The Big Picture: The Big Spoiler: Iron Man 3

ironpatriot

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Great video Bob!

You had me laughing at the end. I also felt the movie left open the possibility for The Mandarin's return. If there is an Iron Man 4, having Trevor stumble upon the rings would be great.

I accept that The Mandarin had to be changed to suit the movie. However, I feel they did that prior to the big reveal, not after. It wasn't bad, it was just disappointing.

I liked the movie a lot. As an adaptation of the "Extremis" storyline... it is horrible.
 

ironpatriot

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LysanderNemoinis said:
Well, I suppose I'm the only one who figured out the big twist right away. The moment I heard "defense contractor" and saw a rich white guy in a suit, my friend and I just left because we immediately knew how it was going to end. I mean...how else would it? Like Bob said, "The Mandarin" was a perfect amalgamation of real-world actually dangerous people and ideologies, so how on Earth could he be the villain? And Bob of all people being surprised that Guy Pierce's character was the bad guy? Have you watched any movies or played any games in the last eight years before today?
TheNaut131 said:
I actually kinda liked the twist. Though I'm kinda sick of the "villain-isn't-the-villain-at-all" trope and EVIL BUSINESSMEN MAKING WAAAAAR, I oddly liked it. It was absurd. I mean, plenty of people guessed it *coughbullshitcough* but I didn't really expect THAT.
Credossuck said:
considering the inherent "goofyness" of the comic mandarin, i think what they did with the character in this movie was a good call. While the Twist was telegraphed miles ahead (yeah... another defense contractor suddenly appears in the movie, gosh i wonder if he might be evil...).
So... None of you expected a rich white villain in an Iron Man movie?
 

9thRequiem

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Trinab said:
I just came back from the movie, and I went there knowing there was a big twist.

When I left the movie, I was left wondering what the twist was. I'm starting to know too much about writing stories. :(

The way Killian was introduced in the flashback clearly identified him as a big deal. When he came to Stark Industries all fit and suave, with a suspicious henchman, I immediately realized this was the main antagonist. To make a good antagonist, a writer needs to make it personal between the antagonist and protagonist. When it showed Killian arriving, smirking after Potts, it rang that little bell. The link between Killian's henchman and the terrorists attack sealed the deal for me, so the big twist wasn't really a surprise to me, so much so I was expecting something utterly different. One does not waste that much time developing the second in command to the antagonist.

The Mandarin was too detached, too different and out there to strike me as the primary antagonist. I admit I was not expecting him to be a drunken druggie however, so I guess they got me there?
After IM2, the balance of antagonist did surprise me. Of course Killian was going to be *an* antagonist, but I figured him to be on some level subservient to the Mandarin, after the whole Vankov / Hammer dynamic. Maybe I'm just too simple minded...
 

Friendstastegood

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aba1 said:
Again didn't say that I said I prefer realism or at least the more realistic takes on things and then in a related but separate note that I hate when comics will drop all pretense of logical progression to create something illogical because it will sell more.

You combined my two thoughts into one.
It would probably help people differentiate between your thoughts if you learned to properly punctuate your sentences.
 

Gorrath

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While I could get behind the idea of Mandarin being redesigned as a political and philosophical nemesis to Tony Stark, I absolutely hated what they did with him in the end. It wasn't that it was a bad idea, it's that they did this, already, TWICE.

The formula for Superhero movies seems to often concentrate on the 'two bad guys' mechanic, and this is what we've seen in each of the Iron Man movies. In the first movie, we got a terrorist organization who may or may not have had actual grievances, and the REAL power behind them, which was a rich white guy trying to control the military industrial complex. In the second movie, we got a brilliant Russian inventor who may or may not have had actual grievances, and a rich white guy trying to control the military industrial complex... And now, in the third movie we get what at first appears to be another terrorist who may have an actual grievance, but it turns out that the REAL bad guy is... a rich white guy trying to control the military industrial complex.

Seriously, I have no issue with using corporate warmongers as villains, but isn't the stereotype of the rich white capitalist with no moral compass growing just as stale as any other? I would have been far happier with Mandarin having been re-imagined as a thoughtful philosopher who has decided to use the same force the West does to achieve social change. Instead we get a retread of, "Tony atones for being a part of war-based capitalism by taking down another guy who's trying to do the same thing." There's nothing wrong with that plot, we've just done it to death!
 

CelestDaer

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So, here's the thing about the Tony Stark side of the Extremis storyline as I understand it. Note: I haven't read... well, really ANY comics... as I understand it, Tony kind of implants the suit into himself to become the true Iron Man? So, he basically becomes Wolverine, minus the claws? And who says that's not what they have planned for the not so subtly implied fourth Iron Man? You know what really bothers me about the trilogy as a whole? Why did it take three movies before Tony Stark got that sliver of shrapnel removed? It's not like he couldn't have continued to wear the arc reactor afterwards, he's got a chest cavity specifically designed for the thing.
 

Daria.Morgendorffer

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Since we're doing spoilers around here, I will probably just to with warnings and not tags.

First of all, the first thing I said to my husband when we were introduced to Killian was "Syndrome", as in "The Incredibles".

You don't dress up Guy Pierce as a complete dork and expect the audience to not anticipate some sort of radical turnaround.

This movie did a lot with telegraphing. The thing with Pepper at the end? I mean, duh. How could it have ended any other way, really?

That said, I LOVED the twist. I was in the theater going "hell yeah, that's how you pull this stuff off". Because I think a lot of the movie was about masks people wear. I've read a lot of objections to Tony not wearing the Mk42 a lot in the movie but it thought it was not only a beautiful contrast to the villain (with his declaration that he was the Mandarin), but also a sublime but of character growth for Tony: he could finally be Iron Man without the suit and that's what all of his taking action without the sur on was about. Tony ISN'T the suit. The suit is an extension of him that he was finally able to distance himself from. The ending to me felt really earned in that regard. The PTSD stuff was overwrought, sure, but it was part of the overall Hero's Struggle.

Plot holes and silliness aside, this was a fine movie and a decent series ending.
 

Gorrath

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Daria.Morgendorffer said:
Since we're doing spoilers around here, I will probably just to with warnings and not tags.

First of all, the first thing I said to my husband when we were introduced to Killian was "Syndrome", as in "The Incredibles".

You don't dress up Guy Pierce as a complete dork and expect the audience to not anticipate some sort of radical turnaround.

This movie did a lot with telegraphing. The thing with Pepper at the end? I mean, duh. How could it have ended any other way, really?

That said, I LOVED the twist. I was in the theater going "hell yeah, that's how you pull this stuff off". Because I think a lot of the movie was about masks people wear. I've read a lot of objections to Tony not wearing the Mk42 a lot in the movie but it thought it was not only a beautiful contrast to the villain (with his declaration that he was the Mandarin), but also a sublime but of character growth for Tony: he could finally be Iron Man without the suit and that's what all of his taking action without the sur on was about. Tony ISN'T the suit. The suit is an extension of him that he was finally able to distance himself from. The ending to me felt really earned in that regard. The PTSD stuff was overwrought, sure, but it was part of the overall Hero's Struggle.

Plot holes and silliness aside, this was a fine movie and a decent series ending.
I agree with you about the theme of Tony being Iron Man without the suit. It was certainly a piece of character growth that demanded to be shown by the third movie. While Aldrich identified with his new powers, Tony was learning to identify himself without the suit, and bravo for that. Honestly the Aldrich bad guy was fine, it's just that the Mandarin plot actually made Aldrich less interesting. Having Aldrich struggling with self-identity the same way Tony was would have been a perfect thing to focus on and explore more deeply instead of making his plot all about a fake terror war.

Imagine how great it would have been to have Aldrich, who desperately needed financing for his think tank, going to an actual Mandarin who could provide that backing. Then imagine him and his new powers causing him an identity crisis and playing it off Tony's own similar crisis, comparing the two men's struggles and contrasting their reactions to that crisis. Aldrich would have been a pawn of Mandarin instead of the other way around, and we wouldn't have needed this non-nonsensical military industrial plot to muddle the whole thing up.
 

dystopiaINC

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Personally I loved the twist, and i loved this episode. That ending had me cracking up because I could see it clear as day, and It. Would. Be. AWESOME! lol
CelestDaer said:
So, here's the thing about the Tony Stark side of the Extremis storyline as I understand it. Note: I haven't read... well, really ANY comics... as I understand it, Tony kind of implants the suit into himself to become the true Iron Man? So, he basically becomes Wolverine, minus the claws? And who says that's not what they have planned for the not so subtly implied fourth Iron Man? You know what really bothers me about the trilogy as a whole? Why did it take three movies before Tony Stark got that sliver of shrapnel removed? It's not like he couldn't have continued to wear the arc reactor afterwards, he's got a chest cavity specifically designed for the thing.
that shrapnel was just the first piece they pulled out, it was said i the first iron man when his chest was hooked up to a car battery that the bomb that hit him had put a bunch of fragments into his chest that would get into the blood stream and tear up his heart, so the arc reactor in his chest was to work as an electron magnet and pull the shrapnel and hold it in place, since it was close to his heart they couldn't operate with out the extremis to keep him alive during the operation. when they pulled the first shard out it got pulled up to where they had his arc reactor hanging above him to keep the shrapnel in place.
 

Wilco86

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Oct 5, 2011
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Awesome ending! (And kudos for mentioning David Lo Pan.)

Of the Iron Man villains, I would like to see Ghost. I know he would be a hireling, but he could be one of the few guys to challenge Tony with cunning and gadgets.

PS: I was kinda waiting Iron Man 3 to make a double con, and Trevor Slattery actually just fooling Tony. Alas, that was not the case, but I would like to see him with magic powers.
 

Tormuse

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I went into the movie knowing nothing about the comics, so I didn't know the Mandarin was supposed to be such a big deal. Maybe if I had known more about his original character, the twist would have bothered me, but as it was, I loved the twist! :)

When the movie started and the Mandarin was broadcasting his threats to people, the parallels with Osama Bin Laden were quite obvious and all I could think was, "Didn't we have Arab terrorists as the bad guys in the first film?" The character just felt tiresome, overdone, and uninteresting, so when the twist was revealed, it worked really well. Throughout the Iron Man movies, we've gone from Arab terrorists, to an evil Russian, to a pseudo-Chinese guy and it's like we've been conditioned to expect the foreign guy to be the Big Bad. The twist is effective because not only does it play on the expectations of the characters and the audience, but it makes fun of those expectations and kind of says, "Don't you feel stupid that it was so easy to convince you that this clown was a serious threat?"

(I could go on about how it could be interpreted as an allegory for mass media stirring up public support for dubious political decisions, but I digress...)
 

Shirokurou

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And Guy Pearce did have Oriental Dragon tattoos. He could totally pick up the mantle and go like "I'm the true Mandarin, I don't need a double any more. And cue Loki giving him magic rings."
 

BehattedWanderer

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Speaking as a member of the annoyed group, and having had some time to think about it, I don't hate the twist--it was a good twist, it just belonged in a different set of movies. Had it shown up in the Nolan Batman movies that some ultimate criminal was just an actor, I'd have loved the hell out of it. My problem is that they teased The Mandarin, which meant I thought it was the beginning of seeing all the space magic/science/superpowers actually start to intermingle, instead of stay mostly in their respective films, with their respective characters. I was hoping to see Iron Man learn to deal with nonterrestrial things that were super effective against his armor that he'd have to learn to work around (or, see a named Thorbuster or Hulkbuster make an appearance for a Tony Stark having a massive identity crisis where he's panicking that without the suit he's nothing, so he's overcompensating by building an army, or say an Iron Legion to help him specifically deal with the idea by being more than just a man in a suit). Yeah, it was a good twist, but it was an unwanted twist, and instead of giving me something fun and exciting, it took something fun and exciting away.

I was okay with most of it being him outside the armor, to remind him that it's not *just* the armor, but the whole combination that was important. He told Romanov in the Avengers that he was something even without the suit, so that he had to convince or remind himself felt appropriate. I could deal with the kid as a time passer and comic relief, and was even kind of excited by the Fin Fang Foom imagery of Killian's character, but I still wanted the Mandarin, dammit, and instead I got yet another crappy, annoying EVIL CORPORATE MOOK who wanted nothing but more money. Great. Like I don't already have thousands of those. You know what I don't have thousands of? Idealistic evil bastards with superpowers or space weapons that want to achieve a goal, but have a superhero in the way. Guess which of those I wanted to see.

Oh, and that most of my annoyance comes from the really, really annoying last 15 minutes or so doesn't help things. I liked the twist, but was disappointed that there wasn't a "lol no really, I am the Mandarin, thanks for turning your back and buying my charade of being an actor"; I hated the ending that made everything into another pointlessly overdone and heavy handed metaphor that robbed me of all my enjoyment.
 

Therumancer

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Xaszatm:

You wrote a message to me in response to me, and I'm guessing you deleted it or something because I can't find it (I could also not be very observant at the moment). I just wanted to say that everything I've said about China is pretty well documented actually, if you do searches for things like a combination of "China, Satellites, Lasers" you'll find articles going back to around 2006 dealing with ground based systems intended to interfere with military satellites and enforce conventional warfare. What's more China's militay build up has included things like a naval force sufficient to project it's troops into other countries en-masse, aircraft carriers, and other assorted things. Very much a conventional invasion force under construction, there is no need for any of this in a defensive capacity, only if you want to bring your forces to attack other nations. Things like the Yuan class submarine are also matters of public record at this point, as well as China's increasing belligerance in trying to force Japan to cede control of parts of it's territory to China in combination with it's rising military power, territory which is incidently of key strategic value within the region. Likewise things from behind the Bamboo Curtain *DO* indeed get out including what a lot of Chinese politicians are saying internally, for internal consumpsion, which has been incredibly militeristic over the years, even if the nature of it has not played well with the mainstream press.

I hate to be this direct, but there has been enough shown about China to also make it pretty clear that the typical Chinese is pretty much forced into a life of borderline slavery, being forced to share sleeping mats with multiple other people in shifts, working for a pittiance in sweatshops which is how the Chinese economy is maintained, and even in many cases made to live alongside their own livestock which is how diseases like SARS got started. In counterpart to this however there is a relative minority of people who live quite well in some of the hugest, most modern cities in the world, and act as a sort of ruling class. While it's from Hong Kong this is one of many articles that kind of summarizes the issues.

http://news.yahoo.com/poor-cages-show-dark-side-hong-kong-boom-142635066--finance.html

Not to mention the well documented antics of the Beijing Olympics with the police pretty much forcing people out of their homes to make space, and keeping "unsightly" people confined to their homes during the olympics themselves. For the most part whenever someone wants to bring up truely atrocious human rights violations and the majority of a people living in horrendous squalor, China is the target, and has gotten interntaional attention for this in the past.

By the accounts I'm getting China's saber rattling is pretty much used similarly to what the USSR did to help keep it's underclass focused and in line, as well as military invasion "in the future" being the promised solution to a lot of the problems going on. After all if you live in say a dog crate in between going to work at some sweatshop, the idea of this military your goverment is building being used to conquer the "decadent" western world your told is responsible for your problems represents a ray of hope, it will be worth it because if you colonize other nations there will be living space, and one day people won't have to share the same mat with a dozen other people, live in dog crates, or whatever else.

At any rate, while not "nice" I have to take anything I hear coming from China via a computer with a grain of salt if your to be believed, because really, only a fairly small percentage of the population have computers. A point made in some articles on asian gaming (just to back it up) talking about the use of cafes and such in countries where even the middle class are unlikely to have PCs. It doesn't seem likely that you'd agree with me, even overseas, if your in that class and plan to live and work in China at any given point.

Apologies for the length, but the bottom line is I don't believe you, especially seeing as there is a preponderance of evidence that presents things as being very differant from the tone of your post. Likewise when I am reading articles about how China has just launched it's first Aircraft carrier, which is hardly a defensive weapon, around the same time when it's trying to get it's hand on territory held by Japan which is of strategic value to the US, your not convincing me China isn't planning military aggression. You don't build Aircraft carriers for any other reason but to project power and spearhead attacks (so you can launch planes into other countries). I suppose you can argue it's not true, but it's kind of right there if you catch my meaning.

At any rate as this applies to the Mandarin, my point is that he's actually a pretty understandable character, and really one of the more realistic villains out there. At the end of the day he's out to conquer the world for his own people (with himself in charge), believing in their inherant superiority over all others and right to rule. There have been many men like him throughout history, and China has had plenty of conquerors through it's own history. It's relevent because even if the trappings are differant, this is pretty much what China is building up to do.

Let me be honest about one final thing in closing though, I don't hate China or the Chinese people in any absolute sense. To be totally blunt with you, I'd have few if any issues if China simply agreed to start respecting copyright and IP laws, and ending it's knockoffs, and pretty much disarming it's offensive military forces. I mean I don't care if China wants to have a coast guard, some airforce bases to intercept jets someone might send after it, and a huge conventional military and a buttload of tanks if someone is to land troops or whatever. Hell, to be honest I didn't
even care that much about China being a nuclear power. All of my attitudes are entirely reactive. I get angry over the human rights stuff, but as others have pointed out, we can't really force that to stop without wrecking the rest of the country, I mostly simply see that as something important to attach to any kind of surrender if we were to ever beat China in a war, rather than the motivation for a war in general. It's just like my sentiments on The Middle East, I make total war arguements about breaking the culture, however to be honest if they just decided to generally knock it off on their own, I really wouldn't give a crap, keep the Islam to their own borders and be respecful of those who disagree (by say not expecting visiting women to act submissive to men and dress in body tents), for the most part we're more than happy to pay for their oil, and the leaders are more than willing to sell it so they can buy their fleets of gold plated cars and crap (disputes between them and the people over that should largely be an internal matter, to be fair, I think most Muslims are pointing their guns at the wrong people and would improve their lot in life if they whacked their own leadership and put the money into general govermental coffers, but that's another entire discussion).

At the end of the day though we're going to have to agree to disagree about The Mandarin, and I doubt we'll ever agree on any of these issues. To me I see "The Mandarin" as being oddly appropriate, much like say "Red Guardian" representing Russia when things were even less friendly between us. Is he 100% accurate to reality, of course not, he's a bloody super villain, he does however make the point while fitting in within his own universe. China chills out, then your likely to see the media follow suit, and characters like this lose their relevence (as I see it).

I also still maintain that "Iron Man 3" was just okay as a movie, and what it did with this character was crap. Just because you call something by a name doesn't mean that's what it is. You can call that character the Mandarin and it's false advertising and an insult to the premise as far as comics and the franchise goes. It's sort of like the guy who fed a bunch of ferrets steroids and sold them as poodles.... sure it might be entertaining on some level (a lot of the world Loled at that) but it's still not a poodle nor will a 'roid Ferret ever likely be accepted as a pet of equal value. "Iron Man 3" pretty much freaked us all out for a bit with it's twist (which I won't spoiler here) but at the end of the day it's a 'Roid Ferret when we should have gotten a poodle, and those who are disappointed have every right to be.
 

xPixelatedx

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The twist just didn't work... not at all. I mean, it could have! But no, it did not have any payoff.

Instead of seeing Iron man fight something cool and fun like a wizard with space rings, we got to see him fight a guy who literally 'gets hot'. ...Come on Bob, you know they went that route because it was a lot more 'down to earth' in comparison. Yeah, it isn't real, but they did it because it was more real then the alternative. And if anything, the Iron Man movies always play it pathetically safe in this regard. I thought after the Avengers they'd finally grow some balls with Iron Man and bring in the weirdness. Boy, was I wrong. What a snore-fest that movie was.

I also found Guy Pearce boring and obnoxious in this movie, he made a terrible main villain.