Iron Man 3 blew up Tony’s suits, but can any big change really take in this mega franchise?
Film Features The Marvel Moment
Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 felt like a fitting cap on the trilogy of superhero movies starring Robert Downey Jr. as a guy slowly learning how to be a hero. Whether you think the film totally works, or you appreciate Black’s attempt at smuggling in an ersatz Lethal Weapon movie (the second act, in particular, gets extremely Riggs-and-Murtaugh during Tony Stark and James “Rhodey” Rhodes’ invasion of the Mandarin’s compound), the conclusion makes sense as a logical end point for the story of Stark, a man who went from caring only about himself to blowing up all his suits in a final display of commitment to his relationship, his emotional well-being, and, well, himself. Too bad the next film immediately walked it all back.
This isn’t to say the Marvel Cinematic Universe won’t let its characters evolve. Tony Stark, in particular, has the most transformative evolution in character across the entire three-phase map of the MCU’s first decade. By the start of Iron Man 3, Stark is dealing with PTSD, the result of his near-death experience saving the world in The Avengers. He suffers panic attacks at the mere mention of the events in New York, but thanks to the attack by the Mandarin, which strips him of essentially everything but his wits, Tony learns to stop needing the protective shell of his suits, which have become a high-powered symbol of his insecurities. So in the final battle against Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), Tony engages all his suits in the struggle while also realizing he’s been using them as a crutch. Cue the “Clean Slate Protocol”: A.I. assistant J.A.R.V.I.S. triggers a self-destruct program, blowing up all of the Iron Legion, creating a lovely Christmas fireworks display, and seemingly ending the billionaire’s tenure as a metal-suit-developing crimefighter.
Which is why it’s disappointing to see Avengers: Age Of Ultron more or less ignore that development. When it begins, we have a new Tony psychologically, but the destruction of the suits may as well have never happened, for all the impact it seems to have had on Stark’s participation with the Avengers. There may have been an interim period in which Steve Rogers had to convince Tony to rejoin the team, rebuild some suits, and fire up the Avengers initiative full-time, but you wouldn’t know it as far as the narrative is concerned. This highlights a larger difficulty with the MCU and the juggling act it must perform when it comes to servicing the mammoth-sized team-up films in between installments of each hero’s individual franchise. The superhero sequels need things to progress and evolve, but not so much that characters can’t be easily reasserted into the middle of the next Earth-threatening disaster.
So huge developments will be walked back, or dismissed with a glib one-liner or wave of the hand in the next film, to prevent anything too problematic from causing friction in another story. It’s arguably why Captain America: Civil War was basically just another Avengers movie—it helped smooth continuity between the previous films and the still-to-come Infinity War. (Although Civil War hedged its bets even within the film itself: The final voice message from Steve to Tony is basically an assurance that their falling-out isn’t such a big deal, and he’ll see him the next time the planet’s in peril.)
The suits in the final battle also serve another, nicely metaphoric purpose, too: They highlight just how wearying the big CGI-heavy final battles in so many of the MCU films really are. Whereas Iron Man 2’s conclusion ironically showcased the hollowness of these film-ending CGI slugfests by having its hero literally fight empty suits of interchangeable weaponry, Iron Man 3 shows how soulless those clashes really are, and nimbly suggests a better alternative: Blow them the hell up.
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If you want to get really cynical, Tony Stark having significant character development and status quo shakeups in his solo series only for all of it to get completely shat on by some other writer who just wants to make a big dumb crossover event, is actually peak Marvel Comics.
Imagine a comic book accurate version of Claremont era X-Men. That would be weirdly fun to watch.
Only if the movies had a narrator that seemed actively hate the characters on the story. I’m rereading all of X-Men right now and I swear some of the narration is “Okay enough about these dumbasses, let’s talk about whatever stupid shit these guys are doing.”
I miss that era of Marvel storytelling.
“Hey why don’t we take two pages out to randomly show you some stuff will be coming up in few issues time.”A bit like season three of Batman ‘66, where the end bit was the next villain Bats, Robin and Batgirl had to face.
You should watch the first couple of episodes of Doom Patrol.
But the angst! THE ANGST!!
I would settle for an accurate version of the Claremont era X-Men in the damn comic books.
*shudder*
I thought that is exaclty what X-Men 1 & 2 are. While they’re not literally faithful to Claremont’s stories, they are literarily/narratively faithful. Oh – and holy !@#$, is Days of Future Past hit almost the exact same notes as the original story (was that Claremont?), too. What a great movie that was.
So for the upcoming Dark Phoenix, they’ll let her live at the end, then instruct everyone to come back into the theater for a quick revision of the ending where they kill her off.
I wanna see the film version of continuity changing event like Crisis.
Days Of Future Past is probably the closest you will come to that.
Sorry, I don’t want X-Men movies. their continuity is to perfectly built to transition to television. It’s been why every X-Men movie struggles to succeed – their stories aren’t easy to turn into 3 acts, because Claremont embraced continuity so early, all the epic stories are so serialized. I’d much rather adopt a season/movie style – do a season of X-Men on their app or whatever, then have a summer “event movie” in the off season. They don’t have to be huge projects, I think the X-Men universe actually would benefit from some more low budget treatment.
Actually it’s more accurate to say that it’s more like an editorially mandated crossover.
if I remember correctly, after Black showed this to Whedon, Whedon looked at him and said “Well what do I do now?”
I guess his answer for Age of Ultron was just act like it didn’t happen!
Or, y’know, it’s the wood-chopping scene, where Tony explicitly says “We fight so we can end the fight, so we can go home.”
I’d argue it served as the undercurrent for why he created Ultron. He has an exchange with Dr. Cho at the start about wanting to retire and see his suits gather dust, and he justifies the creation of Ultron as being about creating a defence for the Earth so it would no longer need the Avengers…and then the movie ends with him stepping away from the Avengers again.Like it’s a retcon, but it’s more shifting the end of Iron Man 3 than ignoring it…it’s saying that rather than giving up outright on being Iron Man at the end of 3 he had one foot out the door and was trying to work out a way to get out completely while still feeling like the Earth is protected. (And while it wasn’t stated in the film, one of my head-canon’s has always been that the collapse of Shield is what made Stark come back, as that left the Earth without a line of defence and the film establishes that the Avengers have been dealing with the fallout of Shield’s collapse.)
“And while it wasn’t stated in the film, one of my head-canon’s has always been that the collapse of Shield is what made Stark come back”
That’s actual canon. It just wasn’t said out loud until Civil War when he’s talking about how Pepper broke up with him. “Few years ago, I almost lost her, so I trashed all my suits. Then, we had to muck up Hydra. And then Ultron, my fault. And then, and then, and then. I never stopped. Cause the truth is I don’t wanna stop.”
“I dunno, Joss. Maybe kill off one of the women in the story to motivate a male character? That’s your go-to, right?”
Buffy characters killed off (other than villains):
Buffy, but she was resurrected.
Kendra, but that motivated a female character (Buffy).
Angel, but he’s a man.
Buffy again, but she was resurrected again.
Tara, but that motivated a female character (Willow).
Anya, but that didn’t motivate anybody because it was the last episode.
Spike, but he’s a man AND it was the last episode.
Firefly characters killed off (other than villains):
Book, but he’s a man.
Wash, but he’s a man.
Mr. Universe, but he’s a man.
Um….Nandi, I guess? That motivated Mal, so there’s 1.
Dr. Horrible characters killed off:
Penny, motivating Horrible, so there’s 2. Avengers characters killed off (under Whedon, other than villains):
Coulson, but he’s a man.
Quicksilver, but he’s a man.
Much Ado About Nothing characters killed off:
Hero That was fake. SHIELD characters killed off (other than villains):
Victoria Hand, but that didn’t motivate anybody because they didn’t find out until they were already motivated.
Hartley, motivating Hunter, so there’s 3.
Trip, but he’s a man.
Gonzalez, but he’s a man.
Rosalind Price, motivating Coulson, so there’s 4.
Lincoln, but he’s a man.
Mace, but he’s a man.
Fitz, but he’s a man.
Coulson again, but he’s still a man. I haven’t seen Angel, Dollhouse, or Cabin in the Woods; does he do it a lot more in those?
You did forget Jenny Calendar from Buffy, whose death motivates Giles, but also motivates Buffy herself. I also wouldn’t credit Joss for much of Agents of SHIELD. Jed and Maurissa run that show, he basically just wrote and directed the pilot and then consulted on S1. I don’t know if he’s had any involvement since. If so, no one talks about it. Fred and Cordelia both die on Angel, and both of those do motivate men, but I’m not sure that’s their major purpose. Before that, we have Doyle, a man, dying in a way that motivates Cordelia. Wes does in the finale, motivating Illyria/Fred, so there’s some weird symmetry there. Lilah’s death doesn’t really motivate Wesley to do much that I can remember. On Dollhouse, Mellie is eventually killed, motivating Ballard. But Boyd also dies that episode, and Topher dies in the next. So there’s a pretty big gender balance to the deaths, and almost none of them follow the “fridging” pattern of a female character dying for the sole purpose of motivating a man. I was pretty upset by both Cordelia and Fred’s deaths, especially happening so closely in relation to one another and being so similar plot wise, but even they don’t really follow that pattern. Tara’s death is pretty uncomfortable for the dead lesbian trope, but that’s a different stereotype. Anya’s death was pointless, but it doesn’t motivate Xander to so much as cry, which is its own problem.
Oh, I forgot Summer Glau’s character in Dollhouse. She definitely dies to fuel Topher’s manpain. That’s probably the closest Joss ever got to fridging.
Yeah. Its similar to talking to people who are like “You know everyone is gonna come back at the end of End Game? Its so lame!”Its a comic book movie. Of course shit will reset to status quo. That is peak comics.
I follow Deadpool, and know this struggle well. “Well he’s going through some serious trauma over here, but they need him to be silly and quippy while he crosses over with this character over there.”
significant character development and status quo shakeups in his solo series only for all of it to get completely shat on by some other writer who just wants to make a big dumb crossover event Heh. Daniel Knauf (Carnivale) and his son wrote some issues of of Iron Man, and were not told a thing about some then-upcoming “event”, I think Civil War. As I recall Knauf said it wasn’t horrible, but if they’d known a bit in advance it might have helped shade the ending of their Iron Man arc to fit in with what the readers would later see Tony Stark do.
Or, for that matter, Thor spending pretty much all of Ragnarok learning that he doesn’t really need the hammer, and then the moment things go badly for him, he takes off to the ass-end of the universe to get another one.
IM3 was as empty a movie as Tony’s unoccupied shells. Tony learns to love himself! The Mandarin is a drunken Englishman! Killian devotes himself to an entire life of murderous villainy because one guy was rude to him! Tony blows up his suits, while we all know another Avengers movie is on the way.
As a Liverpool fan, I’d have chosen Trevor’s joy at the Reds scoring a goal.
Not that that would have been a particularly memorable one shot, but I don’t mind being biased in a completely pointless way.
I mean, it would have been nice to see Tony’s moment of relapse, but there’s been an ongoing push/pull with his dependencies, and it’s not especially surprising that the progress was only temporary- and AoU seems to be Tony attempting to automate the security blanket so he doesn’t need to wear it as a suit, which is really an even worse idea (if also a highly characteristic one.)
This movie got a lot a crap from the Mandarin twist, but people forget Mandarin always kinda sucked as a character. He had about one good story (Extremis).
The Mandarin twist was about the only thing saving this crapfest.
I agree, the whole thing felt much more real and believable, rather than relying on some mysterious organization spring up that had to be retconned in. And by real and believable, I mean the machinations, hijacking of technology, think tanks, and other ilk.
I dunno, I still appreciate the “Dad’s leave” bit.
Thing is they had been setting up The Ten Rings as a terrorist organisation for the first two movies, they had what seemed to be real goals and real power. For it all to be washed away with a “Hey that was all Killains doing” just felt off.
Between this film and the All Hail the King short, I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to think that the Ten Rings are a real terrorist group, and that Killian used their existence to his advantage when he created his Mandarin.
I’m not sure if I like that explanation better than the explanation of “Killian also invented/funded a terrorist army and let them loose on central Asia,” but the movies aren’t super interested in examining that question too closely.
Yeah i had heard of that one-shot. Are they considered canon though after the Venom one? Also there may have also been a Ten Rings agent in Ant-Man at the Yellowjacket presentation so the organisation may well still exist elsewhere. Iron Man 3 really didn’t do them any justice though.
Honestly, now that I think about it, I’m a little bummed that this might be the last we see of AIM.
The people want MODOK, damn it!
I’d love to see those yellow radiation suits AIM agents wear kicking about in the MCU.
Agents of SHIELD basically did MODOK with the Superior in season 4. He even said “…designed only for killing.”
Aww, that’s neat! Some day I might have to watch the rest of that show. It wasn’t convenient for me beyond the first season, but I’ve caught bits and pieces here and there. I have to say that I don’t love what they did with Hydra, and the Inhumans were always pretty boring, but it does seem like a pretty likable series.
You can watch it on the you tubes.
Venom is unrelated to the MCU. There are no Venom shorts. And yes, all the short films are canon.
There is no MCU Venom one-shot. There are only 5 one-shots:
—“The Consultant”, which is about Coulson setting up the stinger from Incredible Hulk
—“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer”, which is about Coulson stopping a robbery
—“Agent Carter”, which is about Agent Carter (this is the only one that could be considered non-canon, as it has contradictions with the Agent Carter TV series, but if you just change the date at the beginning it works out anyhow)
—“Item 47”, which is about a pair of robbers in the aftermath of Avengers 1
—“All Hail the King”, which is about Trevor Slattery & the Mandarin
Because you’re wrong. The Ten Rings was a real terrorist organization, Killian was just co-opting their name and iconography.
Not really, they even show in the movie the Killian just co-opted an existing organization and used their name to cover up the explosions.Then they made that abundantly clear in the Marvel short. What was dumb was not to incorporate them into the Netflix TV show. Tony needed to focus on more global and interstellar threats when Thanos came. The 10 Rings org should have been moved to Netflix like Hydra was moved to AOS.
I think it’s possible to do a good version of Mandarin that would work in modern day context for MCU.
Should Marvel ever get round to showing the real one (as confirmed in All Hail the King), then I’d like to see John Cho in the role. I’ve liked him since his one-and-done appearance in the original Charmed tv series.
Yes. The original character was problematic for various reasons, but I’m sure they could have successfully updated him if they’d given half a try. They basically threw out the concept for the Adrian twist. They could’ve thrown out a bunch (as they do regularly with these adapted characters) and still arrived somewhere closer (and recognizable) to his source material.
I feel like Iron Man 3 was the last time MCU tried anything ballsy and after that reaction to it, they pretty much just defaulted to giving the masses exactly what they wanted.
In a way, Winter Solider, GotG, Civil War, Infinity War, and Black Panther are all far less subversive films than Iron Man 3 was.
Winter Solider, GotG, Civil War, Infinity War, and Black Panther are all good. Some even better than IM3, but I agree. The Mandarin twist was maybe the boldest thing Marvel has done story-wise. IMO IM3 was a more searing indictment of the military industrial process than Winter Soldier was.
Nobody goes to Marvel movies for subversion. That’s what the DCU is for. Moody Superman? Well that subverted my expectations. Batman killin folks? Subversive. Casting Eisenberg as a twitchy Lex Luthor? Subversive AF. Also, the movies sucked, but hey, they sure were subversive. Subversion is overrated. Furthermore, there isn’t a hell of a lot subversive about a super hero deciding to stop being a superhero in the 3rd part of a trilogy. Say what you want about it’s execution, but when The Dark Knight Rises was over, Bruce Wayne was done with being Batman.
…but I don’t like moody Superman and Batman killing people? And while I think the Mark Zuckerberg take on Lex Luthor is an interesting one, it’s completely wrong for that film.
Why you gotta be a snide dickhead and insinuate I’m a butthurt Snyder fanboy just because I pointed out that a lot of the actively hyped up “risky” MCU films are still pretty safe overall.
I’m not. I’m saying nobody goes to Marvel movies for subversion, and that they have a long and proud tradition of explicitly avoiding subversion because they are maintaining an ecosystem of character and story arcs that have to survive multiple directors and phases with some semblance of continuity. That’s why Peter Parker is probably not going to be revealed as a Hydra sleeper agent as a means of plot twisting a dull movie. Saying “This Marvel movie isn’t subversive enough” is about as valid a critique as saying “It was fine, but I think there could have been a little more lacrosse in the movie.” They’re dealing in the familiar, and getting by with character development and fan service. For better or worse that’s who they are.
Also, you weren’t implying that JakeKakey is a Snyder fanboy, but using the Snyder movies to show that subversion is not a worthy end in itself.
Merely being subversive doesn’t make or break a film, but people do actively hype up the other Marvel films I mentioned as being subversive or otherwise daring in some way. And what legitimately bold storytelling risks do they take?
GotG touted “tHIs is SO Bold THE MAIN ChaRAcTEr is a talKIng RAcoooN”, like it wasn’t a light-hearted sci-fi comedy and a tenth entry into this ultra-sucessful billion dollar movie franchise. Also as if Fifth Element, Avatar, Men In Black, Serenity, Transformers or a dozen other mainstream sci-fi blockbusters never existed. That film was ALWAYS going to make its money back.
Winter Soldier is an excellent film, but it’s political message is far more actively neutered than it could have been. Instead of giving Cap a true “Are we the baddies?” realisation, the film is all too happy to blame everything on literal secret Nazis while also implictly implying SHIELD was basically fine up until the literal secret Nazis who ran it decided to implement Operation Sky Holocaust. It’s a toothless cop-out.
Civil War pays some bare lip service to the idea of The Sokovia Accords for about twenty minutes, then all of it goes out the window and turns into a clusterfuck the moment Bucky comes into the picture. The big philosphical slapfight of the film pretty much amounts to Captain America wanting to sort out the imminent crisis first, then deal with Bucky afterwards, with Iron Man wanting to do those exact same things in the opposite order. Oh and the events of Winter Soldier pretty much do not get brought up in this film.
Infinity War has the snap, but that loses the vast majority of its impact the moment you remember it’s only Part 1 of 2. Also, entirely expected. Although, on a structural level, it does juggle its 40 odd characters across seven different storylines remarkably well.
Black Panther and Captain Marvel are kind of up there with GotG in that, general pop culture discussion and vocal minority of haters aside, those films were pretty much guaranteeed to succeed. BP has slightly more of a case here for being genuinely subversive, as Captain Marvel was not only beaten to the punch by Wonder Woman, but also very cynically exploited “feminist empowerment” marketing despite featuring shockingly little of the aforementioned in the film itself. And it still broke a billion, even if everyone already forgot about it a month later.
What I’m trying to get at is that, for better or worse, Shane Black made narrative choices that he knew would absolutely piss some people off (Tony without a suit and carrying out a low-tech investigation for 70% of the film, Mandarin bait and switch, focus on corporate conspiracies, war on terror paranoia criticism, focus on Tony’s psychology and PTSD etc.) and then one-hundred percent commited to them. I don’t believe any subsequent MCU films have taken or will take as many risks as that.
Obviously none of them have to take any risks, but that doesn’t invalidate my original description of Iron Man 3 as the last one to really do so.
Creating Guardians of the Galaxy isn’t subversive. It’s risky, but once we get it on the big screen the movie itself was a fairly standard super hero movie. Really it was just a microwaved Avengers with different characters coming together, only without giving them all their own stand alone movies. It just so happens that they picked an IP that is pretty out there. Having a talking Raccoon isn’t subversive, because the IP already used that. It’s just a faithful retelling of the story. The other movies you are describing aren’t subversive. They just aren’t. That’s not what subversion means. This doesn’t mean that Marvel movies are bad. There’s an art to telling traditional stories in a way that still feels fresh. But nobody walks out of a Marvel movie thinking “Holy shit. I can’t believe that happened.” That’s just not what they do. They’re not Game of Thrones. And they actively try to avoid plot twists. Even when it really wouldn’t hurt them to have a few mixed in. People wonder why they reveal the Hulk is in Thor: Ragnarok in the promos. It could have been a big reveal if they’d held off until people actually saw the movie. But they didn’t do that. They really don’t do plot twists. The Mandarin reveal was an exception to that rule, but in general they have made a point not to go that route. Marvel is not subversive.
I’d argue that GotG2 was plenty subversive. Far more so than the first, honestly, which is just a typical Marvel McGuffin movie with a great soundtrack.HYDRA-in-SHIELD was shown to have been up to all sorts of bad shit in the past 70 years, including murdering the Starks.Cap’s distrust of surrendering his decision-making to an outside force in CW might have something to do with the events of Winter Soldier…and the slapfight has to do with the fact that Tony and the rest had already signed the accords and surrendered their decision-making to an outside force, leaving them unable to back Cap up even if they know it’s the right thing to do.I’d also argue that Ant-Man and the Wasp is pretty subversive, as the super powered “enemy” just turns out to be someone who needs help.
On the other hand, a couple of lacrosse scenes might’ve made Thor 2 more enjoyable.
What “reaction,” haha?Its gross was closer to The Last Jedi than TLJ was to The Avengers.
Oh that film’s done extremely well for itself as far as box office goes, but going by the internet discussions, both then and now, it’s easily the most polarizing in the entire series. Bit of a proto-TLJ situation four years before the actual TLJ.
I can imagine a bunch of Disney suits generally preferring a film that everyone can agree is a “decent” 7/10, rather than one that oscillates between a 4 and 9 depending on whom you ask.
Ah, that’s fair.I think it’s easily the best Iron Man movie, but I was also a latecomer to the original (I actually saw Incredible Hulk first).
You know, I’d normally say that Hollywood suits would only really look at box office success. But considering how Marvel Studios has a better batting average than pretty much any franchise out there, maybe you’re right about how they correct course and take in fan reactions.
C’mon…Guardians was way ballsy at the time. Every other article about it was asking if a movie featuring a tree and talking raccoon could work.
Which was obviously a fucking stupid statement if you remembered that five years before that, an incredibly corny full CGI sci-fi film about people transferring their consciousness into Native American furry-smurfs from an alien world in order to go rebel against their human oppressors, went on to still remain the highest grossing movie of all time.
There’s been countless weirder blockbusters than GotG.
The existence of a successful weird movie doesn’t automatically de-risk making another weird movie. I can point to a whole host of other weird movies which failed. The Guardians of the Galaxy were not well-known characters when the movie came out and their story did not really overlap with any other MCU movies. Beyond the characters being strange, it was risky simply because they were the first truly unknown characters Marvel was throwing into a film. It also got greenlit in 2012 just after The Avengers came out and while every movie in Phase 1 did pretty well, some of the solo flicks back then didn’t make as much bank as we’re used to seeing the average Marvel movie make now.So yea, I think it was ballsy for Feige to decide that he thought highly enough of his still burgeoning franchise to trust that the movie could work.
I’d “argue” that Thor 3 was a tad bit out there, but I don’t disagree.
Love that film to bits, but they essentially just completely rebooted Thor into something more GotG-themed.
It was an excellent move, but I would consider it a pretty safe one considering how few people really cared about the Thor series at that point.
Uh, I would argue that Winter Soldier is pretty damn subversive, lol. The fallout in the movies that followed weren’t as much.
I think the biggest problem with trying to drive home some larger character development by destroying the suites and Tony “moving on” was that there was ZERO intention of having any of it stick. like the article said, the next time we see him it’s like it never happened. The only difference is Tony doesn’t have a glowing circle on his chest all the time. Also, 90% of IM3 sucked regardless.
IM3 is the only MCU that I’ve really loved.
Ragnarok kind of screws up that premise.
They make good villains out of lots of guys in the comics who never had a definitive classic story. And it’s not like they strictly adapted any one particular story in most cases with their more successful villain depictions, so that’s not a good excuse either.
While the Mandarin is a dated character, the Kingsley version we were initially presented with was a genuinely intimidating update.Not that that makes the twist bad. Intellectually it’s interesting and it’s one of the few genuine plot twists in the whole MCU. But if you’re going to pull that bait-and-switch, the real villain has to be at least as good as the fake one, and Killian fails that test hard.
The problem for me is that the last two Iron Man movies had Tony going up against corporate war profiteers who he knew he was in the right taking down. The trailers suggested that the Mandarin might be a villain who would challenge Tony’s sense of morality or personal philosophy, and I was really intrigued by that. And then the movie said, “Surprise, it’s another amoral corporate douchebag, just like the last two times!” and it was so disappointing.
Mandarin wasn’t in the original Extremis story. Hell, Killian commits suicide at the start of the story. Hall was actually behind everything.
That to me is another disappointment. ‘IM3′ could have had the first female villain in the MCU and really surprised people with Hall being absolutely cold and ruthless (and probably underestimated by Tony). But no, it’s the much more obvious Guy Pearce character.
And Hall would’ve been behind everything in the movie, too, if not for Ike Perlmutter being a raging sexist.
Mandarin wasn’t the villain of the Extremis storyline.
What disappointed me the most is that Kingsley’s performance as the Mandarin was so good that I was pretty sad that we didn’t get more of it. He was so perfectly menacing.
On the other hand…his performance as Trevor was even better!
Forget the Mandarin twist, the entire movie is full of plot holes and discontinuities. Why would he call out the Mandarin to come fight him any time and give out his home address and then hang our in his faulty non weaponized prototype? Why not have all the other suits ready to defend him like in the end? Why the hell is he trying to charge the suit with a car battery? how are like 5 other people able to wear and control the suits? Almost the entire movie is only half thought out.
Sorry, Dragon Seed is a pretty damned good Mandarin story. There’s great opportunity for an awesome character there, given a chance.
Love Iron Man 3. Arguably the first instance of proper directorial flair coming through the MCU and I thought the Mandarin stuff was quite clever. I can see why it’s divisive, but personally it’s one of my favourite entries.
I like Iron Man Three (as it was clunkily called on screen), it fit the Shane Black template of quippy fun and decent action.
Watched alongside Kiss Kiss Bang Bang makes it even better in my eyes.
I really like it too – it has a genuine tonal darkness to it that doesn’t feel forced, and the scenes of Stark and Happy coming up against the Extremis soldiers are genuinely some of the tensest action scenes in the MCU. (Stark blowing up that one with just an open gas line and dogtags in a microwave is easily one of his best scenes on film). But it’s also at least interested in the psychology of Tony Stark in a way The Avengers and Iron Man 2 clearly couldn’t be bothered being, which helps it through its weird tonal shifts and underwhelming final act.
I thought Thor had a little of that too, Branagh definitely used his classical shakespearian mentality to color a lot of the asgard stuff. But yes Iron man 3 is a Shane Black film first and foremost. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear if they were pulling for Mel Gibson to be Killian, if it wouldn’t cause a whole myriad of other problems..
“Branagh definitely used his classical shakespearian mentality to color a lot of the asgard stuff”
That’s pretty much what made Loki one of the MCUs highlights.
Hmm I’m not sure I can see Gibson playing the loser version of Killian from the New Year’s Eve prequel bit. Having said that, he’d have been a good villain for the main part of the film.RDj and Gibson sparring off of each other would have been good.
Air America 2 – this time with metal suits.
he did play a nebbishy character in the singing detective (with RDJ) a few years prior, thats actually what I was thinking of when I watched Iron Man 3 the first time.
Based on Pearce’s performance, I was guessing Black wanted to cast Val Kilmer in the role, but Kilmer was too out of shape to play the character as written.
Same for me. It’s the in the top-half of my own MCU ranking, and it’s easily my favorite Iron Man solo film. I thought the Mandarin twist was brilliant and hilarious, and I love the Shane Black-ness of it all (the RDJ voiceover, aforementioned Lethal Weapon vibe, funny dialogue, and Christmastime setting).
When I was a middle schooler, I had this thought. Wouldn’t it be cool if Bruce Wayne had to save the day as Bruce Wayne? Like he got stuck in a Die Hard or Speed situation and couldn’t get to his suit for some reason and he has to reveal himself as the bad ass he is or people die?Then Iron Man 3 happened. And the people said, “No, that’s not cool at all, please go back to the suit, thanks.” But I appreciate that Shane Black and I go to the same weird places, and for me at least, it was fun to see Tony Stark just being Tony Stark. There’s not the same threat of discovery as the Bruce Wayne scenario, we all know his deal, but still fun.
Seeing him having to sort stuff out as Tony was really neat, and I kind of wish the movie didn’t feel the need to have the obligatory big CGI fight at the end because the best bits are when he’s stranded in the small town with the kid.
Of course, the problem with that Bruce Wayne story is Batman is so perfect, that he would have a stash of gadgets and gear already in place in whatever building he was in.I do like that idea, though. Like the beginning of Arkham City, you are Bruce Wayne during the opening act.
MacGuyver Tony is an awesome Tony. Really enjoyed that sequence. And there is PLENTY suit actionAso, that’s the reason why that scene in The Dark Knight where Joker shows up at the party and Bruce has this badass moment where he calmly disarms one of the thugs and disassembles his weapon while in civvies, as he walks off to get suited up, is one of my favourites from that film.
I love it, too, because of what an 80’s buddy action film homage it is. I really love the middle stretch where Tony has to get by without his suit.I’m actually not that big a fan of the Mandarin twist, and the Extremis henchmen are a little generic at times (but that actually works within the 80s action film millieu). The rest of the film is very fun, though.
Iron Man 3 is the best of the IM series. I understand why it might not be someone’s favorite, but I don’t really understand the ire it got beyond maybe what they did with the Mandarin. (The Mandarin in Iron Man 3 is a far better use of the character than if they had played the character straight).
It also helps that Ben Kingsley is fantastic in that role.
And youuu’ll nevurrr see me comingggg…
I frequently cite the Air Force One rescue sequence of Iron Man 3 as one of the best superhero moments on film.
The hero is given a problem and a time limit. He (and we) are explicitly told that it’s literally impossible for him to succeed and to save everyone. And then, using his unique gifts, he saves them all anyway.
Even if I didn’t love the rest of the film deconstructing Tony Stark to really see what makes him a hero, or delivering a genuine unexpected twist with the Mandarin, or how it managed to be fun and adventurous without being goofy or losing the dread associated with the villains and their plan – and I did love all of those things – I’d still love this movie just for that sequence.
And that’s just one of MANY really creative action scenes. In fact, this movie gave us the highest number of creative and well-realized Iron Man action sequences of any MCU film. I mean, the whole escape scene from Killian’s castle? Come on!
Great point! Tony’s shootout with some goons while wearing just a mismatched boot and gauntlet? Escaping the Extremis hench-lady with an exploding microwave?
And while the trailer spoiled the surprise, the appearance of the automated, Jarvis-controlled Iron Man suits was definitely a “Marvel moment.”
I am admittedly completely in the tank for Shane Black as a writer/director but it was my favorite stand alone Marvel movie up until the recent run of Ragnorak/Homecoming/Black Panther, and the part where he’s hanging out with the kid in the middle of nowhere without his suit is still my favorite stretch of any of them. The way they handled the Mandarin was also a great way to get around a very silly and problematic character.
The only Iron Man movie I liked. This makes me an MCU social pariah. I also thought Black Panther was overrated.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The best Iron Man movie is The Avengers.
You misspelled Civil War.
The movie is deeply flawed but I enjoyed it. My biggest criticism was the end not being used to hint at Age of Ultron in some way, however that may be due to a lack of communication / maybe AoU wasn’t even planned yet.Just something to hint at the Iron Legion would’ve been nice.
I mean, I think the movie does plenty to hint at the Iron Legion. Tony has built a huge number of suits that can run on autopilot. He “quits” at the end, but he relapses back into that idea between 3 and AoU
Fair enough. The end hints that he cannot put a thing down, which Civil War brings up and addresses. I guess I saw the ending hinting at him working on another suit for himself and not the Iron Legion.Really Agents of SHIELD was the more appropriate place to hint at the Iron Legion.
Perhaps a post-credits scene of him working on something, with Pepper being slightly aghast that he’s already making new suits, and him going “Honey, no, never again, it’s not a suit, I promise. It’s something bigger, something… better.”Which you could play as a happy ending, him having learned his lesson and redirecting his energies towards something “better”… but which the subsequent film reveals was actually Ultron, and therefore NOT “better” at all. So you get the best of both worlds, a “happy” ending that also, retroactively, comes to be seen as something different.
Either that or just a post credit scene of him lying in bed awake, getting up and going to his lab. Various screens show a “mass produced” Iron Man drone model and a zoom in on “PROJECT: ULTRON” with Battle of NY review footage running nearby.
The scene with him talking to Banner was funny and that could have been the mid-credit scene, but then a very end-credit scene like you describe would have made sense.
“It’s not a suit, I promise. It’s an Unmanned Legionaire directly connected to a Tactical Response Network.”
Starts typing… “UL/TRN”
Everyone misses the point about this movie. Tony doesn’t destroy his suits because he no longer wants them. He says he is Iron Man. The next suits we see are different. Tony tinkers with them. Makes them safer and builds the Iron Legion. He no longer powers them with his heart. He makes them external to him. He is trying to build a world that doesn’t need him at the beginning of Age of Ultron. His destruction of the suits was always symbolic. And he’s a builder that has no affection for the specific very expensive suits. The fireworks was a gift for Pepper. A way to show her how he’s changed.
Tony is an unusual MCU character in that his character arc arguably makes more sense if you ignore his own sequels; his appearances in team movies and in other people’s end up being more essential to his character evolution.Iron Man 3 is an especially rare bird in that despite following up on The Avengers, it basically has no connection to anything else happening in the MCU going forward.
I liked Iron Man 3. I liked the Mandarin twist because it did show a willingness to still put some interesting twists on classic characters, and I wish they followed up with the thread on the one-shot that implied not only was there a Mandarin, but he was pretty pissed off. I think they could have done a lot with the 10 rings, and tied it into tech, and maybe that he builds something to counter Iron Man. The Extremis stuff was cool, but I think they could have been its own movie, especially as Tony was dealing with his PTSD and reckoning his previous life. I hated that he blew up his suits, and how this kicked off the “We really didn’t have a plan past Avengers” phase of the MCU. Some of the bending to get around the “why didn’t he call in his Avenger friends” was a little painful.
I’m tired of the criticisms from this era of why these guys didn’t call their new Avengers friends to help out in the solo movies.Iron Man 3- Tony is going through PTSD from the last time he teamed up with those guys and has impaired decision making through tthis film. Plus, Thor doesn’t exactly have a cellphone.Winter Soldier- Cap gets caught up in a huge conspiracy where he doesn’t know who to trust. Plus, Thor doesn’t exactly have a cellphone.Dark World- Thor is an Asgardian god who has been doing this alone for 1500 years. There’s a reason he doesn’t have a cellphone.
Summed up perfectly in Doctor Strange I might add:“You could have sent me an electronic message. It’s called an E-Mail?”“….do you even have a computer?”“No what for?”
I want to make it clear: I’m not criticizing the “They didn’t call the Avengers every movie.” I’m criticizing the reactions of the movies to the fact that the Avengers existed, and the fact that they didn’t know what to do with it while they were making the movies.
And that reason is, every time he finishes a call, he announces, “What a marvelous contraption. Another!” and then smashes it on the ground.
And both WS and IM3 take place in literal days.
Plus, Thor doesn’t exactly have a cellphone.
Uhm…. they could have sent a raven.
Plus, Iron Man and Captain America don’t exactly have ravens.
I always thought that having Iron Man go up against someone with actual magic rings could be cool. His tech is suddenly not good enough because he’s facing someone whose “tech” doesn’t need to follow the rules of physics.
They could’ve easily solved the plot incongruity by having Tony sit out the fight with Hydra as an observer at the beginning of AoU. Once the Avengers secured the base, he comes in to look at the tech and Wanda hexes him, then continue the movie as is with just the added wrinkle that he is suiting up because of how badly he screwed up with Ultron. He basically quits again at the end of AoU anyway. I liked that they addressed this plot point in Civil War nicely with the Tony-Steve conversation re: Pepper, I wonder if because they noticed fan confusion.
Why couldn’t Joss think of that?
He needed that dumb shot of them all going through the forest.
Iron Man 3 is one of my favorites in the whole MCU, I think. It’s just… so fun? It has so much fun with being a superhero movie, with being an Iron Man movie, and that all shines through. Plus, the end credits (not the end credits SCENES, but the actual end credits) are the best in the entire MCU and you can fight me on that. Can You Dig It is a fucking AMAZING song.Also – I think it’s possible to reconcile the character arc resolution at the end of this movie with where we see Tony a few years later – in this, while he clearly has a contingency plan set up with Jarvis controlling his myriad as suits, I think it’s clear that it’s just that, a contingency. He has every intention of USING these suits, or continuously making more of them, to combat every possible disaster scenario. The end of Iron Man 3 is him coming to terms with his own personal trauma at the end of The Avengers and shedding his shell so to speak, but only on a personal level – I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that rather than cure him of any mental illness or paranoia, the further films posit that he just swapped out concern for his own well being with concern for EVERYONE’S well being. And his solution was to essentially contract out the Avenging to the Iron Legion and, eventually, Ultron. I don’t think it’s perfect by any means, and I definitely see the franchise struggles in cases like this or the backpedeling of Thor’s character development between Ragnarok and Infinity War (which is much more egregious in my eyes), but I don’t think the Tony we see in Iron Man 3 is completely incompatible with the Tony we see in Ultron.
We need Ironman 4 !!!!!
I do really like this movie, but it has some huge black marks, most of all Tony publicly giving the Mandarin his home address with no actual plan of what to do if he’s actually taken up on it, not even getting Pepper to safety. I’m also really uneasy with the whole thing where hero soldiers who get a horrible maiming injury are automatically turned evil by it. And of course, this is one of the movies where Shane Black gave a small role to his asshole pedophile friend before he finally got called on it with The Predator. I have no idea who he is in the movie, and I don’t really want to.Oh, and the twist with the Mandarin is awesome. The character has always sucked and has always been horribly racist, so this was a great way to avoid all that. And if everyone can happily ignore how the first movie portrays SHIELD as a brand new organization, why can’t they just also do it with the Ten Rings stuff?
Tony giving Mandarin his home address with no actual plan is…kind of the point. Guy is going through a mental breakdown and not making smart decisions at all.
I was listening to the Blank Check Patreon commentary for this movie last week (reeeeeal nerdy shit), and they were commenting how this scene was shown at ComiCon, and it seems like this badass “come and get me” moment. But in the context of the movie, it’s a freaking meltdown. He breaks someone’s phone and nearly drives his car through a crowd of people; it’s supposed to be the opposite of heroic.
Wouldn’t the super-famous Tony Stark’s address be pretty easy to figure out any way. It wasn’t a top secret lair, it was a mansion on the coast.What made little sense to me is if he was able to remote pilot the suit, and he’s got PTSD… why would he ever suit up himself again?
Agreed on the address – the foolishness there was Tony issuing the challenge, not the address itself.On your second point, I think it’s because once he got the PTSD under better control, the massive ego glory-seeking part of him was able to unfurl its wings again. That’s the “I am Iron Man” thing – he doesn’t say “I am the guy who remotely pilots Iron Man.” He needs this.
Didnt you watch Iron Man 2???? Drones, like parrots, are BAD.
Drones yes. But not remote controlled. And it was Aladdin that taught me that parrots are bad.
Excellent point about about Parrots aside, aren’t all drones remote controlled?
I guess he is referring to the difference between having automated operations versus a human being having direct control, albeit remotely.
The soldiers are turned evil when they start exploding and Killian says “do what I order you to do or I won’t give you the only thing that will protect you from exploding.”
I really like Iron Man 3. The villain is definitely one of the most boring in the MCU, and that’s a competitive list, but pretty much everything else is really good.And while it seemed like Tony’s development throughout the film was ignored later, I largely disagree. Guy is going through a breakdown, he suffers through PTSD…and while it isn’t the most interesting thing to watch necessarily, people don’t change over night. It makes perfect sense that his dramatic quitting involved a relapse shortly after. And from there he keeps trying to quit…he made Ultron so he could quit, he wanted the Sokovia accords so he could quit, he’s still justifying his not quitting in Infinity War…but as he says in Civil War, he doesn’t really WANT to quit. In a large way, his role of Iron Man is the MCU’s depiction of Tony’s alcoholism.
I feel like the “THEY TOTALLY IGNORED IM3!!!” crowd skips the farm scene on every rewatch of AoU, because there’s not enough splosions.
I think there is something to be said for the argument that it was less of a planned arc and more of another writer coming up with a justification for keeping the character around but…I mean, it still ends up a totally valid arc regardless.
I don’t think that he’s trying to quit exactly, he’s just going to get a handle on his PTSD and par down to one suit. Which is why he builds the Iron Legion, so he can have a lot of suits without actually having a lot of suits. Obviously that’s a cop out, but that’s also why he’s on the outs with Pepper during Civil War.
Not to mention that, even after destroying all of the other suits, he can’t help but keep tinkering on his current one. Even going as far as to recreate the Arc Reactor on his chest in order to support the nano-suit.That’s always been part of who Tony is, it’s just his PTSD cranked it up to 11 and lead to him obsessively creating dozens of suits in a short span of time.
Bingo. Tony is never going to be a “normal” guy. He was always going to invent and tinker and create – he just realised at the end of IM3 that he didn’t need an army of suits, one for every possible eventuality he could think of, no matter how out there that eventuality might be. He just needed a practical number. Hulkbuster was designed with a specific purpose, for example, not out of PTSD-driven obsession.
I feel like you could say the stinger at the end of IM3 is the catalyst for his character in at least the two following movies he was in. His actions make further sense when you realize Tony has mental health concerns that he clearly doesn’t know how to address if he’s bringing them up with a physicist who also fights the army when he gets too mad and not someone with therapy experience or a mental health licensure.I’m not entirely on board with that characterization, either. I think superheroes are best when they tell people that they can do more than they think they can, and the implicit messaging of how Tony develops up to at least Civil War from this movie is basically “yeah you can be a hero but your good intentions may end up making a killer robot and imprisoning your friends. You might even try to straight up murder them if unpleasant things are brought up!”Not really IM3’s fault given the self actualization that happens in the movie and that the end scene was more funny than anything else, but the trauma thing was definitely something MCU picked up and ran with.
I’m still not sure how Tony’s central AoU thesis: “The mission, the why we fight, is so that we can end the fight. So that we can go home” contradicts the end of Iron Man 3.That line is very common, and always comes off as a facile way to score internet points from someone who hasn’t actually spent the time engaging with Tony’s arc.
The falling out between Tony and Steve stuck enough that Tony wasn’t ever able to actually bring himself to call Steve in Infinity War even when it would have been a super good idea.And I never took the end of IM3 to mean that he’d never be Iron Man again, just that he’d stop obsessively making a ton of cheap suits. He’s only ever had one at a time after that, and now knows that he’s what makes him the hero, not the suit, which he reiterates to Peter in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Nah, he was about to give in and call Steve in Infinity War until Ebony Maw showed up. He was like a second from pressing dial. I think the ending of IM3 was suppossed to be more than that. He got the arc reactor out of his chest, too, and the dialogue in Civil War doesn’t make sense unless he upset Pepper by starting up again after having stopped.
The real impact of Civil War ending was that, well, Steve needed to be called and Vision was on the lam with Wanda. They don’t break apart, Vision and Wanda are happily able to cuddle up in the Avenger’s compound, with several of the strongest heroes in the world in the same area…
I actually interpreted that Civil War moment as them overcorrecting. Since everyone had assumed that Tony had given up being Iron-Man and then come back without explanation they decided to offer one with that interpretation in mind, even if that hadn’t been the film’s original intent. Also, after rewatching Infinity War I realized that Tony obviously keeps the phone Steve gave him with him AT ALL TIMES.
He had more than one in Age of Ultron though. He had his regular suit and his Hulkbuster armor.
He had more than one in Age of Ultron though. He had his regular suit and his Hulkbuster armor.I got the feeling that the Hulkbuster armor was built in coordination with Banner, not just as a specialized armor that might come in handy some day.
I feel that doesn’t count. He clearly worked with Banner to develop that suit.
The Hulkbuster was built specifically to be a counter-measure to the Hulk. Similar to how they’ve developed the Lullaby by the time of AoU.
The point of the multiple suits in Iron Man 3 is that he’s afraid. Going into direct combat against the Hulk seems like the opposite of fear.
Yeah, i still think the ending had merit in that he really wanted to quit being Iron Man, going so far as creating the Ultron program to defend the world so he can be a guy and not a hero anymore. To think it would make sense for Stark to stop being Iron Man in more than one film is silly. For all their chances at dropping the ball, Marvel has a pretty decent track record at this point.
Let’s not forget that he ends Iron Man 3 with the words “I am Iron Man.”I think the “disconnect” between “Tony retires and blows up all his suits” and “Tony shows up in Age of Ultron like nothing ever happened” could have been easily mitigated by either: altering the dialogue at the end of Iron Man 3 a little to reveal that he understands that he doesn’t need to obsessively create suits, he just needs one, or altering some dialogue early in Ultron to reveal that, indeed, he had retired but came back after SHIELD collapsed because when does anyone ever get what they want.
“…every time I think I’m out, they pull me back in…”
Yeah, the fact that people routinely ignore the last bit of dialogue in the movie annoys me a lot. Even Pepper, in IM3, is not actually angry about Iron Man – she’s angry about obsessively creating suits.
You know, the more I think about it, the more I’m starting to think that the meme “The end of IM3 means Tony was giving up being Iron Man” is an fan retcon of the meaning. At the time, did we really think he wasn’t going to be Iron Man any more? Or did that belief become widespread because some fans misinterpreted it and repeated it until everyone believed it?
I’m not sure! It might have been during or after RDJ’s first contract renegotiations when it wasn’t obvious if he was returning.
Tonly could have literally said “I’m getting too old for this shit.”
(Although Civil War hedged its bets even within the film itself: The final voice message from Steve to Tony is basically an assurance that their falling-out isn’t such a big deal, and he’ll see him the next time the planet’s in peril.)
Let’s not pretend there wasn’t a lasting ramifications just because of a seemingly amicable voice message – it’s because of this fracturing that Thanos won in Infinity War. Instead of the Avengers all fighting together on a united front, they were splintered into two groups (or for some, sitting at home under house arrest), and that’s directly due to the rift Civil War caused.
Tony’s reaction to that voice one was far from “amicable”
I know it fits clumsily with Age of Ultron, but by gum I have a lot of love for IM3. The kid was good! Ben Kingsley was fun! And Extremised Pepper was quite a look.
It would have been awesome to keep Fireflower Pepper.
I’ll start by saying I actually enjoyed this movie overall. Shane Black writes good dialogue and some of the action sets were awesome, including the one with all of his suits in action. I do, however, think it was a mistake to not stay with the original plan of making Rebecca Hall’s character the main villain. But I’ve been on a soap box for a long time that Phase 2 lacks any cohesiveness whatsoever and part of the blame can be put on this movie. Knowing that Ultron was to be the ultimate bad guy in Avengers 2, why wouldn’t he show up here as an AI ally to Tony who shows signs of corruption vs being hastily introduced in Avengers 2? It’s pretty much a perfect situation to introduce him. Additionally, the whole Iron Man retiring is undone almost immediately in that movie too. We all knew Iron Man wasn’t really retiring, so why write that into the conclusion? It makes it feel more hollow in retrospect.
I like IM3 a lot, but I do fully agree with the criticism that it basically had no lasting impact since every subsequent movie essentially ignored it completely. The “Mandarin” swerve was fucking great, although it might not have been if a lesser actor than Ben Kingsley had been there.
since every subsequent movie essentially ignored it completely.
I made a stand alone reply that is probably still greyed out where I call out Extremis as the big forgotten hand-wave. After Vision accidentally takes out Rhodey in Civil War and he lawn darts into the ground damaging his spine, how hard would it have been to include a line about adapting Extremis to help regenerate his spine during this scene.
Although with Pepper apparently involved in Endgame to a reasonable degree, maybe she’ll reference it at last.
No matter how upsetting the end of Infinity War is, no MCU death will be as mournful as the Malibu Mansion getting destroyed.
Tragic waste of some beautiful architecture, but at least he rescued his pet robots.
Iron Man 3 was great, I hated Iron man 2 so much and this movie was such a nice step in the right direction.
I really, really did not like the Mandarin twist. Ben Kingsley’s performance was so theatrical that when the switch is made, the new villain just doesn’t mesure up. There was this weird bit where Stark defies the Mandarin to attack him, and then is caught by surprise when he actually does. And having him be able to control suits even when he’s not in them was not a good development; it took away a lot of urgency in the final battle.I disliked that film more than any other MCU films, because of the expectations I had for it.
That’s a weird thing about having stand-alones and team-ups – how much peril does a superhero have to be in before his friends help out?The Thor movies are of course an exception – when he’s off in the other Realms battling Dark Elves or his sister, it’s not as if an Avenger can suddenly arrive to assist.But in the other movies, when the hero faces a Major Crisis, where are the others? Is there a rubric to determine when you should ask for an assist, or are the other heroes conveniently absent? Spiderman did this the best – the issues he faced were pretty localized. But Iron Man facing Extremis soldiers, Cap facing a hidden faction in Shield AND automated Helicarriers…don’t these encounters require at least more hands on deck?There’s always a fine line. With any superhero movie, there’s a conflict. That conflict has to have stakes large enough to make the movie worthwhile, but small enough that other heroes are not needed. Or you’re left with some throwaway line as to why certain characters cannot be reached…Sometimes I wonder if Feige spots a certain discontinuity, and decides to shrug it off.
Blowing up the suits was never significant because they could come back just as easily as they came. When I see Tony Stark cranking out tons and tons of high tech weaponry I wonder why none of this ever gets to actually do good for people by changing everyday technology. All it really shows is Stark has no intention of ever letting things out of his control. As to salvaging an Asian Mandarin? That’s easy, the Mandarin is an academic “mandarin” who is acting on behalf of the US government to overthrow the People’s Republic of China. As usual, the methods are entirely villainous. (As is the goal I would argue, but in the MCU?)I thought the real moment in the Tony/Pepper relationship was her becoming an extremis? Or did I dream that?
In the voiceover at the end of the movie he mentions getting Pepper “sorted”, just before he also handwaves away his chest-installed arc reactor. It’s incredibly forgettable.
I enjoyed IM3, the humor and action were top notch. The plane passengers free fall rescue was amazing. Didn’t much like the suits being blown up at the end though. Its made no sense. In this movies world you have powerful forces of evil, the Earth was almost conquered by a alien invasion —and Tony just blows up the best defences they have. Great movie. Lousy nonsensical ending.
The lack of consequence really could have been an easy fix, too. Just keep Tony out of the first battle sequence in “Age of Ultron” and have him commanding the Iron Legion remotely. Then, when the Iron Legion is corrupted by Ultron, he has no choice but to don the suit again to fix his mistake. If Tony is going to go back on his word, we need to see it happen, see him make that choice, for it to matter.
I mean, there’s a lot of things I’d want to change to make “Age of Ultron” a better movie. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to hold any of it against THIS movie, which I unabashedly love.
Did this series skip The Avengers? Or is it not going strictly chronologically?
Here you go: https://film.avclub.com/marvel-s-grand-experiment-finally-coalesces-in-a-striki-1833902314?_ga=2.148473968.638359996.1554735030-2037051189.1554042488
Thanks! For some reason, that doesn’t show up in the list when I go to the Marvel Moment tag in the drop-down. Very odd.
The end of IM3 just establishes that Tony is at a place where he can move on from his trauma and he doesn’t “need” the suits to feel like a hero. His subsequent turn in Age of Ultron does not detract from that in any way. It does, however, establish Tony’s desire to stop avenging all together. This is evidenced by his motivation to create Ultron in the first place. He wants to automate his position and finally hang it up.
I just realized that somebody already made this point in the thread. Whoops.
I think the hand waving away of Extremis is the bigger issue. Tony fixes Extremis, fixes Pepper, fixes his own heart…and then. You’d think after Rhodey broke his spine in Civil War there would be at least a throw-away line about incorporating Extremis in his treatment plan along with the mechanical leg braces. I do still love the movie, though. I love when Tony was busting that kids balls. “Dad’s leave. No need to be a pussy about it.” “I can tell [you’re cold]. Because we’re connected.” [smirk…drives away]
I really never got the impression that Tony was done being Iron Man. Especially when the movie literally ends with him saying “I am Iron Man.”
Yeah, he blew up his armor, but that was more in keeping with the film’s larger theme of exploring who Tony is without his armor. The story is about him learning not to rely on it, not about him discarding it. (plus Tony replaces wears new armor in every movie he’s in anyway, so the audience should know by now that an exploding suit doesn’t mean the end of Iron Man unless Tony is in the suit at the time.)
“They highlight just how wearying the big CGI-heavy final battles in so many of the MCU films really are. Whereas Iron Man 2’s
conclusion ironically showcased the hollowness of these film-ending CGI
slugfests by having its hero literally fight empty suits of
interchangeable weaponry, Iron Man 3 shows how soulless those clashes really are, and nimbly suggests a better alternative”
… but not before showcasing that very same thing as well. The cartoonish violence and fall-apart billion dollar suits in the climax of this movie is what killed it for me. Not the Mandarin twist, and not (so much) the Killian character.
I think this showcases why Whedon was not the right choice to keep the franchise running forward, and why it’s good he left in the end. You can already see small signs of it in Avengers, where he makes a point of changing Captain’s costume and Iron Man’s arc reactor to more classic versions. I feel he just never wanted to continue using versions of the characters other than the ones he had in mind.
This was the very first MCU movie I ever saw.
I thought the destruction of the suits fit well with the lead-in to Ultron. He got rid of the suits because he didn’t want the Avengers to be the ones putting their lives on the line.That drove his desire to build the drones and Ultron, and why he ended up siding with the Accords after being confronted with the consequences of his actions as an Avenger.And just because he got rid of all of those suits, he wasn’t going to get rid of *his* suit. And that also follows into Ultron, where he quits the Avengers and leaves it in the hands of Steve and Nat.But he was never going to stop tinkering with his own suit and his tech. And he wasn’t going to stop helping create new tech once new heroes starting rising up. It’s what lead to him building Peter’s suit. As he blamed himself for Parker getting involved, so wanted to make sure that if he couldn’t stop him…he could at least keep him from getting himself killed.
IM3 was probably the most disappointed I’ve ever been with a movie.
I’ll always go to bat for this movie, it still remains one of the best. I think the ending is a little misread, he’s not giving up. The ending actually plays directly into Age of Ultron, he wants to make Ultron so he doesn’t have to be Iron Man anymore, so that they all don’t have to avenge forever, that seems like a pretty direct consequence.
Iron Man 3 is the only Marvel film I genuinely dislike.
Fire-breathing bad guys? Lame. Blowing up all the suits? Lame. The Mandarin twist? Lame.
I don’t feel that Avengers 2 walked back Stark’s character development. If anything, the notion of him having the automated armors was an outgrowth of him deciding he didn’t need to always be there to be Iron Man. He got rid of his crutch but just fed his savior complex in the process.
Bruce was right to be bored…
It’s incredible how much casting, production, and outright glee went into the All Hail The King one-shot with a very restricted release. Prior to GOTG it was the MCU highwater mark for beautiful insanity. Ben Kingsley having a ball and drinking shots with a monkey in a ushanka. CAGED HEAT!
I completely forgot that Sam Rockwell came back to play Justin Hammer one last time in this. That was probably the best of the One Shots, with the possible exception being the Agent Carter one.
I’ll be honest, Iron Man 3 is probably my least favorite MCU film so far, though Captain Marvel gave it a run for its money. I know everyone shits on Iron Man 2 and Thor 2, but I actually like those films. While 3 has some moments I like, it just never seems to come together as well as it should. It doesn’t help that Fake!Mandarin was a more enjoyable Big Bad than Real-ish!Mandarin. Also, I didn’t believe for a second Tony was gonna hang his armor up. Iron Man was the figurehead for the MCU during this time, so him retiring and not showing up in any more Avengers films was laughable even back then.
My basic issue with the Mandarin twist is that the MCU series had been notoriously ambivalent about their lack of good villains (most names were tied up with Fantastic Four/Spiderman/X-Men) so why waste one of their relatively well known ones. Plus they had been building up ten rings from the first film as a terrorist organization so i was hoping to actually see 10 alien rings on the actual Mandarin. He was always specifically tied to Iron Man so i doubt they will ever have a chance to re-do his storyline but i hope Marvel decides to incorporate the 10 rings into their universe at some point. Killian Aldrich wasn’t a bad villain but he isn’t Mandarin and I was hyped for a Mandarin showdown.
I must be one of two people who didn’t interpret that moment as him giving up being Iron Man, especially when he says “I am Iron Man” right afterwards.Really enjoyed this film though. Had started to doubt after all the backlash it has gotten over the years, but my recent MCU Rewatch cemented it. Still think the twist could have been handled better but it still somehow works
It’s a controversial opinion, but ‘Iron Man 3′ is right at the bottom of the MCU for me. (‘Doctor Strange’ has an asterisk next to it because I haven’t seen it.) And it’s not just the Mandarin twist, although that is a whole nest of plot holes in one. (Why hire an unreliable drug-addict of an actor whose face could be recognised to play your terrorist?) There’s so much I dislike about this film. The opening voiceover – a feature I’m glad that almost all other Marvel movies has avoided – that amongst other things mentions the story is taking place in Bern, 1999 seconds before the words “Bern, 1999″ appear on screen. The annoying kid-sidekick sequence that drags down the whole middle of the movie. Ridiculous plot points like the fact that apparently just anyone can step into Rhodey’s armour and pilot it. A mind-numbing battle between faceless goons and empty CGI suits that has no tension. The need to wrap up everything at the end super quickly so that Pepper’s plight is wrapped up with, “Oh, and I cured Pepper”. The fact that the fake villain is replaced with someone who’s just a retread of the villains from the last two films. (A weapons dealer with a grudge against Tony, you say? You mean Obediah Stane? Or Justin Hammer?) It’s just one bad choice after another.All that said, I did like Tony having to go low-tech and use a bunch of improvised gadgets for his assault on the Mandarin compound. It would be my choice for the Marvel Moment, in fact.
In the minority here but Iron Man 3 may be the worst MCU movie.So much could be said about what’s wrong from the uneven tone, the under utilization of the Extremis storyline, Tony curing himself so randomnly out of nowhere,and of course the treatment of the Mandarin. That choice itself was an insult to original fans and also general fans as it robbed the movie of the truly threatening anatagonist promised in the trailers. Age of Ultron committed the same sin to a lesser extent.But the true flaw of the movie is that it takes away the importance of the suit. The first film established how special the suit was in tandem with Tony’s natural skills. He needed that one suit to make a difference. Now he can control the suit without being in it and then control an army of suits at once. So Tony could literally sit in a room dictating the action, taking away all tension.
Tony doesn’t quit being Iron Man at the end of the movie. He blows up all his extra suits as a symbolic way of abandoning the anxiety & paranoia that had led him to create them— i.e., his overall personal arc for the movie.Why are so many of these Marvel Moments entries filled with either outright errors or least-charitable-readings of each film?