Deep Dive Disney: Wes Looks at Iron Man 3

Friends, it’s the Christmas season, and to celebrate we’re going to be looking at… two superhero films that take place during the holiday but otherwise have nothing to do with Christmas. Yeah, it’s been a wild year for me so I decided instead of going out of my way to cover something Christmas related, I’d just cover a few of vaguely Christmas themed films that I personally love. After all, despite their lack of any connection to the holiday beyond the backdrop, both this film and the one we’ll be covering next week have made their way into my December seasonal movie watching rotation. That brings us to today’s subject matter, Iron Man 3, our second ever MCU film, and, ironically, the second third entry in a series we’ve covered without covering the first two. We’ll be covering the other Iron Man movies one day I’m sure, but today, let’s talk about Iron Man 3. This was a fairly significant movie in the MCU as it was the first solo hero movie that came after and dealt with the fallout of the events of the first Avengers movie. In this case, Tony Stark has been dealing with some serious PTSD issues and has been burning the candle at both ends as a coping mechanism, pushing his girlfriend Pepper Potts to her limit in the process. Meanwhile, the country is in a state of panic as a result of various attacks by a terrorist organization and their mysterious leader known only as The Mandarin. When Tony calls out the Mandarin on live television, naturally the terrorist organization retaliates and blows up his home in Malibu. Now alone, far from home and without his suit, Tony needs to solve the mystery of what Mandarin’s organization is really after and put a stop to them before it’s too late. Let’s take a look at Iron Man 3.

Main Character:

You know, a long, long, time ago, even before I was posting my own website, I held a poll amongst my twitter followers and close friends to determine the greatest performance as a comic book superhero for the purposes of an article I was writing at the time. While Kevin Conroy as Batman came close, the winner, and rightfully so, was Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man. It’s honestly kind of incredible how much this role fits Downey like a glove and over the years, he's become so synonymous with the character that the two are inseparable in the minds of many. And, naturally, that great performance is carried over to this film. As I said, Tony Stark in this movie is going through some serious shit. The events of Avengers changed the entire world for a lot of people and Tony was no exception. Even if he didn’t have to fly up into a black hole with a nuke strapped to his back, something that would give anyone some serious anxiety, Tony still received a massive system shock when he came to realize just how insignificant he is to the larger universe. If you look at the first two Iron Man movies, you’ll notice that up until this point, Tony has only been fighting other men like what he used to be, wealthy industrialists who make weapons that hurt people. Yeah, guys like that need to be stopped, but when there’s a fleet of alien warships led by a crazed Norse God descending upon you, men like that seem like small potatoes. True, Tony is a genius and a master engineer who happens to wield one of the most advanced technological weapons on the planet, but he is ultimately just a mortal man and when a mortal man is thrust into a world of gods, aliens, super soldiers and big green rage monsters, it’s going to shake them to their very core. Tony had that very thing happen to him, and he doesn’t quite know how to deal with it. The best he can come up with is to bury himself in his work, forgoing sleep, time with his friends and any kind of self-care whatsoever. Remember, one of the reasons Tony created Iron Man was to keep people, specifically the people he cares about, safe from harm. Sure, Tony has the Avengers backing him up now, but he knows he can’t always rely on them and if someone as powerful as Loki comes knocking on his door with an interstellar army at their back, a metal suit isn’t going to cut it anymore. Not to get too far into another movie, but it’s likely this mentality that leads him to creating Ultron. However, Tony does learn over the course of this film that he does need to dial it back a bit and realize he doesn’t have to do everything alone. That busybody mentality doesn’t totally go away, but we do see some serious growth from Tony over the course of this film, which works.

Villain:

Normally when we tackle a film with multiple villains we cover the side villains first and then save the ultimate big bad for last. Yeah, we’re not doing that this time. By early MCU villain standards, Aldrich Killian is okay I guess but, for better or for worse, he is definitely not the villain that people remember when they think of this movie. They try to make Killian this big twist villain, but really, he’s about as much a twist villain as Clayton from Tarzan. Yeah, the full extent of his evil isn’t revealed until later, but let’s be honest, if you can’t taste bad guy all over this creep the minute he appears on screen that’s on you pal. He does have some cool gimmicks, such as using an experimental technology called extremis to turn himself and his subordinates into super-weapons that can breathe fire, but beyond that, he’s just a smug scumbag who makes vague villain speeches with a shit-eating grin on his face. Villains like this are a dime a dozen in the MCU and Killian doesn’t do too much to distinguish himself from the pack.

But no one gives a shit about Killian, let’s talk about The Mandarin. For those who don’t know, The Mandarin is the biggest Iron Man villain of the bunch. Batman has The Joker, Superman has Lex Luthor, The Fantastic Four have Doctor Doom, Iron Man has The Mandarin. The Mandarin is Iron Man’s greatest foe and a character that fans were clamoring for since movie one. The Mandarin is also a very racist caricature of Asian people based on the problematic Fu Manchu archetype. Adapting this character as he appeared in the comics was probably not going to fly, especially since these movies are so big in the Chinese market. The filmmakers basically had three options and no matter what they went with, they were going to piss people off. Option A: Adapt the The Mandarin as is. This may have made the fans happy, but people on Twitter would be crying racism like crazy and they also would have risked alienating the Chinese market. Option B: Don’t include the Mandarin at all. This is probably the safest bet, but it still carries the risk of alienating the fans. So all that’s left is Option C: Include the character, but put a new twist on them for the modern era. This is usually the option I prefer because it allows the filmmakers to get creative, but how they ended up changing the character, predictably, pissed a lot of people off. In this film, “The Mandarin” is a falsehood, a puppet for Killian played by an out of work actor with a substance abuse problem named Trevor Slattery. Trevor has no idea what Killian is actually doing and is kept pacified with all the alcohol, loose women and speed boats his heart could possibly desire. Using The Mandarin, Killian has effectively manufactured a threat to the American government that will force them to keep funding his research. Killian has Mandarin appear on TV, spout off a bunch of cryptic mumbo jumbo about punishing American decadence and boom, Killian gets exactly what he wants. It’s actually a pretty clever plan when you think about it, but sadly, comic book fans did not like this version of The Mandarin, feeling that Marvel horribly butchered this classic character. But what did I think of The Mandarin? Honestly, I loved this new take. It reimagines the character in a new and unique way that cleverly gets around the character’s problematic origins. The Mandarin/Trevor is played by Sir Ben Kingsley and hey, the dude played Mahatma Gandhi, playing a goofy out of work actor should be a cake walk for him. He manages to be appropriately menacing as The Mandarin and pretty funny as Trevor. Good work all around. I may be in the minority here, but I thought this film adapted The Mandarin in the best way it possibly could. And for those who still didn't like it, we ended up with a somewhat more comic-accurate version of The Mandarin in Shang-Chi.

Side Characters:

As per usual when we cover an MCU film, there are a lot of side characters, most with a long and complicated backstory of their own, so we’ll be trying our best not to make this section longer than all of my articles combined.

We’ll start with Pepper Potts, Tony’s girlfriend, business associate and the only one who can keep Tony in check when he goes off the rails. Picking up from Iron Man 2, Pepper has now taken control of Stark Industries and seems to be doing a better job running the show than Tony ever did. This movie shows that Pepper is well and truly sick of Tony’s shit and just wants him to take a break once in a while. She can tell that Tony is trying to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders and it’s slowly destroying both of them.

Next up is Happy Hogan, played as always by the very awesome Jon Favreau. In this film, Happy has left his position as Tony’s bodyguard and is now Pepper’s head of security. There’s not a whole hell of a lot to say about Happy since he spends much of the movie in a coma courtesy of one of Killian’s henchmen which directly leads to Tony calling out the Mandarin on live TV. Still, Happy taking his new job way too seriously and his love of Downton Abbey are pretty funny. Also, during a flashback scene, we get to see Happy sporting a Mullet. Gotta love it.

While stranded in Tennessee at one point, Tony befriends a kid named Harley. You’d think these two would form a meaningful connection, and yeah, they do bond a little bit, but actually, Tony takes every opportunity to fuck with this kid and it’s kind of hilarious.

The President of the United States in this movie is played by William Sadler, who is known for playing the bad guy from Die Hard 2 as well as Sloane, the evil Starfleet intelligence operative from Star Trek Deep Space Nine. I’ve said it before, I will say it as many times as I have to. No one puts Deep Space Nine in the corner. Not on my blog! There’s this cool moment where the President is seen wearing the War Machin armor which almost inspired a two part fanfic called “President War Machine.” Maybe I’ll write it one day, it’s not what you think it is. Also, the vice president is played by Miguel Ferrer and something about the guy who built Robocop showing up in an Iron Man movie makes me smile.

And we’ll round things out with Tony’s best friend Colonel James Rhodes aka War Machine, who in this movie has been given a red, white and blue rebranding and now goes by Iron Patriot. While the Iron Patriot armor does admittedly look neat, I feel that this was ultimately just an unnecessary plot point in order to incorporate a popular character from the comics. See, in the comics around this time there was indeed a character called Iron Patriot, but it wasn’t Rhodey. See, when Tony Stark lost his position as head of S.H.I.E.L.D., the government lost faith in the Avengers and put together a team of replacements led by Iron Patriot, an Amalgam of the deceased Captain America and the disgraced Iron Man. And the man in the suit? Norman Osbourne. Yeah, The Green Goblin briefly assumed an Iron Man like identity in order to gain the favor of the American government while still engaging in shady dealings behind the scenes. Your mileage will vary on how well that plot point works or not, but it’s certainly more interesting than giving War Machine a half-assed rebrand. Still, Don Cheadle does a great job and continues to prove himself to be one of the coolest regular actors in the MCU.

Memorable Scenes:

The climax of this movie is made of pure solid metal awesome. The President is chained up on an oil rig and Tony and Rhodey are alone, without suits of armor, against several of Killian’s extremis powered goons. But Tony has a trick up his sleeve, something he calls “The House Party Protocol.” Beneath the wreckage of Tony’s beach house, all of the forty something Iron Man suits that Tony built activate at once and and they all join the fight. This moment is so cool and even includes a few easter eggs from the comics. Plus, they make for lovely fireworks when Tony blows them all up at the end.

Story:

As we discussed, Tony in this movie needs to learn that he can’t keep burning the candle at both ends and that he doesn’t need to do everything on his own, something we discussed in detail when we discussed Tony himself. There also seems to be this theme of the past coming back to haunt you since Tony is indirectly responsible for Killian becoming a supervillain. It’s a bit weak if you ask me, but it’s not an awful theme I guess.

The Dark Disney Factor:

Not too much in terms of overtly dark moments here. I will say, Tony’s PTSD is shown to be pretty brutal and treated with the seriousness and severity such a condition deserves, but outside of that, this one keeps things generally light.

Final Thoughts: Say what you will, I love this movie. Is it perfect, no, but it's a solid entry in the Iron Man franchise that I feel deserves a bit more love. Next time, we're tackling a superhero movie from the other side of the fence. That's right, Deep Dive DC is back with the direct sequel to Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie. Join me next week as we take a look at Batman Returns.