IRON MAN 3 discussion (spoilers)

How would you rate Iron Man 3?

  • Total voters
    14
I only read parts of the arguments but Bass point about x2 and other older movies being loved despite flaws. I think it was because they were some of the first good comic book films. But they just good. After GREAT films like The Dark Knight and The Avengers. People expect more.

I disagree that Maya, or whatever her name was, was a better character then her comic counterpart. She was useless in the movie. You can have wrote out her character and nothing would have changed. She wants Tony to join the bad guys, then has a sudden change of heart, then dies to make Tony more heroic.

Also Loki really won in The Avengers. He never cared about ruling earth. He wanted to get back to Asgard. Which he did.
 
Ice said:
I geeked just a little with the mentions of the Roxxon company. This was the first mention, wasn't it?
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Roxxon was actually shown as the company who own the gas station that Coulson stopped at in the "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to Thor's Hammer" One-Shot short film. I believe that was its first mention/appearance in the MCU, with IM3 being the second.
 
TheManWithoutFear said:
Great point. I was talking to a co-worker about all of this tonight. Well, not this exactly but pretty much about 10 years ago no one cared about Iron Man at all. His entire mythology is coming around and he's now actually bigger than Spider-Man. This probably undermine's my entire argument with Bass about the "respect" of Mandarin but I never read Iron Man. All I know is Mandarin was his arch-enemy and it was his time to shine finally. But that never happened. So are we ushering in a new age? Is Aldrich the new big bad? is Stane? Do heroes need an arch enemy?
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Well you could argue Tony Stark is his own worst enemy, others like Justin Hammer and Obadiah Stane might have created problems for him that pushed him towards alcoholism, but it was ultimately Tony himself who took the final plunge. In a summer blockbuster, Man vs. Himself for 2 hours likely would not have sold a lot of tickets, so you needed some sort of external villain. The film makers tried to make Mandarin work back in the first film, but they were having problems with him and ultimately ditched him and made Obadiah Stane the villain.

Some heroes have arch enemies and it works very well, Lex Luthor vs. Superman, Joker vs. Batman. But those characters have great chemistry and that is reflected in all the great stories they have together, Mandarin does not have that level story telling. Mandarin seems more like an archetype rather then a character, he doesn't seem to have a good reason to be a villain or try to take over the world. Batman created Joker, Lex Luthor was Metropolis' favorite son before Superman showed up, with Mandarin, he just shows up one day to take over the world and Iron Man decides to stop him, that is not as interesting as the other stuff I have mentioned.

Some people have said they like Mandarin because they like the idea of a conflict of magic vs. technology, but Mandarin as a "magical" character doesn't fit very well with the use and misuse of technology theme in the Iron Man movies and that contrast has not translated into a lot of great Iron Mans stories. Really even the comic book writers seem to have trouble writing him consistently, Knauf wrote him as Ra's Al Ghul style well intentioned extremist, while Fracation wrote him as a Kim Jong Il stand in, both which are different from how he is written in Silver Age, 70s or 80s, sometimes he is anti technology and sometimes he has no problem using technology. I don't think Mandarin gets the same level of good writing most of the other arch nemesis villains in Marvel do.
 
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This movie was a big, fat, flaming, runny turd.

This was Marvel's Batman & Robin. Just about as corny as they could make it, and so far removed from the original - a GREAT movie and a near-perfect comic movie - that it doesn't even deserve the same name.

I mean no offense when I say this, but I can't believe that anyone who saw and liked the first movie liked this.

It had it's problems throughout, but I think it was the point in which we saw the President of the United States hanging in the air in an Iron Man suit that I lost what little respect I had for this movie. That was unbelievably corny.

But then they topped it by giving Pepper super powers. This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine and I was pretty vocal about it when we got MJGoblin in USM. Most superheroes - including Iron Man and Spider-Man - NEED regular people. I don't know enough about the science of writing to know WHY they are needed, but they are. Once everyone is running around with super powers it makes it less special.

Those are just conceptual issues I had; I don't even want to bother ranting about stupid things like how he has 40+ Iron Man suits at his beck and call but he can't have them help when his house is being bombed to smithereens. Or how Pepper seemingly dies and Tony is still able to crack jokes and make smart-aleck quips. Or how they had him running around like Solid Snake. He's Tony Stark! Tony Stark doesn't dodge behind buildings like Solid Snake!

On a different note, I absolutely hate what they did to the Extremis story. I loved the comic, and it was so beautifully simple. There was no need to complicate it, no need to turn Maya Hansen into a villain, no need to create an army of Extremis enhanciles...none of that. All they had to do was adapt the Warren Ellis story. Ruined.

There were things I liked. Mandarin as an actor was a great twist. Most of the action sequences were good,except for the airplane rescue, which again was just stupid. What an amazing plot device, where Iron Man has the ability to lock peoples' grip without paralyzing the rest of their body. And I love how these people fall thousands of feet and get dropped in the ocean, and instead of freaking out and gasping for air they are cheering Iron Man!

Gah. I can't even compliment the movie without being reminded of how bad it was.

1/5 stars. Boo. I fear for the future of Marvel movies.
 
E said:
This movie was a big, fat, flaming, runny turd.

This was Marvel's Batman & Robin. Just about as corny as they could make it, and so far removed from the original - a GREAT movie and a near-perfect comic movie - that it doesn't even deserve the same name.

I mean no offense when I say this, but I can't believe that anyone who saw and liked the first movie liked this.

It had it's problems throughout, but I think it was the point in which we saw the President of the United States hanging in the air in an Iron Man suit that I lost what little respect I had for this movie. That was unbelievably corny.

But then they topped it by giving Pepper super powers. This is a HUGE pet peeve of mine and I was pretty vocal about it when we got MJGoblin in USM. Most superheroes - including Iron Man and Spider-Man - NEED regular people. I don't know enough about the science of writing to know WHY they are needed, but they are. Once everyone is running around with super powers it makes it less special.

Those are just conceptual issues I had; I don't even want to bother ranting about stupid things like how he has 40+ Iron Man suits at his beck and call but he can't have them help when his house is being bombed to smithereens. Or how Pepper seemingly dies and Tony is still able to crack jokes and make smart-aleck quips. Or how they had him running around like Solid Snake. He's Tony Stark! Tony Stark doesn't dodge behind buildings like Solid Snake!

On a different note, I absolutely hate what they did to the Extremis story. I loved the comic, and it was so beautifully simple. There was no need to complicate it, no need to turn Maya Hansen into a villain, no need to create an army of Extremis enhanciles...none of that. All they had to do was adapt the Warren Ellis story. Ruined.

There were things I liked. Mandarin as an actor was a great twist. Most of the action sequences were good,except for the airplane rescue, which again was just stupid. What an amazing plot device, where Iron Man has the ability to lock peoples' grip without paralyzing the rest of their body. And I love how these people fall thousands of feet and get dropped in the ocean, and instead of freaking out and gasping for air they are cheering Iron Man!

Gah. I can't even compliment the movie without being reminded of how bad it was.

1/5 stars. Boo. I fear for the future of Marvel movies.
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This was pretty great. I'm disappointed you liked the Mandarin twist but you hit on a lot of things that bothered me. I wouldn't rate it as low but I definitely feel embarrassed I gave it 4/5 stars now.
 
TheManWithoutFear said:
This was pretty great. I'm disappointed you liked the Mandarin twist but you hit on a lot of things that bothered me. I wouldn't rate it as low but I definitely feel embarrassed I gave it 4/5 stars now.
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Because it was a great twist and a good way to avoid the more problematic aspects of the Mandarin.
 
I think it's obvious MWoF wanted Mandarin to be played by a Caucasian in stereotyped Asian make-up (very squinty eyes, buck teeth, robes, bowl-hair cut), not pronounce his "R"'s, eat (and kill) with only chopsticks, and to require a chauffeur because he'd inherently be a terrible driver.

;)
 
TheManWithoutFear said:
I still don't understand why Mandarin, if taken seriously, couldn't just lost all of those racial stereotypes.
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Because the racial stereotypes were a huge majority of his character originally, so if they'd done what your suggested they'd have to fundamentally change the character in just about every way short of the rings...which inherently they did in IM3, just not as a serious character.
 
DIrishB said:
Because the racial stereotypes were a huge majority of his character originally, so if they'd done what your suggested they'd have to fundamentally change the character in just about every way short of the rings...which inherently they did in IM3, just not as a serious character.
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I don't think that's true at all but whatever. He's a joke. I get it.
 
DIrishB said:
Because the racial stereotypes were a huge majority of his character originally, so if they'd done what your suggested they'd have to fundamentally change the character in just about every way short of the rings...which inherently they did in IM3, just not as a serious character.
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Exactly, they were better of doing what they did. I thought it was great and worked better in with the film's story,
 
DIrishB said:
I think it's obvious MWoF wanted Mandarin to be played by a Caucasian in stereotyped Asian make-up (very squinty eyes, buck teeth, robes, bowl-hair cut), not pronounce his "R"'s, eat (and kill) with only chopsticks, and to require a chauffeur because he'd inherently be a terrible driver.

;)
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"I AM DA MANDARIN!"
 
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