Monday, May 13, 2013
Iron Man 3
SPOILERS ahead for Iron Man 3!
We saw Iron Man 3 a week ago and I am somewhat lukewarm in my appreciation. I thought the style was quite different from Iron Man and Iron Man 2, both directed by Jon Favreau, who gives them a very consistent feel in the dialogue, cinematography and the settings. The difference is presumably due to Shane Black's direction and I can't say I liked the change in tone. This was definitely a "low tech" Iron Man movie.
The villains were the Mandarin and a bunch of guys with a genetic alteration that allows them to regrow lost limbs and radiate intense heat. While I really liked the twist with the Mandarin (which I won't spoil here), I thought the mutated guys were too ill-defined to be interesting. Their abilities actually seemed to grow more powerful as needed during the movie, to the point that they seem to be a match for Iron Man's suits, which seems really silly.
Speaking of which, it seems like a huge waste to have Tony Stark create dozens of new Iron Man suits with special abilities, only to fail to highlight any of the special abilities. The suits all play a part in the final battle, but none of them stand out as having anything unique about them. And none of them seemed to have any real firepower, seemingly limited to punching the bad guys more than anything. I also thought it was an odd choice to have a couple of dozen autonomous Iron Man suits flying around. Who needs Tony Stark anymore? (Although the suits didn't seem to be useful enough to actually help him during the final confrontation with the bad guy. A couple of dozen are just flying around while Tony gets attacked.)
There's also a very long stretch where Tony has no armor, leading to a ridiculous sequence where he infiltrates the bad guy's secret headquarters by himself with a pistol and a few home made gadgets. Huh?
This was my least favorite of the three Iron Man movies (yes, I don't find the second one as bad as some). I liked parts of it, but the shift in tone and the complete neutering of the Iron Man suit made me feel it was less Iron Man and more like an episode of 24.
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2 comments:
I'm also torn. I'd heard that this was the "best one" by several people, so perhaps my expectations were a bit high. I still favor the first movie. I didn't mind the armorless section, as it highlighted the Tony aspect of the character, which is important. I too wish the various armors had been highlighted a bit more. I liked the movie, but I didn't love it. I'd discuss it more, but spoilers.
No way was this the best one. Whoever told you that is mental. The first one is great.
I don't mind highlighting the Tony character, but I don't really feel like they resolved his PTSD issue with the wormhole. The problem just sort of went away. I also don't see the point in making him Jack Bauer. He figures out where the bad guys are, contact Rhodey and the military and let them handle it.
If I remember, there isn't one moment in the movie where he's in a fully functional, armed Iron Man suit. I found that disappointing.
I hated that the bad guys could completely shut down one of the suits by touch. It's kind of necessary to avoid having Iron Man or Iron Patriot just blow them up, but it completely undercut the power of the technology.
And I really didn't like the suit that can fly across half the country and land on his body. At that point he may as well just as shouted "Accio suit" and made it clear it was all magic.
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