Marvel movie marathon: Iron Man 3

Continuing my journey on my Marvel movie marathon quest! The 7th film up in the Marvel movie marathon: Iron Man 3.

Just to catch you up on what I’m doing with this Marvel movie marathon in case you missed my first post about Iron Man:

I am in the process of watching every MCU film from start to finish in release order, and of course sharing my thoughts. And bonus for my blog readers – since I’m watching all of these films with my new Marvel correspondent (he doesn’t know he has this title yet), you actually get two different perspectives on the movies. Tony (not Stark) has seen all of the films multiples times and knows a lot of the behind the scenes info and comic book origins. I, up until this point, have been a casual Marvel fan and have seen most of the movies once, though some of the early ones not at all.

We’ve gone through all of Phase One, which means we’re up to the first film in Phase Two:

Iron Man 3.

Release date: May 3, 2013
MCU phase: phase two
Run time: 131 minutes
Box office: $1.215 billion
Rotten Tomatoes audience score: 78%

“Plagued with worry and insomnia since saving New York from destruction, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), now, is more dependent on the suits that give him his Iron Man persona — so much so that every aspect of his life is affected, including his relationship with Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow). After a malevolent enemy known as the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) reduces his personal world to rubble, Tony must rely solely on instinct and ingenuity to avenge his losses and protect the people he loves.”

Becky’s knowledge prior to watching: I’d literally walked into a room where people were watching this movie once and I saw about half an hour of it. I’d seen other Marvel films at this point and there were some weird things going on so it stuck in my mind pretty vividly. It was towards the end of the film and I remembered seeing a drunk British guy surrounded by mostly naked chicks confessing he was an actor and not a bad guy, and I remembered that Tony Stark needed a young kid to help him defeat the terrorists. So yeah, I had a very weird background going into this one!

The hero: Iron Man

Okay, so if you’ve read any of these other posts about the Marvel movies you probably know how I feel about Tony Stark. When we start this movie off we actually Tony struggling with some serious PTSD. I’m really glad they addressed this because it’s hard to believe someone wouldn’t struggle after what they’ve been through. Unfortunately I don’t feel like Marvel handles this issue particularly well (one of the things that I really appreciated about the show Falcon and the Winter soldier was that they actually had the characters see a therapist!).

Ultimately Tony retreats back into his sarcastic ways and continues to be a bit of a jerk. I do think his character has more potential but Marvel just loves to fall back on his quippy lines and playboy attitude. We do see hints of growth but it’s not consistent. His interactions with the young boy who helps him out are kind of nice and heartwarming though and do indicate there’s probably the future family man deep inside there.

The villain: Killian Aldrich

We’ve got a Syndrome thing going on here (see The Incredibles) – a “fan” of Tony Stark looks up to him and wants to work with him, only to feel rejected and unimportant. So of course he’s going to get powerful and come back to get his revenge! He’s fine I suppose as a villain, just not particularly interesting or unique. I think a better take would have been to make Maya the true villain instead. She kind of walks that line between helping Killian but sometimes regretting her actions, but I think she would make a much more interesting “true” villain in this movie.

The romance: Pepper Potts

Yup, we’re back with one of my least favorite couples ever, Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. Only now they’re actually official and it honestly is rather depressing to me. I’ll say it again – Pepper deserves better. Is he maybe slightly better than the previous movies? Yeah. Is he still thoughtless and kind of awful to her? Also yes. He invites terrorists to the house where Pepper is without thinking. He gives her that stupid giant stuffed bunny. At the end he destroys all of his Iron Man suits (mostly “for her”)… but then the next time we see him in Avengers Age of Ultron they are not only back, but Pepper is not. And of course, what are the odds that Pepper was once involved with Killian? Just to create a little more bad blood there with Tony. Oh and finally – why does Pepper have to be half naked for a good chunk of this movie?

The story

I feel like the plot of this movie was all over the place. We have Killian and his whole evil plan with Extremis, a red herring villain with the weak Mandarin storyline, Tony battling with his PTSD, then a random kid who is needed to save the day. I personally just felt like the movie never got a good rhythm going in terms of a consistent plot and I didn’t feel all that invested in most elements of the story.

Tony (not Stark) says:

“I think this one is at least better than Iron Man 2. It’s a whole movie about Tony Stark just being Tony Stark, and less about him being Iron Man or a superhero. It’s interesting to see him producing all of these Iron Man suits because it represents his mental health breaking down and his fractured mental state. However the film is flawed in a lot of ways. I don’t think the villain is explained very well, like how Extremis works, and I hate the Mandarin twist. For this to be the next film coming off of The Avengers, it’s just a disappointment.”

10 random thoughts I had while watching Iron Man 3:

Ah, what a surprise – Tony’s history of being a complete jerk is going to come back and bite him in the butt.
PTSD is real and a very important issue… I’m glad this movie is addressing that.
It’s also still not an excuse to act the way that he does towards Pepper, now his girlfriend.
Iron Patriot? Is this a thing?
Yeah, the fact that our supposed villain is “the Mandarin” was not the best choice and feels pretty cringey.
Nooo not Happy! Good thing I know he survives.
OF COURSE Tony Stark is going to be dumb enough to just invite the terrorists to his home. Of course he is.
Good thing there is a young child to save the world!
The whole kidnapping the president thing just feels a little bit cliché, I think.
How much cooler would it have been if instead of just removing Extremis from Pepper they were able to find a way tfor her body to cope with it and then she could be a superhero too?

Rating:

Becky: 4 out of 10
Tony: 5 out of 10

Do you agree with any of my Marvel Movie Marathon Iron Man 3 thoughts?