Iron man 3 and lava super soldiers

[TheKangaroos]

I think after the Avengers complaining about the Marvel Cinematic universe being unrealistic is...I wouldn't say an invalid criticism, but it just feels kind of weird that we had a blond guy flying around with a magic hammer and that was ok but this wasn't.

The problem with the "lava super soldiers" as they've been dubbed, isn't that they don't make sense within the Marvel universe but that they don't make sense within the context of the film's narrative. We're introduced early in the movie to the idea of an adjustment to the human makeup that can heal at a vastly accelerated rate, and it's established that this cellular activity causes extreme heat (and sometimes explosions). However, by the end of the movie, we've got Guy Pearce carving open metal suits with his fiery wrists and generally being solid as a brick s**t house. Nowhere was it established that this healing quirk also grants you incredible strength. Marvel has done this before - Wolverine shearing open inch thick metal doors with his claws, even though that would have less to do with the quality of his claws and more to do with his strength, that, although considerable, has never before or since reached those levels - but I am more inclined to blame Iron Man III for these inaccuracies as the movie, on a whole, was terrible and the inaccuracy related to a more significant part of the plot (the final boss fight).

A few words on the movie itself. Was I the only one who thought it was awful? The whole 'haunted by New York' story arc is dropped without explanation halfway through, the whole bit with the kid was poorly acted and went on so long it completely ruined the pacing and frankly seemed rather pointless as it comes to nothing, and on a more pedantic note, why wouldn't Captain America be involved when a terrorist started blowing up bombs on US soil? (This may be explained in Winter Soldier I suppose).

 

[Bertylicious]

The thing that bothered me was how the lava super soldiers were able to shut down Tony's suit by being hot. I mean, my electric oven gets pretty hot and that doesn't keep turning off. If they were electric super soldiers then I'd have been okay with it but it just got in the way of my ability to suspend disbelief.

Other than that I thought they were okay foes.

 

[twistedmic]

The thing that bothered me was how the lava super soldiers were able to shut down Tony's suit by being hot. I mean, my electric oven gets pretty hot and that doesn't keep turning off. If they were electric super soldiers then I'd have been okay with it but it just got in the way of my ability to suspend disbelief.

Other than that I thought they were okay foes.

But the part of the oven that heats up is designed to get that hot and is fairly simple (a big metal box with heat coils at the top and bottom). If you super-heated the circuit board it would most likely short-out the oven, or overload it to the point that the oven would shut itself off.

Plus the lava soldiers get much hotter than your typical oven, and Tony's suit is a lot more complicated than an oven.

 

[tomtom94]

I find the revisionist history going on with Iron Man 2 quite interesting, since 3 was released I've seen a couple of people claim that it's easily on a par with the first film (usually done in contrast with someone's opinion of Iron Man 3, obviously). I've seen 2 twice and both times I felt that it was a film with a major identity crisis, could never decide whether it was more important to be its own film or try and set up The Avengers. It also managed to somehow turn Sam Rockwell and Mickey Rourke into a disappointing villain team. It's by no means a bad film and it's a must-see if you plan to watch Avengers because it sets up the mythology, but it's not as good as the first film, which contained some really zippy one-liners and great set-pieces in addition to reconstructing the fun superhero movie. 3 knows exactly what it is, it's the first film released post Avengers and it has some serious character development to do and fun to be had - and it does it.

The plot twist (which I suppose it is necessary to bring up) works extremely well in my opinion and stops the film from being "just another superhero movie". It gives Tony Stark's arc greater emotional depth, and it manages to subvert the audience's expectations fantastically in a way that I thought had died out with the advent of social media. Would I have liked to see a standard portrayal of The Mandarin? Undoubtedly, but I didn't leave the cinema upset that I didn't. The rest of the film managed to impress me enough in that regard. Shane Black knocked it out of the park with a fantastic script and some great set-pieces.

I'll be honest, the Extremis super soldiers were silly. Extremis is basically used in Iron Man 3 as powers that activate and deactivate at the speed of plot, and it's probably the dumbest thing that's occurred in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date. So if you want to go ahead and pick holes in it it's not exactly difficult. I'm still not sure who decided to write in the script "Guy Pearce breathes fire at Tony Stark" with a straight face. With that said, this comes in a franchise that had Tony Stark enter himself for the not-Monaco Grand Prix, and had Mickey Rourke come onto the track with giant electric whips and attack the contestants.

Given how good the rest of the movie is, the lack of consistent logic concerning Extremis is a disappointment.

 

[Nuxxy]

I still think Iron Man 1 was the best, kicking off the Marvel Avengers Universe so successfully.

My problem wasn't the bad guy, or his powers. It was that there were too many of them. The movie was supposed to be personal, and it started out like that. It was Tony's very real personal suffering from his demons (PTSD instead of alcohol, and the ghost of douchebag Tony past). Tony is stripped of his tech, suffers from his hubris, and is left as just a man. Even the kid was ok, because he represented a younger Tony, with abandonment issues, using science and mechanics as a coping mechanism, still a smart aleck but before the hubris and fear stepped in.

But then for a finale, they go from up close and personal to, literally, a "house-party". Lots of suits fighting lots of bad guys, but the personal factor of Tony the man vs Killian the superman completely lost. Then he blows up all the suits and remainder of the resolution of Tony's demons is dealt with in a single monologue. The ending was weak-sauce, especially since it could have been, should have been, and was builing up to, a lot more.

As for the "Mandarin", I don't think the we can rule out the real one. Killian could have based his 'design' on whispers of the truth. All you need is the world to proclaim how Tony has defeated the Mandarin for the real legend to pop up.

 

[elvor0]

I think after the Avengers complaining about the Marvel Cinematic universe being unrealistic is...I wouldn't say an invalid criticism, but it just feels kind of weird that we had a blond guy flying around with a magic hammer and that was ok but this wasn't.

Well yeah, but that was literal magic/very very advanced alien technology. That's an acceptable explanation. The Lava people were just what? An injection of...stuff, as far as I remember. Why they exist doesn't bother me rather that their invulnerability had some rather wonky consistency, along with the bonkers range of powers.

 

[Meatspinner]

it just feels kind of weird that we had a blond guy flying around with a magic hammer and that was ok but this wasn't.

I feel you summed up my feelings perfectly. It seems with superhero movies we have a very strange set of double standards at work, I personally quite liked the whole Mandarin/fire people thing but then again I had no deep seated investment in the comics/games/anything really to do with superhero comics as I was all about Transformers as a kid.

Op already said that he'd/she'd prefered the ten rings. I don't see where this strawman is coming fome

 

[vid87]

I actually think the idea that they're soldiers - veterans of the US army conscripted into the "Mandaran's" army out of bitterness of their government abandoning them - was a brilliantly disturbing twist.

Think about it: real people driven to desperation over their disabilities and trauma - not unlike what we hear on the news - willing to kill for a semblance of their former power and sense of self-worth...and Iron Man kills every one of them in the climax. Putting two and two together by that point, it was the creepiest fight I've ever sat through and really made me feel guilty about cheering IM beating the hell out of them, regardless of what they've done. It was a no-win scenario.

 

[Cabisco]

it just feels kind of weird that we had a blond guy flying around with a magic hammer and that was ok but this wasn't.

I feel you summed up my feelings perfectly. It seems with superhero movies we have a very strange set of double standards at work, I personally quite liked the whole Mandarin/fire people thing but then again I had no deep seated investment in the comics/games/anything really to do with superhero comics as I was all about Transformers as a kid.

Op already said that he'd/she'd prefered the ten rings. I don't see where this strawman is coming fome

Firstly: Damn I hate it when people go 'Strawman' like your using a superpower or uncovering a dastardly scheme urgh...

But anyway: The guy I quoted made an interesting point about Marvel as a whole and I agreed with him, because it's a good point that we can see within comicbook movies that many had problems with the believablity/weirdness of the 'fire' people (many of my comic book loving friends thought it was weird yet would of loved 'magic rings') yet Norse god is fine and dandy.

I went a little off the rails but still within the parameters of 'discuss the fire people in iron man 3' in a wider context... darn meddling kids.

 

[Crispee]

I dunno, I didn't have a problem with the lava people. It may have been unusual in context with the other Iron Man films, but after Thor and the Avengers, there's less need to maintain realism. I thought of it as like Earth, after meeting Thor, Loki and the Chitauri, were slowly approaching Asgard's technological level.

Remember that Thor has the Frost Giants, blue humanoids that can create ice, not so different from the lava people. And Stark was able to summon the armour in the same way Thor can summon the Hammer. That was how I saw it anyway.

As for the armours being weaker, I think the reason they were weaker was because he's made 40 of them in under a year, whereas the original 7 each took months and months to perfect and iron out all the flaws, not to mention the new armours were essentially 100 smaller armours, which means they're more flexible and mobile at the cost of being lighter, less dense and therefore less durable.

Edit: As for him telling the Mandarin his address, all I could think was "Oh my god, I cannot believe he acted in character.". The real question is why, with all his resources, they weren't able to figure out that he lived in the huge automated mansion embedded in a cliff face within driving distance of one of his factories until he told them.

 

[Nuxxy]

Edit: As for him telling the Mandarin his address, all I could think was "Oh my god, I cannot believe he acted in character.". The real question is why, with all his resources, they weren't able to figure out that he lived in the huge automated mansion embedded in a cliff face within driving distance of one of his factories until he told them.

To mix movies: It wasn't about the address, it was about sending a message. Tony was issuing a challenge to say that he wasn't scared of "big bad terrorist Mandarin". And Killian responded because 1) he hates Tony's hubris; b) it would be in character for the Mandarin to want to teach Tony a 'lesson'; and c) publicly defeating 'Iron Man' would work in line with Killian's fear-mongering end goal.

 

[RedDeadFred]

That movie was so forgettable I actually forgot about the lava soldiers. Well now that I remember... Sigh oh boy that as stupid. I don't see how IM3 is supposed to be the best of the 3 movies (no I don't think it's a trilogy).

I had too. The only thing I could remember about the movie was how dumb the ending was (not the whole Mandarin thing, just the whole final fight).

The only good part of the movie was his banter with the kid. Easily the worst of the three IMO and probably the worst out of all of the Avenger movies.

Personally, I found Thor and Cpt. America to be much more guilty of being forgettable than IM3, as all that I can remember from the former are Thor and the supporting cast (can't even remember the plot), and from the latter, Chris Evans and the tesserract. 3 might be the weakest of the Iron Man trilogy (again, my personal opinion), but I wouldn't say it's the worst of the Avengers movies. Pretty sure that honor goes to the first Hulk movie, if anything.

Edit: First Hulk movie of the new series of superhero movies, I mean.

Fair enough. I tend to not think about that movie. I liked the Edward Norton one though. I liked Thor a bit more than some of the worst because Loki was entertaining. Captain America is probably the one I disliked the most (when the villain pulled his face off to reveal a plastic looking skull underneath, I actually said out loud, in the theater: "this is so stupid"). However, despite me disliking it the most, I still thought it was a more well made movie than Iron Man 3. Not sure if that makes sense.

 

[schrodinger]

Spoilers ahoy!​

I was okay with it. Up until the very end. When the Lava Men were able to rip the suits apart like so much paper mache (or Radditz if you prefer). I found that a bit hard to swallow. Also, I didn't like them taking the shrapnel out of Tony and apparently curing Pepper of Lava Man syndrome. Though, there was no reason to make her a Lava Man... Lava Woman ..? Lava Person. There was no reason to make Pepper a Lava Person in the first place.

From what I remember, in the movie some of the soldiers had the tendency of exploding and Pepper was in danger suffering the same fate, and for tony that would of been devastating. Whether or not she was going to go nuclear i'm not sure; regardless, getting her cured had to be done.

 

[Bluesclues]

That movie was so forgettable I actually forgot about the lava soldiers. Well now that I remember... Sigh oh boy that as stupid. I don't see how IM3 is supposed to be the best of the 3 movies (no I don't think it's a trilogy).

I had too. The only thing I could remember about the movie was how dumb the ending was (not the whole Mandarin thing, just the whole final fight).

The only good part of the movie was his banter with the kid. Easily the worst of the three IMO and probably the worst out of all of the Avenger movies.

Personally, I found Thor and Cpt. America to be much more guilty of being forgettable than IM3, as all that I can remember from the former are Thor and the supporting cast (can't even remember the plot), and from the latter, Chris Evans and the tesserract. 3 might be the weakest of the Iron Man trilogy (again, my personal opinion), but I wouldn't say it's the worst of the Avengers movies. Pretty sure that honor goes to the first Hulk movie, if anything.

Edit: First Hulk movie of the new series of superhero movies, I mean.

Fair enough. I tend to not think about that movie. I liked the Edward Norton one though. I liked Thor a bit more than some of the worst because Loki was entertaining. Captain America is probably the one I disliked the most (when the villain pulled his face off to reveal a plastic looking skull underneath, I actually said out loud, in the theater: "this is so stupid"). However, despite me disliking it the most, I still thought it was a more well made movie than Iron Man 3. Not sure if that makes sense.

It makes sense. Basically you can respect CA more because you feel it was put together better than IM3. I'm not 100% sure if I agree, but I can see your point. And off topic, I like the Edward Norton Hulk myself, to the point that I was sort of disappointed they didn't keep him for the Avengers (though I didn't mind the change to Mark Ruffalo after watching his performance).