Dis would have been a great movie if it had been half an hour shorter. And made a lick of sense. Monster can imagine script notes session went someting like dis:
Producer: Dis skript full of plot holes and not make much sense.
Writer: Dats okay. Me fix it.
Producer: By applying logic so it easier to understand?
Writer: No. By making it so complicated dat audience simply assume dey too stoopid to understand.
Well, me have news for makers of Iron Man 3. Monster not stoopid. Me have GED from Pyongyang Institute of Higher Learning and Dance!
Movie begin wit Tony Stark seeing a therapist because he suffering panic attacks after Avengers movie. How dese panic attacks figure into plot and pay off at end of movie. Spoiler alert: Dey don’t!
Meanwhile, U.S. government rocked by string of bombings orchestrated by villain called de Mandarin! Why he called de Manadarin? Well, in original comic books, he called de Mandarin because he be of Chinese descent and adopt title of Chinese bureaucrats of Imperial China. In de movie – well, he not Chinese but Middle-Eastern so he called de Mandarin because…mebbe he named after de orange? It was either dat or Tangerine?
When Tony’s bodyguard get injured in an explosion dat, in retrospekt, not make any sense at all (we’ll get to dat), Tony vow revenge and dare Mandarin to come after him. So bad guy respond by blowing up Tony’s cool mountain-side home.
At dis point, fairly more-or-less straightforward movie take a hairpin turn when Tony end up in Tennessee to investigate similar bombing there. He befriend lovable little rascal of a kid who all sorts of quippy and cute and no doubt shoe-horned into story to appeal to young audience. Dudes, it’s a movie based on a comic book character!
While Tony enlist brilliant kid’s help to recharge his armor, he investigate apparent suicide bombing by local soldier and pay visit to his mom at local bar. COINCIDENTALLY, she happen to be waiting for someone to give dem a top sekret file on her son. A top sekret file dat, for some reason, also contain information on other soldier blown up in similar explosion.
Why mother have dis information on other soldier? Why bad guys need to get deir hands on dis file? Why dey just not go over to her place and take it instead of arranging meeting in a public place? How Tony be so lucky as to just happen to walk into bar and approach soldier’s mother on exact night she be planning to meet bad guys and hand over file? How possible – LOOK! EXPLOSIONS! COOL!
Tony fight bad guys who turn out to be super soldiers wit super-strength, agility, and healing powers. And, for no apparent reason later on, super fire breath. He defeat dem, but barely.
In one of movie’s many ridikulous moments, Tony learns all about super soldiers by hacking into super seckret database containing convenient video recordings of experiments on soldiers wit someting called Extremis. Sometime it work, making dem superhuman. Other times it not work, making dem blow up. BUT….
We see one soldier blow up because his body unable to accept Extremis. Dis be explanation for explosion. But den how to explain explosion of soldier in Tennessee? If his body rejekted Extremis, he would have blown up in lab, not in public? And what about soldier who exploded, injuring Tony’s bodyguard? Why he blow up? If it delayed reaction to Extremis, what all dat nonsense about him getting a briefcase from bad guy?
Tony track bad guy to Miami and get drop on Mandarin who…turn out to be aktor hired to play part of a wanted terrorist. Very funny – except for fakt dat, even though he be seemingly goofy and unwitting accomplice who assumed deaths were fake, he couldn’t be stoopid enough NOT to be aware of news reports on terrorist acts in his name. Also, he SHOT a guy on video!
Dis little twist bring up another point. In comic book, Mandarin be one of Iron Man’s greatest villains – but he played for a joke here. So dis pretty much rule out any appearance of real villainous Mandarin in future Iron Man movies…unless he be some supervillain who just decide to name himself after a laughingstock rube.
Tony captured. But get his armor back. But Pepper kidnapped. And President! And Air Force One blow up but Iron Man manage to save flight crew in one of movie’s more inspired sekwences.
It all culminate in big extended impressive but over-long climactic battle pitting Tony and his buddy, Rhodey, against bad guy and super soldiers. Pepper, who now a super soldier because she be injected wit Extremis, help save de day. And Tony celebrate by blowing up all his extra Iron Man suits, assuming he won’t need dem because bad guys all dead even though he thought he had killed dem before and dey turned up very much alive later. Also, FYI, some of dem not really injured and just fell into ocean so chances are – LOOK! EXPLOSIONS! SO COOL!
Wait a minute. Pepper now a super soldier? No, because Tony be a genius. He fix her. Uh, if Tony be such a genius, why he not fix himself? Okay, because Tony be a genius, he also fix himself and remove shrapnel from his heart. Happy now? Uh, if Tony such a genius, why he not remove shrapnel from heart two movies sooner?
Wait another minute! What was bad guy’s plan? To get Vice President in office? But if dat de case, why not just assassinate President instead of going through big show of kidnapping him, stringing him up, etc? What was point of de Mandarin? More me tink about it, more me hate dis movie.
VERDIKT: Great movie for people who love explosions – and not much else.
RATING: 4 chocolate chippee cookies.
I loved this one!
It had a bit of a Mojoverse twist to it, and while I don’t care for Mojo storylines (except one good Spider-Man/Wolverine story), I thought it worked just fine here. After two extremely dark Batman flicks, I was happy for the comic relief this twist provided.
das
“LOOK! EXPLOSIONS! SO COOL!” See Cookie, one day you too can be a successful movie producer!
I actually didn’t get a chance to screen the movie again since I was away for the weekend in Maine (it was great! What a nice break.) But it was on the big screen not long ago anyway, so I’ll go from memory.
I remember it being better than IM2, but I do recall many of the points you raise. I was pretty horrified by the cliched annoyingly precocious pre-teen which was such an obvious tack-on that it practically ruined the movie for me. And I totally agree about IM getting his heart fixed with apparent ease. Why exactly wouldn’t he have done it much sooner? It clearly isn’t needed to power the IM suits, since other people seem to be flying around in them otherwise quite intact.
Although I haven’t read the comics, I was very disappointed in how Mandarin was presented/portrayed. Way to totally neuter what should have been a mysterious, almost implacable foe. Ugh.
“More me tink about it, more me hate dis movie.”
Yeah, that pretty much sums up almost all of these movies, sadly.
@Tam Dixon: We got British Columbia’s rain on Sunday, Today is cloudy and cool, but no snow yet…yay!
I’m just not into these comic book character films. Too much stuff that is very unlikely to happen. Yet I love science fiction. Go figure.
I kinda thought it was fun. Silly, but fun. I didn’t like it as well as the first movie, but didn’t think it was too bad for a comic book.
My son and his buddies were really upset that they made Mandarin such a doofus because he apparently was an excellent villain in the comic books. But not having read the comic books, I was willing to switch off my brain and immerse myself in the mayhem
Um, I know I haven’t been around much, and Steve McQueen is really awesome, but I never realized he was a superhero. Or did you switch to film classics while I was preoccupied with other stuff.
Uhh… Iron Man 3. Does to Iron Man what The Dark Knight Rises did for Batman. Bad for pretty much the same reasons (terrible leaps in logic, decisions that are out of place, things that don’t pay off or come together properly, if at all).
It seems that the director was so intent on going “We don’t need the Avengers! Tony is Iron Man!” that they decided Tony didn’t even need his suits.
Still, we did get another funny video out of it:
I haven’t seen this movie, but, ahem:
We see one soldier blow up because his body unable to accept Extremis. Dis be explanation for explosion. But den how to explain explosion of soldier in Tennessee? If his body rejekted Extremis, he would have blown up in lab, not in public? And what about soldier who exploded, injuring Tony’s bodyguard? Why he blow up?
See comment from way back when on how Carson could have been blown up by the exploding tumor in SGA. (Yes, I’m still harping on that one.)
As Big Jim McBob and Billy Saul Hurok would say: He blowed up good! Yeah. He blowed up REAL good!
Thanks for sharing that HBMC!
I had a heart defect as a child, so Ironman was one of my heroes because he could have a bad heart and still be a hero. As long as Robert Downey Jr. continues, in my opinon, to excellently personify the character of Tony Stark, that’s all that really matters to me. I loved his interaction with the kid and his panic attacks. Those things keep him human.
This was a terrible movie.
So many problems. I agree the addition of the child seemed like an afterthought. Oh, and the kid’s mom works in a diner, but Stark rewards the kid by building and stocking a lab for him. How about money for his mom so he doesn’t spend all his time alone? And the car? Was that for the kid? Give a 12 year old kid a classic muscle car? What could possibly go wrong?
What I couldn’t get over was these people, these humans, got so hot they could melt steel (because of some miracle potion). Ah, wouldn’t all the water in your body turn into steam? Don’t we need water? To live?
Speaking of water…
ArticGoddess: it rained here in Victoria, BC, for the last four days. I think we just got all the rain we didn’t get during the summer. Some real torrential downpours. One minute the street was almost dry, the next the drains were clogged with leaves and roads had turned into lakes.
There was a new corvette parked on the side of the road at the deepest largest puddle. The water was almost up to the bottom of the car door. Every time someone drove by the whole car was literally covered in a thick sheet of water. I hope his (or her) car has _really_ good door and window seals.
At the beginning with his silly dancing and lame ass music I was nervous that this movie was doomed. It reminded me of Johnny Depp. I still think Avengers is the best Iron Man movie to date. I thought the PTSD route was a nice way to go, but it seemed forced in every scene it showed up. And what’s the deal with the suits constantly falling to pieces when they get impacted by something? He must have been making those in China…. This movie stripped away everything that was bad-ass about Iron Man. He didn’t even defeat the bad guy! Hell, I’m surprised they didn’t suit the boy up and have him save the day. Anyway, I just didn’t like it.
Eh, despite its faults, I applaud the writers for not trying to one-up The Avengers by making the movie EVEN BIGGER AND LOUDER, as seems to be the trend these days. It was deliberately smaller and more personal, and even though there were some leaps in logic, I thought the plot was clever and the characters were interesting.
By the way Joe, it looks like CBS are having a hard time on Mondays, though it looks like my MOM renewal prediction was overly optimistic, We are Men debuted poorly too. Overall CBS are failing on Monday. The only thing really doing what I would call good is How I met your Mother. 2 Broke Girls is dropping fast.
I didn’t see this coming in all honesty, I thought CBS would have a good Monday.
I think my overall score will be lower than people are expecting lol. You seem to be much better at predicting stuff Joe lol
God bless Cookie, I hope he at least got to snack on fried gnocchi later. I’ll wait until my brother forces me to watch Iron Man 3, but at least I’ll be prepared to be confused.
I thought I was a Sleepy Hollow fan until they hit me with a super gross out scene in the first five minutes. Walking Dead has never grossed me out the way Sleepy Hollow has, I don’t think I can keep watching if they are gonna gof for grossing viewers out instead of just telling a story.
@shinyhula: Fringe used to do that, too. Sometimes I would just close my eyes and wait for the commercial. Things were usually fine after that. But I agree with you – I’d just as soon they do without the gross-out openings and give me a good story. Haven’t watched the most recent episode yet, but I’ll consider myself forewarned.
Yes, thank you, Cookie. While I enjoyed it in a mindless and RDJ is still the perfect Tony Stark way, the plot holes and manipulation of original comics stories bothered me to no end. I liked that Tony had panic attacks (and that’s one thing I didn’t need a solution/plot point for) and I liked that Pepper saved the day (even if how we got there was ridiculous) but most of the rest of it was all over the place. I’m in the minority (or even by myself) but IM2>>>>IM3.
And my favorite thing about this movie was the people who equated its formula to The Incredibles. It’s ridiculous how close they are.lol
Iron Man >>> Iron Man II >>> Iron Man III
The law of diminishing returns on sequels