Let me begin this by saying that I'm overall rather disappointed. I ended up getting distracted by so many elements of the film that clash with the established Marvel history as I know it and so much so that there are still parts of the film that I don't recall actually watching.
The Mandarin. One of Stark's 'ultimate' foes from prior comics and cartoons; reduced to being a hired actor strung out on drugs? The Iron Man suits, the ones to take a huge beating in the first two movies and The Avengers, now so easily destroyed by a small missile? Those same suits that are supposed to be powered by the arc reactor in Starks' chest now running without it? Not only running without but recharging from a car battery?? And the prototype suit that seems weaker than all the other suits (and in fact tends to fall apart apparently at the slightest touch)? Or that the Iron Patriot (aka rebranded War Machine) armor is simply taken even though it has (or at least did have) security measures in place to prevent exactly that?
And since when can you instantly heat a hunk of metal to melting point? I'm not talking about the instances where a bad guy was heating up a suit to get someone to come out, I'm referring to the big fight scene at the end of the film where the bad guys are instantly, and I mean on contact, melting and punching through the different suits with zero lag time and bits of melted metal fall away. They were talking earlier in the film about the temp being 3000 degrees, though I have to admit I didn't catch whether that was Kelvin or Celsius or what, but even then, assuming Kelvin, that's 5000 degree F. It takes steel a couple seconds, literally, to heat up and melt at temps like that. Based on prior movies, the Iron Man suits are a bit tougher than that.
It's getting really hard to suspend my disbelief on this one.
I tried to stay engaged throughout the film but found I kept wandering into and out of sleep and day dreams during the viewing. I hate to say it but I'll have to watch it again to get all the parts I missed (I'll wait for a Dollar theater to do that).
I fear for the future of the entire Phase 2 franchise based on this movie. Hopefully the next Thor and Captain America films will fair far better than this one. Many people are calling this the best Iron Man story yet, and many others are sounding just like me saying it couldn't have been much worse.
Ok, now, let's pretend for a second that these characters are a bit more real and talk frankly. Since when would Tony Stark build a suit, prototype or not, that was so seemingly flimsy and flawed? The Mark 42 armor had more bugs in it than Windows 98 when it was first released. Couldn't fly at first, then had no weapons (and yet some of them worked anyway....), and apparently had a few leaks in it. Remember the suit was starting to fill up with water even before Jarvis told Stark to take a deep breath. You can recharge the suit off a car battery? Whatever happened to powering the suits from the all-powerful arc reactor?? Also, minor side note, the Mk. 42 suits was sized to fit Tony. If you've been paying attention over the last couple years, you'd note that Pepper is a bit taller than Tony, and yet the armor fits her just fine?
Since when does Tony have to tell Jarvis NOT to target Pepper? Doesn't Jarvis know her already, and based on past behavior would likely point out that she was one of the Extremis targets before taking a shot at her?
Another thing; since when was Stark's home address a secret? Recall the film before this where he had a house full of guests for a birthday bash with catering, valet parking and such? How secret is that?
Something else kinda unrelated is that Tony apparently had a lot of time since the New York Incident to build a small army of armors. We got to see them all for about 10 minutes total. It would've been awful nice to see more of them, especially since he went to all that trouble of building them in the first place.
And now, after all that, Tony finally gets the surgery to remove the rest of the shrapnel from his chest, something he could've done a few years earlier had he really wanted to. And then he just chucks the old chest reactor into the ocean. For a guy was so terribly paranoid about folks getting his tech and using it against him, he seems to just be throwing it all around and leaving it lay about now.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that in this film, we see Pepper being Pepper like we'd expect. We see Happy being Happy like we'd expect. We see Tony do a near 180 degree flip on his personality which is so far removed from his character/personality as to be a little unsettling (recall he was held captive in a cave for months, tortured, threatened daily, that whole 'phoenix personification' thing). He came out of everything being even tougher than when he went in. Now, IM3 shows him having anxiety attacks and being, for lack of better phrasing, afraid of his shadow? When did this happen??
And, not a single mention or appearance by a SHIELD agent anywhere. You'd think with a threat like they made the Mandarin appear to be that SHIELD would at least be in the loop somewhere watching things.
And the Mandarin. I was so looking forward to the tech vs. magic fight.
For those that are unaware, and I'll put this simply and quickly so folks can understand, the Mandarin was just a guy, a regular joe, until he found/acquired the 10 rings. A-HA! You remember the 10 Rings? The terrorist group from the first film? As soon as I heard that mentioned in the first film I had visions of where everything was heading. Anyway, these rings were each a magical item in their own right, and each had a specific power or ability. For example, one could manipulate Time to a degree, another could heal, some had power over the basic elements and weather, etc. etc. All ten of them together were a significant force to be reckoned with. The Mandarin himself, in some incarnations, was an anti-technology zealot which is why Stark was the perfect target. The two foes would battle back and forth, one trying to eradicate all technology from the planet (and thereby become the most powerful person and hence the new Ruler of the planet) and the other using every thing he could to prevent that and foil the evil plot.
So now out comes this movie, and the Mandarin is nothing of the sort, not at all even remotely like what we were expecting. And other than seeing the symbol of the 10 Rings terrorist group, there is no mention of them what-so-ever. We do get introduced to AIM though, and that was even a bit of a let down. AIM was always after Stark tech, to sell or reverse engineer and stuff. In the film, AIM was kind of a joke actually.
Remember back when Iron Man was flying and took a tank launched exploding sabot shell to the head? Plummeted to the ground and made a small crater at impact? Then crawled out, destroyed the tank with a small missile and proceeded on his merry way? Fast forward now to IM3 where the Mk. 42 armor gets hit by a truck and falls apart. Where a single medium missile destroys all the Suits from Mk. 1 to 7 (and by destroyed I mean blown into tiny little bits). Even the suit that took the exploding shell to the head disappeared in a puff of fire and smoke. Either that was one terribly powerful missile, or somebody wasn't doing their homework when they wrote this script.
I could go on and on here about all the things I saw as problems or issues or contradictions in this film, but I think you get the idea. This was a decently entertaining movie for the most part, even though I had trouble staying awake in a couple spots. But it just grates on me so much knowing some of the histroy of Stark and Iron Man and seeing it all flipped over and flattened on a pancake griddle set to high heat.
Ok, now, let's pretend for a second that these characters are a bit more real and talk frankly. Since when would Tony Stark build a suit, prototype or not, that was so seemingly flimsy and flawed? The Mark 42 armor had more bugs in it than Windows 98 when it was first released. Couldn't fly at first, then had no weapons (and yet some of them worked anyway....), and apparently had a few leaks in it. Remember the suit was starting to fill up with water even before Jarvis told Stark to take a deep breath. You can recharge the suit off a car battery? Whatever happened to powering the suits from the all-powerful arc reactor?? Also, minor side note, the Mk. 42 suits was sized to fit Tony. If you've been paying attention over the last couple years, you'd note that Pepper is a bit taller than Tony, and yet the armor fits her just fine?
Since when does Tony have to tell Jarvis NOT to target Pepper? Doesn't Jarvis know her already, and based on past behavior would likely point out that she was one of the Extremis targets before taking a shot at her?
Another thing; since when was Stark's home address a secret? Recall the film before this where he had a house full of guests for a birthday bash with catering, valet parking and such? How secret is that?
Something else kinda unrelated is that Tony apparently had a lot of time since the New York Incident to build a small army of armors. We got to see them all for about 10 minutes total. It would've been awful nice to see more of them, especially since he went to all that trouble of building them in the first place.
And now, after all that, Tony finally gets the surgery to remove the rest of the shrapnel from his chest, something he could've done a few years earlier had he really wanted to. And then he just chucks the old chest reactor into the ocean. For a guy was so terribly paranoid about folks getting his tech and using it against him, he seems to just be throwing it all around and leaving it lay about now.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that in this film, we see Pepper being Pepper like we'd expect. We see Happy being Happy like we'd expect. We see Tony do a near 180 degree flip on his personality which is so far removed from his character/personality as to be a little unsettling (recall he was held captive in a cave for months, tortured, threatened daily, that whole 'phoenix personification' thing). He came out of everything being even tougher than when he went in. Now, IM3 shows him having anxiety attacks and being, for lack of better phrasing, afraid of his shadow? When did this happen??
And, not a single mention or appearance by a SHIELD agent anywhere. You'd think with a threat like they made the Mandarin appear to be that SHIELD would at least be in the loop somewhere watching things.
And the Mandarin. I was so looking forward to the tech vs. magic fight.
For those that are unaware, and I'll put this simply and quickly so folks can understand, the Mandarin was just a guy, a regular joe, until he found/acquired the 10 rings. A-HA! You remember the 10 Rings? The terrorist group from the first film? As soon as I heard that mentioned in the first film I had visions of where everything was heading. Anyway, these rings were each a magical item in their own right, and each had a specific power or ability. For example, one could manipulate Time to a degree, another could heal, some had power over the basic elements and weather, etc. etc. All ten of them together were a significant force to be reckoned with. The Mandarin himself, in some incarnations, was an anti-technology zealot which is why Stark was the perfect target. The two foes would battle back and forth, one trying to eradicate all technology from the planet (and thereby become the most powerful person and hence the new Ruler of the planet) and the other using every thing he could to prevent that and foil the evil plot.
So now out comes this movie, and the Mandarin is nothing of the sort, not at all even remotely like what we were expecting. And other than seeing the symbol of the 10 Rings terrorist group, there is no mention of them what-so-ever. We do get introduced to AIM though, and that was even a bit of a let down. AIM was always after Stark tech, to sell or reverse engineer and stuff. In the film, AIM was kind of a joke actually.
Remember back when Iron Man was flying and took a tank launched exploding sabot shell to the head? Plummeted to the ground and made a small crater at impact? Then crawled out, destroyed the tank with a small missile and proceeded on his merry way? Fast forward now to IM3 where the Mk. 42 armor gets hit by a truck and falls apart. Where a single medium missile destroys all the Suits from Mk. 1 to 7 (and by destroyed I mean blown into tiny little bits). Even the suit that took the exploding shell to the head disappeared in a puff of fire and smoke. Either that was one terribly powerful missile, or somebody wasn't doing their homework when they wrote this script.
I could go on and on here about all the things I saw as problems or issues or contradictions in this film, but I think you get the idea. This was a decently entertaining movie for the most part, even though I had trouble staying awake in a couple spots. But it just grates on me so much knowing some of the histroy of Stark and Iron Man and seeing it all flipped over and flattened on a pancake griddle set to high heat.
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