Escape to the Movies: Iron Man 3

[gorfias]

Maybe I missed it here. Is anyone else bothered by...

Spoiler

most of the tension for this movie come from Tony being down to one experimental suit that is badly banged up. I suspended disbelief and pretended not to remember that Tony has a penthouse building full of other suits and went with it. It worked, it was fun, it was good, and then, at the end of the movie, he just calls in 50 robotic suits to come aid him. Where the heck were they the rest of the movie? I'm very surprised I'm not seeing everyone screaming about this. I can take the Mandarin and other problems, but this undid the entire reason for tension in this movie. Oh, and "Clean Slate" was stupid.

 

[omegawyrm]

I actually really liked the villain's motivation, both as a "this is what Tony would have been without his wake-up call in the first movie" thing, and maybe because the Metal Gear games have made "controlling both sides of a war largely just to be a dick to this one guy who pissed me off, and also control the world I guess" seem like such a reasonable motivation for a bad guy.

And one of Tony's suits totally moves like Monsoon in Revengeance.

 

[Snowsongwolf]

The thing that surprised me about this movie was that it brought to light the fact that I cared about a robotic arm (the one Tony always ostracizes for doing things wrong).

 

[Calibanbutcher]

I saw the movie two days ago, and I have to say:
Meh.
It was alright as far as I am concerned, but it didn't really impress me all that much. Robert Downey Jr. was good, Gwyneth Paltrow was alright, Guy Pearce was fun (though I liked him better in Lockout) and Ben Kingsley stole every scene he was in.
If superheroes are your thing this movie is for you.
If you just want a fun action-romp, this movie is a good choice.
If you want anything more than that, you would be better of with another movie.

Why?

Spoiler: Spoilerific spoiling spoilers

Spoiler: seriously, this is going to spoil some of Iron Man 3's story, so turn back now if you intend to go see it any time soon

Ok, let's start:
First of: The "big shocking twisty twist of twisting proportions that will get people mad":

That shouldn't have ever been spoiled in the first fucking place since you know some guy's going to go click it anyway and then be disappointed later. You know you're ruining it for somebody because you couldn't wait to talk about it here.
I also disliked how they ended the main villain, having mutant-Pepper save Tony Stark from mutant-Guy-Pearce was not something I wanted in my IRON MAN movie.
If I had wanted to watch two lava-mutants duke it out, I would have gone seek a movie called "ULTIMATE-EXTREME-lava-mutant-cage-match-XX-2000".
Maybe it was to build this thing called "tension"? Your complaints should rather be focused on how predictable it was that Pepper would just get up after that.

Spoiler: Spoilers inside...

So me discussing what I didn't like is a no-go, because others are going to click on the spoiler and get the movie spoiled, but that won't stop you from debating me in spoilers?
Also: It would have built tension if it hadn't been so damn obvious that Pepper didn't die and that she was going to come back and possibly save the day, seeing as she has also gained ultra-mutant super-solider powers.

Ending Iron Man's story:
Wasn't it established in the first movie that they couldn't operate on Tony Starks heart because he wouldn't survive the procedure or something along those lines?
Well this movie said FUCK YOU to that and had him undergo surgery to apparently remove all the shrapnel etc.
Makes you wonder why he didn't just do that right the fuck after getting back to America.
Hell, if that was possible, why wasn't he all like:
"It's good to be back in the good ol' US of A. Now, someone get me a burger. And then I am gonna have me some real american open-fucking-heart surgery." in the first movie?
Did he just forget about his chest full of metal shards?
Was he too busy boning supermodels to schedule an appointment?
Was the night-light built in his damn chest just too convenient?

And then the damn shards. Why did it take 3 movies for him to remove them? I remember them being inoperable, but now magically it's fixable? Just lazy.

Wow, looks like some people don't know how to pay attention to a movie. He had the perfected formula administered into him and then was able to remove the shrapnel that couldn't be removed or he would otherwise die because his heart would then just regenerate after removing them.

Spoiler

Didn't he just mention that he managed to "heal" pepper from the Extremis treatment etc? If he actually managed to improve the Extremis stuff in order to go through surgery, then fair enough.

The "Iron Man-Prototype-suit failing" bit got old way too fast. As in:
It felt old the first time they used it and from then on out it continued to get worse and worse.
You can't deny that last "suit failing" gag with the Mk.42 coming in during the final fight was funny.

Spoiler

Yeah, I got a slight chuckle out of that, but mostly because of RDJ's delivery. And I really could have done without it.

His motivation sucked and his plan sucked. However, Guy Pearce made such a great job potraying the guy that I still found him very enjoyable.
I consider this villain to be like a good version of Hammer from Iron Man 2. His snake-like attitude, his opportunistic and inhumane weaponization of humans into living bombs can make a viewer learn to hate him, whereas Hammer's "hey man, whazzis allabout drones, bro?" antics leave the viewer with absolutely no emotional feedback whatsoever.

Spoiler: Villanous things

And that guy left you with emotional feedback? For me he was very much on par with Stane and Hammer, in so far as that I didn't hate him, I didn't love to hate him, he just seemed like another bland Douche McEvildoer, specialized in doing the evilest evil in evil history. He was fun to behold at times, but mostly I was left somewhat unsatisfied. The mandarin seemed like a really well-done villain in the trailers and the first part of the movie, so much so, that suddenly being left with just another genius-businessman gone mad was very disappointing.

Spoiler: The last one for now

Again, I did not like the movie very much. It was alright, maybe slightly above average, but even if we continue to argue back and forth, my opinion probably wouldn't change. Good for you that you liked it, but I clearly didn't enjoy it as much as you, for reasons I have stated in a slightly hyperbolic fashion in my first post in this thread.

 

[SixShooter]

Iron Man 3 is not a good movie. Some spoilers follow, so skip if you don't want to read them:

Spoiler

1)The bizarre tonal shifts into action-comedy aren't "daring". They're simply an attempt to rescue a weak and poorly built skeleton. Consider that without the jokes, you'd have little semblance of a story, and very bland cookie cutter action. There's nothing that really advances the Marvel Universe, and nothing that really advances the Iron Man universe, baring the ending which we'll get to in a bit.

2)Iron Man is barely in this movie. The "I've discovered that without my suit, I'm still Iron Man" bit, reeks of desperate post fact editing. All we get is Captain Jack Sparrow roaming around saying funny things, broken up with a few minutes of shooting Stark Industries weak-sauce at the lava-mutants. As another poster pointed out: Iron man doesn't even defeat the final boss. We get the evolved form of Pepper Potts lamely taking out Guy Pearce in a fashion that shouldn't have killed him...

3) Super hero movies deal with the problem of their protagonists being too powerful for real drama, it's true. But the way IM3 deal with this was to ridiculously sabotage Iron Man. He's got PTSD, is sleep deprived, gets taken off-guard, has to defend Pepper Potts before he can defend himself, and none of his suits work. To say that the movie "leans into this plot device too much" is an understatement. It's basically as if Superman spent 98% of his movie without super powers. Only worse, because in the 2% where he has his powers, he's still getting his ass kicked by people he should be able to handle no problem.

To put it in the context of the calibration demonstrated in avengers: Apparently the average lava grunt is > Thor in terms of ability to destroy Iron Man's armor.

4) Sloppy story telling. Despite all the "I'm more than my suit!!" stuff, the final act is still resolved through a literal Deus ex Machina.

5) Plot holes:

-What was the villain's motivation? They made it clear that it wasn't just madness, but why then go through the trouble of this plot? He's already filthy rich, and the potential use for the bio-weapon/healing agent would be worth untold billions done straight up. Is it about "power?" What would he gain by putting the Vice-President in place, that (A) he didn't already have enough of, and (B) Is worth the risk?

-Guy Pearce forgets that he can breathe fire when he would've won with it. Lolwut.

-The durability of the lava mutants is all over the map. Why can the chest laser kill them, but then suddenly not, but then suddenly a bomb is enough, just after it wasn't =\.

-Why was War Machine's suit so easily disabled, but then suddenly A-OK after the President was taken out of it?

-Why was Tony Stark able to find the Mandarin so easily, yet the U.S. military was clueless as to where the broadcast point was?

-Why was the security around the Mandarin so lapse?

-Why did Tony have no air defense technology at his mansion? Considering the he basically runs a major arms depot right by the water, shouldn't there have been some basic surface-to-air stuff?

-How is he able to get the shrapnel out of his chest?

-etc etc etc the plot is stupid.

6)Acting like you're trolling isn't an adequate distraction for making a weak movie. The overly self-referential "wah we'll break down if you ask about the avengers", and "I got nothing", and "I'm more than just my suits" and the audience abusing post-credit skit, try to give the movie the air of subversiveness (Bob fell for this). It's not. It's just a lazy movie that's empty. There's nothing there.

2.5 stars out of 4 is about right. It's not boring, has some neat explosions, and some of the laughs (in the middle) are decent. But it doesn't carry it's weight near enough to be considered "good" and certainly is lightyears away from great.

 

[SixShooter]

Now, regarding Bob's review, it has to be said: The weird hate crusade against Nolan and the Batman trilogy has gone from quirky to juvenile. It's at a point where Bob is clearly trying to come up for post-fact rationalizations as to why these weak "real" comic movies, are somehow better than the Batman movies. They're not. Between the constant bashing in the reviews, his columns, and in twitter, it's clear that Bob is just carrying out some extended meta-argument with someone/something. The movie reviews are coming secondary, and his quality is drastically suffering because of it.

 

[Reyalsfeihc]

Shane Black man... Respect. When the film started with the narration, I couldn't help but smile like an idiot. The humour was just so good, along with almost everything else. Only thing I didn't like:

Spoiler

Wasn't it established what he CAN'T remove the shrapnel? I'm a bit confused.

Otherwise it's just very very good. Not Avengers good. But still very good.

And for the record: I loved the Avengers, think Captain America was the worst Marvel film (and I think that Bob has a HUGE bias whenever it comes to characters he loves and the US, and it just explodes for this film), find TDKR to be pretty darn good though not TDK good, and think Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a MASTERPIECE.

I was a bit confused about that too, but here's what I think has happened.

Spoiler: Starfish Extravaganza!

At the end it's fully realized that Pepper has the regeneration serum in her that Mandarin uses after... well, you know, the entire finale to that fight sequence. Tony then promises Pepper that he can complete the serum, as his drunk self was close to finishing it 10 years prior. In order for Pepper to survive, we know he would've had to complete the serum, meaning that he has a serum that can perfectly alter human DNA in order to allow for regeneration, in which case why would he NOT take it. So now we have a Tony Stark that can regenerate himself, which would allow for the shrapnel fragments to be removed, and now Marvel has an excuse to pull a "Well look, he's not REALLY dead" moment.

Just my two cents.

 

[Reyalsfeihc]

snip

You should really put those in spoiler tags unless you want a bad time

Spoiler

spoiler text

 

[gorfias]

Spoiler: I'm about to discuss a few quibbles, including my own:

Spoiler

Lot of people seem confused about the shrapnel removal. We can just assume surgery techniques have come far in the last 9 years and it can now be removed.

I liked that they were able to add tension by not having Tony in his suit the whole movie. I hated that he could just call 50 other robotic suits to save the day at the end of the movie. Where the heck were they the rest of the movie!?!?! Calibanbuster offered this: if you can suspend your recollection that Tony has a building in New York with more suits, you can buy that the other suits didn't get used for most of the movie as they were trapped under ground by rubble that had been removed by the end of the movie.
1) Ironmans, including Hulk Buster trapped by rubble? OK. Just go with it.
2) I think they should have come up with a plot device that shows Tony get informed the freaking moment enough rubble had been removed to free them. Otherwise, I don't think it would have been in the middle of the night during a fire fight but again, it would have been infinitely better than the deus ex experience we had of Tony going the whole movie without his armor, only to call 50 robots when he needed them at the end.

 

[Silverspetz]

Allow me to summarize both of these posts for people who thought TL,DR. "I don't know shit about comic book movies and resent that a product based on previous products would expect me to be familiar of the original. Every movie should consider my ignorance, and make up for it! That's how we get awesome superhero movies like Tim Burton's BATMAN!!! Also Poop!" Your welcome.

Correction: I resent that a medium based on previous mediums is trying to introduce their worst tropes (Bucky breaks his own fucking rule for god's sake) to this medium, and one critic in particular is showing his bias by giving that medium a pass for shit he usually takes other movies to task for. Every movie should NOT be given a pass just for sticking to something in the source material for the fanboys even if it's a really terrible idea (like how Bob wants everything to look like the Silver/Golden Age of comics). That's how we get shit movies like Captain America!!! Also Poop!

None of those "worst tropes" you listed have appeared yet. These movies are embracing the comic-book STYLE of over the top energy and humor, not constant convoluted retcons to keep the status quo (in fact this movie in particular makes a big deal out of the fact that they are changing that status quo in the end). Cameos occur but not in a way that breaks up the flow or narrative.

Bob has not been biased in his reviews of these movies. He may overall forgive them for some things and enjoy them none the less for what they are but if a comic-book movie is bad he calls it out just like he would any other movie. If you want to accuse him of bias then you can at least do a better job of it by not just calling a movie he likes shit without explaining why.

 

[rda_Highlander]

I've made my own review of the movie, here: http://unbalancedopinions.blogspot.com/2013/05/iron-man-3-detailed-review.html
(it's long and SPOILS EVERYTHING)

and I have to say that I don't agree with Bob on this one occasion The movie is completely weak, if it wasn't for the action sequences. Definitely weakest recent Marvel movie yet. I know that opinions are greatly diverging, but apart from the fact that it's the first post-Avengers Marvel movie, I really don't get the excitement.

 

[gorfias]

Spoiler: I'm about to discuss a few quibbles, including my own:

Spoiler

2) I think they should have come up with a plot device that shows Tony get informed the freaking moment enough rubble had been removed to free them. Otherwise, I don't think it would have been in the middle of the night during a fire fight but again, it would have been infinitely better than the deus ex experience we had of Tony going the whole movie without his armor, only to call 50 robots when he needed them at the end.

Spoiler

Actually they did. Right before Iron man flies to Airforce 1, Jarvis makes a comment that construction crews have the lower deck of his mansion cleaned up and the southern wall removed.

That's pretty good. Not perfect, but I buy it. Other than that, while people can quibble, I think I'm largely OK with this movie. Bummer about the big twist but like movie bob says, good story over fidelity. I guess it works pretty well for me. I'll take it as my own shortcoming that I missed this particular plot point.

 

[blalien]

I never saw Iron Man 2, and my girlfriend never saw the first two (we did see the Avengers). Is Iron Man 3 still worth seeing right away, or should we get caught up first?

 

[irishda]

Bob has not been biased in his reviews of these movies. He may overall forgive them for some things and enjoy them none the less for what they are but if a comic-book movie is bad he calls it out just like he would any other movie. If you want to accuse him of bias then you can at least do a better job of it by not just calling a movie he likes shit without explaining why.

He calls them out for being bad...unless they're Marvel.

Very well, let's look at Captain America. Here's Bob's video for it. Now, right off the bat, he says he's tempted to call this the perfect movie. That right there should set off some warning bells that a critic can't find any fault with any movie, but let's dig deeper. There's no mention that the entire third act once Captain actually starts fighting the Nazis completely devolves into a series of rapid-fire montages (which is exactly how they manage to cram this into a "history-spanning epic" that covers the length of the war). There's no criticism that Captain inexplicably has four random guys following him around now. I'm pretty sure they never even said their names, much less got anything remotely close to characterization for them. But Bob undoubtedly loves them, because, as Bob says in the review, he grew up reading about them, so he knows exactly who they are.

But the biggest tell is his highest praise for the movie. In his words, it's a "lack of irony and cynicism". The movie is perfect because it doesn't make fun of his precious source material. In Bob's own words, it's so great because it doesn't try to have complex characters or subvert the source material in order to try to have depth. It's so great because it keeps exactly with the source material for flat, uninteresting characters. "An uncompromisingly good guy versus an evil with a capital 'e' guy." Normally, movies with flat, 1D characters get a word or too about how boring the characters are. But it's okay in this case because they're based on characters Bob likes.

 

[The Deadpool]

Meh, I actually didn't like it. Mostly because of the motivations of the villian, they were so flimsy and "yeah, because I wan't to fuck things up" compared to the other two movies, especially the second one.

I don't think you understood his motivation...

Well, no I didn't.

So we see that Tony Stark dissed Guy Pearce a long time ago but he made a comeback. Did he wanted revenge?

Or was it about creating terrorists and becoming a defense contractor at the same time? That's... just evil. Why? Didn't he wanted to conquer the world too?

Well...

Spoiler

It was an evolving plan. After New York, contracts for the Extremis went up because everyone wants a super hero they can control. Problem is, Extremis isn't ready. There's a small chance they'll explode and kill everyone around them (whoops). Killian doesn't want to wait until the glitch is fully fixed because of greed, so he injects it on people ANYWAYS.

He then creates Mandarin, a super villain to take the credit for said accidental explosions. In this manner, people start investigating the MANDARIN more than the source of the explosions and keeps the whole Extremis thing under the radar.

This next part is barely touched on in the movie, but it seems the President wasn't quite playing ball with AIM as much as Killian wanted (probably not allowing their less moral research, knowing AIM and Killian) so when the opportunity came to get the vice president in his pocket instead, a new plan forms. Tony fixes Extremis and Mandarin kills the president.

Now he has a new President who let's him do what he wants, a country on a manhunt for a super villain and all the demand he could EVER want to sell Extremis and whatever else he can cook up.

In short, his motivation was money. There was probably a little of power corrupts type thing, and not liking Tony, and a crush on Pepper... But primarily? Money.

It isn't perfect. Not quite as straight forward as I would prefer, although to be fair, it's nice to see a plan that evolved over time instead of all of it being planned eons and eons ago.

Also nice to see they used the events of the Avengers as an excuse. Mandarin becomes WAY more believable after aliens invade and wanting super soldiers also becomes quite a bit more likely.

On the other hand too much depends on Tony actually fixing the Extremis and it overstates the power of the US President (as lots of movies do).

 

[The Deadpool]

Spoiler: I'm about to discuss a few quibbles, including my own:

Spoiler

2) I think they should have come up with a plot device that shows Tony get informed the freaking moment enough rubble had been removed to free them. Otherwise, I don't think it would have been in the middle of the night during a fire fight but again, it would have been infinitely better than the deus ex experience we had of Tony going the whole movie without his armor, only to call 50 robots when he needed them at the end.

Spoiler

Actually they did. Right before Iron man flies to Airforce 1, Jarvis makes a comment that construction crews have the lower deck of his mansion cleaned up and the southern wall removed.

That's pretty good. Not perfect, but I buy it. Other than that, while people can quibble, I think I'm largely OK with this movie. Bummer about the big twist but like movie bob says, good story over fidelity. I guess it works pretty well for me. I'll take it as my own shortcoming that I missed this particular plot point.

If you want something to quibble over:

Spoiler

Tony and Rhodes state that they can either save the President OR save Pepper.

Tony flies his armor to the President, and fails to save him. The President "escapes" Air Force One with... A SUIT.

The suit flies to the bad guy's home and arrives there BEFORE TONY AND RHODES.

Meaning Tony had plenty of time to fly to Air Force One, save the President, and fly back to where Pepper was... And get there earlier than he actually did.

It's a MINOR quibble, but a pet peeve nonetheless.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Best Christmas film since Die Hard.

I enjoyed the twist, although I went with two comic book lovers and they hated it because it wasn't true to the comics.

I really loved the after credits bit as well... It was all a story he was recounting to the Hulk as therapy.

Although they could have expanded the villain's role and motive a bit more, especially with the Mandarin at the beginning, apart bit more narrative and threat from the few confusing 'America must die' videos would have been nice. The threatening message in the trailers didn't even make the final film, and there was nothing similar to replace them.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Not in my opinion. Easily the best of the Marvel movies so far, better than Avengers even. Good story, good characters, good action, good dialogue, good spectacle, it just works. I wasn't a big fan of either of the first two Iron Man movies, but this one is definitely worth a watch. And the twist, while not exactly original, is beautifully done.

This is more or less what I was going to say. I found IM3 to be as good as the Avengers, maybe better, I'm not sure yet.

There's only 2 issues I really have with it, but they're minor spoilers so...

Spoiler

First, they give Pepper fire based superpowers and have her kick the villain's ass, good so far, I like it when women aren't completely helpless, but then they ruin it, since the end it's implied that Tony turns Pepper back to normal, even after it's quite clear that she won't explode, for no apparent reason. In short, they turn Pepper into a badass who's able to actually contribute for once and then take it away. Of course, why let Pepper have the ability to realistically protect herself in a world of Superheroes and Supervillains? After all, if that happens she could no longer be used as a hostage every movie and actually has to have a purpose, and we can't have that.

Second, I hated how they handled War Machine/Rhodes. For one thing, they change his Superhero name into the incredibly lame Iron Patriot just for the sake of a running joke, for another, he barely does anything throughout the entire movie, in fact, he or rather the IP armor does more to help the villain than he does to stop him. The most he contributes is he saves the president, when he wasn't even in any real danger, (the guy was even wearing the IP armor at the time) and then flies off, presumably to stick the president somewhere safe (something that would take only a couple minutes tops) and for no real reason never comes back. Sure Rhodey, just let Tony handle the bad guy and his minions all by himself, it's not like he could END UP DEAD! It's not just the final fight either, there's plenty of moments throughout the movie where Rhodey is doing nothing of importance (and he spends about a 3rd of the movie incapacitated, largely because he fell for the oldest trick in the book) and would been pretty useful. In fact, that's probably the reason why he doesn't really do anything, quite a few of the conflicts in the movie would be solved pretty quickly if Rhodey had actually been doing something. Another thing is that after spending the entirety of the second movie setting War Machine up you'd expect to see some Iron Man and War Machine fighting back to back for about half the 3rd movie's action scenes, and War Machine hardly even fights anyone at ALL the entire movie, much less at Iron Man's side.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Bob has not been biased in his reviews of these movies. He may overall forgive them for some things and enjoy them none the less for what they are but if a comic-book movie is bad he calls it out just like he would any other movie. If you want to accuse him of bias then you can at least do a better job of it by not just calling a movie he likes shit without explaining why.

He calls them out for being bad...unless they're Marvel.

Very well, let's look at Captain America. Here's Bob's video for it. Now, right off the bat, he says he's tempted to call this the perfect movie. That right there should set off some warning bells that a critic can't find any fault with any movie, but let's dig deeper. There's no mention that the entire third act once Captain actually starts fighting the Nazis completely devolves into a series of rapid-fire montages (which is exactly how they manage to cram this into a "history-spanning epic" that covers the length of the war). There's no criticism that Captain inexplicably has four random guys following him around now. I'm pretty sure they never even said their names, much less got anything remotely close to characterization for them. But Bob undoubtedly loves them, because, as Bob says in the review, he grew up reading about them, so he knows exactly who they are.

But the biggest tell is his highest praise for the movie. In his words, it's a "lack of irony and cynicism". The movie is perfect because it doesn't make fun of his precious source material. In Bob's own words, it's so great because it doesn't try to have complex characters or subvert the source material in order to try to have depth. It's so great because it keeps exactly with the source material for flat, uninteresting characters. "An uncompromisingly good guy versus an evil with a capital 'e' guy." Normally, movies with flat, 1D characters get a word or too about how boring the characters are. But it's okay in this case because they're based on characters Bob likes.

Unless that Marvel movie happens to be Amazing Spider-Man, which he's STILL making occasional digs at every once in a while because he hates it so much, and for reasons that aren't even valid, at least not the reasons he actually gives, most if not all aren't actually true.