber that thing we did in the comics that a lot of people hated? Let's put that in the movies." I also felt kinda meh about Pepper's big return and how she killed Killian. Is it wrong I feel she should have just died?
1429479 I actually don't know the story behind Iron Patriot, I really only know Iron Man from films I haven't gotten the chance to read any of his comics.
1429610 Well Iron Patriot wasn't just an Iron Man thing. It was Norman Osborn aka Spidey's Green Goblin. Don't ask. It got really weird and all the stuff happened that really shouldn't have. Anyway point is it wasn't very good so I found it weird they included it in the movies.
1429648 Oh my God, just those vague hints are enough to tell me I don't want to know anymore.
1429653 No you don't.