Iron Man 3: Existentialism or Terrorism?
So, for those of you following along at home, these are my thoughts through the first time I’ve watched this movie. I’ve been challenged by a good friend of mine to watch all the Avengers movies before watching Avengers: Infinity War (hopefully while it’s still in the theaters).
In case you haven’t watched it before, SPOILER ALERT!
Dear V,
I think Iron Man 3 was the worst of the Iron Man movies. They had some great plot ideas, but threw them all into a bowl and expected to come out with one of the neatest quilts or afghans you’ve ever seen.
Again, this is going to be a tad bit differently structured because I don’t want to go straight through the movie — I’d rather touch on the areas that I thought the director and writers could have taken and made a better movie. (That and I’ve just listened to Lindsey Ellis talk about the Ideology of the First Order and her voice is still in my head.)
Tony’s Existential Problem: This was the best part of the movie to me. Having Tony be freaked out by what he saw through the wormhole and how he managed to get out and, well, just everything that happens in New York during The Avengers — this is what the movie should have been based on. There’s a great reason for this — it shows Tony Stark is human after all.
Stark plays himself as being the great intellectual genius (which he is) who is so far above mere humans (which this part of the movie shows is incorrect). Part of Tony’s anxiety attacks could come from the fact that he really does, in a sense, believe he’s god. I mean, not really, not if you asked him, but somewhere inside, he believes he’s invincible.
I had always said that 23 was the age I wanted to be. When I turned 24, I managed (somehow — really, don’t ask) to be in the run-down apartment of a 40-something year old woman who had a really, super-god-awful bad mural of Jesus on the cross on the wall (yes, in her apartment) behind her. And, for some reason, I saw me being like her when I was that age. (shudder) I’ve left a few things out, but needless to say, I was wide awake, laying in my bed all night, thinking about that. I had finally realized that, yes, I was going to get older (and she was not what I wanted to be like). I wasn’t invincible.
Maybe — just maybe — this was Tony Stark’s realization when he took the nuclear missle through the wormhole and saw what was on the other side.
The Mandarin: This was really an unnecessary plot device except I loved to see Ben Kingsley in that role. That was a great performance. But why was this here? Obviously to cover up who the bad guy really was, but at that particular point in Killian’s plan of action, was Ben Kingsley really necessary?
I knew when I saw Guy Pierce as Killian (the first time as well as the second) that he was going to play an important role — you don’t just hire a well-known actor to play nobody. I did have a question of who the Mandarin was when Killian’s team brought Kingsley’s character to Killian’s house. But then all was revealed not too long afterwards.
The whole political terrorism aspect tires me. I get tired of the whole “America bad” message — in a way, I can sympathize with our German friend who tires of always hearing about World War II.
I suppose it gave Rhody a chance to be War Machine (yeah, much cooler name) and a broader feel to the movie, but did it really need that? Focusing on Stark’s existential crisis would have kept me more riveted to my seat instead of looking to see which of my friends were on Steam at that moment.
How Do You Kill Something That Can’t Die? Now this layer I would have kept. The staged videos with Kingsley were completely unnecessary. It’s a superhero movie — yes, I know there has to be some action, but I didn’t understand what adding the “terrorism” layer of mystery was really going to bring to the table. Sure, it brought anonymity to Killian (who I can’t get out of my head as Leonard in Memento) but so did just bombing the hell out of different places.
I think they were aiming for the whole “well, this is why he’s doing all of this” explanation, but I just don’t buy it. Just like every other villian, Killian wanted power — the terrorism schtick was just a reason he gave.
Now let’s talk about the bad guys. Yes, not just Killian, but Killian’s men as well. So what they have is something that allows them to regenerate, right? The heat thing — the heat thing was just a gimmick to explain the regeneration and the bombings (which was kinda clever, I might add…kinda). There are several scenes where we see that Killian’s team can generate arms and legs.
For some reason, this brought me to the idea that these guys just can’t die. We see in Air Force One that Tony is able to shoot a hole into the chest of the head of the bad guys — and that kills him. Or so it appears. Even Tony thinks so. Perhaps that’s their only weak spot. Who knows? At the end, all the Iron Man suits killing the bad guys must have shot a hole through the heart of each.
The End(?) Killian has used the liquid on Pepper to give her regenerative powers — I believe, hoping that she’d explode. So now Pepper has “superhero powers” too, right? And she makes quite an awesome show of them at the end as well.
In wrapping up the trilogy, we have Tony fixing Pepper so she doesn’t have powers. We have Tony going under what I assume would be open heart surgery to have the shrapnel that the electromagnet in his chest was keeping away from his heart.
Tony essentially seems to be giving up the Iron Man life. Yet, at the very end, he leaves with “I am Iron Man.”
Overall, I think the writers tried to stuff too much into this movie.
But I liked the “barrel of monkeys” toward the end. That was cleverly done.
And I enjoyed Tony’s rapport with the kid in Tennessee.
