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| Wednesday, May 15, 2013 09:56 AM |
| On the Viewer - Iron Man 3 |
 by Fëanor |
Hey, poppy and I saw this movie! It's good.
One thing I like about these Marvel movies: things don't just happen, and then they're resolved and that's that. Tony and Pepper are a couple now, but that doesn't mean that everything is fine with them and it's happily ever after. They have the same problems any couple has, only one of them is the CEO of a multinational technology company, and the other is a super-genius superhero with post-traumatic stress disorder, so their problems are magnified considerably. And that's another thing: the events of The Avengers are not just glossed over. What Tony did there - how he almost died, how he killed hundreds of living things - has had a lasting impact on him and the people around him. He is not okay. He is still dealing with what happened. Like a real human being would.
The way he deals with these issues is the way he has always dealt with all his issues: he tinkers. He builds. No one knows how much. He's up to Mark XLII of his suit now, and this one comes in pieces that fly onto his body automatically when he calls them with a simple movement of his arms. Of course, it doesn't work perfectly. This is another thing I like about Tony: he is not perfect. He's arrogant, and kind of a jerk, and when he tries to be really cool, he often fails and trips over himself and his cool new gadget punches him in the crotch.
The movie opens with a glimpse into Tony's shameful past, when he was even more of a jerk. There's a one night stand with a brilliant scientist named Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall) who's developed an amazing piece of biological technology called Extremis. And Tony unwisely and cruelly brushes off another very smart person: Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), who's just started a new company that he calls A.I.M. (a name that will mean a lot to fans of Marvel comics). Jumping forward in time, we find that Killian has done very well for himself. He's now handsome and strong and successful, and he's taken over development of Hansen's Extremis. Again he tries to connect up with Tony's company, this time through Pepper, who's a little stunned by his new appearance, but is not interested in what he's selling; it sounds too much like a weapon to her. Which, of course, it is.
Meanwhile, a new threat is rising in the world. A mysterious terrorist who calls himself the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley). This is another very familiar name to Marvel comics fans, but it's rather a tricky character to handle. The Mandarin, when he was originally created in the comics, was basically an old fashioned, Fu Manchu-type, Yellow Peril villain. Luckily, writer/director Shane Black and co-writer Drew Pearce come up with a brilliant new twist on the character that makes him not only palatable, but also funny and believable, and gives Ben Kingsley a truly wonderful role to sink his teeth into.
I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Pepper gets to suit up and do some pretty amazing things in this movie, and that it's great. I'm only disappointed it didn't last longer and she didn't get to do more. Also, the movie passes the Bechdel test, which is exciting to see in a superhero movie.
One of my favorite sequences in the movie is when Tony finds himself alone in a small town and ends up teaming up with a young kid named Harley. If Harley is a character from a comic book, I didn't recognize him. He's a random kid with his own scars and issues and he and Tony lean on each other for a bit. I like very much that when Tony is in the middle of another PTSD attack, Harley gets him out of it by reminding him that he is a mechanic and he should just build something. That puts him back together, gives him something to hold onto.
Sometimes the movie's plot doesn't hold together as well as I'd like. Sometimes things happen that are a little hard to swallow. But the more I think about it, the less this matters to me. Most of it holds together pretty well. And from the beginning of the first Iron Man movie, you've had to accept that Tony is capable of impossibly amazing things when left on his own with almost no resources.
Iron Man 3 is another good superhero movie from the Marvel people because it is not just about action set pieces and things blowing up and super people punching each other (although it is certainly about those things, too). It is about people being human, and failing, and getting back up, and failing again, but changing, and eventually, slowly, maybe healing a bit and turning into slightly better people. By the end of the movie, Tony is still a scarred, beaten up asshole. But he's a little more aware of his own failings, and a little better than he was before. We know he'll always be a mechanic and a tinkerer, but maybe he won't be quite as obsessive about it now. As he points out, Iron Man is not the suit: Iron Man is him, the man inside. He can step out of it, and still be himself. Still be a hero. |
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