IRON MAN THREE - A Retro Review

I've been dreading this one. It's time to look back on the insult to not only comic book fans, but moviegoers everywhere, 'Iron Man 3'.

Rarely...RARELY do I walk out of a movie angry. I may be disappointed. I may be bored. I may be dismissive. But I left 'Iron Man 3' angry as hell. For starters, I was mad because the trailer for the film promised something completely different from what we were given. Not only were we promised Iron Man's arch-nemesis, the Mandarin, but we were also promised Extremis and several scenes that hinted that this might finally be a foe too strong for Tony Stark to defeat.

Long before this movie came out, when they announced that Jon Favreau would give up director duties, I thought "ok, maybe it's for the best." Iron Man 2 wasn't the greatest, and putting in the writer of 'Predator' and 'Lethal Weapon', two of the all-time great 80's action movies seemed like an interesting idea.

Basically...yeah.

Instead, what we got was a snarky, disdainful movie that has a major tonal shift from everything that had preceded it, and a handful of half-baked plot threads all leading to a major twist which is completely unnecessary to the story. Not only that, but there was a major change to the character of Tony Stark that comes totally out of left field.

Director Shane Black seems more interested in putting together a series of scenes for varying reasons, rather than a coherent story. Aldrich Killian hates Tony for being an asshole to him way back in the day, but how do you go from business rival to complete psychopath? The movie never stops to explain. However, since he felt compelled to create a piecemeal story that never really coheres into an actual movie, I'm just going to rip his efforts apart, piece by shitty piece.

Throughout the first two acts of the movie, Tony struggles with PTSD following the Battle of New York. All we ever get for explanation is that he is struggling to understand those events. It's never even hinted that he's dealing with his own mortality. Not only that, but once the third act arrives, Tony's PTSD seems to have vanished without any sort of resolution.

Man, fuck this bullshit.

The kid. Oh god, the kid. The kid makes me think of that line in 'Barton Fink' (if you haven't seen it, good lord, rent it or stream it. It's one of the Coen Brothers' best) where Judy Davis is talking about the famous screenwriter and how he developed a formula for "wrestling pictures" that usually involved the protagonist becoming invested in the life of a small child. Harley, the kid, brings literally nothing to the table. He exists to elicit laughs and to be a foil for Stark's quips, once Tony is removed from the company of Pepper, Rhodey, and Jarvis. The kid is just there for Stark to antagonize. If you disagree, ask yourself if the kid was removed from the film, would it be fundamentally different?

And remember how in 'The Avengers' Iron Man got hit with Mjolnir and took the hit rather well? No dents or explosions or anything? Well, apparently Tony Stark was done building suits with that sort of durability, because MK42 suit is routinely broken apart by things like getting hit by a truck, getting hit with its own faceplate, and getting tugged on by a small child. Killian's Extremis thugs, too, have very little trouble in dispatching Tony's many autonomous suits with their hot hands. Nevermind that Tony's armor has, in the past, absorbed lightning (which, if you google it, burns more than five times hotter than the surface of the sun), Extremis people are indestructible, regenerating monsters! Except when they're not.

I MADE IT ALL UP FOR...REASONS!!!

Let's examine the Extremis issues. The main conceit of this particular Macguffin is that it will heal your broken body, regnerating severed or damaged tissue and also, if you can control it, allow you to burn things with your hands. And spout fire (an idea so ludicrous, even the movie stops to be like "wtf?"). The Extremis explosions, passed off as bombings carried out by the Mandarin, are caused by Killian's test subjects not being able to regulate their body temperatures (although what exactly that entails and why it's so difficult is never really explained. I can't regulate my body temperature either, but somehow it manages to regulate itself pretty ok). So if Killian's goons can go off at any moment, why the hell does he let them out of his sight? This leads to the idea that Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall) will manipulate Tony into fixing the flaws in Extremis. However, why she doesn't just come to him straight up is never explained either.

The regeneration thing is also inconsistent. Killian's two top goons, Savin (James Badge Dale) and Brandt (Stephanie Szostak) are both seen regenerating from severe injury repeatedly until the moment when they just don't. Tony tosses Brandt into a transformer, and he blows a hole* through Savin's chest. But instead of regenerating, they just die. Why? Did they run out of Extremis juice? And how was it Savin and Brandt managed to master the whole 'regulating' thing? Why are they so special? With so much Extremis nonsense, it's really annoying that the only purpose it really serves is to provide a reason for the Mandarin to exist.

*while everyone gets all up in arms that Superman and Batman kill in the DCEU, nobody seems to give a shit that Stark kills...a whole lot of people, too. Also, Captain America is a total killing machine. Just sayin'.

From the outset, the Mandarin is presented as a grave threat, responsible for numerous deadly bombings (that turn out to be bogus) around the country, but right from the start, we see that Killian is the one that is somehow tied to the explosions and that is clearly has something to do with Extremis. But before the big reveal, the Mandarin is so shortchanged in screen time that, even though we know he and Killian are somehow tied together, he still doesn't seem like the primary threat.

We were promised this.

Which brings us to the twist. The Mandarin is not a real villain, but an actor portraying a terrorist. This is a plot twist that makes absolutely no goddamn sense at all, except to generate laughs because Ben Kingsley plays actor Trevor Slattery as a debauched lout who is barely aware what is going on around him, let alone capable of being a dangerous terrorist. Nevermind that he's claiming responsibility for actual deaths and acts of terrorism; nevermind that he shoots a dude in the head; Trevor claims that none of it is real. Shane Black did this because he thought it'd be funny. Not because it served the story. How am I so sure? Because it doesn't serve the story**.

We got this. THIS is bullshit.

Killian claims he created the Mandarin so that the the U.S. government would be too distracted looking for him to really investigate the Extremis explosions. But there is literally nothing to indicate the government doesn't trust Killian or AIM (his company), or even suspect that there is anything out of the ordinary about the bombings. The Mandarin was created by Killian to throw off a hunting party that doesn't exist. Therefore, he doesn't serve the goddamn story one bit.

**a good plot twist makes you want to go back and watch the movie again. The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects - you go back and watch the film again and look for clues that should have tipped you off to the twist ending. It's enjoyable to see what you missed. But aside from the twist itself, it usually helps if said twist is in service to a good story in a good movie.

This is physically impossible. 

'Iron Man' was good. 'Iron Man 2' was flawed, but still had its moments. Tony's turn in 'The Avengers' was at least fun, and provided him with a nice little soliloquy about the shrapnel in his chest and the role it plays in motivating him to do the most with his life as he possibly can, as well as leading Bruce Banner to accept his Hulk powers and channel them into heroics. Shane Black literally undoes everything that was good about those three outings as he decides to end Tony Stark's solo tales with Tony just up and deciding to have heart surgery to remove the shrapnel, despite the fact that we've been repeatedly told it's too dangerous. It proves that Shane Black was only interested in telling a Shane Black story, not an Iron Man story. He was the wrong writer, the wrong director, and the entirely wrong way to go for this complete and utter failure of a movie.

I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

FINAL SCORE 1/10

Iron Man will next be seen apparently making a lot less jokes in 'Captain America; Civil War' out Friday in most of the world, and next Friday in America. Which is totally unfair. America created Cap and Iron Man and we gotta wait an extra week to see them? F that S, Feige, you rat bastard!! 

ONE MORE WEEK??? GAHHHH!!!