Iron Man 3
And lo, I managed to watch Iron Man III unspoiled. To allow others that pleasure, I shan't use the icon I sorely want to. Also? Tony Stark managed to break the curse of the comics film trilogies, wherein usually the third installment is the weakest (see: Spider-man, X-Men, Batman). This film rocks, and manages to both form a great conclusion to the solo outings (if Marvel so chooses) and leave Tony & friends available for future Avengers shenanigans.
Now I had tried not to read anything about this film, but even so, I couldn't avoid hearing that Ben Kingsley was cast as the Mandarin. This left me hoping for something like the twist in Iron Man where the Afghan terrorists are actually funded and frontmen for the real villain, Obediah (aka the military industrial complex), but still not exactly glad that they were going to use the Mandarin at all. Well, I needn't have worried, since what the film actually does with the Mandarin is perfect and in retrospect the only thing you can do with a villain created as a Yellow Peril stereotype. To wit, as opposed to Tony's kidnappers in IM I, who were actually Afghans, he's a British actor named Trevor and hired to play a Yellow Peril stereoytpe which in-story was specifically created because that's what a white guy thought American believe a scary terrorist looks like, as a distraction and a trick. Ben Kingsley is visibly having a blast as Trevor the beer guzzling football (soccer for Americans) fan out for actorly glory, and it's probably an in-joke to the fact so many Brits get used to play villains in Hollywood productions that Kingsley gets to use his own accent and wasn't directed to play Trevor as an American.
As for the actual villain: Guy Pearce has also fun being smarmy and smug, no surprise there (and desperate in the introductory sequence). Iron Man II also tried to make both Ivan Vanko and Justin Hammer over the top reflections of different aspects of Tony; I think it works better here with Pearce's character and Maya Hansen, though I regretted that Maya's role wasn't as large as it was in Warren Ellis's Iron Man: Extremis, an obvious influence on this film, where the theme of Maya and Tony as fellow scientists who have in different ways sold out but still long to give their scientific abilities redemptive meaning is a major, not a minor aspect. (Maya's last words to Tony in the book, after he figured out the truth, are something along the lines that he's no better than she is, and Ellis lets Tony reply that no, he isn't, but he tries to be.) Then again, for that to work in a film the whole plot would have had to be different, and I liked this one, small role for Maya not withstanding.
But enough about the villains. What makes the film so hugely enjoyable are how well our heroes are put to use. I had liked Pepper and the fact she hadn't ended up with Tony in Iron Man I, had not liked the romantic turn in IM2, and had been converted to the pairing by Joss Whedon in a few minutes in The Avengers, so I was hopeful, yet also fretting, re: what would IM3 do with Pepper and Tony/Pepper? The banter was good (movieverse Tony and Pepper always were), and when there was mutual saving when the Malibu house was blown up - Tony directing the armor to form around Pepper, Pepper using the armor to shield Tony as well, then get Maya out - I relaxed on that front. So much did I relax, in fact, that I was 90% certain there would be pay off for Pepper getting kidnapped by the bad guy halfway through the film that would not be Tony saving the damsel. And when Pearce's character started to pump her with Extremis I was certain, certain enough not to be distressed by the plunge to supposed doom. That was a Chekovian gun if ever I saw one: it had been established repeatedly that the surviving Extremis candidates could make it out alive of explosions, plus from a Doylist pov there would have been no reason for the villain to use Extremis on Pepper if the film hadn't intended to go somewhere with it. Yes, from a Watsonian pov it was to blackmail Tony into working on stabilizing the Extremis formula, but there had to be a Doylist reason as well. So while I was waiting and hoping for the discovery of Pepper's survival, her getting to be the one to save Tony and defeat and finish the main villain was still a special kick. What had converted me in The Avengers to the relationship was continued and developed further here, that they actually had managed the transition from boss/employee to equal partners. I had a big smile on my face during the Pepper-the-superhero scene.:)
Actually, I smiled a lot in the film, because it remembered that one very enjoyable part in IM1 had been the Tony-builds-experiments-screws-up-then-succeeds sequence, and one reason why one can care about a "billionaire playboy philantropist" is the "genius mechanic" part, that he's really good building and inventing things from scratch. So Tony gets to do a lot of that in this film as well, justified by plot. The interaction with the kid throughout was golden as well, not least because it was funny and occasionally touching without ever veering into sentimentality. (The kid trying to guilt trip Tony and Tony noticing immediately was a case in point.) It also occurs to me that with the boy and with Gary the tattoed fan in the present, we saw a difference between Tony in the past and Tony in the present. Tony in the past doesn't even notice fanboy!Guy Pearce other than as an annoyance to make fun of; Tony in the present is still prone to quips but also doesn't ridicule vulnerable-to-him people like Gary, instead treats him as a human being.
Which brings me to another big difference to IM2. Tony there believed he was dying which made for extra appalling behaviour, including towards Rhodey and Pepper. Whereas here, while he's dealing with the after effect of almost having died in The Avengers (which makes for lovely emotional continuity, btw), he doesn't take it out on them. The banter with Rhodey, including his teasing him about the "Iron Patriot" label, is affectionate, and with Happy, too, he comes across as a friend, not a boss. (Btw, Jon Favreau gets more dialogue here than in his own films.) Speaking of Happy, whoever in the scriptwriting team had the idea of making Happy Hogan a Downton Abbey fan (who seems to ship Sibyl/Branson, because of course he does): thank you, that was the kind of detail that makes Happy a real character, not just a cameo gag and nod towards the comics. (Also, since Tony recognizes the show on sight I assume he's been watching as well. My own disenchantment not withstanding: I love that. Can't wait for
likeadeuce to write a "Happy and Tony argue about the third season" meta fic.)
Another sign of Tony being genuinenly changed while maintaining his quintessential Tony-ness: little touches like the fact he tells the mother of the unfortunate Jed Davis her son was no suicidal bomber. Or, of course, the obvious symbolism of HOW he manages to save the people sucked out of the air plane, enabling them to help each other and thus managing to save the lot, not just a few.
And lastly: the obligatory post-credits scene about two thirds of the people in my cinema were patient enough to wait for. Because The Avengers hadn't just provided Tony with a near death experience and alien invasions but also with some new friends. Thus, the revelation that the person whom he was narrating the events of the film to weren't, as I had at different times assumed, Pepper or Happy Hogan, but Bruce Banner, was absolutely perfect. And Bruce's reaction was hilarious. Somewhere in the credits, while waiting, I read "special thanks to Joss Whedon" , and until I hear otherwise I chose to believe Joss wrote that tag scene. Because it's his type of humor and he invented and launched the good ship Science Bros, after all.:)
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/893987.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Now I had tried not to read anything about this film, but even so, I couldn't avoid hearing that Ben Kingsley was cast as the Mandarin. This left me hoping for something like the twist in Iron Man where the Afghan terrorists are actually funded and frontmen for the real villain, Obediah (aka the military industrial complex), but still not exactly glad that they were going to use the Mandarin at all. Well, I needn't have worried, since what the film actually does with the Mandarin is perfect and in retrospect the only thing you can do with a villain created as a Yellow Peril stereotype. To wit, as opposed to Tony's kidnappers in IM I, who were actually Afghans, he's a British actor named Trevor and hired to play a Yellow Peril stereoytpe which in-story was specifically created because that's what a white guy thought American believe a scary terrorist looks like, as a distraction and a trick. Ben Kingsley is visibly having a blast as Trevor the beer guzzling football (soccer for Americans) fan out for actorly glory, and it's probably an in-joke to the fact so many Brits get used to play villains in Hollywood productions that Kingsley gets to use his own accent and wasn't directed to play Trevor as an American.
As for the actual villain: Guy Pearce has also fun being smarmy and smug, no surprise there (and desperate in the introductory sequence). Iron Man II also tried to make both Ivan Vanko and Justin Hammer over the top reflections of different aspects of Tony; I think it works better here with Pearce's character and Maya Hansen, though I regretted that Maya's role wasn't as large as it was in Warren Ellis's Iron Man: Extremis, an obvious influence on this film, where the theme of Maya and Tony as fellow scientists who have in different ways sold out but still long to give their scientific abilities redemptive meaning is a major, not a minor aspect. (Maya's last words to Tony in the book, after he figured out the truth, are something along the lines that he's no better than she is, and Ellis lets Tony reply that no, he isn't, but he tries to be.) Then again, for that to work in a film the whole plot would have had to be different, and I liked this one, small role for Maya not withstanding.
But enough about the villains. What makes the film so hugely enjoyable are how well our heroes are put to use. I had liked Pepper and the fact she hadn't ended up with Tony in Iron Man I, had not liked the romantic turn in IM2, and had been converted to the pairing by Joss Whedon in a few minutes in The Avengers, so I was hopeful, yet also fretting, re: what would IM3 do with Pepper and Tony/Pepper? The banter was good (movieverse Tony and Pepper always were), and when there was mutual saving when the Malibu house was blown up - Tony directing the armor to form around Pepper, Pepper using the armor to shield Tony as well, then get Maya out - I relaxed on that front. So much did I relax, in fact, that I was 90% certain there would be pay off for Pepper getting kidnapped by the bad guy halfway through the film that would not be Tony saving the damsel. And when Pearce's character started to pump her with Extremis I was certain, certain enough not to be distressed by the plunge to supposed doom. That was a Chekovian gun if ever I saw one: it had been established repeatedly that the surviving Extremis candidates could make it out alive of explosions, plus from a Doylist pov there would have been no reason for the villain to use Extremis on Pepper if the film hadn't intended to go somewhere with it. Yes, from a Watsonian pov it was to blackmail Tony into working on stabilizing the Extremis formula, but there had to be a Doylist reason as well. So while I was waiting and hoping for the discovery of Pepper's survival, her getting to be the one to save Tony and defeat and finish the main villain was still a special kick. What had converted me in The Avengers to the relationship was continued and developed further here, that they actually had managed the transition from boss/employee to equal partners. I had a big smile on my face during the Pepper-the-superhero scene.:)
Actually, I smiled a lot in the film, because it remembered that one very enjoyable part in IM1 had been the Tony-builds-experiments-screws-up-then-succeeds sequence, and one reason why one can care about a "billionaire playboy philantropist" is the "genius mechanic" part, that he's really good building and inventing things from scratch. So Tony gets to do a lot of that in this film as well, justified by plot. The interaction with the kid throughout was golden as well, not least because it was funny and occasionally touching without ever veering into sentimentality. (The kid trying to guilt trip Tony and Tony noticing immediately was a case in point.) It also occurs to me that with the boy and with Gary the tattoed fan in the present, we saw a difference between Tony in the past and Tony in the present. Tony in the past doesn't even notice fanboy!Guy Pearce other than as an annoyance to make fun of; Tony in the present is still prone to quips but also doesn't ridicule vulnerable-to-him people like Gary, instead treats him as a human being.
Which brings me to another big difference to IM2. Tony there believed he was dying which made for extra appalling behaviour, including towards Rhodey and Pepper. Whereas here, while he's dealing with the after effect of almost having died in The Avengers (which makes for lovely emotional continuity, btw), he doesn't take it out on them. The banter with Rhodey, including his teasing him about the "Iron Patriot" label, is affectionate, and with Happy, too, he comes across as a friend, not a boss. (Btw, Jon Favreau gets more dialogue here than in his own films.) Speaking of Happy, whoever in the scriptwriting team had the idea of making Happy Hogan a Downton Abbey fan (who seems to ship Sibyl/Branson, because of course he does): thank you, that was the kind of detail that makes Happy a real character, not just a cameo gag and nod towards the comics. (Also, since Tony recognizes the show on sight I assume he's been watching as well. My own disenchantment not withstanding: I love that. Can't wait for
likeadeuce to write a "Happy and Tony argue about the third season" meta fic.)
Another sign of Tony being genuinenly changed while maintaining his quintessential Tony-ness: little touches like the fact he tells the mother of the unfortunate Jed Davis her son was no suicidal bomber. Or, of course, the obvious symbolism of HOW he manages to save the people sucked out of the air plane, enabling them to help each other and thus managing to save the lot, not just a few.
And lastly: the obligatory post-credits scene about two thirds of the people in my cinema were patient enough to wait for. Because The Avengers hadn't just provided Tony with a near death experience and alien invasions but also with some new friends. Thus, the revelation that the person whom he was narrating the events of the film to weren't, as I had at different times assumed, Pepper or Happy Hogan, but Bruce Banner, was absolutely perfect. And Bruce's reaction was hilarious. Somewhere in the credits, while waiting, I read "special thanks to Joss Whedon" , and until I hear otherwise I chose to believe Joss wrote that tag scene. Because it's his type of humor and he invented and launched the good ship Science Bros, after all.:)
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/893987.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.