It would seem that there are mainly two different types of people who go see and enjoy superhero movies these days, during what is shaping up to be quite a "Golden Age" of comic book movies. Each type of moviegoer shells out money to see both Marvel and DC movies. So who are these movie-going, comic book-loving types?
I say you can break them up into either comic book "purists" or the mainstream audience.
But what about the minority that is sort of...in between these categories?
Personally, I never was exposed to comic books growing up. But back in 2008, Iron Man still managed to catch my eye in a way that few other genres have done. Based on a little internet research (read: Wikipedia, Marvel's website, and a few other sources), I consider myself a little more knowledgeable in the comic book world than the average person, but obviously not to the level of the afore-mentioned purists.
I believe being in this grey area has a few advantages: I don't get caught up too much by changes in characters or storyline, but I'm still able to have an appreciation for the character's roots in the comics while also realizing the myriad of different directions that filmmakers can take the movie, thanks to the comics. It's also a bonus to be able to pick up on little easter eggs, including actually having an idea of who Thanos was after seeing the Avengers.
This brings us to Iron Man 3. I'll go through the individual strengths and weaknesses of the movie before I get to the main point of this article, which is my perspective on the twist and the overall movie.
Generally speaking, the plot twist itself seems to have caused a division between these two types of moviegoers, with the hardcore fans absolutely up in arms about the change and the general audience not minding it as much. This explains the mixed reactions to the movie overall as well. So what did this "in-betweener" think of the movie? No more delaying, let's get right to it!
Also, spoilers from here on out.
Strengths:
1. The action.
While both previous Iron Man movies had their fair share of Tony blowing things up, what should have been the epic final battle always left a little to be desired. Iron Man's fight with Iron Monger wasn't terrible, but Tony really didn't even actually defeat him. And Iron Man 2's three minute fight against Whiplash was incredibly disappointing. Let's face it, seeing Iron Man face off against other people's variation of his suit got to be a little tiresome. Luckily, Aldrich Killian made up for that by being able to hold his own against Stark.
From the destruction of Tony's Malibu mansion, to the exhilarating mid-air rescue featuring Air Force One, and finally the epic climax with all of his suits against the Extremis soldiers, the action sets in this movie were a thing to behold.
2. The dialogue.
Once again, Robert Downey Jr. proved that he owns the role as Tony Stark. His interactions with Pepper and especially the kid from Tennessee, Harley, are top notch. Tony's one-liners and overall dialogue in this movie are comparable to those from The Avengers, which is really saying something.
3. Making it a standalone movie
After making The Avengers as big as it was, Iron Man 3 needed to focus solely on Tony Stark and his personal story. While it's almost inexplicable as to why SHIELD, the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, wouldn't be involved in a major domestic terrorist threat (that question will be answered in future movies, Marvel says. Hopefully in Captain America 2), it makes sense not to distract us from Tony's story by bringing in Nick Fury or having the other Avengers come help out.
A big part of this was having Tony's suit malfunction and send him to Tennessee. Personally I was hoping that we'd get a better way to get Tony cut off from the outside world and rely on nothing but his wits, but this worked to an extent. What didn't work is the fact that the world is supposed to think he's dead. I'd think SHIELD would definitely step in at that point, but that's just me.
Plus if Tony is supposed to be dead in the eyes of everyone else, how does he get from Tennessee all the way to Florida with no suit, no Jarvis, and no way that people wouldn't recognize him on the way there?
If there is eventually a good explanation of why no one else came to help out Stark, I'll let it go. But in my opinion, that question should've been answered in this movie, even if it was just a throwaway line. They made a conscious effort to make ridiculously obvious allusions to the Avengers, so explaining why they didn't even consider contacting them or SHIELD would've been nice. Minor nitpicks though. On that note, let's look at the weaknesses of this movie.
Weaknesses:
1. The tone
This movie had absolutely no idea what it wanted to be. From the numerous trailers that were released, it seemed that we'd be going through a more intense, dramatic battle that would've been a nice change of pace in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Instead, humor had to be injected into almost every scene. Sometimes it worked, but most of the time it didn't.
For a movie that was trying so hard to make the events of The Avengers seem very real and relevant (i.e. Tony's nightmares and panic attacks related to the events in New York. Which is kind of odd when you think about it, but I'll get to that.), the movie, and its characters, doesn't really take itself seriously at all. The persistent attempts at humor undercut the more dramatic and serious moments, which really hurt the overall product.
And personally, most of the jokes just weren't all that funny. The scene with the obsessive Tony Stark fan Gary, the "Mandarin" coming out of the bathroom during the plot twist scene was very cringe-worthy and lame, Tony trying to summon his suit for a good 5 minutes in front of his two captors got dull real quick, and Tony's opening monologue seemed like the writers were trying too hard to make it funny.
But I'll give them this - the times when the jokes were good, they were hilarious. Most of Tony's give and takes with Harley, the scene with the one bad guy left after Tony kills the other henchman and he begs "I don't even like working here, they are so weird!", and of course Stan Lee's cameo, were spot on.
But I think Marvel needs to realize that just because a movie is funny, doesn't automatically make it good. It worked with The Avengers, but definitely not Iron Man 3.
2. References to the Avengers
Despite hyping up the fact that Iron Man 3 would be a standalone movie, director Shane Black felt compelled to constantly hit us over the head with painfully obvious allusions to the Avengers.
As I mentioned before, The Avengers movie had a fun, light feel to it that made great use of one-liners and slapstick humor. One side effect of this was that there was barely any sense of danger for any of the characters. Hordes of aliens pour into New York City, but you never actually see anyone die or get hurt. Agent Coulson is savagely maimed by Loki, but all signs point to him returning in SHIELD's TV series. Our heroes constantly perform death-defying stunts but have little to show for it except for a few scrapes.
This brings us to Tony Stark. He heroically flies through the wormhole to deliver the nuke to the Chitauri mother ship, one of the few cases of actual danger the characters ever face in that movie. But in Iron Man 3, they tried too hard to make The Avengers more meaningful and relevant by having Tony haunted by nightmares and panic attacks as a result.
But that makes almost no sense.
So Tony gets kidnapped by terrorists in the 1st Iron Man movie, has an electromagnet placed in his chest to ward off killer shrapnel in his heart, has a trusted life-long friend betray him, works through his Daddy/alcoholism issues in the 2nd movie, gets attacked by Whiplash...but none of that makes him suffer panic attacks? It takes going through a wormhole, during a movie that features almost no sense of real danger to any of the heroes? To me, this comes across as a hollow attempt to make The Avengers have more weight than it really did.
3. The villain's plan
Disappointingly, Iron Man 3's villain took the route of: nerdy guy gets offended and rejected by Tony in the past, holds a grudge against him for decades, and finally exacts his revenge. Past that, it makes no sense why Killian would branch out to threaten an entire country with a made up terrorist identity, inject Pepper with the Extremis virus, and kidnap the President.
The villains from the previous movies were given more background and motivation than Killian...and that's not even saying much.
4. The Plot twist
Here is the real purpose of this article. The controversial twist of having the Mandarin be nothing more than a stage actor that Killian hired in order to fool everyone into focusing their energies on some made up terrorist rather than the "real" Mandarin, Killian himself.
Given my background, my problem wasn't with bastardizing and completely changing one of Iron Man's chief villains from the comics. Mixing the Extremis storyline with the Mandarin wasn't an issue for me, although I find the way they went about doing so to be very flawed.
My problem was with the studio hyping up Ben Kingsley's Mandarin as the main villain throughout all the marketing for the movie, only to have the twist revealed halfway through in such a lame, anti-climactic way. It was almost as if they thought up the plot twist just for the sake of having one, not because it was essential to the actual story. Not to mention that it was an almost criminal misuse of Ben Kingsley as an actor.
I hate to use this example here, but it would be like having all those posters and trailers for the Dark Knight Rises that focused on Bane as the villain...only to have Talia show up in the first hour of the film, expose Bane as some random, harmless circus freak, and have her fight Batman instead.
Not only that, but the allusions and hints towards Mandarin had been in place since the first movie! By intentionally misleading the audience, and even going so far as to use the 10 Rings symbol in all of the Mandarin's telecasts, it comes across as false advertising. Additionally, it makes no sense for Killian to have the 10 Rings come up at all because the Mandarin is just made up anyway.
It would've been great cinematically to have the movie we were shown in the previews. Tony faces off against the terrorist in charge of the same organization that kidnapped him in the 1st movie. This would've brought the trilogy full circle, which Shane Black was trying to do. This leads us to the next point.
5. Bringing the trilogy full-circle
The way the movie did so was to tie it in with Tony infamously declaring "I am Iron Man" at the end of the first movie. This is why we got the montage at the end of Tony somehow suddenly being able to have the shrapnel in his chest and his electromagnet surgically removed. The idea was that neither the suits nor the chest piece made Tony Iron Man. He made himself Iron Man.
Good idea in theory, but poorly executed. Not only are two MAJOR issues glossed over in a matter of seconds (Pepper inexplicably gets rid of her Extremis powers, and the shrapnel that Tony has lived with for over 6 hours of film time is nonchalantly taken care of in no time at all. Again, ridiculously anticlimactic), but those issues get wrapped up in the most frustrating way possible - a montage sequence that explains nothing.
Going even further, the introduction of the "Iron Legion" in the final battle, which made for great action and visuals, completely negated the theme of the movie. A huge part of Iron Man 3 was that Tony would be left to fend for himself without the use of his suits. The movie even begins with a flash-forward of the suits being destroyed in the mansion attack in order to drive this point home.
But despite spending so much time repairing his Mark XLVII suit, Tony resorts to calling in every single suit he's built since the events of The Avengers. So the Malibu mansion attack didn't even destroy the suits like it seemed it would.
In light of this fact, the only reason to have the attack in the first place would then be so that Jarvis could malfunction and send Tony to isolation in Tennessee. Which he would've done anyway, because he had put together the clues that pointed him in that direction, causing him to file that flight plan with Jarvis. So what was the point of it anyway, to show Tony needlessly and idiotically give out his home address to progress the plot? Was this action sequence just a big excuse to have an action sequence...?
Ending thoughts:
To conclude, while not a terrible movie, Iron Man 3 still wasn't very good. I didn't dislike it purely because of the plot twist, though that didn't help much at all. The story, the decisions made, and many more aspects already discussed here left a lot to be desired.
It was misleading for most reviewers and critics to claim that the hardcore, purist comic fans wouldn't enjoy the plot twist while the mainstream, general audience would love it. I seriously doubt this is the only instance of someone disliking the movie despite not being well-versed in the comics or being in that "in-between" category between the other two.
But in spite of a very disappointing start to Marvel's Phase Two, I'm more than looking forward to seeing what they do and how they continue the story in this Marvel Cinematic Universe.