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May. 6th, 2013 10:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretMy 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
-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