Riding the Roller Coaster that is Iron Man 3

There are exciting climbs but disappointing drops. This was one ride I really didn’t care to be on.

I promised myself when I saw this movie I would never let my fingers touch the keyboard regarding it and the plot and my complete and utter disappointment in it and yet, here we are… With a little bit of help from some of our followers on our Facebook page, I’ve been prompted to write this somewhat review/somewhat rant. I guess the best place to start in this would be the beginning…

I really didn’t hate the entire movie. Lets face it, I could probably never hate anything that Robert Downey Junior is in because I might have a bit of a crush on him. I just hated about 50% of it. First and foremost, this isn’t an Iron Man film, it’s a “Tony Stark kind of seems like an agent of SHIELD” film. What starts out as an incredible glimpse into the mastermind that is the Mandarin quickly goes flat. How this is even a Marvel movie is completely beyond me. I’m telling you now, if you are a fan of the comics, don’t waste your money. You will rage the entire time and then walk out wondering what you’ve done to deserve the treatment you got.

Also, past this line there will be full spoilers.

Let me first address Tony’s panic attacks–a part of the film I actually didn’t mind. These were spot on from the start: the symptoms he felt to the initial reaction of ‘oh my God, am I having a heart attack?’ were played perfectly. Maybe not so much the recovery time but they did it well and they didn’t just do it once; the panic attacks came back twice more throughout the film and were said to be brought on following the events of the Avengers. Makes sense, right? After everything Tony went through, he develops a little bit of an issue and I thought it was neat to see that side of things.

I also really liked the kid in the film, actor Ty Simpkins. His character Harley and Tony seem to get along well and he was a good source of humor while he was in the film. Unfortunately, that didn’t last long.

I could go on about the other things I did like (like the opportunity to see all kinds of Tony’s suits like the Heartbreaker, Igor and the God Killer) but you really came for the rant, didn’t you?

Lets talk about the Mandarin. You may remember a while back one of my first articles was one that took a look at the Mandarin and his abilities (you can read about it here) and what this might mean for our Iron hero.

Apparently, it meant nothing at all. Apparently, the writers saw it fit to turn the Mandarin–who is arguably one of Tony’s biggest enemies, if not THE biggest–into the ‘face’ of anarchy. The Mandarin was an actor. He wasn’t some bad guy with ten rings all representing a different ability. This was not science versus magic as we saw so many times in the comic books. This was the movie slapping every comic book fan in the face. When the whole thing started to unfold, I laughed. It’s an elaborate ruse. It has to be. No one can possibly do this to the Mandarin (and all the comic book fans around the world) can they? Can they?!

They did. Thanks a lot Shane Black and Drew Pearce. The writing in the film was bad, but to do that to the Mandarin? You’re breaking my heart, boys.

What they did instead was introduce Guy Pearce (a phenomenal actor in my opinion, but in the right roles–like Charlie Rakes in “Lawless”) as Killian, a man who is a very poor excuse for a villain who has an equally poorly explained conspiracy with the Vice President to kill the President. What?

Enough about that. Lets get to the Extremis. I was so excited when things started to come to light talking about Extremis making a mark in the third installment of the film, but little did I know it would be executed so poorly. The story arc in the comic is brilliant and I’m sure many peoples favorites–without going into too much detail, the Extremis arc pitted a Neo Nazi psychopath injected with the serum against Tony and he had to face a villain unlike one he’d ever seen. The movie decides to multiply that to dozens, possibly hundreds of people who had been injected as a part of an experiment, and they miss some great opportunities in the plotline that they could have taken right from Extremis and didn’t. Please, if you haven’t read this arc, get to your local comic book store poste haste.

Even Tony is a little beat up about what happened.

Finally, the ending. Tony destroys all of his suits and undergoes a procedure because they’ve harnessed the healing factor of Extremis and Tony Stark can just go about being Tony Stark. Right? This was how I felt at the very end of The Dark Knight Rises. That’s it? Bruce just decided “I’m not going to be Batman anymore”? Same with Tony. He’s not going to be Iron Man anymore? Just Tony Stark? I guess this will make Avengers 2 and 3 interesting, and while they’re at it maybe they can talk a bit more about how none of Tony’s problems in the end were really solved, unless you count that after the credits scene. (There should have been something for Thor: The Dark World…)

Like I said, I loved a lot of things about this film, but it wasn’t what I was expecting at all. It’s hard to go see a film based on comics nowadays–you never know where the writers are drawing their inspiration or what they will do to make it work for film (or not). The way I approach it now is try not to think of it as a comic book movie. You can’t. You’ll always end up disappointed in some way. Though, this time it was especially bad.