Jelly wrote:I was almost inspired to write an essay about it being a relevant critique of corporate power in America and an exposition of terrorism,
do it
It was pretty good. The villain was underdeveloped and pretty darn cliche in general (then again, this is a superhero movie) but obviously Tony was the focus of the movie, and the way his character progressed made up for it.
I will like this one much better the next time I watch it, knowing what's going on. It took me forever to figure out the story this time. Some of that was by design in just the way the movie is put together, but even with that considered it took way longer than I think it was supposed to.
For the first half hour I wasn't sure what the movie was even going to be about, it was tossing around stuff about the Mandarin and then the weird fire people but didn't seem to settle on either. It started coming together eventually and I was just finally understanding what was going on when it got all switched up by revealing the truth about the Mandarin which confused me in a new way because I understood some parts of the story better with that revelation, but other parts just became more fuzzy.
So this was a movie I really had to just take as it unfolded and piece together on the spot and in retrospect, there was no point where I had a solid enough understanding of the current situation to consider the story yet to come. A very odd and unfamiliar experience, but not an unenjoyable one. I did like watching what was happening, even though for the vast majority I was watching it for just that, what was happening at that moment, with no encompassing understanding of exactly why it was happening or how it fit into the big picture.
I have to say though, kinda hated the ending.
He just stops being Iron Man? That can't be an option, can it, doesn't he have responsibilities to the world? You can't just go 'I don't want to be a superhero anymore.' I mean if he wants to reevaluate some things that's fine, but that's not what appears to have happened here, it looks like Iron Man has been completely retired.
Also, he can have an operation to remove the shrapnel? What? Why didn't he do that as soon as he got back home in the first movie? A major part of the second movie's plot was finding a way to make a better magnet when he couldn't keep using the first one. The assumption made from that is removal wasn't a possibility because if it was he wouldn't have needed a new magnet because he wouldn't have needed any magnet.
Overall, though, this movie seems to attract lots of hate... for various reasons, I suppose. A big one is the Mandarin twist which *gasp* doesn't follow the comics, but really, the movies are there own thing and it doesn't bother me. There is an extra on the Thor 2 dvd/br and I'm sure Youtube by now that kind of makes up for that, anyway. I really enjoyed the movie overall up until the retirement/surgery. My only other complaint is that we see the various armors taking all sorts of damage in the other Iron Man films and Avengers, but weird fiery dudes just tear them apart. Still, I thought the final battle was better in this than the other two Iron Man films., even if the suits were made out of paper.
The one-shot All Hail the King is interesting. I think it was an effort to calm the backlash over what they did to the Mandarin. It's saying 'When we revealed that this guy wasn't who you thought he was people took it to mean the whole Mandarin thing was fake, but that's not it. Only Trevor was fake. There is a real Mandarin, this guy just wasn't him.'
stay tuned.