Just seen Iron Man 3 [OPEN SPOILERS]

Cafe Society
81

Great movie, better than 2. I’m actually sad that the Iron Man franchise appears to be over - they’re definitely my favorite super hero movie series. I hope he gets plenty of screen time in the following Avengers movies.

Enjoyed the cameo of Yinsen during the party - nice callback to Iron Man. And one thing that was really great - the trailers led you to believe that the scene where the suit grabs Pepper while they’re in bed is just a nightmare of Tony’s - but in the movie it’s what actually happens.

Stan Lee’s obligatory appearance was pretty funny as well.

Tony didn’t know there was a specific plot against the President until he got to Miami & talked to Trevor. Once he got free and rescued Rhodes, they did tell the VP everything based on Trevor’s vague description of “it’s got something to do with the Vice-President”, and assumed the VP would make sure the President was safe.

And as Alessan said, you only bring in the Hulk when there’s a target-rich environment of things for him to Smash, and there’s no other choice. And even that’s risky - remember how he punched out Thor during a brief pause in the fight against the Chitauri? Asking the Hulk to act as someone else’s bodyguard is bad idea.

“I don’t have the right temperament.”

82

So my thoughts on Iron Man III, spoilers ahead.

I thought that Guy Pierce looked a lot like Lee Evans’ character from There’s Something About Mary in the flashback scene.

I was surprised at what they did with Mandarin despite the fact that I knew something was coming though I didn’t know exactly what. It would have been nice if they could have done something a little more classic with the character, but that being said, what they did was hilarious. Ben Kingsley pulled it off, was really awesome with both parts, and is probably one of the few people who could have really pulled it off as well as he did.

Extremis – Eh. I did like that they had a high-tech weapon to fight against Iron Man with that didn’t have to be another suit of armor or derivative of it. They were a little inconsistent with it though. Breathing fire didn’t seem to fit quite right but then they dropped it anyway after the one time they did it, so whatev.

I liked seeing Pepper Potts in the armor and I also liked that she also saved Stark’s bacon at the end. It seems that too often in superhero movies, the hero has to save the damsel in distress who has nothing better to do but hang from a great height and have the villain put her in peril. I know they always talk about trying to do something else with the female characters but Iron Man 2 with Black Widow and Iron Man 3 with Pepper were the two that actually pulled it off. I wasn’t bothered by Stark’s narration at the end that “hey we fixed her,” it was shorthand, but the story was over and I thought that it worked as a part of everything being wrapped up.

I didn’t catch that it was Bruce Banner at the end. I should have and I could tell it was someone but I didn’t figure it out until I looked it up afterwords. My wife was a little thrown off when I told her because apparently she was expecting Bill Bixby. She was happy when I told her that the president was Death from Bill and Ted. Maybe we should rent Die Hard II so she can see William Sadler’s butt.

Altogether, I though it was a good movie and better than Iron Man 2 (I didn’t think Iron Man 2 was bad bad, but I do think it was a bit of a misstep). I thought the bit with the kid was fine, I thought the action scenes were cool and credible, the whole evil plot was a little convoluted and it wasn’t too hard to guess that Vice President Miguel Ferrer was in on it, but the plot did make enough sense for it to work in a movie (AIM is bad, they want to do bad things).

Did anyone else like that bit at the end where they should quick scenes from the 3 movies to the brassy music? I thought that was pretty awesome and I dug the tune – I may have to look it up.

Also, I took my 5 year old son to it and I thought it was OK for him. There are quite a few deaths and the movie itself is pretty long. He ended up getting fidgety about halfway through. He thought the Extremis troops were aliens because they were talking about aliens from the Avengers movies.

83

The “hey we fixed her” thing. I assume that means he completely fixed her back to the way she was, not that he simply fixed the dangerously unstable and might explode part.

After all, the latter is what he was trying to fix the first time and was sure he could do again.
One thing I wondered if I missed something. So he fixed himself as well. There wasn’t anything in this movie that showed him gaining that ability and so he could have done that at anytime. Instead it was just him growing up enough to be willing to separate himself from his Iron Man identity?

And I think it is a Cinema Rule that if the actor playing the Vice President is more famous than the actor playing the President, then a coup is in the works.

84

It may have been a subplot with the cardiac surgeon Yinsen introduced him to in the 1999 flashback, that got cut. And it may have been an expression of Tony’s monstrous ego as well - he doesn’t need to see a doctor to deal with the shrapnel in his chest - he fixed it himself. Though it does make you wonder why he didn’t have surgery in the second movie, when the arc reactor was killing him.

85

That was weird. I thought I was watching The A-Team all of a sudden. I expected to see Mr. T high-five someone in a freeze-frame.

86

The one thing I really found annoying was how suddenly in superhero movies everybody has goddamned superpowers. Okay, I’ll buy the Extremis cannon fodder running and jumping around like Captain A-fucking-merica out there… but Tony Stark is specifically NOT a super hero. He has super armor. When he’s not in his super armor he has no business jumping from catwalk to catwalk - that’s the whole point! Robert Downey Jr. is, what, in his mid-40’s? One assumes the character is of similar age - he works out, but come on. It’s ALWAYS less interesting that way. (See: Watchmen. See also: Missing the Point.)

87

Yeah, I kind of agree with you there. Tony’s in excellent shape, but he’s in excellent shape for a playboy CEO, not a superhero. I had the same suspension of disbelief problem (actually far worse, because it was a lot more blatant) in the latest Die Hard movie. I mean, yeah, McClane is supposed to be able to take punishment, but he’s even older than Tony and he doesn’t even have the benefit of a lot of high-tech methods to stay in shape. The man would be dead.

88

I meant to mention how much I liked the end credits. Very '70s!

Also if anyone is a fan of this I would recommend Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. It also stars Robert Downey Junior and is by the same Writer/Director. It’s a fun, underrated movie.

89

Ditto the thumbs-up for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Downey is great, and so is Val Kilmer. Very funny buddy-cop type movie - sort of.

In real life, I think Robert Downey Jr busted an ankle doing some of those catwalk stunts which delayed the production of the movie for at least a few weeks.

90

Agreed

91

The acting was well-done, as usual, but I thought the plot line was a bit too shallow. Not enough explanation on what extremis is and what it does and how it affected Pepper at the end. For it to be the meat and potatoes of the plotline, I thought it deserved a more thorough explanation. The bait-and-switch of Mandarin and extremis rubbed me the wrong way, too. I would have preferred mandarin than the superhuman, walking hellfires.

92

Sure. But even Hawkeye or a few SHIELD agents or just a helicopter would have helped. There was really no reason for Iron man to go solo here. esp as Tony Stark couldn’t even suit up as IM all the time.

93

A few random thoughts.

When they mentioned that AIM was involved with the militarization of the Iron Patriot suit, and Tony started to hack with Roadie’s password, I expected them to reveal that the suit’s software had a backdoor which would explain why the villains were able to just shut it down like that. Except, they didn’t go that route at all. Why was just being grabbed by one of the extremis-infected people enough to shut down the suit without actually seeming to damage it?

It seemed to me that essentially none of the suits that we see being used (except for the Iron Patriot suit) were actual combat-rated models. The good combat-rated suits, comparable to the one Tony wore during the Avengers, were probably all destroyed in the missile attack on the mansion. The Mark 42 was an experimental prototype, not really meant for combat, that also didn’t work very well. The rest of the ones that he called out of the basement at the end were probably similar - one of a kind experimental ideas built in a sleep-deprived state and then tucked away in storage. Which would explain why none of them seemed remotely as effective as the suits we’ve seen him use in previous movies.

I’m still not clear on exactly what the villain’s big plan was. Create Extremis, which turns out to make the subjects explode sometimes. Create the fake Mandarin to cover up the explosions, or was that the plan all along? And then at the end, kill the President and kidnap Pepper … because evil? Maybe the side effects of Extremis include megalomania and loss of inhibitions and common sense, it would explain a lot of everyone’s behavior toward the end.

94

And disturbing ones. You’re right: it was all just because evil. Not very satisfying when you stop to think about it.

95

I liked it. It was fun.

96

You don’t read comic books, do you? The rule in any solo title (or film) when the hero is outnumbered is that the Avengers are on another mission, SHIELD has been grounded by Congress, the X-Men are MIA, the Fantastic Four are in the Negative Zone, and Spider-Man can’t afford a bus ticket to the battle site.

97

I have no problem with that because that happens all the time in the comic book universe. Iron Man handles his own stuff in his own titles and also handles Avengers-level threats in the Avengers comic. Other heroes don’t just show up in the Iron Man comic willy nilly – that kind of stuff is usually reserved for the big event crossovers.

I was under the impression that they were going to broil Roadie alive if he didn’t eject.

Step 1: Create Extremis
Step 2: Blow shit up
Step 3: ?
Step 4: profit.

98

It was an overly complex and convoluted plan. Use the Mandarin to depose the president, using the oil tanker as a trump card political statement. Have the reluctant VP - who’s in because he wants his daughter’s leg to heal - step in as President and then authorize the research, development, and purchase of the Extremis system for super-soldiers and thus profit. Kidnap Pepper because she’s kind of sexy. Kind of.

The problem is that the entire plan could have been done through legal means. Stark Industries itself was spawned as a result of the military-industrial complex. A means to regenerate limbs within a few seconds would only benefit moreso from the military-medical-industrial complex.

99

The Mk 42 was definitely not combat ready - that was stated right at the beginning when he was testing it. It just happened to be the one he could summon to protect Pepper when the choppers attacked. I don’t the others weren’t combat ready so much as that Jarvis isn’t as good at suit combat as Tony is. Especially if he’s got to control 30+ suits at once.

I think the plan was:

  1. Create Extremis, make a lot of money regrowing limbs/curing diseases and all that.

  2. Oops, Extremis makes people explode sometimes. Create the Mandarin originally to divert attention from that, but later try to leverage that into more power, leading to…

  3. Apprise the VP that his daughter’s leg may be curable by Extremis, but only if the President is removed. Which will give AIM a lot more power.

  4. Kidnap Pepper because Tony left him on the roof in Switzerland, and because he and Pepper had some unresolved romance anyway, and I guess, evil.

100

I saw it yesterday and enjoyed it, but can someone explain to me how come one of the approximately 147 flying supersuits buzzing around the final battle, none of them caught Pepper as she seemingly fell to her death? Or did I just miss something?