I've had a few weeks to digest Iron Man 3 now, I've watched it repeated times & I've come to the conclusion that I just wasn't very impressed with Iron Man 3 at all.
After leaving the theater initially I felt disappointed but I thought my expectations were just too high the first time so I went to watch it again but it still felt disappointing, I'll try explain what I didn't like & why I didn't like it so be polite people.
The opening song Blue actually embodies the essence of this movie rather well, silly, simple, slightly fun but completely hollow.
AC/DC has become synonymous with Iron Man, I would have liked at least one AC/DC reference in there somewhere, even in the end credits, to replace the silly Austin Powers style music, I kept expecting to hear a Yeah Baby Yeah! in there somewhere.
The trailers depicted a personal battle with the Mandarin that would push Tony to his absolute limits but the Mandarin wasn't even concerned about Tony at all, the Mandarin wasn't bothered by Tony & didn't particularly care about Tony until Tony provoked him, If Happy hadn't have been so over zealous in his security, he wouldn't have been blown up by accident & Tony never would have challenged the Mandarin in public.
I loved the line from the trailers (but not in the movie) "Do you want an empty life or a meaningful death?", none of the menace from the trailers transferred over into the actual movie & the news clips felt so fake, Paul Verhoeven does them so much better & the constant slide over effect whenever they would change locations made it feel like a bad TV show from the 70's, some really bad editing & effects there.
Shane Black was all over this, the voice over thing from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (which I hate), the finale at the docks, the Christmas settings, the sharpshooter Riggs, I mean Rhodey, the banter felt like it was from a Lethal Weapon 5 script except Glover & Gibson have much better chemistry, the helpful kid from The Last Boyscout, I mean, The Last Action Hero, I mean Iron Man 3, the natural born killer, Pepper, from The Long Kiss Goodnight, I mean, Iron Man 3, the constant helicopter attacks from all his movies, the similarities are almost endless.
I really enjoyed Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the self narrative worked on that film but not for Iron Man 3, it's like the guy has nothing new to offer, he's just rehashing old ideas in different settings.
Some people have said it before & I'll say it again, the first two Iron Man movies were action movies with moments of comedy, Iron Man 3 was a comedy movie with moments of action, the laughs from the first two Iron Man movies came from Tony's personality & wit, he wasn't actually cracking jokes like he does incessantly in Iron Man 3, it was just too much in this one, take the exchange between him & the reporter in the first movie, he was being serious for the most part, slightly facetious but that's where the comedy was, not in his increasingly lame one liners, "That's a limited edition."
Now, the implants, were they so he could control his suit with his mind or were they acting as some sort of guidance beacons for his individual suit parts, I think it was the latter, when the suit is attaching itself to him at the start, he tells Jarvis to slow them down & when the face mask gets knocked upside down, Tony jumps around to match it to his face, which all seems to indicate that he has no real control over them via his mind & if the implants were so he could control the suit with his mind, why did he need 47 of them? Wouldn't 1 implant suffice, 47 seem to indicate that he has these implants all over his body acting as beacons for his suit.
If Tony needed implants for his suit to guide itself on to him, how could he summon the suit onto Pepper & Killian?
I thought the comics handled the extremis story line far better, Tony was dying from a beating an extremis soldier gave him so he injected himself with extremis but before that, he injected some sort of nano technological under armor into his body, which he was only able to survive due to extremis' healing abilities, that is what allowed him to control his suit via his mind, it could only work because of extremis, this would have been a much cooler avenue to explore than some implants which were never really explained at all.
Would I expect the leader of The Avengers (arguably) to have a home defense system of some sort, considering he nuked another world, I would think so, would he, at the very least, after threatening The Mandarin, get Jarvis to station a few sentries around the perimeter, I would think so, would I expect one of the smartest guys on the planet to at least be wearing a battle ready suit, Yes, I would think so.
Jarvis said he was busy because Tony gave his address out to the world but what was Jarvis doing exactly that prevented him from doing anything else of any use, he was watching the front gate, poorly I might add & watching a few news helicopters, also, poorly, aside from that, he wasn't really doing anything, he didn't even give Tony a heads up, Sir, incoming missile detected, nope, nothing. nice one Jarvis.
While the mansion was being destroyed, Tony never once asked Jarvis for help, he never said Jarvis get me a suit, Jarvis send a few suits out here, nothing, he had 40 odd suits mere meters away from him & most of the big debris didn't fall until after the fourth or fifth missile struck.
Which brings me to my next point, the debris is a thin excuse, at best, those solid steel doors weren't even dented by that concrete, this is the same concrete that as seen in Iron Man 1, Tony fell through two floors like a lead weight with ease, Jarvis should have been able to open the doors, all the suits were stacked around the sides so any rubble that would have fallen in, wouldn't have hit any suits, not that concrete should be able to damage a suit in the first place.
Even if the doors couldn't open, forty suits couldn't bust their way out? Igor couldn't? the guy with 2 actual jackhammers for arms couldn't find a way out, no, the suits are useless at this point, they are unable to match the technological prowess of a crane.
And this is the same concrete, where almost half the mansion falls on top of Tony at the bottom of the sea & he's able to bust his way through most of that, but then the hand detaches itself & pulls Tony out by his flesh & bones, deciding not to grab onto the actual suit, all of which was done by Jarvis, not by Tony controlling his suit with his mind.
A kid can snap off Iron Mans finger? Some people say the suit was designed to come apart, well, the fingers weren't.
I'm still not sure why AIM refitted Iron Patriot, especially after Tony has been so protective & secretive of his technology in the past, I can understand him giving his buddy a suit but to hand it over to another competitor who he seems to know nothing about seems out of character for him & the suit (Iron Patriot) had the same access features that all of Tony's suits had, did AIM do that too or was that Tony?
Seems strange that Killian spent quite a while heating up the suit so much that it almost killed Rhodey yet when Iron Patriot lands at Air Force One, there's not a mark to be seen on the suit, it's all brand new & is there no clearance checks at all to get on board what is supposed to be the most secure plane in the world?
Also strange that the President seemed to have control over the suit yet he never done anything in it, he could get in & out of the suit at the very least, did Rhodey somehow fire the repulsor blast or did the President, I'm not sure but that whole debacle was so ridiculous, Rhodey swinging through the air like Tarzan.
Jarvis is beginning to take away far too much from Tony Stark, it's almost like Jarvis doesn't even need Tony anymore, Tony can just sit on the couch & say, Jarvis, go do this or that, I would prefer to see Tony rely less on Jarvis & more on himself, even though he did to a certain extent but I'm talking about him as Iron Man.
The extremis soldiers, 3,000 degrees is hotter than magma yet all these guys & girls still have all their clothes on? People say, it's a PG movie, you can't have nudity, that's obvious, a quick scene detailing Killian or some scientist developing some sort of cloth or uniform for them would have been all that was necessary, the Hulk was butt naked in The Avengers although they didn't show you but why else would the guy give him a pair of pants, some clever camera play at the end with Pepper could have worked with Tony giving her his shirt at the end, many possibilities, no nudity required.
Killian can tear chunks off of Tony's suits yet he grabs a railing & it doesn't burn through or break, that's some pretty serious metal, I didn't realize industrial plants used stronger materials than Iron Man does.
As many others have stated, the consistency of the suits was way off, some say they were prototypes although I think only 42 was an actual prototype but still, they were all made out of the same materials & should thus have the same durability as the others, Thor couldn't penetrate Iron Mans armor & he can conjure temperatures exceeding 6 times the surface of the sun yet a puny 3,000 degrees can melt them & tear them to bits.
I thought the special effects for the suits looked fake in this one, in the previous 2 & the Avengers, the suits looked metallic, they looked strong but they looked noticeably different here, someone said it was a different vfx studio, I'm not sure if this is true but it wouldn't surprise me.
Yes, Pepper at the end was totally unbelievable, she has never shown the slightest interest or ability towards fighting & when she is around violence or fighting all she is does is scream & run away, it seems totally unrealistic that she would somehow start doing flips through the air & begin pummeling Iron Man suits like they were nothing.
Also, why would Killian inject Pepper with extremis? In the comics there is a 97.5% chance of fatality with extremis subjects so if Killian wanted Stark to work for him, injecting Pepper with a substance that's highly likely to kill her might not be the best move, not to mention, if she does survive extremis, Tony now has an extremis enhanced ally.
And as you can probably guess, I didn't like the Mandarin twist, The Mandarin spent his formative years training his body & mind, he was not Gollum, he was a martial arts expert & a formative enemy for Stark even without his rings & the rings weren't magic, they were alien technology, nothing anymore absurd than what has already happened in Thor & the Avengers before plus I was actually looking forward to seeing Kingsley's performance, how perturbed I was to see him use toilet humor & carry on like a drunken imbecile, he reminded me EXACTLY of Simon from Frasier, they were almost identical, such a shame.
Killian was not the Mandarin, the Mandarin even admits that his body can't take the extremis virus, it will kill him, some people say that we will see the real Mandarin later on, I think we might but that will just negate Iron Man 3, bad move Feige, I never had doubts about him before but now, I'm worried.
I hate to bring politics into movies but the whole America creates its own enemies & produces & fosters fear for control just felt like a not so subtle knock to America about its foreign policy, I bet the truthers & conspiracy theorists were nodding in complete agreement & loved the twist, I thought it was pandering to be honest.
And can anyone explain why Tony looked so worried when that Iron Man helmet rolled out of the fire? When the face popped off, he looked so relieved, what was he so apprehensive about, was he expecting Killians head to be in there?
Also some people say 42 was special because it could come apart at will but that other armor that looked a lot like a version of the destroyer armor, broke up into 6 different parts & hit the extremis soldiers off the balcony, that suit could apparently come apart & reconnect at will too.
When he initiated clean slate, Igor, who was supporting the crane, must have been blown up, yet, the structure remained standing, that's odd.
I was definitely expecting better from Marvel, I still have high hopes for The Dark World but Iron Man 3 was pretty rough, in my opinion.
