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Iron Thread 3: Out Now! [Iron Man 3] (Use SPOILER Tags!)

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  • DerrickDerrick Registered User regular
    I liked the movie, but I didn't love it. I really wanted to love it.
    The Mandarin twist was trite. If you're going to do a villain fake out like that, at least replace the fake villain with a better one. Fire Boy had no motivation pretty much the entire film to be doing what he was doing. He sure as Hell wasn't hurting for cash, so there's no reason to unseat the president and get a stooge for military contracts or anything.

    I liked the "look how stupid the government is" bits vis-a-vis terrorism, but it just doesn't replace the need for a good antagonist with strong motivations. I didn't watch the trailers, so the "big twist" didn't work for me. I just got to that point and thought "Well, that was fucking stupid."

    Take away the twist, and you've just got fire dudes attacking the only person who they think can actually help them all movie long. And also a bizarre fixation on the president just to make the audience think the situation is important, I guess.

    It just fell flat to me. The plot didn't really work, and the villains were just Mcguffins.

    I probably won't go out of my way to watch it again.

    "The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us."
    "This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in."

    "There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother."
    -Theodore Roosevelt
  • Professor PhobosProfessor Phobos Registered User regular
    Well, the insane villain plot isn't exactly that...
    AIM's illegally-tested-on-humans super soldier virus starts exploding. To cover up their flagrant violation of like, all the laws, they fake a terrorist organization to take credit for the explosions.

    This is a motivation, in the strictest sense of the word. I wouldn't call it "strong" so much as "nuts" but, eh, Killian is a maniac and I think Marvel deliberately goes for unsympathetic maniac villains to ensure the movies are escapist mass-audience palatable.

    I think it's clever that the movie Mandarin is literally what the comic Mandarin is; a stereotype designed to creep out a white audience, made by white guys. Which is not to say I don't think it'd have been possible to do a proper Mandarin that wasn't a Yellow Peril archetype.
  • DerrickDerrick Registered User regular
    Well, the insane villain plot isn't exactly that...
    AIM's illegally-tested-on-humans super soldier virus starts exploding. To cover up their flagrant violation of like, all the laws, they fake a terrorist organization to take credit for the explosions.

    This is a motivation, in the strictest sense of the word. I wouldn't call it "strong" so much as "nuts" but, eh, Killian is a maniac and I think Marvel deliberately goes for unsympathetic maniac villains to ensure the movies are escapist mass-audience palatable.

    I think it's clever that the movie Mandarin is literally what the comic Mandarin is; a stereotype designed to creep out a white audience, made by white guys. Which is not to say I don't think it'd have been possible to do a proper Mandarin that wasn't a Yellow Peril archetype.
    That doesn't really work because it's not like the extremis soldiers are being reintegrated into society with no knowledge of what happened to them. They're goons. You can keep goons away from the public without making up an international conspiracy. I mean, why bother?

    And why didn't the hostage cry out when "The Mandarin" shot him? Either he didn't really shoot him, in which case it's weird as fuck that he didn't say anything, or he really got shot in which case the actor should have freaked out because he thinks all the guns are fake.
    "The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us."
    "This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in."

    "There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother."
    -Theodore Roosevelt
  • DracomicronDracomicron Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    Derrick wrote: »
    And why didn't the hostage cry out when "The Mandarin" shot him? Either he didn't really shoot him, in which case it's weird as fuck that he didn't say anything, or he really got shot in which case the actor should have freaked out because he thinks all the guns are fake.

    This... seems to be a crazy nitpick.
    Was he gagged (I don't remember)? Maybe that guy didn't have a microphone. Maybe he was a digital effect. Maybe the whole thing was staged and filmed in advance, including the president's call, since the outcome was never in question.

    Maybe the censors said that the fake hostage's death throes were too much for a PG-13.
    Maybe this is an incredibly minor detail movies gloss over all the damn time, and we never notice.

    Seriously, it's like people are desperate to find fault in this movie.
    Dracomicron on
  • AthenorAthenor Dapper Storyteller Registered User regular
    Derrick wrote: »
    And why didn't the hostage cry out when "The Mandarin" shot him? Either he didn't really shoot him, in which case it's weird as fuck that he didn't say anything, or he really got shot in which case the actor should have freaked out because he thinks all the guns are fake.

    This... seems to be a crazy nitpick.
    Was he gagged (I don't remember)? Maybe that guy didn't have a microphone. Maybe he was a digital effect. Maybe the whole thing was staged and filmed in advance, including the president's call, since the outcome was never in question.

    Maybe the censors said that the fake hostage's death throes were too much for a PG-13.
    Maybe this is an incredibly minor detail movies gloss over all the damn time, and we never notice.

    Seriously, it's like people are desperate to find fault in this movie.

    Or maybe...
    One of the scenes in the end credits reel shows that the Mandarin didn't actually shoot him, but instead Killian took him into a backroom and shot him after the filming was done.

    At least, that's what someone on this forum mentioned; I wasn't paying that close of attention to the end credits as they whizzed by on my first viewing, so I'm going to check it out the second.
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  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    I will say that I basically enjoyed the movie, watching it just as a movie. That doesn't make it good though. To me, this is one of those "wasted potential and unrefined success on an impressive scale" situations.
    How would the suits survive the debris dropping on them? Gee, I dunno, probably in the exact same fashion that Tony survived the house falling on him that started the whole mess... You know, by lasering what needs lasered, and dodging the rest. Not really the point though. It's just that (imo) the plot requires jumping through GIGANTIC hoops of logic in order to arrive at outcomes like: Tony doesn't wear an Iron Man suit for the majority of the runtime of the movie, Rhodey also does not wear his suit/it does not function for a large portion of the movie, Rhodey is a useless captive for quite a while and only teams up with Tony in the ending, and Tony's girlfriend LITERALLY (nearly) dies in a fire through his mistake. And I have to say why would you work so hard to arrive at such unenviable destinations?
    Black seemed to want to make a Tony Stark movie, not an Iron Man movie IMO. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but unlike Nolan with Batman Black didn't have the creativity to make it work. He also reversed the tone so its a comedy with drama/techno-thriller not a drama/techno-thriller with bits of comedy unlike the previous two entries.
    Arch wrote: »
    Arch wrote: »
    This movie is subtle as hell, and coming off all of the other Avengers movies, I can get how it is a little jarring and confusing.

    That does not make it a bad movie though.

    Subtle... ah yes.
    *Remembers the scene where the Mandarin farts and talks about smoking blunts to show that he's a silly head.* SUBTLETY AT ITS FINEST. Less sarcastically, I don't feel like "a plot that makes literally no sense in various places and you just have to go with it" is a good candidate for calling something "subtle."

    Back at nightmare,
    yes you're right about how the scene played out, but also no. Because the Mark 42 is a piece of shit, bafflingly broken suit and judging from the end battle, the others actually worked... So the reason there even WAS a problem is because the suit didn't really have weapons and wouldn't fly right. So again, don't apply the problems it had to the ones that worked and were armed.

    The only part of the plot that doesn't make sense is Mia Hansen starting with the scene with Pepper in the motel.

    Everything else is either alluded to or outright told to you in the course of the film.

    Complaining about things like "how did the suit parts fly all that way" is like asking how, in Eternal Sunshine, they can erase people's memories.

    In an action movie with nothing else in it? Yeah, those can be valid questions and problems with the movie. But for a film that tried to be more than just "Robot guy fights fire people", it gets leeway with some things.

    And, like nightmare said, most of the criticisms people have been posting are answered in the movie itself, albeit subtly.

    Unlike Eternal Sunshine the Iron Man movies occasionally will tell you how the suits work, even if its basics stuff. They don't need to make a college course about it just make it logical, coherent and basic. That's an advantage Favreau had over Black IMO.

    An action movie can be more than "robot guy fights fire people" but it shouldn't be to the detriment to the "robot guy" concept. People came to see an Iron Man movie, not a Tony Stark movie. The movie also isn't as smart as it thinks it is. Especially after Avengers.

    Its possible to be too subtle, as well.
    Just don't think too much about the plot or applied any amount of real world logic to the movie. You can easily find a bunch of problems if you do.

    For example,
    When did Tony Stark become an expert on genetics and bioengineering?

    Extremis can regenerate limbs, cure diseases, make people healthier, increase the production of crops and livestock, and generally make things better for all of humanity, and Pepper doesn't want to fund its research just because it can be used by the military? That's a really poor excuse.

    Where exactly is JARVIS? It's a program running on a computer, where is that computer? Is it in the Mk. 42 suit? Is it in Tony's house? Is it in a satellite orbiting the earth? Is it distributed over a network? Why did it malfunction and how did it get better? Why didn't Tony focus on fixing JARVIS first since JARVIS can control an army of Iron Man suits.

    Why did Tony need to charge the Mk. 42 suit with a car battery? He's got an arc reactor in his chest, that's how he powered the suits before. Heck, a major plot point in Iron Man 2 was how he was creating this special new element that would super charge the arc reactor so he didn't have to rely on palladium cores.

    Why didn't Tony have JARVIS call the other suits earlier, like when he had to save the president? I know the entrance to the suit storage vault was blocked by the wreckage of the house but Tony could have told Pepper to focus on clearing the wreckage. Plus how hard would it have been for the suits to clear that wreckage? They had a hulk buster suit.

    What is Killian's thing with Pepper? That was just random. Why didn't he have his extremis soldiers guard Tony instead of using non-powered guards? Heck, why didn't he inject Tony with the extremis too to give him more incentive to find a way to stabilize the virus? Or why didn't Killian take out Tony's arc reactor and replace it with a car battery to force him to work on extremis?

    Why didn't Tony have more suits focus on attacking Killian? It seemed like the suits were occupied fighting the extremis soldiers but after they kill Killian, there were still like 10 suits flying around so clearly the extremis soldiers were no match for the suits.
    More to go with KingofMadcows very sensible list:
    Why are none of the suits "coded" to Rhodey exactly? Seems like a dick move when apparently Pepper can use the Mark 42 at a whim from Tony...

    A single hot touch from that one lady completely disables the Iron Patriot? But... why??? And did she just like... lug the suit to a helicopter and fly him back to base from Afghanistan? And it NEVER rebooted in that whole time? And if continual heating force opens the suit, why didn't she just do it there and then kill Rhodey, instead of transporting him directly to their SECRET LAIR?

    After what happened to War Machine in 2, why wasn't Tony/Rhodey more strict about security on it? Why didn't Tony include a secret backdoor thingy that only Rhodey could get into in case of emergency?

    Why are all the new suits 1000x worse than the one from 1 (much less 2) except for convenience? Like... the suitcase suit didn't pop off Tony like a pair of tear off pants with a single hit... What happened to the awesome lasers Tony had in 2?

    Tony nearly solved things for Maya in 10 minutes, while drunk. WHY didn't she ever come back and say "I will pay you to help me perfect this,"? She didn't have a revenge reason like Adrian did, presumably.

    Let's pretend like Tony having 40 suits in his basement doesn't make the entire second act a joke (we have to pretend that because it very much does). Why does it also seem like he's pretending to be broke? I mean, yes he buys things at the store, but like common household items. Why doesn't he pay for a supercharge for the Mark 42 with his hojillion dollars? Or buy the news van outright rather than try to sneak around and jack a signal? I'm not saying he needed to do those specific things, but there was ZERO story justification for why we were getting the "World's Most Wanted, Tony with only his worst suit, no friends, and no money" storyline when NONE of those things made sense in THIS storyline. I love how SHIELD seemingly has no interest in this super terrorist detonating bombs all over the US and threatening the President.

    The last bit in Tony vs Adrian is when the Mark 42 comes back, post being hit by a truck. And we get the feeling of "thank god, he's still got ONE left". But then in the ending he (nonsensically) explodes the like... 10 suits that were apparently still there and functional. So... WHY THE FUCK did the Mark 42 need to fly a thousand miles when there were plenty of suits THERE that just weren't helping?! When he's trying to save Pepper, why didn't he ask for like 10 suits to jump in there and lift the block and all the others to run interference for him saving her?

    So the VP is on AIM's side for two reasons: 1) he'll get to be President and 2) maybe Extremis can cure his daughter or granddaughter or whatever. Fine, that sort of makes sense. But wait, won't his first act as President have to be going full tilt into catching/murdering the Mandarin? How will that work exactly, as he'll be an abject failure as a President if he doesn't make any headway (presumably an unsatisfying and unwanted outcome for him), but catching them (while easy since he knows who they are) would impeach/jail him? And also, seeing as how he knows all about their evil plans, does he somehow NOT know that the explosions generally AREN'T terrorist attacks but Extremis fuck ups? And if he does know that, is he gonna just hope that doesn't happen to his grand/daughter? That seems... dumb.

    Weeeee!
    -Stark is a super genius in a comic book setting. It's nonsensical, but it's on of those things you just roll with here. Plus it was just a mathematical formula he provided, right?
    -Actually, she says "weaponized" not "used by military." She was probably thinking more along the lines of what happens if some shithead terrorists or rogue nations get a hold of it.
    -Remember that time in Iron Man 1 when he nearly died because the suit used up all of his juice? I'm guessing he doesn't want to repeat that. And given that the Mark 42 seems to have each componrant have a seperate powersource, it may be too much for his chest RT to handle. But I agree with his that this is kinda stupid.
    -I imagine the wreckage crews couldn't get near there until after the police and federal officials were done investigating the scene of a suspected terrorist attack. Also, the larger suits may not have been able to dig their way out without collapsing the whole thing and burying the not-super strong suits.
    -Pepper mentions she used to work with Killian and got asked out several times by him; plus the whole "trophy" thing they mention in the movie. And as for why not have Extremis soldiers guard Tony? Why? If he could have done something, he probably would have when Killian shot Maya. Killian had no way of knowing Stark had a mobile suit. Extremis potentially blows up people on injection, so if he wants Tony alive, that's a no go. And does Killian even know enough about Stark to know why he wears the arc reactor and how to circumvent it. Does he even know it's an arc reactor? (There may have been some newspaper clippings in Iron Man 2 showing off Tony's personal arc reactor, but I don't remember)
    -Eh, given how fast those suits can be taken down, I imagine if Tony pulled off too many from the larger pack, they probably would have lost. Just because 10 survived doesn't mean 10 were superfluous. It just means they had enough firepower to stop the extremis soldiers before the last 10 of them were destroyed.
    -The suit tossed onto pepper was the Mark 42 prehensile suit that Tony can remotely control. (He later tosses it onto Killian). He didn't have that suit for the beginning of that fight. The rest of the suits aren't coded to Rhodey because they're a bunch of random prototypes and experiments.
    -IIRC, it wasn't a hot touch, it was some kind of electrical thing. AIM was the company that upgraded War Machine to the Iron Patriot so they either planted a way of deactivating him, or exploited an existing weakness. And really, they go through the trouble of setting up a trap for Rhodey, you don't think they have a way of transporting him around after that? Do you really need to see that? Also, the extremis soldiers seemed to be under the impression that heating the suit would damage it. It was Killian who decided do it, after being recommended not to.
    -I imagine that Rhodey had some means of taking control of the suit (which is how he restarts it after he gets the president out of it.) The problem is, any remote access can potentially be hacked, so making a it so you can send a signal to the suit and take control is probably not a really secure idea for a piece of military hardware. Tony, of course, does what we wants.
    -Because they're rapidly developed prototypes that Tony likely didn't really perfect, and didn't heavily weaponize, until moving onto the next suit. Though he never really went up against 3000 degree temperatures in previous movies so they may not be that as shitty as they look.
    -Well, 1, Tony slept with her and left while she was sleeping. A lot of women take that personally. 2. She would pay Tony? Where are her funds coming from exactly and why the hell does Tony need money? She joined up will Killian because she needed resources, not because she HAD resources. :P She already showed Tony all of her shit, and he still took off. He obviously wasn't interested.
    -He's trying to stay under the radar. A guy looking like tony stark buying a bunch of random tools is one thing, but a guy like Tony Stark running around and buying random shit like a crazy billionair does would basically be a big I'M HERE sign. And Rhodey specifically says in the beginning the US government took a black eye from the New York situation and were "calling dibs" on the Mandarin situation, as it were. Beyond that, there's no telling what resources SHIELD had available at the time to allocate to the situation. I mean, really, it amount to a bunch of mysterious, untraceable explosions; some super hijacking of airwaves that no one can trace, Tony's place getting blowed up, and Airforce One getting attacked with only Tony and Rhodey knowing where the POTUS was being taken to and who is behind it. (And the guy they tell, the VP, sits on the info.) Did we need to see a scene of SHIELD being able to do anything, or not succeeding in their investigation?
    -Again, just because there was ten suits left doesn't mean those suits weren't needed where they were. Also, I never got a "he's out of suits" sense. Killian just kept cutting through whatever suit he was wearing and Tony was inbetween suits when the mark 42 showed up.
    -Bin Laden wasn't caught on Bushes watch and he still got reelected. He just needs to appear to be making headway, and with Killian controlling the terrorist side of things, it wouldn't be hard to stage "successes" and whatnot. Dude just needs to win election reelection anyway, after that he's done no matter what.
    Yes. It'd mean they still exist and show how they reacted to events. In the movie its like SHIELD is a non-factor. Fury would tell the US military to fuck off were they tell him they "had this." There's nothing from the previous appearances he was in that Fury would hold off - especially when the military were getting nowhere with the investigation. Unless the WSC was politically holding Fury back, though that'd mean the movie would have to show or talk about that - and why Fury wouldn't have helped Stark/went after Mandarin anyway, he'll disobey orders if he thinks they're bullshit and he wouldn't leave Tony alone against someone as dangerous as the Mandarin. Until the third movie SHIELD, and Fury, have been supporting characters in the franchise. That's why them disappearing is noticeable.
  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    Well, the insane villain plot isn't exactly that...
    AIM's illegally-tested-on-humans super soldier virus starts exploding. To cover up their flagrant violation of like, all the laws, they fake a terrorist organization to take credit for the explosions.

    This is a motivation, in the strictest sense of the word. I wouldn't call it "strong" so much as "nuts" but, eh, Killian is a maniac and I think Marvel deliberately goes for unsympathetic maniac villains to ensure the movies are escapist mass-audience palatable.

    I think it's clever that the movie Mandarin is literally what the comic Mandarin is; a stereotype designed to creep out a white audience, made by white guys. Which is not to say I don't think it'd have been possible to do a proper Mandarin that wasn't a Yellow Peril archetype.
    We've been over this. Comic Mandarin hasn't been a yellow peril archetype for decades. Its possible to do with that, there have been updated incarnations over the years in the comics and the version in Armored Adventures is awesome.
    Derrick wrote: »
    And why didn't the hostage cry out when "The Mandarin" shot him? Either he didn't really shoot him, in which case it's weird as fuck that he didn't say anything, or he really got shot in which case the actor should have freaked out because he thinks all the guns are fake.

    This... seems to be a crazy nitpick.
    Was he gagged (I don't remember)? Maybe that guy didn't have a microphone. Maybe he was a digital effect. Maybe the whole thing was staged and filmed in advance, including the president's call, since the outcome was never in question.

    Maybe the censors said that the fake hostage's death throes were too much for a PG-13.
    Maybe this is an incredibly minor detail movies gloss over all the damn time, and we never notice.

    Seriously, it's like people are desperate to find fault in this movie.
    Too many "maybes." An Iron Man movie shouldn't have pointless speculation on tiny details. Every scene was put in there for a reason and if it isn't properly communicated to the audience someone fucked up.
    Harry Dresden on
  • Robos A Go GoRobos A Go Go Registered User regular
    Was anyone else disappointed that the trailer's suggestion of a rogue, potentially sentient, Iron Man suit was really just a clip from a jump scare?

    I think that having the suit become a liability like that would have made Stark's over-reliance upon it a more salient theme.
  • DanHibikiDanHibiki Registered User regular
    Was anyone else disappointed that the trailer's suggestion of a rogue, potentially sentient, Iron Man suit was really just a clip from a jump scare?

    I think that having the suit become a liability like that would have made Stark's over-reliance upon it a more salient theme.
    No. I just assumed it was a figment of his imagination.

    Though I did think the mandarin was going to hack the suits and Iron Man would have to fight them because that happens any time you make autonomous army in comics.
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  • DracomicronDracomicron Registered User regular
    Too many "maybes." An Iron Man movie shouldn't have pointless speculation on tiny details. Every scene was put in there for a reason and if it isn't properly communicated to the audience someone fucked up.

    Er, that's what I'm trying to say. It's an Iron Man movie, so why are people speculating on miniscule details like
    why don't we hear a guy on a broadcast screaming after he's shot?
    There are so many reasons why it could've happened the way it did and so little impact on the plot, that the only reason to speculate on it is actively trying to find a flaw in the movie. The "maybes" I'm citing are just a scraping of the huge number of possibilities why most people wouldn't even notice it.

    Which is... well, some people like finding flaws in things. It's the reason there are terrible critics in the world. I don't want to say that the person who "fucked up," in your words, is the person that wasted their time complaining about this easily-dismissable detail, because that would be unkind.

    I do think, however, that a lot of peope were definitely expecting a different movie going into this, and they're eager to find fault in it to justify the fact that they felt fooled, or that they felt one of their favorite villains got the short end of the treatment stick.
    Was anyone else disappointed that the trailer's suggestion of a rogue, potentially sentient, Iron Man suit was really just a clip from a jump scare?

    I think that having the suit become a liability like that would have made Stark's over-reliance upon it a more salient theme.

    I thought that the movie would be
    Tony vs. the suit, honestly. My Skynet-Jarvis comparison from earlier was kinda my baseline going into the movie.

    I was surprised, but not upset, that the movie defied my expectations.
  • Linespider5Linespider5 We Good? Registered User regular
    Well, I'm sorry the movie didn't work out for some people in here.
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  • MrFuriousMrFurious Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    Ah, the old "It's a Summer Movie, man! You're not supposed to think about it! You're just supposed to sit back and watch stuff blow up and shovel pop corn into your mouth and enjoy it for what it is!" excuse. It's the motto of the moronic, mouth-breathing masses. The Idiots should put it on their flag.

    Comparing 'Iron Man 3' to 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' is ridiculous. Nothing they did in 'Eternal Sunshine' was impossible. Does the technology to do what they did in the movie exist? No, but it could. And no, they didn't go into super detail about how it all worked, but they at least gave SOME explanation. You can tell a lot of thought went into it. There was no thought put into 'Iron Man 3' other than 'heh heh, that'll look cool, heh heh'. 'Iron Man 3' doesn't bend the rules a little bit, it takes all the laws of Physics and Aerodynamics, not to mention Logic and Reason and puts them into a pile and then takes a huge crap on it and then sets it ablaze. It's a moronic movie made for moronic people which is why it did so well at the box office. Our species is devolving back to a primate state and the success of jackasses like Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich is proof. Watching a movie were a collection of small armor pieces fly 832 miles and assemble themselves is an insult to any human being with even average intelligence. Anyone who sees such a display of stupidity and thinks it's 'awesome' is either a child or has the mental intelligence of one. And anyone who didn't stop to think "Why doesn't he just breathe fire on Tony Stark since he already did it before" belongs in a zoo because they clearly lack the intellect of a Human Being.
    MrFurious on
  • maximumzeromaximumzero Registered User regular
    I was getting massive T-1000 vibes from all the Extemis-powered villains.
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  • iguanacusiguanacus Registered User regular
    Is my sarcasm meter broken MrFurious?
  • SynthesisSynthesis Registered User regular
    Derrick wrote: »
    I liked the movie, but I didn't love it. I really wanted to love it.
    The Mandarin twist was trite. If you're going to do a villain fake out like that, at least replace the fake villain with a better one. Fire Boy had no motivation pretty much the entire film to be doing what he was doing. He sure as Hell wasn't hurting for cash, so there's no reason to unseat the president and get a stooge for military contracts or anything.

    I liked the "look how stupid the government is" bits vis-a-vis terrorism, but it just doesn't replace the need for a good antagonist with strong motivations. I didn't watch the trailers, so the "big twist" didn't work for me. I just got to that point and thought "Well, that was fucking stupid."

    Take away the twist, and you've just got fire dudes attacking the only person who they think can actually help them all movie long. And also a bizarre fixation on the president just to make the audience think the situation is important, I guess.

    It just fell flat to me. The plot didn't really work, and the villains were just Mcguffins.

    I probably won't go out of my way to watch it again.

    Seeing it yesterday, I got the distinct impression...
    That it would have seemed less trite if they didn't appear so awkwardly determined to salvage 'Da Mandarin' persona that is such a part of the comics by having somebody, anybody declared "I AM DA MANDARIN!".

    I mean, yes, the character is a major part of the Iron Man mythos. And yes, the actual concept, or something resembling it, is so absolutely ridiculous and doesn't translate well at all into the present, even acknowledging animosity towards contemporary China ("Ten magic rings? Ancient Chinese secret!"). So having the fake out seemed..plausible. Certainly way less stupid than actually having him as the ages' Osama bin Laden.

    But I'm a laymen when it comes to Marvel. I expect fans of the comics have any number of reasons for not wanting it to play out that way.
  • HozHoz Registered User regular
    iguanacus wrote: »
    Is my sarcasm meter broken MrFurious?
    MrFurious is a man who takes his aerodynamics very seriously.
  • QuidQuid The Fifth Horseman Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    A super hero's abilities and equipment ignore the laws of physics?

    Heavens to Betsy.
    Quid on
  • PailryderPailryder Registered User regular
    if its ok to put some words in peoples mouth, none of the people complaining about the flaws of the movie have said the movie was terribad, they've simply said that it doesn't move beyond a movie that was entertaining into a movie you can think about afterwards and not come up with a lot of movie silliness.
    i haven't read any iron man comics, i only knew about the mandarin from armored adventures and maybe one of the video games? i didn't know his background or origin and it didn't matter to me
    that there was a twist in this movie in which the guy that's face is the mandarin is just acting. the whole point was that it was silly, they made an iron man comedy and that's the let down.
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  • shoeboxjeddyshoeboxjeddy Registered User regular
    About the twist, I've heard it called a brilliant subversion of audience expectation, and that's somewhat true. Because
    the audience would probably expect the character's most famous villain to be treated as a respectable threat and not a combo of a potsmoking actor and insane businessman (with no connection to the original character). That is certainly a subversion! Kind of like it would be a subversion in the Amazing Spider-Man series to have the Green Goblin be a methhead whose skin turned green from ODing and Spider-Man defeats him with one punch. Or for Doctor Doom to be a minion of The Thinker, that would be a subversion! Ah, but what we're missing is that all of these tweests are infinitely inferior to the capable, dangerous characters with fully fleshed out backstories that we're familiar with. Simply surprising the audience is not a good enough reason to do ANYTHING.

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  • KingofMadCowsKingofMadCows Registered User regular
    The Mandarin totally could have worked if they based him off of
    6tn600.jpg

    He's a charismatic leader who has mastery over the media and knows how to manipulate public opinion.
    He exploits antipathy towards the West and fashions himself as a champion of the downtrodden.
    His agents have infiltrated corporations and western governments, and he takes advantage of the corruption inherent within those organizations.
    He utilizes terrorism and unconventional warfare to great effect.

    All they have to do to make the Mandarin like Kane is add some pseudo-religious elements and make extremis the equivalent of Tiberium. They could have the Mandarin treat extremis like a divine gift that he gives to his most loyal followers. Extremis could be the technology that he plans to use to change the balance of power in the world.
  • MrDelishMrDelish Registered User regular
    yeah, I didn't really want to watch Iron Man 2 again, though
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Puts his name on his helicoptor.. ..so everyone knows it's his.Registered User regular
    How is that Iron Man 2?
    Vanko just wanted to ruin Stark's life/kill him and then piss on his companies ashes. He didn't have an anti-government or anti-corprate agenda, he wasn't a champion of the downtrodden.

    Like... Help me out here, I'm not sure what parallels you're tying to draw here.
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  • Look Out it's Sabs!Look Out it's Sabs! Registered User regular
    I actually really liked the main villains in IM 3
    The Mandarin twist was great, even though I knew about it beforehand. Seeing the twist and how Ben Kingsley's character really was, was hilarious. And I really like Guy Pearce and it felt fresh having an IM villain not being some guy in another suit. He actually felt like a threat, when he was just going through the various suits that Tony kept popping on.
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  • oldmankenoldmanken Registered User regular
    Just saw the movie, and I can sum it up in one word... meh.
  • DeadfallDeadfall Registered User regular
    I disagree with every single one of MrFurious's words.
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  • JoolanderJoolander Registered User regular
    Deadfall wrote: »
    I disagree with every single one of MrFurious's words.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVXOC2NFsJg
  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    Synthesis wrote: »
    Derrick wrote: »
    I liked the movie, but I didn't love it. I really wanted to love it.
    The Mandarin twist was trite. If you're going to do a villain fake out like that, at least replace the fake villain with a better one. Fire Boy had no motivation pretty much the entire film to be doing what he was doing. He sure as Hell wasn't hurting for cash, so there's no reason to unseat the president and get a stooge for military contracts or anything.

    I liked the "look how stupid the government is" bits vis-a-vis terrorism, but it just doesn't replace the need for a good antagonist with strong motivations. I didn't watch the trailers, so the "big twist" didn't work for me. I just got to that point and thought "Well, that was fucking stupid."

    Take away the twist, and you've just got fire dudes attacking the only person who they think can actually help them all movie long. And also a bizarre fixation on the president just to make the audience think the situation is important, I guess.

    It just fell flat to me. The plot didn't really work, and the villains were just Mcguffins.

    I probably won't go out of my way to watch it again.

    Seeing it yesterday, I got the distinct impression...
    That it would have seemed less trite if they didn't appear so awkwardly determined to salvage 'Da Mandarin' persona that is such a part of the comics by having somebody, anybody declared "I AM DA MANDARIN!".

    I mean, yes, the character is a major part of the Iron Man mythos. And yes, the actual concept, or something resembling it, is so absolutely ridiculous and doesn't translate well at all into the present, even acknowledging animosity towards contemporary China ("Ten magic rings? Ancient Chinese secret!"). So having the fake out seemed..plausible. Certainly way less stupid than actually having him as the ages' Osama bin Laden.

    But I'm a laymen when it comes to Marvel. I expect fans of the comics have any number of reasons for not wanting it to play out that way.
    The Mandarin isn't an idea that's unsalvageable in movies. In fact, the first film sets him up perfectly. All adaptions change characters but they went too far with this IMO. Just because Shane Black or Favreau can't do it doesn't mean no-one can.

    The rings aren't magic, either. Avengers and Thor bought aliens to the Marvel universe. The Mandarin exploiting alien technology is a logical conclusion to that.
    I actually really liked the main villains in IM 3
    The Mandarin twist was great, even though I knew about it beforehand. Seeing the twist and how Ben Kingsley's character really was, was hilarious. And I really like Guy Pearce and it felt fresh having an IM villain not being some guy in another suit. He actually felt like a threat, when he was just going through the various suits that Tony kept popping on.
    As much as I like Guy Pearce and his performance in the movie Killian isn't bringing anything new to the franchise a serious Mandarin could have. He's a genius terrorist, corrupt businessman and a white guy. Even Kingsley's fake Mandarin could have been a fresh take on that, minus being a white guy. That said, I agree it was good that he wasn't in power armor.
    Harry Dresden on
  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    Too many "maybes." An Iron Man movie shouldn't have pointless speculation on tiny details. Every scene was put in there for a reason and if it isn't properly communicated to the audience someone fucked up.

    Er, that's what I'm trying to say. It's an Iron Man movie, so why are people speculating on miniscule details like
    why don't we hear a guy on a broadcast screaming after he's shot?
    There are so many reasons why it could've happened the way it did and so little impact on the plot, that the only reason to speculate on it is actively trying to find a flaw in the movie. The "maybes" I'm citing are just a scraping of the huge number of possibilities why most people wouldn't even notice it.

    There shouldn't be multiple reasons for this, all we needed was one plausible explanation given to the audience. That's why its a flaw. Some people did notice it, though. Flaws in movies will be discovered, especially when they're big budget movies about popular franchises. A movie like this having too many "maybe's" is a bad sign. It means they left it too vague to the audience, which isn't good in a comedic Iron Man movie.
    Which is... well, some people like finding flaws in things. It's the reason there are terrible critics in the world. I don't want to say that the person who "fucked up," in your words, is the person that wasted their time complaining about this easily-dismissable detail, because that would be unkind.

    So what? Not every movie is perfectly constructed. Iron Man 3 definitely wasn't. Not all critics are terrible, you know. Some actually have valid complaints. I liked the movie and the franchise but I'm not going to let it slide for that. People complaining about that minor flaw is a reasonable objection IMO. You may be able to overlook that, others do not.
    I do think, however, that a lot of peope were definitely expecting a different movie going into this, and they're eager to find fault in it to justify the fact that they felt fooled, or that they felt one of their favorite villains got the short end of the treatment stick.

    That gives people an easier excuse to look for flaws. They're less likely to "forgive" something that's let them down. Its not necessarily a bad thing. It means they're less inclined to overlook flaws but I agree people who didn't like the movie shouldn't overboard with it otherwise their criticisms have less weight. of course people were expecting a different movie - the trailers are convincing us we're going to watch Iron Man's Dark Knight Rises, what we got was a
    comedy movie about Tony Stark defeating Fire Lord Guy Pearce who he unknowingly alienated at a Christmas party.
    Having IM's arch-enemy
    split into an AIM scientist with a fire fetish and a patsy Ben Kingley
    was only going to increase the scrutiny.
    Harry Dresden on
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Puts his name on his helicoptor.. ..so everyone knows it's his.Registered User regular
    Point of order
    it was a New Year's Eve party. :)
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  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    Point of order
    it was a New Year's Eve party. :)
    Got me there. :mrgreen:
  • ThisThis Registered User regular
    It bothered me a bit that instead of Iron Man, we basically have super-C3PO and the human who asks him to do things.
    Reads the LoL thread more than he plays LoL
  • a5ehrena5ehren Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    Reading this thread makes me really, really glad I don't know anything about the comics and therefore have expectations for how certain characters are supposed to be based solely on the name.

    That said, The Mandarin is a pretty dumb name for a vaguely Middle Eastern bin Laden stand-in, so they could have put a bit more effort into that part of it.
    Yes I know that the Mandarin was actually the business guy

    Saw the movie tonight, thought it was pretty fun.
    a5ehren on
  • ThisThis Registered User regular
    Chiming in on the idea that any dislike of the movie is based on expectations from trailers and comics:
    I thought this movie was pretty 'meh', and it had nothing to do with trailers or disrespect for the comic book Mandarin. I didn't see any of the trailers, and while I'm a comic fan I never read much Iron Man. My problems with the movie are mostly about:

    - Tony Stark being the controller/builder of robots instead of a guy who uses a super-suit. Like I said in my previous post, it was like, here's a guy who asks C3PO to do stuff for him. And then an army of robots for the final scene... just didn't feel like Iron Man to me at all. They've gone way too far with JARVIS. It's like JARVIS is Iron Man instead of Tony. Maybe that was an intentional comment on Tony going off the deep end a bit but I still didn't appreciate it.

    - The really half-assed handling of his PTSD/panic attacks resulting from the events of Avengers. Someone else already talked about this, but it just wasn't done well. The movie is basically a silly comedy, and then once in a while in calm scene they ask RDJ to freak out for a minute and then forget about it. I really would have liked to see a movie where this was dealt with in a meaningful way instead of just kind of throwing it in there sometimes.

    - The total physical invulnerability of Tony Stark. The scene where the house blows up and he makes the armor protect Pepper was such a great moment, because it shows Tony is willing to sacrifice himself to protect Pepper. But... who the hell needs armor when you can get slammed against a wall and run away completely uninjured? That moment would have meant a whole lot more if there was some cost to not using the armor on himself. It makes the choice of who to protect with the armor fairly meaningless. I mean, what's the point of having armor if we're shown over and over in the movie that it really makes no difference whether he's wearing it or not - either way he apparently can't be hurt.
    Reads the LoL thread more than he plays LoL
  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Puts his name on his helicoptor.. ..so everyone knows it's his.Registered User regular
    This wrote: »
    - The really half-assed handling of his PTSD/panic attacks resulting from the events of Avengers. Someone else already talked about this, but it just wasn't done well. The movie is basically a silly comedy, and then once in a while in calm scene they ask RDJ to freak out for a minute and then forget about it. I really would have liked to see a movie where this was dealt with in a meaningful way instead of just kind of throwing it in there sometimes.
    Re: Panic attacks.. That is almost exactly how they happen for me. Something triggers them, I go completely off the deep end, then it ends and it's almost like it never happened.

    Panic attacks are kinda fucked, yo.
    thanossig_zps4bf2ceeb.jpg
  • AistanAistan Registered User regular
    This wrote: »
    - The really half-assed handling of his PTSD/panic attacks resulting from the events of Avengers. Someone else already talked about this, but it just wasn't done well. The movie is basically a silly comedy, and then once in a while in calm scene they ask RDJ to freak out for a minute and then forget about it. I really would have liked to see a movie where this was dealt with in a meaningful way instead of just kind of throwing it in there sometimes.
    Re: Panic attacks.. That is almost exactly how they happen for me. Something triggers them, I go completely off the deep end, then it ends and it's almost like it never happened.

    Panic attacks are kinda fucked, yo.
    Every time it happens it is the absolute worst experience of my life, seeming like it will never end. Then it inevitably does, and I go back to "normal".

    I don't even have any big traumatic moments in my past. What Tony was going through seemed perfectly plausible to me.
  • shoeboxjeddyshoeboxjeddy Registered User regular
    This wrote: »
    - The really half-assed handling of his PTSD/panic attacks resulting from the events of Avengers. Someone else already talked about this, but it just wasn't done well. The movie is basically a silly comedy, and then once in a while in calm scene they ask RDJ to freak out for a minute and then forget about it. I really would have liked to see a movie where this was dealt with in a meaningful way instead of just kind of throwing it in there sometimes.
    Re: Panic attacks.. That is almost exactly how they happen for me. Something triggers them, I go completely off the deep end, then it ends and it's almost like it never happened.

    Panic attacks are kinda fucked, yo.

    I feel like you're missing the point. If you were a super hero, maybe they would happen when you were fighting crime say? Or trying to save someone? And not just when it was "convenient", which is what happens in the movie.

    Here's a good example: Spider-Man 2. His powers short circuit at absolutely TERRIFYING times and it nearly gets him killed. It's not like they only broke in a quiet scene where no harm came to him. Can you see the difference, from a dramatic standpoint?

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  • Undead ScottsmanUndead Scottsman Puts his name on his helicoptor.. ..so everyone knows it's his.Registered User regular
    Depends on the person.
    If I have something to distract me, I tend to avoid getting them; it's only when I have time to think about things is when shit goes downhill.
    thanossig_zps4bf2ceeb.jpg
  • nightmarennynightmarenny Registered User regular
    Depends on the person.
    If I have something to distract me, I tend to avoid getting them; it's only when I have time to think about things is when shit goes downhill.
    TOny gives a whole speech in the beginning about how he starts to freak out if he stops so he can't sleep and builds suit after suit. Tony doesn't get the panic attacks during fights because they specifically happen when he has a chance to stop and think.
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  • QuidQuid The Fifth Horseman Registered User regular
    This wrote: »
    - The really half-assed handling of his PTSD/panic attacks resulting from the events of Avengers. Someone else already talked about this, but it just wasn't done well. The movie is basically a silly comedy, and then once in a while in calm scene they ask RDJ to freak out for a minute and then forget about it. I really would have liked to see a movie where this was dealt with in a meaningful way instead of just kind of throwing it in there sometimes.
    Re: Panic attacks.. That is almost exactly how they happen for me. Something triggers them, I go completely off the deep end, then it ends and it's almost like it never happened.

    Panic attacks are kinda fucked, yo.

    I feel like you're missing the point. If you were a super hero, maybe they would happen when you were fighting crime say? Or trying to save someone? And not just when it was "convenient", which is what happens in the movie.

    Here's a good example: Spider-Man 2. His powers short circuit at absolutely TERRIFYING times and it nearly gets him killed. It's not like they only broke in a quiet scene where no harm came to him. Can you see the difference, from a dramatic standpoint?
    The panic attacks weren't being used to create suspense during fights. The point of them wasn't so he would be at immediate risk to harm.
  • DanHibikiDanHibiki Registered User regular
    This movie would have made a lot more sense if Tony Stark had panic attacks from being in the Iron Man suit.
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