The big challenge for Marvel Studios in 2013 was to do the next thing. They’d done a series of films that all culminated in Avengers, which was a hugely successful movie, having made flipping great wodges of cash and being well-liked and adored by most who saw it. Everything came together in that 2012 film, fulfilling the promise of the five films that came before it, and the question on everyone’s lips after that was, “Will they be able to keep it up?”
They started the second phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe the same way they started the first one: with Robert Downey Jr. headlining his third and what has so far been his final solo Iron Man film.
While he remained an executive producer and co-star as Happy Hogan, Jon Favreau declined to sit in the director’s chair for a third time, and Downey Jr. recruited Shane Black—with whom he’d worked on Kiss Kiss Bang Bang—to write and direct, with Drew Pearce brought in to co-author the script.
Pearce and Black’s primary inspirations were the “Extremis” storyline in the Iron Man comics from 2005-2006, written by Warren Ellis, marking the first time the MCU used a 21st-century comics story; and the Avengers movie, as Tony Stark’s experiences in that film inform the character’s actions here. (Each of the three post-Avengers movies will, in fact, be dealing with the fallout from the Chitauri invasion of New York, as we’ll see over the next couple of weeks.)
In addition, this third movie makes use of the Mandarin, as hinted at by the “Ten Rings” references in the first film. Using the Mandarin was a challenge, as the character was created in 1964 as a villain who used gems he found in an alien starship to give himself tremendous power. But the Mandarin was a “yellow-peril” stereotype of a sort that was depressingly common at the time (see also: Wong Chu in Iron Man’s debut in Tales of Suspense #39), and which would very much not be acceptable in an early-21st-century movie (nor should it be). Having said that, the Mandarin is the closest Iron Man has to a main villain the vein of Lex Luthor to Superman, Dr. Doom to the Fantastic Four, Magneto to the X-Men, the Joker to Batman, etc. The ostensible solution was to make him a radical terrorist in the vein of Osama bin Laden. While he’s never identified as a radical Muslim, he is implied to be from the Middle East, which just updates the stereotypical boogeyman, albeit with a twist that makes it actually work.
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The movie was plagued by issues that were raised by the Walt Disney Company’s purchase of Marvel, as Marvel Studios already had a deal in place to be distributed by Paramount Pictures, and Disney wasn’t eager to let a competitor profit from their work. Eventually, though, a deal was worked out.
Back from Avengers are Downey Jr. as Stark, Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Paul Bettany as J.A.R.V.I.S., and Mark Ruffalo in a post-credits cameo as Bruce Banner. Back from Iron Man 2 are Favreau as Hogan and Don Cheadle as James Rhodes, now in the Iron Patriot armor. Back from Iron Man in a cameo is Shaun Toub as Yinsen. Appearing for the first time in this film are Guy Pearce as Aldrich Killian, Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin, Rebecca Hall as Maya Hansen, Stéphanie Szostak as Brandt, James Badge Dale as Savin, Ty Simpkins as Harley Keener, the late Miguel Ferrer as Vice President Rodriguez, and William Sadler as President Ellis (named after the writer of the “Extremis” storyline that inspired the movie).
Downey Jr., Cheadle, and Bettany will next appear in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Paltrow and Favreau will next appear in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Sadler will next appear in three episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Kingsley will next appear in the short film All Hail the King.
While this is seemingly the last Iron Man film—there are no current plans for a fourth, though there are plenty of as-yet-unannounced slots in the upcoming slate of MCU films, so you never know—the character has continued to be an important part of the film series, appearing with the other Avengers in Age of Ultron, Infinity War, and the upcoming Endgame, and co-starring in Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming. His personality also comes up in Ant-Man and Thor: Ragnarok.
“Oh my God—that was really violent!”
Iron Man 3
Written by Drew Pearce & Shane Black
Directed by Shane Black
Produced by Kevin Feige
Original release date: May 3, 2013
We open in Bern, Switzerland on New Years Eve 1999. Tony Stark is at a scientific conference where he’s given a speech (which he doesn’t recall giving) and is flirting with Maya Hansen, a biologist who is developing a way to harness the brain’s full capacity. Stark is actually interested in what she’s doing as well as taking her to bed. On the way to the hotel room, he blows off an awkward, crippled scientist named Aldrich Killian, though Hansen actually takes his business card. Killian has formed a think-tank called Advanced Idea Mechanics.
Fast forward to Christmas 2012. Stark has been having trouble sleeping since Avengers. Pepper Potts has moved in with him, and is running the day-to-day of Stark Enterprises. Happy Hogan has taken over as head of security, as being Stark’s bodyguard seems pointless when Stark is an armored superhero. Potts has a meeting with Killian, who is able-bodied and much better looking now, and wants Stark Enterprises in on A.I.M.’s new project, which seems related to the work Hansen was doing a dozen years earlier.
Stark is designing new Iron Man suit after new Iron Man suit—he’s up to 42 different models.
A terrorist known as the Mandarin is bombing sites all over the world and sending out pirate broadcasts taking credit, with messages to U.S. President Ellis. The bombings are frustrating to law-enforcement because the bombs are leaving no residue behind whatsoever. Jim Rhodes, whose armor has been painted red, white, and blue and who has been rebranded as the Iron Patriot, is assigned to the case.
Hogan doesn’t like the look of Savin, the bodyguard Killian brought with him, and follows him. Savin meets a man named Taggart at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Shortly thereafter, Taggart himself explodes, killing several people, and badly injuring Hogan. Before lapsing into a coma, Hogan stares at and reaches for Taggart’s dogtags, the only part of him that survived. Savin himself walks away from the explosion, completely healing every wound he receives.
Stark is pissed off, and meets with Rhodes to discuss the Mandarin, who has taken credit for the attack on Grauman’s. Rhodes says that the government is scared, and needs to be able to handle this themselves, not depend on the Avengers to do it.
When queried by reporters about the attack, Stark calls out the Mandarin, even giving his home address on camera.
At home, Stark does a deep dive into the Mandarin, including a holographic reconstruction of the crime scene, based on the photographs. He sees that Hogan was looking at the dogtags and saves an image. He searches for similar explosions to this, and finds one that isn’t a Mandarin bombing, in Tennessee. J.A.R.V.I.S. puts together a flight plan, but then the doorbell rings.
It’s Hansen, who says she needs Stark’s help. However, three helicopters attack and destroy Stark’s house before she can properly explain. Stark has his Mark 42 armor attach to Potts so she can get herself and Hansen to safety. Once she’s clear of the house, he takes the armor back to himself and fights back, but the armor is badly damaged by the helicopters and also by Savin’s powers. The last thing the damaged J.A.R.V.I.S. does is implement the flight plan to Tennessee before powering down.
Stark stumbles to a garage full of electronic gear, used by a ten-year-old named Harley, who threatens Stark with a potato gun. Eventually, Harley agrees to help Stark repair and recharge the armor. Stark also investigates the explosion, since that was why he wanted to come there in the first place. Six people were killed in the explosion, but only five left shadows on the surrounding walls. Stark visits the sixth person’s mother, who hands him a file—belatedly realizing that Stark isn’t the guy who called her. That was Savin who, along with another powered terrorist posing as a Homeland Security agent, show up and take on Stark. However, even without his armor, Stark is able to use his scientific knowhow (among other things, blowing up a microwave with a set of dogtags) to stop the bad guys, aided by Harley.
Potts and Hansen are talking in a hotel room when Killian breaks in to kidnap her—and it turns out that Hansen is working with Killian. She had come to convince Stark to join A.I.M. Now they have Potts for leverage.
Stark has figured out how Mandarin’s attacks are “covered up”—the bombs are people. The process Killian and Hansen developed is called Extremis, and while it can allow someone to heal completely (and also regrow limbs, with A.I.M. having taken its test subjects from soldiers and others who have lost limbs), and also give them energy powers, it can also result in them exploding. With help from Rhodes, as well as a satellite uplink from a local beauty pageant (where one of the judges looks just like Stan Lee), he learns all about Killian’s project, and discovers that A.I.M. is working for the Mandarin.
One of Mandarin’s pirate broadcasts is traced to Pakistan. Rhodes is sent there, only to find that it’s a sweat shop. But one of the women making knockoff sportswear is also an Extremis soldier, who knocks Rhodes out and takes him captive.
J.A.R.V.I.S. is back up and running enough to trace Mandarin’s stronghold by tracking concentrations of Extremis users—which, oddly, is in Miami. Stark drives down there and is able to use various gadgets he’s put together to take out security, finally finding the Mandarin—
—in bed with two women and speaking with a Cockney accent. It turns out “the Mandarin” is really a drug-addicted actor named Trevor Slattery who thinks he’s playing a role. Killian’s people capture Stark and tie him up. Hansen tries to convince Killian not to hurt Stark, as he can help them stabilize Extremis, but Killian just shoots her for her trouble. He shows Stark that he not only has Potts hostage, but has given her Extremis.
Killian created “the Mandarin” as a cover for the explosions of Extremis users who went bad. His plan is to take out President Ellis next. He gets Rhodes out of the Iron Patriot armor and puts Savin in it. Savin heads to Air Force One to escort Ellis home for Christmas.
An alarm on a watch Stark borrowed from Harley (actually Harley’s sister) goes off, which makes Stark happy, as it means his armor is back to full power. It flies to Miami and attaches itself to him (well, parts of it do—the rest don’t arrive until a bit later, after Harley unlocks the garage door), and he takes care of security. Rhodes takes advantage of the distraction to mount an escape of his own.
Stark calls Vice President Rodriguez to warn them of the attack on the President. When Rodriguez says it’s okay, Iron Patriot is on the job, Rhodes comes on the line and says, “Not so much.” Rodriguez says he’ll take care of it—then hangs up and does nothing, returning to his Christmas celebration. We see that his daughter has only one leg.
Savin takes the President hostage by putting him in the Iron Patriot armor and sending the armor off to Killian. Iron Man then shows up and fights Savin, eventually killing him and saving the thirteen passengers who survived Savin’s attack, but who are falling to their doom. Iron Man is then hit by a truck, at which point we discover that Stark is operating the armor remotely.
Killian’s plan is to kill Ellis, which would put Rodriguez in the Oval Office, and he’ll be Killian’s puppet in exchange for curing his daughter. Stark and Rhodes head to the oil rig where Ellis has been taken. J.A.R.V.I.S. informs Stark that the repair crews have dug out Stark’s basement in Malibu, and Stark calls for all his armors to be sent to Miami. They arrive, and J.A.R.V.I.S. coordinates their attack on the Extremis soldiers while Stark wears one suit. Rhodes rescues Ellis and puts his own armor back on, and Iron Man and Iron Patriot continue to fight Killian’s soldiers.
Stark sees Potts fall two hundred feet into an inferno, and thinks she’s dead. He commands the Mark 42 armor to go onto Killian and then destroys it. But that’s still not enough to stop him—however, another Extremis soldier is, and it turns out that Potts survived the fall and is able to stop Killian with her own enhanced powers. Stark, by way of showing his dedication to Potts, blows up all the Iron Man armors.
Rodriguez is arrested, as is Slattery. Stark gives Harley a ton of high-tech equipment to play with. Stark is able to use what he learned at Killian’s place to cure Potts of Extremis, and then decides to have surgery to remove the shrapnel from his heart. Even as he tosses away his ARC reactor, he muses that he’s still Iron Man.
In a post-credits scene, we discover that the voiceovers we’ve been getting of Stark telling this story have been him telling Dr. Bruce Banner about it, but Banner fell asleep right around when he was talking about Bern in 1999.
“That’s the thing about smart guys, we cover our asses”
This is a remarkably uneven movie. Parts of it work brilliantly, others stumble rather badly. It’s eminently watchable mostly due to the (as usual) superlative work done by Robert Downey Jr., who completely owns the title role.
The one way in which this movie works 100% is in chronicling Stark’s post-traumatic stress following the Chitauri invasion. Stark’s obsession with creating new suits of armor, with trying to do anything to distract himself from what happened in New York, is played perfectly; Stark’s usual manic intensity is turned up several notches, and his verbal diarrhea even more random than it has been in his prior appearances.
The one way in which this movie does not work is in making Stark into a bloodthirsty bastard. I have a serious problem with an Iron Man movie in which Iron Man gleefully informs a bunch of thugs that he’s going to kill them and in what order he’s going to kill them. And he kills the other bad guys, from Brandt in Tennessee to Savin on Air Force One, without hesitation. Yes, right after killing Savin he saves thirteen people, but still, I prefer my superheroes not to be murderers. Especially not murderers of guys who are just doing a job. One of my favorite moments in the film is when one of Killian’s thugs throws up his hands and says, “Honestly, I hate working here. They are so weird!” Truly, more thugs should be doing that. (“I surrender, Spider-Man, they ain’t payin’ me enough to get put in the hospital!”) But it also points out that Stark’s litany of how he’s going to kill the hired hands makes him no better than Killian.
Speaking of Killian, wow, what a dull antagonist. The original drafts of the script had Hansen be the actual villain, but Marvel’s Disney overlords didn’t think that kids would buy an action figure of a female villain, so they changed it to Killian. Yes, much better to make the formerly crippled guy who cured himself, and who was treated like dirt by the hero, be the villain, than some girrrrrrrrrrrl. Of course, having them team up works nicely, but then Hansen is disposed of without a second thought, making you wonder why they bothered having her in the movie in the first place. (A deleted scene reveals that, before she succumbs to the bullet wound, she transfers all the information about Extremis to Stark, which if nothing else explains how he was able to cure Potts in the end.)
Killian’s overall plan seems to be to have control over the person in the White House, which seems—odd? Boring? Simplistic? I dunno, it just didn’t have any bite to it. But neither did Killian. I actually felt sorry for him watching the opening, but then he’s so incredibly sleazy to Potts later on that the sympathy is mitigated somewhat. Still, Stark actually taking some ownership of his mistreatment of both Killian and Hansen might have been nice, but the movie was more interested in him getting past his more recent trauma than his dozen-year-old dickishness.
Having said that, the use of the Mandarin is brilliant. The notion of the Mandarin as a construct used to cover for the Extremis soldiers exploding is fantastic. It enables them to use Iron Man’s greatest foe, and also shine a light on the stereotype that he was created as. Ben Kingsley deserves tremendous kudos here, as he plays the Mandarin as genuinely menacing. His speeches about the massacre at Sand Creek and the origin of fortune cookies (“They’re actually an American invention, which is why they’re hollow, full of lies, and leave a bad taste in the mouth”) are quite clever and scarily delivered justifications for the bombings. And then his later performance as drugged-out Trevor Slattery is just hilarious.
In addition, I love Killian’s explanation for the Mandarin being at least in part inspired by Thor’s arrival in his titular movie. Thor showing up in the southwest in Thor has a lot of the same implications for the MCU that Dr. Manhattan’s arrival did in Watchmen. Prior to that, every hero the world had seen (and this includes ones retconned into the past like Ant-Man, the Wasp, and Goliath) had been human with enhancements of some sort, whether mechanical or chemical. But Thor is something other, a god-like being who brought a bunch more god-like beings and a big giant robot—and later an alien invasion—to Earth. As Killian said, “When the big dude with the hammer dropped from the sky, subtlety became a thing of the past.”
I do like how much Stark uses his brains in this. While on the one hand, the repeated destruction/disrepair of his armor is a good way to keep Downey Jr.’s famous face on screen a lot, at the very least, we see him using his smarts to keep himself from getting killed, whether it’s using the stuff in the restaurant he runs into when being chased by Extremis thugs or the gadgets he threw together before driving to Miami.
Kudos to Don Cheadle, also, who’s similarly kept out of his armor for a chunk of the movie, but Rhodes proves himself able to handle himself just fine without the Iron Patriot armor. (The constant complaining about the rebranding and the new paint job are hilarious, as well. It’s worth watching the extras on the Blu-Ray to see the full talk show segments about that rebranding from Bill Maher and Joan Rivers.) Cheadle brings a pleasant competence to the proceedings, a nice balm to Downey Jr.’s endless snark. Though that snark from the lead does keep the scenes with Ty Simpkins’s Harley from getting overly precious.
The climax is a mess. Watching armor after armor get blown up grows tiresome, and Killian seems to have gone from a small handful of Extremis soldiers (only three of whom actually have personalities, and all three are dead by the time we hit the climax) to an infinite supply of them for J.A.R.V.I.S.-controlled Iron Man armors to fight. Also, why is Killian still doing his perform-for-the-cameras act without Slattery around to play the Mandarin? He must know that that charade has been compromised, because Slattery’s not actually there to film his bit. If he’s not expecting Slattery to be there, why is he going ahead with it? It’s never adequately explained.
And then we have the wholly unsatisfying ending, where Stark gets heart surgery to remove the shrapnel. If it’s that easy, why didn’t he do it when he got home from Afghanistan the first time? The whole point of, well, every Iron Man appearance prior to this is that he has to wear the ARC reactor or he’ll die. Hell, an entire subplot of Iron Man 2 was that the reactor was poisoning him, so why wasn’t this surgery mentioned as an option then? It’s completely out of left field, makes no sense, and does nothing to advance the character. All it does is mean that Downey Jr. doesn’t have to wear a cylinder under his shirt in subsequent movies…
This is an excellent next chapter in Tony Stark’s saga of trying to be less of a dick and only partially succeeding. It’s a terrible superhero movie, though, and it didn’t need to be.
Next week, we see how Asgard is recovering from Loki’s shenanigans in Avengers, as we look at Thor: The Dark World.
Keith R.A. DeCandido is also going to be reviewing each episode of season 2 of Star Trek Discovery as they’re released starting in two weeks, and will be covering The Punisher season 2 later this month as well.
I really enjoyed IM3 and generally think it is vastly underrated. The music alone was thrilling. The use of “Extremis” threw me off a bit at first since it was so different from the comic version, but now in Infinity War we see kind of a version of the nanotech armor and that was absolutely amazing.
My one issue with IM3 (and most Iron Man appearances after the original movie) is how fragile the armor now is. The entire point of armor is that it is tough and protects the wearer, but in this movie even small impacts can break pieces off or shatter the entire suit.
I rewatched this one last night and enjoyed it more than I expected to, mostly on the strength of Downey, Paltrow and Kingsley’s performances. I had completely forgotten the Guy Pearce part of the story.
One thing that does tend to bother me, possibly more than it should, is when there are lengthy sequences in which the armor is being remotely piloted and/or operated by J.A.R.V.I.S. — it kind of takes away some of the tension if the hero of the movie is sitting somewhere miles from the action sipping a daiquiri while using a game controller to defeat the bad guys. Although it did allow for a nice misdirect/reveal when the armor got flattened by the semi truck.
I’m not particularly a fan of this one either. However, I didn’t like the Mandarin twist. I don’t object to the idea of a villain who’s not what you think he is; that was clever. I object that they used the Mandarin for that purpose. I realize he was a racist caricature in the 1960, but I think there are better ways to update him than to have him be completely fictional. Personally, I thought they’d use the 90s “Hong Kong business mogul” version, but the Iron Man movies have gone with “evil businessman” twice already, neither of which was terribly effective.
On rewatching, Harley is the element that bothers me most. I can’t tell if he’s starstruck by Stark, legitimately trying to help and doing it really badly, or completely lacking in empathy and deliberately pushing Stark’s buttons. No matter which, the movie spends a lot of time building this relationship, and then the kid vanishes entirely. I don’t see the purpose.
On the whole it’s OK. It’s not one of the greatest films in the MCU, but it does the job. It still craps over almost everything DC have done since the Nolan trilogy finished.
My biggest regret was that after seeing Guy Pearce in Lockout, I was looking forward to the ultimate snark-off between him and Robert Downey Jr. It could have been epic, and it just didn’t happen.
I was confused by the ending. Didn’t he give up being the Iron Man? And then all of sudden, he’s in Avengers without any kind of explanation.
Oh, and one thing I did appreciate was that this time the villain wasn’t another guy in a suit.
Austin: He destroyed all the existing armors, but his last line before the credits is, “I am Iron Man.” If nothing else, he’s a better person as Iron Man than he was as Tony Stark before Afghanistan, and I can see why he’d go back to that.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Re the ending surgery to remove the shrapnel – I always took it to mean that after Stark figures out how to make extremis stable, he used it to help his heart regenerate/repair during the surgery so he wouldn’t die while removing the arc reactor (how exactly? Dunno – insert hand wavy comic logic and “science” quote here)
I found the Fortune Cookie speech to be a hilarious commentary on both the creation of the original Mandarin in the comics, and Killian’s (and Marvel’s) use of a white actor to play the part of a villain who’s name indicates that he should be Chinese.
@3/@6: Stane, Hammer, and Killian are all rich white businessman villains, so it would seem that they did follow form from the first two movies. Also, the “Hail to the King” short implies that there is a real Mandarin out there, somewhere.
I think that Tony’s status after this movie is somewhat muddled:
In Winter Soldier, he doesn’t wear the suit anymore, but has an emergency repulsor glove in his watch.
In Age of Ultron, he’s fully suited while helping the Avengers with Hydra cleanup, but announces his retired status at the end of the movie.
In Civil War, he’s not an active team member, yet still acts like he’s in charge of the Avengers. He also says that he and Pepper have broken up.
In Homecoming, he’s repaired his relationship with Pepper enough to propose, if backhandedly. He wears the armor when necessary, and directs it remotely other times.
In Infinity War, their relationship seems strong, the wedding is upcoming, and they’re talking about having a kid. Pepper doesn’t seem happy about him having the nanotech suit on his person while they’re jogging.
Did I miss any?
@8: That’s a good point. If I recall, at the end he said he wasn’t trying to “cure” Extremis, but “fix” it. I think I read somewhere that Tony didn’t remove Pepper’s Extremis, but did solve her overheating issues. So he could indeed use the new formula on himself to make it possible to remove the shrapnel and arc reactor without killing him.
Austin @5: IIRC, there’s a line in Captain America: Civil War where Tony explains that he and Pepper are taking a break because he realized that he couldn’t stop being Iron Man (the implication being she wasn’t happy with that and broke things off).
I love this movie nearly as much as I loved the first Iron Man film. It’s respectful of what came before, but not afraid to take a new tack – even more emphasizing the man, rather than the armor.
I do understand Keith’s complaint about Iron Man killing. That said, weren’t the Nazis Cap and Bucky killed in First Avenger just doing a job? what about all those Chitauri that got splattered all over the streets of New York? The Frost Giants Thor shattered? The 10 Rings guys that got burned alive in the first Iron Man film? Sure, Killian’s guys are “rent-a-thugs,” but to all appearances, they were more than willing to kill (save the one who hated working there).
Also, I gotta disagree about tre climax of the film. I loved every second of the various armies going to work against Killian’s forces. After having the various armors malfunction and/or simply absent for most of the movie, it felt refreshing to see them come back in the end.
As for the surgery at the end, I assumed that that had come after years of trying to figure out the solution to removing the reactor without the shrapnel instantly shredding his heart. Hell, for all we know, he had his whole heart replaced with an ARC reactor pacemaker/artificial heart.
And count me as one who thoroughly enjoyed the twist as regards the Mandarin. Does it kind of mess with the 10 Rings foreshadowing in the first film? Most definitely. That said, the Mandarin is hardly Dr. Doom or the Joker. He’s just the most recognizable in one of comics’ least remarkable rogues galleries. I mean, imagine if they messed with other “iconic” baddies like the Melter or the Unicorn …
Also notable is the fact that this very much shows that the movies took their cue from the comics In terms of how to manage both solo and team adventures, with both having an impact on the overall narrative.
@10: Tony wasn’t in Winter Soldier, though his name comes up when the Helicarriers are targeting “threats”. The Repulsor Watch was also from Civil War
@14: Darn; you’re right. Sloppy Google research on my part.
The destruction of the suits at the end seemed more symbolic than anything. They were a result, and therefore a representation of his trauma, and destroying them was supposed to show that he’s moved on.
It does seem, however, that the sheer number and variety that he was able to create in such a short amount of time shows that he was just creating whatever variants came to mind, not focusing on optimizing or strengthening them, which could explain why they were so easy to destroy.
LazerWulf: Yeah, assuming this is taking place on the Christmas following the Battle of New York, it’s only been about six months (since it was obviously summer in New York when the battle took place). Though timelines are always dodgy in these movies…………..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@LazerWulf @9: To clarify, I was happy that this time the villain wasn’t another guy who had just built his own version of the Iron Man suit (like Stane and like Mickey Rourke).
@13:
There are different standards for soldiers in combat (which Cap and Bucky were) and civilians in peacetime (which Tony at least technically is). As ugly as it is, killing people for being on the other side pretty much is a soldier’s job; in peacetime, violence is supposed to be reserved to the government, and only used in extremis.
I pretty much agree with Keith about the film’s strengths and weaknesses. I like the exploration of Stark’s post-Avengers trauma — better than all the movie-series heroes who go through hell every movie and are totally fine afterward. I don’t like the excessive death toll he casually inflicts; that’s a systemic problem of superhero movies in general, since Hollywood has a decades-long addiction to “killing the bad guys.” I love the cleverness of dealing with the inherent racism of the Mandarin by acknowledging and using the stereotyped nature of the character as a plot point rather than just trying to tiptoe around it or avoid it. I loved the skydiving rescue sequence. And I agree with the commenter above that it probably has the most memorable theme music of the three Iron Man films.
Spoiler warning for The Winter Soldier: Since A.I.M. in the comics is a subdivision of Hydra, I like to believe that Killian was a Hydra agent and that his attempt on President Ellis’s life was part of the same master plan as the Hydra takeover in TWS (where Ellis was again targeted for assassination, albeit as one of many). Perhaps the intent was to get him out of the way before the takeover so there’d be less resistance. Once that plan failed, they just decided to take him out along with everyone else.
I also wish there’d been more of a throughline between the army of remote armors here and the proto-Ultron drones in Age of Ultron. It would’ve made sense for them to be the same thing and created more continuity between the films.
@9/LazerWulf: Sir Ben Kingsley is not “white.” He’s Anglo-Indian.
Count me as someone who loves seeing the good guys kill the bad guys. The “refuse to kill” hero thing is such a trope nowadays. I pretty much stopped watching the Arrow TV show when he made a vow in season 2 to stop killing. Heroes have to bend over backwards to go out of their way to avoid killing someone. It becomes ridiculous at a certain point. Not to mention that beating the pulp out of people has to result in some accidental deaths at some point. I’ve seen news stories of people dying from one punch.
Sure, but that’s what makes it a power fantasy. To have the ability to kill someone who’s threatening you, but choose to exercise control and restraint, and not give in to anger. That’s what makes heroes better than regular people.
Adding to the “Heroes don’t kill” conversation, I just want to add that the buildup to Bruce Wayne’s choice not to kill in Gotham was particularly well done (in this particular viewer’s opinion).
They’re not better than regular people; they’re more capable because they have powers or the desire and will to inflict violence on people. And they’re refusal to kill a really evil bad guy results in said bad guys killing more innocent people. Those deaths are on the heroes.
Austin: I can’t reconcile the notion of a person using lethal force as a matter of course being considered in any way a good guy. It should be a last resort for a hero, not a first one. The taking of a life should never be celebrated.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@21/Austin: Sometimes even good guys do have to kill, granted, but what I despise is when it’s portrayed as something they do casually or gladly, something they can do without qualms or hesitation or trauma, even something they can laugh and joke about. That’s just disgusting, and it’s a lie. It’s a lie because nobody is just a faceless extra; every background soldier or mercenary or whatever who dies at the hero’s hands is somebody’s child or sibling or parent or best friend, and their death is the center of someone’s tragic story. And it’s a lie because real, non-psychopathic human beings can’t just kill other human beings as casually as they’d swat a fly. It’s a hard, painful thing and it takes a grave toll. If you’re going to have heroes kill, then be honest about its cost to the hero and to the victims. Making it some harmless, fun, incidental thing is a lie, and I despise liars.
I also dislike gratuitousness. If a death has no impact on the story, if it’s just some casual, throwaway moment with no effect whatsoever on the protagonist or any other speaking role, then there’s no legitimate reason to include it at all. Death as a story device should be used when it’s meaningful, when it has consequences and weight.
Besides, if the “heroes” of a story are just as uncaring about human life as the villains, then why the hell should we root for them? At least they should try to avoid killing as much as possible. Honestly, I don’t even know why this is controversial. When I was growing up in the ’70s and early ’80s, it was pretty much a given that TV and comic-book action heroes would avoid killing if at all possible. They didn’t always succeed, no, but they valued human life as a core principle and that wasn’t see as an unusual or questionable moral stance.
@26 – You make a good point that it shouldn’t done in a humorous or emotionless way. I’m not talking about action movies where the protagonist is mowing down extras. It should have a toll. But at the same time, the hero should be able to rationalize it like soldiers do in war. I mean, the Punisher is a very popular character for a reason. I just think the heroes create more problems for themselves and society when they refuse to put down a villain like the Joker.
And the Punisher was originally created as a villain.
I think everyone is missing something about the heart surgery at the end of the movie. Isn’t the surgeon the same guy that Yinsen was attempting to introduce to Stark in the flashback to the 1999 New Year’s party? Stark’s voiceover right around that point talks about it all coming full circle. I don’t think we’re supposed to infer any technological leap by Stark to enable the heart surgery, rather that it was just a very risky procedure and he was finally ready for it.
Plus the arc reactor was being used as an electromagnet during the surgery to catch the shrapnel pieces as they were removed.
I had never heard of the “All Hail the King” short. Just watched it and it was very well done.
@29/DanW: I think the surgery was supposed to be an advanced, delicate procedure that only that one doctor could do. It actually tied into a subplot that was filmed exclusively for the Chinese release of the film, tacking on a couple of scenes with prominent Chinese actors in hopes of creating more audience appeal. It backfired because the scenes were so obviously tacked-on and unconnected to the rest of the narrative that the Chinese moviegoing audience was more insulted than intrigued. And since the scenes weren’t included in the US release except for a brief bit of the final surgery, that plot thread is unclear in the standard version.
This is a better Lethal Weapon movie than it is a superhero movie, and that’s probably why I enjoyed it so much. Stark’s killing of baddies and unstable behavior is straight out of the Martin Riggs playbook. Plus, the Christmas setting, Florida mansion, and “Ponytail Express” all seem to be plucked right out of ’80s action movies. Too bad Shane Black hasn’t had another chance to corrupt the Marvel Universe. ;-)
More like prescient.
@9: I seem to remember that Killian tells Tony Stark at the end of the movie when they’re fighting that he’s the real Mandarin.
Can’t say I’m much of a fan of this one. Mandarin twist aside, Killian was simply not an interesting character (He had shades of Jim Carreys Edward Nygma in him), Maya Hansen was flat, extremis Pepper was cringeworthy and I hated how Tony kept making jokes after he thought Pepper had died.
I really don’t see how the Mandarin anymore a “racial stereotype” than the Red Skull or Killmonger, He’s just standard Doctor Doom-esque supervillain who just happened to have Chinese ancestry. That’s it. This whole twist wasn’t needed and it clearly wasn’t Jon Favreaus intent going back to the first Iron Man.
This is the only MCU movie I don’t like and don’t own. I’ve only seen it twice. That’s precisely because it’s such a muddled mess, both in terms of character and story. (Also, their powers don’t make sense — they can heat themselves up to melt steel but their clothes don’t burn off. Wait, what? It’s true that few of the abilities shown by the superheroes makes sense, including Tony’s armor, but none of them are that egregiously in your face the way they are in IM3.)
I do agree that the Mandarin was handled particularly well, though. It gave us the villain but was also commentary on both the original bad guy and our casual demonizing of other people. Too bad none of the rest of the film matches that level of layered storytelling.
I kind of suspect that the multiple Winter Soldiers in the Captain America film was direct commentary on the Extremis soldiers. The whole time we’re led to believe Zemo’s plan is to unleash these monstrous supersoldiers on the world, when in reality it was a ruse just to get Rogers and Stark to fight each other. Zemo murders the Winter Soldiers in their frozensleep, casually telling Barnes, “Do you really think I wanted more of you?” Zemo is angry, not crazy. That plan subverts the usual story as well as the trope of the endless army.
@36/spencer-malley: “I really don’t see how the Mandarin anymore a “racial stereotype” than the Red Skull or Killmonger, He’s just standard Doctor Doom-esque supervillain who just happened to have Chinese ancestry.”
Wow, that’s incredibly wrong. He’s an embodiment of the extremely racist “Yellow Peril” trope that was part of Western literature for generations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — basically a clone of Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu. Sure, he typically played a role in comics stories not too different from any other supervillain because that’s how the formulas of the genre worked, but the fundamental conception of the character was a perpetuation of an established, pervasive racial caricature that demonized and exoticized Asians.
Are you saying that it’s impossible to write an Asian supervillain?
@39/roxana: What a weird non sequitur comment. It’s a fallacy to equate the specific and the general. I’m referring to the specific, well-established Fu Manchu stereotype of which the Mandarin was a direct imitation. This stereotype was common in the pulps, movies, and comics of the early 20th century. For example, the cover to the 1937 debut issue of Detective Comics (the title that introduced Batman 26 issues later) is a rendering of the “sinister Chinaman” stereotype so grotesque that it’s virtually unprintable today (except as a historical artifact with a warning attached).
This specific stereotype is inherently racist. It was used for generations to demonize and dehumanize Asians, and any reference to it in fiction cannot be considered innocent, any more than it would be innocent to portray a Jewish character as a scheming moneygrubber or a black character as Stepin Fetchit. Of course any category of character can be portrayed as a villain, but it can only be done legitimately if you avoid the old racist tropes and caricatures, not embrace them.
To be clear on the suits… Somewhere between mark 6 and 8 is the battle for new york suit. If you look at most of the other models, most are built for a purpose. some as test beds others as safety nets. There is something somewhere that lists them in order and name. Several were “space” models, basically projecting his issues from the end of the battle to try to “fix” issues he didn’t know he had. several others a steps required to prove you could build a mark 42 armor, which might be a weak catch all that is a much better replacement to the suitcase armor mark 4 or 5 from iron man 2.
My favorite Iron Man movie, and one of my favorite MCU movies overall. Shane Black is just a master storyteller. I’m still surprised it isn’t better-regarded. I’ve even heard some folks compare it to Spider-Man 3, which just baffles me.
@40, Honest curiousity. So an Asian villain is fine so long as you avoid visual cliches like overlong fingernails and antique chinese robes?
A curious choice they made having the fake Mandarin speak in a voice that sounded almost like a fire and brimstone Southern preacher. Far better and more interesting than the stereotypical Engrish or other variation on an Asian accent. And it made Kingsley’s change into Cockney – or whatever accent that was – all the more funny.
The review pretty much describes my feelings about the film. I loved the Mandarin twist, and there were some great character moments. But the overall story was kind of muddled, and the end was the kind of overblown CGI mess that caps far too many superhero films.
@43/roxana: Racism is a complicated issue, and you can’t understand it if you try to reduce it to pat generalizations and one-sentence explanations. There are, of course, many different gradations of ethnic stereotype in the media, accumulated over centuries. Avoiding them can’t be done with a single rule; it requires careful thought, sensitivity, and an open mind to the concerns of people different from yourself.
And again, it’s a basic logical fallacy to assume that an argument about a single specific thing is the same thing as a blanket generalization. The Mandarin is not every Asian villain; the Mandarin is a specific case, or rather, one of many iterations of a specific stock stereotype that has long since been discredited as a racist caricature. So trying to change the subject to blanket generalizations is just evading the specific issue.
But to get back to the real topic, what’s great about the film’s use of the “Mandarin” is the way it illustrates how credulous Americans are about Orientalist stereotypes and how easily they can be fooled by playing to their racial expectations. Rather than just trying to cleanse the character of its racist underpinnings, the film acknowledges and deconstructs the idea of the Mandarin as a fearmongering ethnic stereotype and makes it an integral part of the story, which is brilliant. I love the cleverness of stories that take a problem and turn it into an advantage, and I love it that the film uses it to make an understated commentary on racial paranoia as a tool used by the rich and powerful to manipulate the masses (while updating the vintage “Yellow Peril” paranoia underlying the stereotype to fit with modern fearmongering about Mideastern terrorists, which is really pretty much the same dynamic).
Have you tried doing something ike that in your own fiction? Questions from a potential writer :)
#11: I remember the “fix” vs. “remove” thing, too — and there is, of course, a fanfictional speculation out there about just how that may have turned out.
@krad in 17– “LazerWulf: Yeah, assuming this is taking place on the Christmas following the Battle of New York, it’s only been about six months (since it was obviously summer in New York when the battle took place). Though timelines are always dodgy in these movies…………..”
The official timeline released by Marvel in the “Marvel Studios: The First Ten Years sourcebook” places Avengers in 2012 and IM3 in 2013, BUT as final scene reveals that he’s relating the story to Banner, one can infer that it’s Stark’s narration that takes place in 2013, not the events depicted.
Yeah, having it be a year and a half after Avengers doesn’t really track. I assume Christmas 2012, with him having the surgery (and the frame with Banner) being in early 2013.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I think this one’s kind of slipped out of my mind. It’s not bad but it’s not that good. I don’t mind the Mandarin twist and found it quite an interesting development. I can see why people would be disappointed that we’re denied a traditional portrayal of the Mandarin (and don’t think it’s impossible to do it without being racist), but find the apparent take back of releasing a short film indicating there’s another Mandarin out there somewhere a bit cowardly so basically ignore it.
It’s a bit disappointing that an Iron Man film features very little of Tony Stark as Iron Man, even if it does allow him to rely on his wits rather than his armour. The ending, with Tony throwing away his reactor and destroying all his suits whilst proclaiming “I am Iron Man”, seems…confusing at best.
@50/cap-mjb: Certainly it’s possible to use the Mandarin character in a way that skirts the fraught racial history of the character. Iron Man: Armored Adventures, the cel-shaded animated series that reimagined Tony and Pepper as high schoolers, did a decent job with their version of the Mandarin. But as I said, I prefer the way the movie did it because it’s more clever and bold — because it confronts and uses that racial baggage in a very creative way rather than just trying to shrug it off.
Whatever strengths and flaws IM3 has, Killian isn’t a giant head and he isn’t surrounded by a mob of dudes dressed as beekeepers. So whats the point even?
I don’t know why I seem to only comment on these posts to correct krad in matters of onomastics – I am enjoying the series – but… Robert Downey Jr.’s surname is Downey. It’s not “Downey Jr.”. The “Jr.” indicates that he is the younger of two men named “Robert Downey”. He’s not the younger of two men named “Downey”; rather, he falls towards the end of a series of indefinite length. If you don’t find that argument convincing, ask e.g. the Chicago Manual of Style:
@53: As it happens, the actor known as Robert Downey Sr. — RDJ’s father — was actually born Robert John Elias Jr., but took his stepfather’s surname when he joined the army. It’s unusual for a father and son to both be Juniors.
@46, CLB, I’m not trying to evade, I’m trying to learn what is considered appropriate in the way of villains. I gather it’s subtle and subjective and there are no set rules. Thank you, that helps.
Marvel’s handling of the Mandarin in this movie was pretty well received. On the other hand, when Marvel attempted to avoid another Asian stereotype by casting Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One in the Doctor Strange movie, it did not go over well at all. It just shows how difficult it can be to update a property containing elements that are no longer considered appropriate.
@38/ChristopherLBennett “He’s an embodiment of the extremely racist “Yellow Peril” trope”
Have you actually read any comic featuring the Mandarin? Because it seems to me you just looked at a picture of him and just assumed that. The Mandarin is a supervillain who wishes to conquer the world because believes himself to be a direct descendant of Genghis Khan and that it’s his destiny to do so but that’s the extent of it. There’s nothing else “Yellow Peril” about him. He wants to conquer the world and just happens to have Asian ancestry. (I guess the Red Skull is an offensive stereotype too because was and is a hardcore Nazi). I’ll grant you that the Mandarin perhaps began as being inspired by Fu Manchu in his first appearances way back in the Stan Lee era but he’s evolved beyond that in modern comics.
My issue with the Mandarin twist is pretty simple. They debuted him as a mysterious, genuinely intimidating villain and then completely shafted him in favor of an Expy of Jim Carrey’s Edward Nygma. You could very easily do a modern version of the Mandarin without the ridiculous “Yellow Peril” baggage and honestly, It would’ve been a refreshing change of pace from the MCU’s seemingly endless brand of generic evil businessmen.
@57/spencer-malley: It is not at all surprising that the later comics have distanced the character from his problematical antecedents. That does not alter the fact that I think it was a more impressive and bold choice on the filmmakers’ part to confront and use that racial baggage in a creative way than it would’ve been merely to sanitize the character and pretend that baggage was never there. It is not a question of whether that could have been done; I have already acknowledged more than once that it could. I’m saying I think it would’ve been a less intriguing choice than what the filmmakers did instead. It would’ve been the safe, predictable route, and they found a more creative, sly, and meaningful way of dealing with it.
@58/ChristopherLBennett “That does not alter the fact that I think it was a more impressive and bold choice on the filmmakers’ part to confront and use that racial baggage in a creative way than it would’ve been merely to sanitize the character and pretend that baggage was never there”.
Not really all that creative considering it never really amounts to anything beyond that oh-so clever “political commentary”. The Mandarin advertised in the trailers and in the terrorist videos leading up to the reveal was not a “Yellow Peril stereotype”, he was simply an intimidating, ominous villain who just so happened to be using a chinese title as his supervillain nom-de-guerre. Nothing racist about him at all. In fact those videos were way more interesting than anything that happened once the Mandarin was revealed and Killian took center-stage.
It’s one thing to diverge from the source-material, that’s fine. Making fun of it on the other hand is less fine, putting it mildly.
When the source material is racist, it’s perfectly fine to mock it. Look at Blazing Saddles. That film got great gags out of tearing down the racism of the Western genre (How well it holds up though, YMMV). What Chris is saying is that the makers of Iron Man 2 did that here.
Sorry, I’m not buying it that anyone was truly upset about the Mandarin’s portrayal in this movie. Few cared about Iron Man before the first installment. He was a mediocre superhero at best, who had the good fortune to be brought to life by a charismatic actor, smart writing, and some very talented special effects people. Before 2013, Mandarin was a language and a good source of Vitamin C. That was pretty much it. Oh, and a duck.
So it’s not like Lex Luthor was suddenly revealed to be a sniveling, twitchy comic relief character. Now that would be crazy.
@59/spencer: You’re being too literal. As I’ve already discussed earlier in the thread, the modern racist fearmongering over Muslim terrorists is pretty much the identical social/political dynamic to the Yellow-Peril fearmongering in the first half of the 20th century. So they were able to use the origins of the Mandarin in fearmongering racial stereotypes in order to make a commentary on the present-day use of equivalent fearmongering racial stereotypes by rich white men trying to fool the public. That’s not “making fun of it,” it’s doing something fun and clever and meaningful with the underlying tropes. I’ve said this repeatedly already and you keep missing the point. You’re fixated on the superficial level of what the Mandarin is in the comics; I’m talking about the deeper cultural and historical tropes that lie behind the character in the comics, and their relationship to larger social issues from history that have resonances with current social issues — resonances that the filmmakers engaged with in a very creative way in order to make a commentary on how Americans’ xenophobic stereotypes leave them vulnerable to manipulation.
As a half-Asian (Japanese to be more exact) person who followed Iron Man stories in cartoons and comics before he became famous in his first live action movie, let me say I was extremely disappointed with Iron Man 3.
Maybe it’s because I live in a different country than the US, but the Mandarin imagery or character never bothered me. I actually thought he was awesome! There was an article a while back in Tor.com about when was the first time “you, as a minority” saw yourself in the media you liked, and that kind was Mandarin for me, in the Iron Man cartoon of the 90s. That was a phase in which I liked a lot of comic book and comic book related things, like X-Men 1992 cartoon, the sagas that were happening in comics at that time (Death of Superman, Infinity Gauntlet, all that thing with putting Marvel characters in 2099, etc). There were basically no cool Asian characters in those shows or comics. Jubilee was a whiny kid, Betsy Braddock was not actually Asian (it’s complicated) and all other characters were even more secondary than the X-Men, who were more diverse than other heroes. The Mandarin was the first one I saw. What if he was a villain? He was a super-villain, and that was incredibly cool. He led all the bad guys and was the most menacing character of the bunch of Iron Man’s foes. He was brilliant, he was powerful, he was evil, how couldn’t one like him, just like people like Magneto, the Joker, Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Darkseid, etc? Also the ten rings were awesome as a superpower, and sometimes he had to do without them (it’s an author favorite to make him lose some or all of them).
Maybe having known Mandarin first led me not to be able to take Fu Manchu serious. Fu Manchu, being the original yellow peril villain, actually has all the tropes of a supervillain. Probably the first supervillain was Moriarty, who was more of a plot device to kill Sherlock Holmes in a single story than a character, but Sax Rohmer recognized something in Moriarty that Conan Doyle didn’t, and made a series about Holmes and Watson expies actually fighting a supervillain. And it’s interesting that the expies were incredibly dull and the series actually is known by the supervillain’s name, Fu Manchu, who created a lot of tropes that other supervillains would follow. So I had much less trouble with Fu Manchu – like characters throughout my life, maybe because having known the comic book rendition I could recognize how ridiculous that character was, and how he belonged in fantastic stories that had nothing to do with real life, just like Moriarty did.
Having seen Iron Man 1 and noticed the foreshadowing of putting an organization called Ten Rings in Iron Man’s origin story, I was excited to finally see Iron Man’s arch villain in the big screen. When I saw the trailers, I got my first disappointment. They had changed the Mandarin’s ethnicity from East Asian to West Asian. I understood their reasons for doing that. One of which was that Osama bin Laden had basically assumed the role of a supervillain in real life, organizing terrorist attacks and then making his videos gloating about it. Another was the fear of losing the Chinese market, which I consider silly. In this case all they had to do was show how the Mandarin had problems with the Chinese government, which he does in the comics.
Then I watched the movie. How disappointed I was. Not only did the movie copy the story of The Incredibles (and lampshading it doesn’t make it all well, it’s still lazy storytelling) but it also copied the twist from Batman Begins.
Then comes another major complaint of mine. The talks about how racism in media affects the real world got to Hollywood at some point, but the problem is that the discussion that happened in the US made Hollywood producers (and part of their audience) think that they couldn’t cast people of color as villains anymore. This is a very simplistic view of race relations (white = bad, nonwhite = good), which in the end is not reverse racism, it’s still racist. It denies the agency of nonwhite people to actually, you know, be people, and make mistakes, commit crimes or just be awful human beings. It denies part of their humanity, because as long as you’re human you can be evil. It makes nonwhite people be some kind of noble savage, which is also racist, and apparently they didn’t realize it.
And this discourse affected those two movies. In both the non white actor is actually a decoy, and the true villain is a white actor. So you have two very good non white actors, Ken Watanabe and Ben Kingsley, and you don’t use their full potential. The villain, which is an important part in a comic hero movie, must be a white actor in that logic. At least Liam Neeson was still a cool actor, and this transferred to the character. Guy Pearce had problems, and I’m going to rant more about it.
Not only was I denied a nonwhite Mandarin, but they changed it to one of the most boring villains in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He had no more those Ten Rings, which were incredibly cool. Instead he could spit fire and transform parts of his body into fire. Boring. Incredibly boring. His dialogues with Tony Stark also were terribly boring.
So, in the end I was disappointed with Iron Man 3. The movie was uneven, even disregarding the villain question. There are pacing issues, with that plot about the kid helping Tony, and logic issues (an attack helicopter comes at Tony’s house. Why not set the house party protocol then and destroy it completely with 40 Iron Man remote controlled armors?). That whole thing about Pepper Potts not wanting Tony to be Iron Man anymore ruined her character in the other movies, making her look like a shrew that kept nagging Tony when he went to do the cool stuff the audience wanted him to do, like save the world. I was happy that Tony Stark could be just a secondary character in other movies from then on. It worked better that way. The people behind those movies hit the jackpot with Obadiah Stane, but afterwards they didn’t know how to make Iron Man villains.
@62/Ryamano: “the problem is that the discussion that happened in the US made Hollywood producers (and part of their audience) think that they couldn’t cast people of color as villains anymore.”
I think that’s overstating it. Doctor Strange cast Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mordo, who’s white in the comics. Then there’s Killmonger in Black Panther, of course, and Black Manta in Aquaman.
I think the larger problem is that Hollywood feature films are resistant to casting Asians in any major roles. It’s become okay to cast black actors as villains because there are enough black actors playing heroes to balance it out. But there’s still a persistent tendency to whitewash roles that should go to Asians, and that goes for heroes and villains alike. What we need is a bigger presence for Asian and Asian-American actors in movies in general, and in a wider diversity of character types.
I think the point about Stark killing is well made. The two things that I have the hardest time swallowing in The Avengers are that Captain America is tossing brain-controlled people off the helicarrier to their deaths, and that the heroes ultimately win by NUKING the Chitauri. Neither of those were necessary; if they didn’t ruin that film for me, they at least mar my regard for it.
I think it’s this movie where we start to see the cracks in the foundation of the MCU, even though I mostly like it. It grapples with something that we know from the first two Iron Man movies: that Tony Stark is not a good person, and that he might ultimately do more harm than good. That tension was there from the beginning; he’s a reformed arms manufacturer who continues to manufacture arms, but only for use as his own (literally) personal armed force. And of course he is self-destructive in his personal life as well.
The films only make gestures in resolving that problem though, and IM3 seems a little more interested in Tony’s trauma and his interpersonal relationships than in serious moral questions. It places him squarely at the center of the bad turns that Hansen and Killian’s lives take, both in how he personally treats them and in how he carelessly allows his own knowledge and technology to be abused by them, repeatedly. If Tony (and the MCU) took that seriously, we might see Tony Stark really change the direction of his life; he might both stop making weapons and also take more care in how he deals with other people.
The ending feints at this, but we know it is empty–that he must remain Iron Man. But this really colors how Tony Stark acts in future movies. He acts even more irresponsibly in Age of Ultron and Civil War than he does here, and yet he never pays any consequences for that. Instead, he is acting as a (terrible!) mentor for Peter Parker.
@64/Colin: On the other hand, Tony specifically says in Homecoming that he wants Peter to be better than he was. So he recognizes that he’s not a great role model, and he sees the potential in Peter to be a better hero than he’s ever going to be.
On the third hand, that makes him come off as worse: he’s not even bothering to improve his behavior because he’s just mentoring Pete not to be like him. Anyone can change their behavior if they just do it
It’s not even close to the first film, but I still liked this one much more than the second entry. This one at least doesn’t drag.
It’s funny. There are certain aspects of superhero storytelling that I always took for granted without pondering the repercussions. I never even noticed Stark took such a casual approach to killing in this particular film when compared to the previous entries. I actually never considered the issue until Man of Steel came out and the issue suddenly blew up across all media. Ironically, both films came out the same year*.
*I almost felt parts of Age of Ultron were an overreaction, a knee-jerk response to the whole issue, when it came out. But then Civil War came and made me reconsider just how much of being heroic is being able to rise above the easy solutions and not necessarily take the violent approach.
As for this film, I adored the Mandarin twist. Not only it makes perfect sense in light of the cultural fear mongering that was a hallmark of American politics during the early 21st century, but they cast Ben Kingsley in the role. Now there’s someone capable of doing the role justice, not to mention be able to essentially portray two different characters.
There are definitely parts that are forgettable. The main villain being one of them. I didn’t even remember his name. I do like it that Stark isn’t so dependent on the suit on this film, using his brains instead. In a way, this was the beginnng of moving the films in genres other than primarily superhero-oriented, which Winter Soldier would take to the next level.
However, I don’t think the film quite carries across the notion of Stark grappling with the fallout from Avengers. I feel Civil War would tackle this character arc more effectively.
While taking out the suits feels like a way to close off the solo Iron Man films, giving it a resolution the other films lacked, I do feel this film didn’t need such an upbeat, resolute ending. You’d think after so many happy conclusions, we’d get a Marvel Universe entry with a more open-ended, downbeat ending. Of course, they were saving it for the Captain America sequels, and Infinity War.
Overall, it’s a mixed bag, but an enjoyable one. Far more rewatchable than the second film, that’s for sure.
And yeah, having the heart surgery as a magical solution only come up after four films with the character feels like a cheat.
@62/ChristopherLBennett: . “I’ve said this repeatedly already and you keep missing the point”.
I don’t think I am. I completely understand the “political commentary” angle and what the filmmakers were trying to go for. My problem is that the twist doesn’t really amount to much beyond this “commentary” and that Killian himself is a spectacularly boring villain. I maintain you could do something closer to a more traditional Mandarin while avoiding the stereotypes just like they did with Killmonger in Black Panther.
If the twist actually led to something interesting, I’d be more accepting of it but as it stands, It really doesn’t aside from making a statement.
@65/ChristoperLBennett
Peter Parker is already a better person at 16 than Tony Stark has ever been in his life; that shouldn’t be news to anyone, even Stark. It’s fundamental to Spider-Man. Home-Coming is basically Peter Parker maturing enough to realize his own value, and that he can stand on his own without having to impress Stark.
I don’t want to get too far ahead of the rewatch discussing things that happen in future movies explicitly. But I think that the movies largely cheat us a lot on Stark’s evolution from this point. They purposely avoided using substance abuse in the movies, and instead transferred elements into his superheroics: Stark is addicted to being Iron Man, and using engineering to ‘solve’ the world (and implicitly, his own mistakes.) That addiction metaphor really starts in earnest here.
But in the future Tony largely gets let off the hook for things that are really his fault, and meanwhile the things that devastate him the most are things that can’t really be construed as his fault. This movie isn’t to blame for what happens in the future, but I do think it starts the pattern of excusing Tony Stark too much.
@68/spencer: “My problem is that the twist doesn’t really amount to much beyond this “commentary””
The commentary is what I like about it. As a creator myself, I enjoy seeing other creators do their work in deft and clever ways, and the way they turned a negative into a positive — into a very unexpected plot twist with a nicely subversive subtext — was a skillful piece of work.
“I maintain you could do something closer to a more traditional Mandarin while avoiding the stereotypes just like they did with Killmonger in Black Panther.”
I’ve already repeatedly acknowledged that, yes, you could do it that way and that it has already been done. Indeed, my whole point is that it would be easy to do it that way, that it would be the natural default way to do it, and that’s why the more unexpected, creative way the filmmakers did it instead is more interesting. Instead of going the predictable route that you’re advocating, they did something more clever and original, something that hadn’t already been done.
@69/Colin R: I think you’re overstating the difference between Tony and Peter. Indeed, the crux of Spider-Man’s origin story is that Peter didn’t start out as a particularly nice guy. When he got superpowers, he wanted to use them to get rich and famous and get back at all the people who teased and dismissed him, and it was his selfishness and contempt for the needs of others that got Uncle Ben killed. His heroic journey is about atoning for the consequences of his original bad behavior. Which is very much the same principle as Tony Stark’s journey in the movies. It’s just that MCU Tony has more of a tendency to fall back into his old patterns, perhaps because he was older and more set in his ways when he made the decision to change.
Colin R: we’ll get into this more in a couple weeks when we do Age of Ultron, but my thesis is that one of the biggest villains in the MCU is Tony Stark in AOU and Civil War. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I don’t think I can overstate the difference between Spider-Man and Iron Man; Peter Parker is a child, and fundamentally innocent. Uncle Ben’s murder may have crystallized his lessons about personal and civic responsibility (we haven’t heard about Ben Parker at all in the MCU, but sure I’ll accept it as a given), but no adult would seriously blame Peter for Ben’s death. That Peter bears that weight and so many others even in childhood just demonstrates his fundamental and heartbreaking decency.
He has exactly the kind of sense of conscience and responsibility that Tony Stark eschewed for most of his adult life. We are introduced to Stark in his middle-age, as a proud merchant of death–not to mention an entitled prick who treated other people like garbage, skating by on wits and charm. It takes a lot of people dying for him to really kindle a sense of conscience, and yet to date he still hasn’t really grappled with the fact that the skills and judgment he uses as a superhero are the same ones that have caused so many horrible problems. The movies are smart enough to hint at that, but I don’t know that they’re going to be smart enough to resolve it. I don’t think there is much comparison between Spider-Man’s guilt and what Iron Man has to atone for right from the start.
Other problems that the MCU is smart and bold enough to tackle, but not satisfyingly resolve, arise in the next few movies…
These problems aren’t resolved because we’re watching the middle of a very long and expensive television series that happens to be shown in theaters. They have to keep these problems going for as long as possible.
One thing I neglected to mention in my previous comment was that this movie has easily my favorite score in Phase II of the MCU. This is easily Brian Tyler’s best score, IMHO – and his Iron Man theme ranks up there with Danny Elfman’s Batman theme and John Williams’ Superman theme.
60. Falco Sorry, I’m not buying it that anyone was truly upset about the Mandarin’s portrayal in this movie.
There are many things I don’t buy when I go shopping. Doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
This is the only Marvel movie I don’t own. I finally relented for the sake of completion and tried to find it at Walmart for $5 or less. They won’t put the DVD out for some reason. Not enough interest to grab it, though I have seen it a few times since my wife tried to quiet me down at the theater.
First off, the comics it steals most of its plot from is Iron Man’s Five Nightmares. I’m not normally a comics reader (I can’t pay $4 for ten minutes of reading) but I found the Five Nightmares at my local library (and returned it a half hour later.) It was a brilliant look into Tony’s fears, and starred Ezekiel Stane, son of Obadiah. He found a way to harness excess body energy to create what Tony dubbed “Iron Man 2.0”. The knockoff arc reactors Zeke made were the bombs. Pepper got injured, and Tony was frantic until he used existing medical tech to make her own “chestplate” with unusual side effects. Then he used the “Block Party”, though without the moniker, to intercept all the other suicide bombers embedded with reactors and defeated Stane by himself. (If I remember correctly. Haven’t read it again since … 2014?)
Where was the rest of that movie?! Was he technically a white businessman? The argument can be made. But he was anti-business. He killed his backers because they were only a means to his revenge. Everything he did was to tear down Tony. Gee, just like Killian killing Maya, except hardcore. The one bright spot seemed to be that Mandarin was being cast into the universe. A powerless one … but he was charismatic and determined. And that could have been rectified in a post-credits scene with Mandy in a cell, and a pair of glowing eyes promises him extraordinary powers. In another movie he betrays his evil benefactor after being used as a pawn and keeps the objects of power to harass Tony later. Maybe even have them tangentially connected to the Infinity Stones? Some device placed here to help defeat Thanos? With the added bonus of Ben Kingsley roaring defiance as he confronts Thanos in his full power only to be struck down effortlessly, but resurrected by the power of the Stones after. Not in the comics, maybe, but terrifically fun to watch!
Oh, wait. he’s Trevor Slatterly, coked-out stage actor.
Falcon, if nobody cared about the lousy twist, why did Marvel backpedal and claim there was another Mandarin? Unless they meant Killian, which is a worse idea than the way they used him for the movie. And I will never be truly happy with Marvel until Pepper busts out the Rescue suit. Maybe in Endgame … They’ll need a new army …
The armors Vs the villains, as recollected —
Mark One Terrorists, sand dunes
Mark Two Ferris Wheel, clouds
(later War Machine Unamerican things, a tank of some kind) lol
Mark Three More terrorists, Iron Monger
Mark Four Hotties, a watermelon
Mark Five (suitcase) Whiplash
Mark Six (triangle) Drones, Dynamo, Thor, a Helicarrier prop
Mark Seven All the Chitauri, Tony’s PTSD
Mark 8-41 The Extremis Troops
Mark 42 Killian
Mark 43 Ultron, Sokovia
Mark 44 Cap, Bucky
Mark 45 Spidey, a ferry
Mark 46? (Bleeding Edge) Thanos, his minions
Maybe I missed it in the previous 75 replies, but has anyone questioned the whole Mandarin-is-being-played-by-an-actor angle in terms of “why didn’t someone who knew Trevor Slatterly or had seen one of his plays call the cops”?
This is the age of the internet; people can – and have – ID’ed people wearing disguises. I’d be disappointed if someone on 4chan or reddit didn’t have a post up about the “Mandarin” looking an awful like that guy who was in a play they saw last summer and then a dozen or more people figuring out the scam in about an hour.
#75
“Not buying” something doesn’t mean that something doesn’t exist. It means not buying into the broad internet of outrage that amounts to so very little. The Mandarin of the comics has his longtime fans or fan, I’m sure, but the controversy surrounding this movie was blown way out of proportion.
@77/Falco: You’re right. The comics-reading audience is a tiny fraction of the moviegoing audience. A successful comic book issue might be bought by something on the order of 10,000 people. A successful blockbuster movie might be seen by the square of that. The vast majority of people seeing these movies have probably never heard of most of their characters before.
That said, the comics fanbase is vocal on the Internet, and can generate positive or negative buzz for a movie, giving them influence out of proportion to their actual share of the audience. That’s why superhero movies these days tend to try to respect at least the broad strokes and high points of the comics characters and storylines.
#78
Yeah, I can’t claim to be a comics fan. I’ve read very few of them. But I am a movie fan and movies often differ from the source material. I mean it’s a truism at this point; it should be expected. Different medium means different considerations.
And for a medium that’s long embraced the multiverse, why can’t comics fans embrace that in movie form as well? It’s just another what-if.
Ragnarredbeard: He was a theatre actor in Croyden, which is the UK equivalent of being a theatre actor in Kansas City. The toast of the West End, he wouldn’t have been. Plus he wore big sunglasses and had a thick beard. Sure, some folks might’ve noticed a resemblance if they happened to know who he was, but the dozen or so people who might have noticed it would likely chalk it up to coincidence.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@80/krad: Plus there’s the fact that people would probably be prone to assume that Trevor Slattery was white, just as many people in real life mistakenly assume that Sir Ben Kingsley (born Krishna Pandit Bhanji) is white. So they wouldn’t think to associate him with the Mandarin, since they’d read him as Middle Eastern or something of the sort.
@@@@@ 63
Like I said, this happened in a time after 2000 and before 2015.
Before that we got a black Kingpin in the first Daredevil movie, and Clark Duncan was the best thing in that movie. Nowadays Hollywood finally got rid of that fear, and I was very relieved when I saw what they did with Mordo in Doctor Strange (and Killmonger in Black Panther). I’m glad it was just a phase and now actors of color can be cast as main heroes and main villains, as it should be.
I don’t know if it was just my dislike for the first movie in it (Iron Man 3) but I think Phase 2 of MCU’s was very uneven, and way worse than Phase 1 or Phase 3. Phase 2 had some boring villains, and most of them missed the mark compared to Phase 1 or Phase 3. I also didn’t like Captain America 2 or Guardians of the Galaxy as much as other people clearly did ( I liked a little bit, but not a lot), so that affects my view of Phase 2. Also the troubles of Avengers 2, which we’ll talk about when we get to it. Ant-Man would be the time I started to enjoy myself again in Marvel movies, and then I’d have a hell of a good ride in all Phase 3 movies.
To me Killian is a very boring villain and can join Malekith and Abomination as villains noone wants to see again. Ronan the Accuser goes on another spot, as very underutilized compared to what he was in the comics (like the Mandarin in this movie), and I’m glad we can get another go at him in the next Captain Marvel movie. Let’s hope more of his personality comes out.
I just remembered something. Didn’t Iron Man casually kill in the first movie too? I seem to recall the scene where Iron Man first drops in when those civilians are about to be killed in that Middle East country. His armor tracks all the bad guys and then shoots them all at the same time.
@84/Austin: Yeah, and it bothered me then too. It seemed self-contradictory to do a movie about a guy having an epiphany, swearing off weapons manufacturing, and then building himself an armor suit loaded with lethal weapons.
I always took the shift in Stark Enterprises away from arms dealing to be because Tony didn’t want his weapons to fall into the wrong hands. He views his hands as the right hands. He doesn’t have a problem with killing per say, he has a problem with his tech being used against innocent people.
Yeah, Tony is not a pacifist of any degree. He is a control freak, which I think has been well established in film canon. Tony is the good guy version of the autocratic dictator, which is why he needs Pepper (and Cap in the team up movies) to balance him out and provide him with a moral grounding. The gap between Tony and the badguys is not that big.
@83/Ryamano, what I noticed about phase 2 was that the heroes were sometimes their worst enemy. This was the phase that focused on making the MCU darker, exposing the character flaws that the heroes had, and how it affected them and the world around them. IM3 shows some of Tony’s actions coming back to haunt him, and his reactions are setting up more problems, some of which show up in future movies (Ultron). Thor2 shows us that Asgard isn’t the wonderful utopia with a single bad apple (Loki). Winter Soldier shows that even our own intervention agency (SHIELD) can be corrupted from within. Ultron cracks wide open some of those flaws and ultimately brings them home to roost. It isn’t until phase 3 that we’re starting to dig out of those flaws and start repairing – just in time for Thanos. If Thanos had shown up before Civil War, he would have faced all of the avengers at once, and probably wouldn’t have gotten as far.
KRAD@71:
I can buy Stark as the antagonist in those movies, but he’s not a villain, by any stretch. A villain is just one possible way to write an antagonist. Stark represents the opposing point of view to Cap’s point of view regarding power and responsibility. And, especially in Civil War, the filmmakers are following Cap’s POV –– Its his story, after all. This is actually the through-line that I love best in the MCU. Depending on your perspective, Stark’s motivations are about wanting less responsibility (because he’s not the most responsible person in the world, obviously), or you might find Cap’s “The safest hands are still our own” argument to be incredibly arrogant and narcissistic.
I think they are both narcissistic in their own way, and the dichotomy between how that manifests in each is brilliant.
@86:
Which is ironic, given where the character ends up by Civil War. He no longer trusts himself to make those decisions. But, at the same time, he can’t stop himself, either.
@88
Agencies like SHIELD are always inherently corrupt, and instruments of authoritarian oppression. Every agency of that kind of secret surveillance and enforcement is like that. Winter Soldier just tried to explain that in ways our post 9/11 brains can accept. If it had a fault, it was that it was just too subtle in making its point.
Just watched this and I agree with most points here. I was also interested to hear Maya Hansen was originally going to be the Mandarin, since I guessed that early on and was wrong. I did get frustrated that so far, most of Iron Man’s villains have been people he was an ass to ages ago. That’s simplifying but we do have two people in this movie that are still angry at relatively minor snubs from 12 years previous. It cheapens whatever motivation they have.
On a separate note, it felt like, as much at Stark was struggling with PTSD from the attack on New York (not sleeping, having panic attacks), Pepper seemed totally unaware. She seemed to have a lot of complaints that were related to his poor coping mechanisms (Stark not sleeping, building a lot of suits, general poor behavior) but seemed more angry about the symptoms than him not addressing the cause. Destroying the suits felt like a token gesture that, if she were concerned about his mental health, doesn’t really solve anything. This is too bad! They’re supposed to have a very solid relationship but we mostly see her arguing with Stark without acknowledging she knows he’s struggling. It makes Pepper look insensitive or at least oblivious.
While I loved the Mandarin twist, I remain bitter that Pepper got depowered in a voice-over. There’s not that many super powered women in the MCU, and Extremis!Pepper could have had some interesting stories with a decent writer. It felt like someone decided the best model for Pepper in the film was the old Lois Lane, Superman’s Girlfriend! comics. It doesn’t even feel right for Tony – after his love has been taken hostage, rather than try to stabilize Extremis and make her invulnerable, he decides to de-power her? There’s some interesting stories to be had about the conflict between the two of them around Tony’s ego and controlling behavior in the face of Pepper suddenly potentially being on his level as a super-powered person, especially since she’s proven she can run the company better than Tony did. I would really have liked to see some of those stories explored instead of just… dropping everything with a voice-over.
Don’t really follow how the comic book Mandarin is a Fu Manchu analog, unless you equate all “yellow peril” type villains.
Now granted my Iron Man exposure is mostly Layton/Michelinie and Busiek (stopped when Quesada stunk up the joint and then dipped in a bit for the Warren Ellis Extremis stuff), but to me, the Mandarin has always been an active super villain that directly takes part in fighting heroes. In the Sax Rohmer novels that I have read, Fu Manchu is mostly a presence behind the scenes, and uses methods like poisonous snakes, or attempted late night assassinations by mysterious visitors etc. He also seems inextricably tied to Limehouse. You would never find Fu Manchu getting in a fist fight with Nyland Smith the way the Mandarin has fought Iron Man. I find the Mandarin more similar to pulp SF characters from the 1930s where all sorts of “rays” had differing powers.
I would have liked to see the Mandarin as kind of a Chinese version of Iron Man with a competing agenda, sort of the way China is developing into a rival of the United States. Maybe they could have had differing ideas of how to take on Fin Fang Foom or something of the like, especially if they took care of the problem, but ended the movie NOT as friends but competitors.
I don’t mind too much the way the movie handled the Trevor Slattery storyline EXCEPT that I don’t like that they changed the ethnic background away from Chinese. I get that having a Chinese villain is essentially a non-starter for blockbuster movies but the very name Mandarin is tied so much into China that it didn’t make sense to me for it to be changed away like that.
@94/vinsentient: The point is not that they’re identical characters in every detail, the point is that they share a common origin in the racist “Yellow Peril” stereotype. The problem with racial stereotypes is not just the point-by-point cataloguing of their features, it is specifically and essentially the history that underlies them. Something that may seem harmless on the surface (at least to the privileged and the people unaffected by the stereotype) can be symbolic of generations of history of persecution and dehumanization. Like the word “Gypsy.” White people tend to assume it’s a harmless word and use it casually as a character name or a description of a carefree, wandering mentality. But people of the Rom culture know it as a slur that’s been leveled against them and used to denigrate them for countless generations, so its casual use is hurtful to them whether it’s meant to be or not.
Just because you don’t know why something is racist doesn’t mean it isn’t racist. It just means that racism thrives because it’s often invisible to the people who aren’t affected by it and don’t realize the extent to which it’s ingrained in their culture.
As for the application of the name “Mandarin” to a non-Chinese character, that was justified in the movie; Tony and JARVIS discussed how the Mandarin used a melange of elements from multiple cultures (Chinese name, South American insurgency tactics, talking like a Southern Baptist preacher), and that was part of what made his identity and agenda hard to pin down. So the cultural hodgepodge was deliberate, both in the pretense and the reality of what the Mandarin was.
@93/curgoth, we don’t know for sure that Pepper is depowered. All the movie says is “I got Pepper sorted out.” That could mean depowered, but it could also mean stabilized and still powered. I’m guessing we’ll find out for sure in Endgame.
Something that I thought was interesting about the Iron Man movies was that the villain in all three movies, be it Obadiah Stane, Justin Hammer or Aldrich Killian, all wanted to be Tony Stark in one way or another for different reasons.
The movie was fine, I’ve seen it twice I think, as many times as Black Panther, I don’t think I have to rewatch either again. I like RDJ in the role a lot, but I assume he’s not going to have another solo movie.
@97/Steven: It’s an interesting observation that Iron Man’s enemies all desire to be Tony Stark, given that Iron Man is basically an expression of Tony’s desire to be less like Tony Stark.
Quoth Ophid: “They’re supposed to have a very solid relationship”
They are not, either. Pepper and Tony have a terrible relationship. He’s a narcissistic control freak, she’s his PA who is frighteningly close the stereotype of a victim of abuse, and she regularly covers up and/or avoids dealing with his many many issues. They’re both a hot mess — him more than her, but she’s got her problems, as you point out yourself.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Tony Stark’s social maladjustment and inability to form appropriate personal relationships is a running thread throughout the movies; In his own film series, his fiancée and closest personal friends are all his employees–Rhodes isn’t exactly an employee, but that line gets blurry because Stark also treats the Avengers like his employees. It’s not even subtle that no one can tell when Stark is actually crying out for help, because he’s usually such a tool. It’s also pretty clear that Pepper and Tony’s relationship was extremely weird and retrograde–as his ‘work wife’ she put up with his poor treatment because she was able to extract as much control and money out of the situation as she wanted.
The two possible exceptions to friendships that are inappropriate work relationships are Bruce Banner and Peter Parker, and Stark is really a bad influence on both of them.
Also, continuing the addiction metaphor, Pepper and Rhodes both seem to have developed pretty firm shields to protect themselves from Tony’s abuse, even if they care about him. This is not unlike how some families have to deal with addicts; they care, but they have to set up firm boundaries and sometimes let their loved ones self-destruct. Avoiding being sucked in with them is the best they can do.
Uneven is what ‘d call it too, yes. it has very fun parts, and nice action… but the plot is all over the place. Ben Kingsley as “The Mandarin” is great, although I was disappointed to see it was all an act… only to get some hope back when the actual Ten Rings kidnap him in the later short film. It remains to see if they’ll do something with it.
The worst part of this film to me is that, while it does a good thing in portraying Stark’s PTSD, almost every time (I only seeing when it was in theaters and then never again) there’s a scene regarding that, they have to punctuate it with some sort of goofy joke to remind you that “LULZ, Tony is such an irresponsible man-child”. It’s an issue I keep having with many Marvel films (and had with Aquaman too), the overabundance and bad placement of jokes.
And, after a mediocre film, I felt even more short-changed with that post-credits scene. What a let down.
@13 – Twels: Yes, the armor smorgasbord at the climax was one of my favorite parts.
@20 – Chris: Oh, yes, the skydiving scene is good.
@35 – jmhaces: He thinks he is, or he’s saying he’s the one behind Trevor’s act. But we already knew the Ten Rings exist, and the later short shows there might be a real Mandarin.
@36 – spencer: Killmonger WAS a racial stereotype, but the Black Panther film fixed that, and it’s being retconed into the comics. And the Red Skull is a nazi, not because of his race or country origin, but because of his political beliefs.
@93 – curgoth: Well, all signs point to Pepper wearing her own armor in Endgame, so, there’s that.
@94 – vinsentient: No way they can have a Chinese rival to Iron Man (as a proxy of the real world US/China rivalry) when they’re trying to court the Chinese market.
@95 – Chris: It’s disappointing how DC (in the comics and in the Flash show) keep using Gypsy’s codename, however minor the character is.
Like the word “Gypsy.” White people tend to assume it’s a harmless word and use it casually as a character name or a description of a carefree, wandering mentality. But people of the Rom culture know it as a slur that’s been leveled against them and used to denigrate them for countless generations
“Gypsy Danger” always struck me as a really odd name for a giant fighting robot. I was kind of expecting them to go with the ethnic-slur theme for the others:
“You’ll be defending Hong Kong against the kaiju, and supporting you will be our other jaegers, Yellow Peril, Rootless Cosmopolitan Financier With Big Nose, Swarthy Foreigner, Illegal Immigrant, and Short-Tempered Aborigine”.
I do enjoy enjoy Iron Man 3 but there are some serious issues with logic and plausibility, the most glaring one for me is the fact that we are supposed to believe that the scattered pieces of his armour can somehow travel to Miami practically instantly. Why not have him bring the stuff with him and keep fairly local so as to avoid this nonsense?
On the other hand I absolutely bloody loved Trevor and the end credits montage of all the Iron Man films to “Can you dig it?”. I also enjoyed Happy’s ‘Forehead of Security” thing:)
Quoth ajay: “You’ll be defending Hong Kong against the kaiju, and supporting you will be our other jaegers, Yellow Peril, Rootless Cosmopolitan Financier With Big Nose, Swarthy Foreigner, Illegal Immigrant, and Short-Tempered Aborigine”.
For the record, this made me snarf my coffee…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@95 CLB
I get that the Mandarin can be seen as a yellow peril character; I’m Hong Kong Chinese and occasionally really have to hold my nose when reading turn of last century adventure stories and pulps.
But I just don’t see the comparison between the Mandarin as a specific character with Fu Manchu as a specific character. To me they are nothing alike other than being villains with the same skin tone (and I guess you could say that sometimes the Mandarin has facial hair in a style made famous by Fu Manchu popularisations). You’ve called the Mandarin a clone and imitation of Fu Manchu and they don’t equate at all in my world.
@107/vinsentient: Well, honestly, I’m not that familiar with either character, so I may have overstated the similarities. But that was never my point; I was speaking about the larger cultural phenomenon, the racial trope that’s no longer acceptable in modern fiction. And when making a new adaptation of a work that includes such a trope, there are a couple of ways to go: you can try to sanitize the adaptation so the trope is no longer there, which is the safer course; or you can use the presence of the trope in the original work as the basis for social commentary, try to turn the negative into a positive. That’s the trickier path to take, and I’m impressed at how well IM3 pulled it off.
@35 was correct; the MCU version of The Mandarin isn’t really Travis Slattery. It’s Aldrich Killian. He’s the one with super-powers that superficially resemble some of what The Mandarin can do, and I guess it’s why he is covered in Chinese tattoos. I assume that this is the real reason that the higher-ups pushed Killian into the villain role instead of Hansen; making the Mandarin white is one thing, but making him a woman, well now!
It is sort of interesting that they laid the groundwork for the Ten Rings and the Mandarin to be ersatz Wahhabist terrorism instead of Chinese in the first Iron Man, and then later blew that up. It’s almost interesting what they did with Aldrich Killian; a techbro who is way into neostoicism, meditation, and cultural appropriation, whose scheme is plundering other peoples’ ideas and public goods while patting himself on the back for his own philanthropy and genius is exactly the kind of supervillain I would like to see get taken down in the MCU.
In execution Killian is pretty dull though.
@108 CLB on your larger point I totally agree and I like the twist in IM3.
It must be hard for movie makers to tread the fine, fine line between something palatable to the Chinese Communist Party, the sensibilities of American theatre goers, and acknowledgement of historical biases. I don’t envy them at all.
Re: @110 Does anyone know the current Chinese Censorship requirements for western movies right now? I used to know, but have half forgot, half not remembered, and would be out of date anyway. It used to have things like no time travel, no homosexual people except as villains, must be in 3D etc, but that was a few years ago now.
@108 A question from someone who is obviously ignorant on the subject, but how does the Mandarin character specifically fit into the “yellow peril” idea? genuinely curious, my frame of reference for the Mandarin is the 90’s cartoon and some crossovers because I was never a reader of Iron Man and I always wondered why they didn’t use the actual Mandarin.
@113/REEM: Here’s a Den of Geek! article about it:
https://www.denofgeek.com/us/books-comics/iron-man/108559/the-secret-origin-of-iron-man-3-villain-the-mandarin
@61 One crucial difference, of course, is that a shadowy Chinese criminal genius never flew planes into buildings and killed 2,000 civilians. Muslim terrorists *did*. The fear that produced was certainly legitimate. Far from fearmongering, those who encourage the people of the world to destroy anyone with similar aims are more than justified. Anyone who disagrees is thoroughly depraved.
106: I should of course have included “Degenerate Dutchman” and “Nautical-Looking Negro”.
@115/James: But the problem is the people who assumed that everyone of the same religion and ethnicity as those terrorists was just like them, which is how racial fearmongering works. In real life, most Muslims opposed al-Qaeda, and indeed most of al-Qaeda’s targets were fellow Muslims who disagreed with their extremist doctrines; their conflict with the US was a sidebar that only happened because we took sides in that internal conflict. And there were hundreds of Muslims working within the World Trade Center that day; there was even a mosque in the building. The terrorists were enemies of the rest of Islam as well as everyone else. But bigoted fearmongers have spent the past 18 years spreading the lie that all Muslims agreed with al-Qaeda, that the entire religion and the entire ethnic population of the Middle East is terroristic and evil and should be feared and hated. (Actually that stereotype was around well before 2001, but it was exacerbated afterward.) That is what the film was commenting on — not the legitimate fear of terrorism, but the way powerful people like Killian use terrorism as an excuse to stir up xenophobia and paranoia that they can use to manipulate the masses.
@krad: I suppose I meant stable in the sense that they’ve known each other a long time (even if they haven’t been a couple that whole time) and know how to work with each other. But you make good points, though perhaps striking closer to the truth about their relationship than I think the writers intended (that is, the flaws are not played to the seriousness they probably should be).
My memory of this one isn’t very strong (in fact, I totally forgot about the kid, but now that you mention it, I wonder whatever came of him…). But I do remember while watching Incredibles 2, something about the plot seemed really familiar – with the TV terrorist not really being the true villain – and then realizing it had been part of the plot of an Iron Man movie :)
I imagine that in the other rewatches that I missed for the upcoming movies, there will be more discussion of this, but I see Tony Stark as deeply flawed. That’s not the same as being villainous, exactly, but he always struck me as a bit of a control freak, one who thinks he knows best. In part some of that is perhaps justified in that he IS likely smarter than a lot of people. But on the other hand I also see somebody struggling with PTSD and not necessarily wanting all that responsibility (as we see in the upcoming movies) on one hand, but being addicted to ‘Iron Man’ on the other.
I know the killing discussion has come up in a lot of other re-watches. I also tend, for various reasons (my ethics, my faith, etc) to believe that the taking of life is an incredibly drastic and serious move that should not be dealt with casually or lightly. If it does have to be done, it should have an impact and seen for the tragedy that it is (that it even got to that point). On the other hand, at times my more pragmatic/cynical side struggles with it sometimes, as well as the more emotional side that just finds it more satisfying. But I fear what happens to us a society when we lose that ability to see the personhood even in those we hate (or even the ones that hate us).
@119/Lisamarie: I’m sure the plot of an apparent villain being only a front for the real mastermind is one that’s been done countless times over the ages.
No doubt, but those are the two I’ve seen at least. And I think the threatening TV message angle is part of what hammered the similarity home.
I’m not criticizing either movie for it, mind you, but it was just kind of funny how it kept niggling in the back of my mind as familiar and then I finally remembered.
I’ve been reading on the Mandarin in the MCU before the Shang Chi movie is released, and it’s interesting that in an earlier draft of Iron Man 3, the Mandarin was supposed to be Maya Hansen. It got changed to Aldrich Killian because of Ike Perlmutter (him again) who said that a female supervillain toy wouldn’t sell. This movie seemed subpar to me, and could’ve been better if there wasn’t interference from this man. Still would not be perfect (I really like the Mandarin villain), but would be a little bit better.
https://collider.com/how-iron-man-3-was-made-mandarin-twist-explained/
Yeah, I’m sure the Aldrich Killian toy was a big success…
@122 and @123,
Yeah, I mean, Feige isn’t perfect.
But I’ve heard enough horror stories about Perlmutter’s tenure at Marvel Entertainment that I can understand and sympathize with just how utterly frustrating it must have been for Feige and his team.
It’s scant wonder things finally deteriorated to the point where Feige went to Alan Horn and gave that ultimatum that either Marvel Studios be removed from Perlmutter’s chain of command, or he was walking.