Iron Man 3 redux
I just saw my first 3D movie!
I am totally okay with it being my last 3D movie.
The way the 3D objects pop out of the background but other objects remain 2D makes it feel more artificial than 2D, not less. And it fucks up the balance of screen compositions and destroys depth of field in a lot of shots. That is probably the result of people not knowing how to compose for 3D yet, rather than an inherent limitation of 3D, but it still looks awful.
A few more comments on Iron Man 3 (spoilers)
Some posts I like (assume spoilers in all of them):
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/05/iron-man-jim-rugg-review/
http://raanve.dreamwidth.org/893330.html
http://thingswithwings.dreamwidth.org/198716.html
http://eruthros.dreamwidth.org/335124.html
http://kate-nepveu.dreamwidth.org/544634.html
http://lettered.dreamwidth.org/158302.html
http://paolorivera.blogspot.com/2013/04/iron-man-3-complete-novel.html
ETA, some from comments:
http://crossedwires.dreamwidth.org/288192.html
http://wistfuljane.dreamwidth.org/68554.html
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/05/06/181560276/armor-and-angst-tony-stark-is-the-new-captain-america
http://yasaman.dreamwidth.org/431472.html
http://www.practicallymarzipan.com/2013/05/iron-man-3-as-literary-fiction-and-other-bullet-points.html
http://oyceter.dreamwidth.org/1013005.html
And this one I find hilarious, because it hates everything about the film most of my friends love (and therefore it is being very Wrong on the Internet):
http://almost-kael.com/post/49682612622/iron-man-3
Feel free to link me to any IM3 posts you find interesting.
cups brewed at DW
I am totally okay with it being my last 3D movie.
The way the 3D objects pop out of the background but other objects remain 2D makes it feel more artificial than 2D, not less. And it fucks up the balance of screen compositions and destroys depth of field in a lot of shots. That is probably the result of people not knowing how to compose for 3D yet, rather than an inherent limitation of 3D, but it still looks awful.
A few more comments on Iron Man 3 (spoilers)
- I can't believe I forgot about Dummy! I was so upset when Dummy and the other bots got buried.
- Tony/bots, Tony/GUIs, and Tony/engineering are three of my favorite things, so I found this movie deeply satisfying.
musesfool pointed out that the necklace Tony gives Pepper at the end is made of the shrapnel from his heart. And, of course, it is heart-shaped. It's another full circle from the time Pepper gave him back his heart: "Proof that Tony Stark has a heart." That's another time she saved his life. Pepper and Dummy.
- Tony injects himself with microtransmitters. That's a really key part of his response to New York, along with the proliferation of armors -- it's not enough to have bracelets! An alien god might throw you out the window before you can put them on! Clearly the solution is to have homing devices inside your body.
(I guess he is still a cyborg.)
- I am more convinced than ever that Tony stabilized Extremis in Pepper rather than removing it, and then he used Extremis to make it possible to remove the shrapnel and the arc reactor.
- This time I kept an eye on Tony and alcohol. We never see him drink, but there are beer bottles in a bucket of ice on the table of the restaurant where he meets Rhodey, and he selects a bottle of white wine for date night with Pepper (though it's possible he didn't drink it, since the two glasses he set up upstairs are full, and there aren't any wine glasses with the food in the basement). I'm going to go with: We don't see him with alcohol in his hand and we don't seen him drunk outside of the flashback, and that's pretty significant even if he's not getting a 60-day chip.
- I think Tony is 98% convinced that Pepper is still alive after the fall, but the 2% uncertainty terrifies him. (Partly because of his relatively muted reaction, and partly because he uses the present tense when he tells Killian she's already perfect.) Though I also like the idea that he does think she's dead and he can't process it, and also he has to put the obligation to stop Killian over his personal feelings.
- JARVIS calls the Summoning of the Suits "the House Party protocol." Tony Stark is good at bringing the party to you. The problem is, his idea of a party is kind of scary.
- I'd forgotten that Killian had a limp and a cane in 1999. Somehow that makes the ablism with the Extremis vets even worse.
- Killian has a supervillain moment at the end, where he declares, "I am the Mandarin." He also says something like: "Time to take off the masks." Parallels to "I am Iron Man," and all Tony's masks.
- I love how Tony can't actually stand to look directly at the hologram of Pepper being tortured, and Maya can't, either.
- Did Pepper wear white suits before she became CEO? I think it only started after the promotion in IM2, but I'm not sure. Black suits = blending in, white suits = standing out.
- We saw Maya get shot and fall, but we don't actually get a final shot of her body, so I have decided not to believe she is dead. I like Maya! I like having a female scientific genius in the Marvel universe! She could have injected herself with Extremis beforehand, or been injected by Killian who wanted to keep her around as a demoted pet scientist!
Anyway, Coulson was way deader than that.
- The bits where Rhodey invades someone's house and a sweatshop make me cringe. I think the "You're free now! ... if you weren't already?" are meant as a critique of some of the imperialist (feminist?) justifications for racism, but it's just not enough subversion for the amount of American Rescuing the Muslim Oppressed that happens here, let alone in the rest of the IM franchise.
- If somebody had described the end credits to me, I would have thought that underlining the connections between the two movies would feel too on-the-nose. In practice, I like them a lot.
- My speculation is that IM3, Winter Soldier, and The Dark World are roughly simultaneous, which is why Natasha and Steve were missing here. I am hoping there will be another use of AIM, maybe as an off-shoot or successor to Hydra, with Zola taking over now that Killian's gone, or handling another branch. When attempts to improve humans with SCIENCE! are a recurring theme, it seems a waste to use your organization of evil scientists in only one movie. Also, I think in the movieverse Bucky's current handlers will turn out to be AIM instead of random Soviets.
Some posts I like (assume spoilers in all of them):
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/05/iron-man-jim-rugg-review/
http://raanve.dreamwidth.org/893330.html
http://thingswithwings.dreamwidth.org/198716.html
http://eruthros.dreamwidth.org/335124.html
http://kate-nepveu.dreamwidth.org/544634.html
http://lettered.dreamwidth.org/158302.html
http://paolorivera.blogspot.com/2013/04/iron-man-3-complete-novel.html
ETA, some from comments:
http://crossedwires.dreamwidth.org/288192.html
http://wistfuljane.dreamwidth.org/68554.html
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/05/06/181560276/armor-and-angst-tony-stark-is-the-new-captain-america
http://yasaman.dreamwidth.org/431472.html
http://www.practicallymarzipan.com/2013/05/iron-man-3-as-literary-fiction-and-other-bullet-points.html
http://oyceter.dreamwidth.org/1013005.html
And this one I find hilarious, because it hates everything about the film most of my friends love (and therefore it is being very Wrong on the Internet):
http://almost-kael.com/post/49682612622/iron-man-3
Feel free to link me to any IM3 posts you find interesting.
cups brewed at DW