Iron Man 3 *SPOILERS*

[Guardsman Bass]

I saw it last night.

Why do the two Iron Man sequel movies have such lame villains? I thought the twist with the Mandarin was hilarious, but Guy Pearce and the Lava People were just bleh. I'm not sure if I liked them more than the Whip Guy and the Tony-Stark-Wannabe from Iron Man 2. I know we're going to get the "big" villain in Avengers 2, but still . . .

Other than that, I mostly enjoyed the movie. There were parts where it felt like the pacing dropped to a crawl, but otherwise it was very fun. I especially liked this:

If the Iron Man persona was a crutch for Stark (much like Batman for Wayne in the movies), him transcending that psychological need is the completion of his character arc. Now he can put on a suit of Iron Man armor because OTHERS need him too, not because HE needs to.

Which the movie drove home hard. It's not just him rushing out of the bar in a panic attack to climb into his armor (where he felt safe), it also shows up in him going above and beyond to make sure his armor is never potentially out of reach, with the automated retrieval system, summoning it in his sleep, and so forth.

[NeoGoomba]

Waitaminute...I said that!

[Ford Prefect]

There wasn't even an overall theme.

Man do I have to quote myself again

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I saw it last night.

Why do the two Iron Man sequel movies have such lame villains? I thought the twist with the Mandarin was hilarious, but Guy Pearce and the Lava People were just bleh. I'm not sure if I liked them more than the Whip Guy and the Tony-Stark-Wannabe from Iron Man 2. I know we're going to get the "big" villain in Avengers 2, but still . . .

Other than that, I mostly enjoyed the movie. There were parts where it felt like the pacing dropped to a crawl, but otherwise it was very fun. I especially liked this:

If the Iron Man persona was a crutch for Stark (much like Batman for Wayne in the movies), him transcending that psychological need is the completion of his character arc. Now he can put on a suit of Iron Man armor because OTHERS need him too, not because HE needs to.

Which the movie drove home hard. It's not just him rushing out of the bar in a panic attack to climb into his armor (where he felt safe), it also shows up in him going above and beyond to make sure his armor is never potentially out of reach, with the automated retrieval system, summoning it in his sleep, and so forth.

At least up until the moment he destroyed them all

[Guardsman Bass]

He destroyed a bunch of drone suits who were emblematic of his hiding behind the suit to escape his problems. He can always build another one.

[xerex]

I liked the movie and didnt mind the twist , but. . .


I felt like Killian simplny wasnt on the level of Tony Stark to be a good 'big bad'. a good top henchman but not THE bad guy.

It might be a lme idea but I thought that after Kingley did his whole drug addicted actor bit, he should have slipped on a ring and slammed Stark and Rhodes into a wall. they pass out , wake and Kingley explains that while "the mandarin" is a persona , he is still the boss, the 10 rings organization exists and there really is a plan

[Crazedwraith]

OK, Got back. Sort of regret spoiling myself but then at least I knew what I was getting into.

What is up with superhero movies deciding that, 'hey being a superhero is terrible and the character should give it up' ? How is that a great message? Hey kids, helping people and doing the right thing is something only people with psychology issues do, and they should stop. OK, I know that's not the precise message. But really I'm not here to see them give up.

But he does still say 'I am Iron Man' before the credits. So maybe that's not really it.

Anyway, my friend and i (wearing green lantern t-shirts) turned to each other at the end and said 'you know for a movie called 'iron man' this didn't have a lot of iron man in it' and Yeah, it was really more a Tony Stark movie.

The PTSD stuff would have been good. In the first movie or the second but here it felt like it didn't really flow from IM2 or Avengers. I mean in Avengers his character arc, such as it was, was to be learnt to be a hero for hero's sake and not in for himself.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The Stark-giving-up-superheroing thing is discussed above. TL;DR, basically think Bruce Wayne hanging up the cape and cowl in TDKR after his job has been complete. It's not like Stark can't help in other ways, nor indeed, is there a dearth in people who can fill his role to an extent. And it's not like he can't make a Mk. XLVIII suit in a follow up and carry on doing what he did, should it be requested of him.

[Crazedwraith]

Yeah, I have read the thread thanks. I'm still allowed to have a different opinion. And I didn't like it in TDKR either.

and some the herp-derp geek stuff as Flagg would say. They managed to shoe horn in an awkward Thor reference. But no Cap reference especially when Stark giving Rhodes a hard time about Iron Patriot? I was expecting a line along the lines of 'hey Rhodey, Steve called. He wants his colour scheme back'

And the final scene really was a waste. All those iron man designs from the comics and they get a split second each, in the dark. Really that scene was a swarm of glowing dots to me. Not great.

[Admiral Valdemar]

But it's not him giving up Iron Man, as we've already discussed. He still is Iron Man. He says as much in the epilogue. And unlike TDKR, he's not retiring because his superhero job is done. He's simply acknowledging that he no longer has to play that role he did in the previous films. Now he can do it for reasons other than guilt trip or some misplaced sense of duty etc.

The final fight fireworks? Yeah, that was dumb and obvious they were using the suits as a marketing ploy, especially as they leaked glimpses and small details before the film came out. Hulkbuster you say? Naw, it's just a mobile suit hydraulic ram. It does sweet fuck all. A stealth suit? Enjoy five seconds of screen time. And so on. It was about as relevant as having all those drones be copies of the Mk. VII. In fact, they'd have been better then at least, since that version took on the Chitauri quite handily.

[SAMAS]

I would like to point out that the mass self-destruct protocol was called "Clean Slate". Why do you clean a slate? So you can write on it all over again. The idea is not that Tony is giving up being Iron Man, but that he's starting over from scratch, maybe using his "perfected" Extremis as a base.

And something I noticed about the trailer and people's expectations about The Mandarin. At no point did the trailers ever promise anything about the Mandarin being a modernized version of the classic Yellow Peril villain with magic rings that many people were expecting. You hear him speaking, see the close-ups of his rings (and beard), but the only thing he does towards Tony are the disguised attack helicopters: an ingenuitive but still primitive attack. Everyone's hopes were pretty much hung on: "Well, they played Thor totally straight, they'll do it here!"

I won't say whether or not we were right or wrong to think/hope that, or whether the anger at how the movie did it was justified. I just have to say the moment of the reveal was the hardest I laughed in the entire movie, because the deception carried all the way across the Fourth Wall and fooled everybody and you have to respect that.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I think upon reflection that The Mandarin twist was the most brilliant part of it. Sure, he got shafted as a comic book character, but as an example of how you can twist the media to concoct any villain of your choosing out of smoke and mirrors? Genius. Kingsley playing it like a new Bin Laden in one scene, then becoming a total clown in others, was pretty much the icing on the cake.

It's not unlike the way MGS2 had Kojima basically tell us this was another Snake game in all the trailers. Then, when you play it... you realise you've been duped just as much as the real protagonist in the game was in that same fourth wall breaking manner. That, as with The Mandarin, would be the point of contention for a lot of people and I could tell even in the screening I was at, that some people would immediately form their overall opinion based on that reveal alone.

[Lost Soal]

My only real complaint about the Mandarin was that the speach he gives in the trailers never occurs in the film. Is that from a deleted scene or did they just record it for the trailer to play up the supposed importance orf the Mandarin

[Civil War Man]

I saw it, and I liked it. For the more interesting superheroes, the people they fight are a distraction. Iron Man fought Stane in 1, Venko in 2, and Mandarin in 3, but fighting them was not the point of the stories. Iron Man 1 was about Tony Stark accepting responsibility for the actions of his company, 2 was about reconciling his relationship with his dead father, and 3 was about recognizing that his past indiscretions have consequences in the present.

It's one of the reasons I like the recent movies' Hulk as a character. He is not about having really memorable villains, because no one is a threat to him. As Banner, he's a clever, resourceful, and a genius. As the Hulk, he is indestructible. The relationship between the Banner and Hulk personas is the driving force behind his plot.

I also like how they handled the Mandarin. The original Mandarin is way too Yellow Peril for comfort, with the Fu Manchu mustache and the magical powers. Having the Mandarin in the movie actually be a power-hungry white guy who uses a proxy to take advantage of those kinds of racial prejudices in order to control things behind the scenes was an interesting take.

[AndroAsc]

Ok I may have missed this since the action was quite fast, but...

1) How did Potts kill Killian when even an Iron Man suit self-destruct could not?

2) The last scene showed Tony throwing away his Arc Reactor. Does this means he no longer capable of piloting Iron Man suits?

[Batman]

Last I checked Rhodey didn't have an arc reactor in his chest, and neither did Killian, yet they both seemed to be perfectly capable of operating the War Machine/Iron Patriot armour. Not to mention Pepper could use (however inexpertly) the Mk42 without one too.

[Guardsman Bass]

Ok I may have missed this since the action was quite fast, but...

1) How did Potts kill Killian when even an Iron Man suit self-destruct could not?

Yep.

2) The last scene showed Tony throwing away his Arc Reactor. Does this means he no longer capable of piloting Iron Man suits?

No, it just means that he'll have to build an Arc Reactor into his next suit, if and when he puts it on. Considering how compact the one in his chest was, it's not a big problem.

[AndroAsc]

Ok I may have missed this since the action was quite fast, but...

1) How did Potts kill Killian when even an Iron Man suit self-destruct could not?

Yep.

2) The last scene showed Tony throwing away his Arc Reactor. Does this means he no longer capable of piloting Iron Man suits?

No, it just means that he'll have to build an Arc Reactor into his next suit, if and when he puts it on. Considering how compact the one in his chest was, it's not a big problem.

1) I think the question was How. If a self-destruct couldn't kill him, why would an Angry Potts with a repulsor blast do the trick.

2) So no nano/bio-armor I take it? I honestly thought they would go in this direction...

[Batman]

I dunno. Maybe the self-destruct already did most of the work and Pepper just finished what it started? We knew by that point that Extremis doesn't make people immortal (Tony killed at least two of them, one without a suit even) and Killian decidedly didn't look like he was in tip-top shape when she finally offed him.

[Dass.Kapital]

I think, though my memory might be wrong, that Pepper actually picked something up first and used the repulsor blast to blow whatever it was through Killian.

As to why that did the trick? We already saw that massive damage to the chest stops thses super soldiers with the death of the major mook on Airforce One.

Just an idea...

[Lancer]

I think, though my memory might be wrong, that Pepper actually picked something up first and used the repulsor blast to blow whatever it was through Killian.

As to why that did the trick? We already saw that massive damage to the chest stops thses super soldiers with the death of the major mook on Airforce One.

Just an idea...

It was a mini-missile. We saw Tony pull the same trick against one of the helicopters attacking his Malibu mansion.

[Hawkwings]

The missile blew up and hurt him, and the huge explosion that followed I interpreted as Killian finally getting too hot and self-destructing.

[Ahriman238]

Finally saw, liked it despite glaring flaws.

When Tony first hops the fence I was wondering what he thought he was doing instead of waiting for the suit to charge up. But I actually liked all the running around with the suits, it forced Tony and Rhodey to show their skills and knit in with the movie's theme (forcing Tony outside his comfort zone, the sheltering armor. Coming down firmly on the "suit makes the man" question with yes, it's the man.) It even made sense when he sent the Mk. 42 telepresence armor to air force one while he and Rhodey went for Pepper.

Killian's death, I interpret this way. He took a hell of a lot of punishment and even the magitech regeneration was shows to have upper limits. I'm going with holding himself together out of sheer spite and a desire to kill Tony before he goes, and Pepper just cherry-tapped him into the grave.

[chitoryu12]

2) The last scene showed Tony throwing away his Arc Reactor. Does this means he no longer capable of piloting Iron Man suits?

The reactor in his chest isn't the same as the one in his suit. The original arc reactor (and the newer one he had Pepper insert for him in the first film) was just meant to power the electromagnet keeping the shrapnel from reaching his heart; Yinsen built the magnet while he was unconscious, and Tony just built the reactor to give it essentially unlimited power. The other suits all have their own arc reactors as an independent power source. That's why the Mk. 42 can even operate independently instead of needing Tony in the suit, and why Pepper and Rhodes can operate them despite not having an experimental power source shoved into their chests.

[Ted C]

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.