Iron Man 3 *SPOILERS*

[Admiral Valdemar]

You mean VIII to XLII.

The Mk VII was able to wrap itself around Tony in freefall in The Avengers, so it's the second model that doesn't need to be put on with external tools.

This is true. Though it is better having this pod delivery system over the individual, more complex flying parts of the suit used predominantly in IM3, which was somewhat useless.

I was going to say the Mk. II had a similar system thanks to Rhodes stealing it, but I forgot the line in IM2 which states no one but Tony can use the suits without permission, so Rhodes just had to get JARVIS to throw the suit on to him with the hydraulic arm setup they had before.

[chitoryu12]

Well, the Mk. 42 showed exactly what the problem is with the suit design: making it a bunch of individual pieces that have to be easily broken apart and assembled at will means that it's ridiculously fragile against impact. A collision with a truck (not even at especially high speed, and not a head-to-head impact) shattered it to pieces, and the next time we saw it, it was so badly damaged that it broke apart simply from its legs hitting a barrier while flying in at low speed.

Compare that to the original red and gold suit, which can survive a proximity detonation from an anti-aircraft shell fired by a tank cannon and various massive impacts. And the Mk. VII, which flew straight through a Leviathan in The Avengers with Tony sustaining little visible injury other than impact shock.

[Cykeisme]

Well, the Mk. 42 showed exactly what the problem is with the suit design: making it a bunch of individual pieces that have to be easily broken apart and assembled at will means that it's ridiculously fragile against impact. A collision with a truck (not even at especially high speed, and not a head-to-head impact) shattered it to pieces, and the next time we saw it, it was so badly damaged that it broke apart simply from its legs hitting a barrier while flying in at low speed.

Compare that to the original red and gold suit, which can survive a proximity detonation from an anti-aircraft shell fired by a tank cannon and various massive impacts. And the Mk. VII, which flew straight through a Leviathan in The Avengers with Tony sustaining little visible injury other than impact shock.

That's exactly what I was thinking, yeah.

The contrast in durability of the Iron Man suits between the first movie and the third is insane, the modular ones come nowhere close to even the Mk. 2 and 3. Stane's Iron Monger armor would have torn those suits to pieces in a heartbeat.

It's the idea that Stark had to fight such numerous and dangerous superpowered opponents with that modular junk turns the action in this movie into a huge let down; we don't see Iron Man at the peak of his capability (using a proper armored suit) taking them on. Massing unmanned AI controlled suits only makes it all look worse.

[Civil War Man]

I'll go ahead and quote Ford so he doesn't have to quote himself again.

I actually liked it better than either of the two previous films, because the film was actually about Tony coming to terms with himself as a person and what being 'Iron Man' meant to him, and how it had been a psychological crutch in the past but was doing him more harm than good now. Like the way in which the Mk 42 is pretty much a failure which never operates as intended (even its one success is tempered by getting hit by that truck and being taken out of action for ages) is thematically emblematic of how the suits can't fix Tony's life. Like it can't even successfully ice Aldritch with a suicide attack. The sense of finality is appropriate and not half-assed.

Mk 42 being buggy, fragile, and unreliable is kind of the point, since the Iron Man suits are physical manifestations of Tony Stark's psyche. The later suits are more prone to failure as a mirror of Tony's increasing anxiety and stress. The nightmares, lack of sleep, and anxiety attacks drive him to continue building and tinkering as an escape, make him impatient to the point where as soon as he finishes he starts again from square one (Pepper says something about thinking he's up to Mk 12 instead of 42), and lowers the overall quality of the work he does complete.

[Cykeisme]

I'll go for that, but an ending where Tony gets his shit together and builds a suit that isn't total junk (or uses an older pre-crap suit) would be nice.
I understand the whole "the suit doesn't make the man" angle, but this is an Iron Man movie. The plot could just as easily show that Stark's recovery from his hang-ups finally make him capable of completing a suit at least on par with those shown in the first movie, the sequel, or in Avengers. Then he could proceed to put it on, and kick ass with it.

I have another question, though.
If surgery to remove the shrapnel was possible, why didn't Stark just have the shrapnel removed from his chest immediately upon returning from Afghanistan?

[Stark]

His recovery from his emotional needs symbolised by his reliance on power armour could be shown by having him build better power armour?

[Civil War Man]

I'll go for that, but an ending where Tony gets his shit together and builds a suit that isn't total junk (or uses an older pre-crap suit) would be nice.
I understand the whole "the suit doesn't make the man" angle, but this is an Iron Man movie. The plot could just as easily show that Stark's recovery from his hang-ups finally make him capable of completing a suit at least on par with those shown in the first movie, the sequel, or in Avengers. Then he could proceed to put it on, and kick ass with it.

I have another question, though.
If surgery to remove the shrapnel was possible, why didn't Stark just have the shrapnel removed from his chest immediately upon returning from Afghanistan?

The ending implies that he's going to start building suits again eventually. He destroyed all of the old suits in order to end his reliance on them, and force him to focus on the more important things in his life. And if he does decide to start building the suits again, he can start from a clean slate instead of being inexorably tied to the relics of a traumatic past.

As for why he didn't get it removed earlier, he was not in the right mindset. He was unable to move on mentally or emotionally until he got rid of the suits, and so it's understandable that he may not have been mentally or emotionally ready to go under the knife. Perhaps it was vanity. Perhaps he felt that he was too important and the surgery was too risky. Maybe it was out of penance, for his failure to save Yinsen. Maybe he felt he didn't have the time. Maybe the thought just didn't occur to him until he was willing to destroy the suits.

[Jub]

Iron Man isn't and never has been the suits of armor that he wears anymore than any hero is his costume or alter ego. Saying that lack of time spent in power armor makes this less of an Iron Man movie is a really shallow view of things. Him building a better suit at the end would not have fit the tone of what is a pretty enjoyable flick.

On the shrapnel thing.Perhaps he is more willing to take the risk now or maybe some application of extremism made it possible, in the end it hardly matters because the surgery fit the movie.

[Simon_Jester]

As for why he didn't get it removed earlier, he was not in the right mindset. He was unable to move on mentally or emotionally until he got rid of the suits, and so it's understandable that he may not have been mentally or emotionally ready to go under the knife.

We know that in Iron Man 1, Stark is so hung up about relying on anyone else to help him swap out his chest reactor that he calls in his (medically unqualified) personal assistant to basically do surgery on him, instead of, say, hiring a discreet professional.

Not much of a stretch to assume that he's reluctant to undergo surgery.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

I thought Stark used Extremis to be able to survive the surgery before curing himself of it, which both tied in the plot elements and worked with the theme. Stark using it on himself symbolises his acceptance and moving on of all of his past rather than trying to ignore parts as well as his bond with and equality to Pepper. I don't feel that takes away from the fact that he made a new choice now to fix it whereas before he saw it as part of himself; while he has the tool now that he didn't before, it's not the tool that pushes him to do it but rather the change in heart he has over the movie.

[Alkaloid]

His recovery from his emotional needs symbolised by his reliance on power armour could be shown by having him build better power armour?

I kind of like the idea that the quality of his suits was related to the quality of his mental health when he built them. It's sort of implied it happened anyway, it just happened after the movie ended.

I just saw it again, and there were a few more thing I liked that I missed the first time around. I'm pretty sure the suit that Pepper disassembled (by ripping out it's heart, no less) and used to fight Killian was the Mk.III, which was a nice touch. And I'm not sure the unmanned suits did that poorly against Killians glowy dudes. They got beat up and a few kamakazied into the ship, but they also just went at things like a bull at a gate and a lot of them were still flying after the fight, enough for a decent fireworks display.

Also, the credits sequence combing clips from al 3 movies is 80s as anything and I love it.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The best '80s action films had credits sequences like Predator. They should have really gone for that. Hilarious that The Expendables totally missed this, despite being a love letter to those films of the '80s and '90s (despite feeling nothing like them at all).

[Alkaloid]

I was actually thinking 80s TV shows rapid cuts between action scenes, stills of dramatic moments, slapstick comedy, all there.

[Havok]

So I saw it finally.

I really liked it. Great mix of serious and silly.

Tony's psyche deteriorating because of being Iron Man was a nice substitute for alcoholism. (although in all three movies there are mass amounts of alcohol everywhere)

I liked the symmetry of that one night in Switzerland being the catalyst for everything Tony has dealt with, become and faced.

The action was good, the stuff with the kid was good, the bad guys were credible and felt threatening, the Iron Patriot was not overly used and yet still felt like part of the story. I particularly like when Stark was out of the suit on his own.

The suits are nowhere near as fragile as everyone seems to think as there were tons left to blow up at the end. I (and the theater audience, from my ear hustling) felt that the Extremis soldiers were just that powerful and not that the suits were weaker. Really only the prototype Mk 42, which had been buggy the whole movie, seemed to be anything close to "fragile".

Overall I liked it as much as the first entry and thought it was far superior to the 2nd.

[chitoryu12]

Also, at least some of the suits seemed to intentionally kamikaze to get rid of the Extremis soldiers in them, rather than simply being punched to death or whatever. Tony and JARVIS were using them as weapons, not actual living soldiers. Even before he decided to destroy all of them, Tony could easily afford to blow some of his suits to pieces to kill several bad guys at once.

[Havok]

Yeah the idea that the "dodge" button was pretty much turned off seems to be lost on the people in this thread.

[NeoGoomba]

After finally catching it myself, all I'll add to the discussion is that the movie flowed by smoothly for me. Nothing felt rushed or seemed to drag on for me. Even my wife loved the shit out of it, and she hated the second one so much she initially had no interest in this one.

[The Romulan Republic]

Despite its flaws, I think this is probably the best Iron Man film so far. Moreover, I probably enjoyed it more than any other film in the main Marvel series of films.

I'm also amused by how this was basically the Marvel Christmas special, even though it was shown in the spring.

[Coop D'etat]

One thing I think they could have done more with is the whole "coming back from war" thing, with Tony's PTSD interacting with his relationship to his suits contrasting against the maimed soldiers relationship with Extremis. That might have been a way to build more of a connection between your hero and the antagonist.

I do really like that instead of trying to top the Avengers they went for a smaller movie about the repercusions of what happened in New York.

[GuppyShark]

Except that they simultaneously acknowledged what happened but didn't address the question of why Tony is risking his life without even attempting to get in touch with his superpowered buddies or the anti-terrorism agency that owes him significant favours....

[The Romulan Republic]

I think there was a line about using information from SHIELD or something like that. As for why Tony didn't get help from other super heros, he challenged the Mandarin to a confrontation which he thought he could handle, and then he felt guilty about endangering Pepper and might not have wanted anyone else to be in danger.

And who would help him? Thor isn't on Earth, and Black Widow, Hawkeye, and maybe Captain America (I'm not sure) were in SHIELD and might not be authorized to help because according to Rhodes, the government wanted to stop the Mandarin without super heros. That would leave just Hulk, who isn't the most reliable ally.

[GuppyShark]

At the very least they could have gotten him a safehouse to shelter and rebuild his suit without endangering a child....

[The Romulan Republic]

That's probably true.

However, a guy with a lot of anger and guilt and post traumatic stress disorder probably isn't likely to be very rational. And Tony Stark isn't the most responsible person.

What's odd is not him failing to go SHIELD. Its SHIELD not coming to him, especially given how close an eye they kept on him in the second Iron Man film.

[Crazedwraith]

Well I was thinking about this as well, Tony seemed to on a personal vendetta. So that's why he didn't call in for help and Stark was presumed dead after the attack on his house at least by the mass media so maybe SHIELD didn't know he was alive. (though this would strain credulity for me) It is odd given SHIELD's constant presence in the previous two films.

Another thing I didn't get was how when the house was blown up, the film acted like Stark had no other resources. No where else to go to fix the suit. I mean Stark Enterprise must have more of the auto fab facilities he has in his sub-basement, or at the very least, did he not keep some suit at Avengers Tower in New York. The only explanation I can think of was that since JARVIS had flown him via flight plan to the location he wanted to investigate and he didn't want to waste time going to one of the other locations.

But considering the Guy is on MK42 and has shown pretty much to treat the suits as disposable and always heading to the next mark. The 'they look after me and i look after them' remarks about the suit just seems odd and out of place.

For some different: Doug and Rob Walker talk about the film Usually like this guy's opinion and he has some points about Stark's stupidity, the disappointment of not seeing more of Pepper in the suit. But boy do they spend of alot of time trashing Guy Pearce for some reason and talking about the mandarin and not talking about the ending.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Spoony talks about Guy Pearce at the beginning in much the same way I viewed him: a horrible stereotypical dork scientist who ticks all the boxes for unoriginality just so he can pull off the "Actually, I'm hunky Guy Pearce" transformation with AIM. It was cringeworthy when it didn't have to be so hammed up.