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[seekingferret]

My thoughts on Iron Man 3


-I still would have rather they hadn't done the Mandarin, but if they felt they had to, that they couldn't gloss over the man who is inarguably the most important figure in Tony Stark's rogues' gallery, this was the best way they could have done it. It was a complete deconstruction of the Western media tropes about the East that can make East-West confrontations so toxic.

And it did set up some meaningful Iron Man/ Mandarin foil dynamics. Tony Stark as the avatar of American consumerism, confronted by an enemy who literally embodies the worst habits of American mythbuilding. And Tony Stark as a man who is always uncomfortable in his own body and forced to pretend to be a public version of himself that he doesn't really like, against an enemy that doesn't have any substance underneath the acting. Tony's worst fear about himself is that he is just like Trevor underneath.

But it eliminated the most vital Iron Man/ Mandarin contrast: Tony as the avatar of reason and science and progress against the Mandarin and his mystical powers, his resistance to progress, his resistance to futurism and new ways of doing things. Because the Mandarin was just a front for a scheme that fits clearly within a progress narrative, that part of the foil relationship is gone entirely, and at a certain point I wonder whether it's still meaningful to tell a Mandarin story if it's lacking the essential question that Mandarin stories are designed to ask. I think I would have rather they concluded that the Mandarin was just an irredeemably racist concept and rather than undertaking the deconstruction, they should just leave him out of the canon of the movies.

-I loved the version of Tony this movie was interested in telling stories about. He was in a committed relationship for the entire movie, he was sober, he was vocal and open and honest in communicating about his emotions, he was open to criticism, he was surrounded by meaningful friendships that he didn't take for granted... and he was still, maddeningly, beautifully, Tony Stark with all the brokenness that implies. This movie managed to show incredible growth in Tony without it ever seeming like unrealistic wishful thinking.

-I liked the version of Pepper this movie was interested in telling stories about, though I was frustrated with some details. OMFG Pepper getting Extremis is better than Tony getting Extremis. I reread the Extremis storyline yesterday after watching the movie, and I still like it, but I think the movie's changes to it were almost all for the better.

I really loved that the movie validated Pepper's feelings of jealousy toward Maya, that she wasn't portrayed as being an irrational crazy bitch, but she had feelings and it was Tony's fault for not being attentive to her feelings. That is an incredibly rare approach to that kind of story.

-I'm not sure how I feel about AIM being introduced here. Obviously it's a set-up for a future movie in some way, right? Presumably AIM will be relevant to Captain America 2 or Avengers 2. I'm hoping it's Captain America, not Avengers, since AIM spun off from HYDRA in the comics, and AIM isn't epic enough to make a great Avengers foe. But I thought this was a fairly boring version of AIM because all the crazy was kind of frontloaded on the Mandarin story.


-Harley was great. We're all in agreement about that, right?

-I'm not sure entirely how I feel about it, but Rhodey and Eli Bradley need to have a conversation about the whole Iron Patriot thing, and I might have to write it. My lord, that suit was originally worn by Norman Osborne in the comics. Giving it to an African-American soldier raised my eyebrows at the least.

-People in the theater who weren't comic book people were complaining afterward that they didn't follow the details of the Extremis tech, and why it led to people being melty and blowing up. Having read the comics, both the Extremis storyline and the Ezekiel Stane "Five Nightmares" storyline that were being merged here, I didn't really have trouble following, but they probably needed a little more handholding for non-super-nerds.

-And I was a bit disappointed with the Bruce appearance at the end, because it showed their continued friendship but it didn't show their friendship being about SCIENCE.


Today is the forty first day of the Omer

Comments

[calledtovienna]

I was complaining about this to M., but I found the movie frustrating, in almost hitting a number of themes, but always backing away from them at the last moment. I think other people have expressed this criticism better, but like, is Iron Man 3 trying to say something about Tony's past coming to haunt him despite his redemption? Regardless of it? Is it trying to say something about getting back on your feet after suffering in conflict (which would tie together with Tony's PTSD-like thing, and also the amputee plot, but the only thing I get out of it is that physical injuries suck?)? It was almost amazing, and then it was OK. So, I see what you are saying about the Mandarin (and I thought that there was an interesting strand of shadow manipulators going through -- the Vice President is more of a character than the President, the Mandarin is a front, Pepper is the one running Stark Enterprises, Tony Stark becomes most useful when he pretends to be dead, etc, but it didn't quite ... carry I guess?) But I did like the Mandarin. Also, there were explosions, I am not complaining.

I think the central Reason vs ... non-reason, I guess, conflict could be delegated to a different movie and a different (new?) villain in a way that would be less problematic. I can see it coming up in Avengers 2, though mostly because I liked Avengers a lot in terms of dealing with themes.

I hope Pepper keeps her awesome powers, but it is nice to want things. >.>

[seekingferret]

I was actually kind of arguing the same question a few months back with kass, about Walter's 'redemption' at the end of Fringe (http://kass.dreamwidth.org/1067912.html). Whether redemption was something you could earn, whether sufficient repentance could make up for whatever evil you let loose in the world. Fringe in Seasons 4 and 5 tries to say yes, and it's one of the reasons I'm kind of uncomfortable with the ending of Fringe, because in earlier seasons, as we watched Walter suffer the consequences of his crimes against science and morality, this was a lot more ambiguous.

I think in Iron Man 3, the point is that when you do bad things, people get hurt. And it doesn't matter whether you repent or not, whether you try to redeem yourself and save other people, your actions are in the past and they have consequences you can't redeem. There's no way Tony can go back in time and tell '99 Tony not to be a jackass. (And anyway, 2013 Tony is still a jackass and he's still making mistakes.) But he can stop worrying about trying to fix the past and just try to be the mechanic who fixes the future. That's the peace Tony finds at the end of the movie, so that he doesn't need to keep the hole in his chest to remind him that he was the heartless arms dealer who ruined tens of thousands of lives.

I think you're right that there's an incompletion to the thematic development in the movie. I also think that I'm going back in a week or so to watch it again and see if a second watch germinates more things in my head.

I agree with you about Pepper. There's some relatively recent comics where Pepper gets to be a badass, like, a lot. She gets her own chest repulsor, her own iron man suit called Rescue, she fights bad guys with and without Tony. And she runs Tony's company for him while he's busy being Iron Man, and generally takes nonsense from nobody.

It's unlikely we'll see Extremis Pepper in Avengers 2, though.

[calledtovienna]

But he can stop worrying about trying to fix the past and just try to be the mechanic who fixes the future. That's the peace Tony finds at the end of the movie, so that he doesn't need to keep the hole in his chest to remind him that he was the heartless arms dealer who ruined tens of thousands of lives.

Hm, that's a good read on it. I don't know why it didn't hit me very well when I was watching the movie -- I was distracted by everything else. But it sort of fits (but then, only sort of: aren't Extremis troops also shown doing the exact same thing that Tony does in the end?). Wah, frustrating!

Is there an Iron Man 4? Is there not? I know things only come in sets of 3, but at this point, why not?

[seekingferret]

I think RDJ's contract was up at the end of Iron Man 3, so it's unclear at this moment whether there will be an Iron Man 4. I also think when Iron Man 2 came out, RDJ pretty much sounded sick of being Tony Stark, and was just looking to finish his contract and be done, but since IM3 was a more positive experience for him, he's making more ambivalent noises now about maybe he will sign a new contract for more Tony Stark appearances. So we'll see. Iron Man 3 ties up a lot of things, but in comic book world there's always another bad guy.

aren't Extremis troops also shown doing the exact same thing that Tony does in the end?

What do you mean?

[calledtovienna]

It stuck out to me that, at some point, Tony Stark finds a bunch of videos of amputees agreeing to take Extremis. And one of them specifically talks about how he is happy to not let his injury affect his life anymore. But even without that -- the Extremis amputees are trying to regrow their limbs using this drug, fix what is broken. Thematically, that is not so different from Tony 'mechanic' Stark, especially the bit where he has heart surgery and throws the shrapnel away at the end, is it? So, what's the difference? That they got unlucky and he is Tony Stark? I mean, technically, yes, but seems like a strange point for a superhero movie.

Bah. Yeah, I can see RDJ being tired of Iron Man (especially since his other movies are being billed as 'oh look it is Tony Stark In Steampunk' by critics). But it is a pity, because he is iconic at it, and Iron Man 3 feels like a good story, but it doesn't feel like the end either. (Not that it should). It feels like the opposite really, the middle or the beginning and I liked that.

[seekingferret]

Yeah, so, about that....

Have you read the Extremis comics? They're not terrible- Warren Ellis did the writing. In them, that's exactly the point, that Extremis is taking what was previously Tony's exclusive post-human domain and making it possible for anyone to get it. And Ellis makes this explicit by having Tony inject himself with Extremis in order to be able to fight the bad guys, so that they become his mirrors in an even more literal way.

I approve of the way they gave Extremis to Pepper instead of Tony in this movie, because Pepper being a super-powered badass is always fun, and it decenters Tony in a way I find meaningful and effective, but that takes away a bit from the original parallel.

You might say that the point is that '99 Tony was capable of fixing Extremis, making it possible to distribute it to the masses, but he wasn't interested. And 2013 Tony is a different Tony? I dunno, there's a lot that I need to think more about.