Official: 7. Iron Man 3 (2013)

[Hollywood Heidi]

Iron Man 3

Release Date: May 3, 2013
Director: Shane Black
Summary: When Tony Stark's world is torn apart by a formidable terrorist called the Mandarin, he starts an odyssey of rebuilding and retribution.
Trailer: 

---

Discuss the movie!  Below are some ideas of discussion points to get you started.  Feel free to simply copy and paste and insert your thoughts or write out your thoughts however you like.  Constructive comments make for better and more interesting conversations so feel free to elaborate and explain your thoughts, conclusions, and opinions.  Repeat Viewers, be careful of spoiling movies that come after this one for the benefit of first time MCU viewers:

What did you think of the movie?

What expectations or theories did you have that either ended up right or wrong? 

Who was your favorite character and why?  Least favorite?

What scenes or situations did you like best?  Least? 

What were some of your favorite quotes?

How do you rate this movie compared to the rest in the MCU?

Where's Stan Lee?  Every Marvel film has a cameo by the great Stan Lee.  Where was it, what did he play, and how did you like it?

Stingers!  The MCU is famous for putting a couple of stingers into each of their films, usually one in the middle of the credits and after all the credits have rolled.  How did you like the stingers and did you understand them?  Many of them are hints toward future movies or characters we'll be seeing soon and sometimes only those who have read the comics know the full meaning behind them.  If you're one of those people or you researched after, definitely let us know what they meant!  I personally never read the comics but I LOVE learning about Marvel!

If you've read the comics, how do you rate this movie compared to the comics?  What did they change?  What easter eggs did you find in the movie that non-readers may not have gotten?


 
Repeat viewers
Be mindful of the first-time viewers and give fair warning of spoiler comments by putting spoiler tags (directions below) or keep them at the bottom of your post with a big texted SPOILERS before it.

[spoiler]spoiler text[/spoiler]
What do you think of the movie now that you've seen the other MCU offerings? 

Did you find anything new you didn't catch the previous time(s) watching?

How did the movie stand the test of time?

[DarkSideCookie]

Even though probably nobody seems to expect, I give this 5 stars! I really really enjoyed this one and remember how excited I was at several scenes. Taste is different, that's true, but I really was surprised that I like it that much, lmao.

I started to extremely love Iron Man, so far my favourite MCU char I think. But then, it's so hard to really choose. Well, we already had that discussion.

In this one we saw a differend side of Tony, very deep emotional. And I have to say I LOVE when a story is told by the main character! I loved the depressive atmosphere a lot too. It just appeared to be my taste of movies, above all in the beginning. As Heidi and my boyfriend too kept telling me there would be something not so good on this movie, I was waiting so hard what would it be lol. I feared to watch the end. And when I saw Pepper falling, my heart seemed to stop for a moment. I'm so glad she survived! But then, actually I knew she would, as we already seen her gotten the same "medicine" like all the other human guinea pigs.

Really, the only fact I dislike is that we won't see Tony with that lightning magnet in his chest anymore. I found it so cool! Well, but he got to rescue Pepper, so that's a low price.

Btw I don't know if you've ever watched the outtake scenes from Iron Man 3, but you should check out. XD There is one really funny outtake I think.

The stinger was so great! So it was Banner who he was telling his story! I so love them together, they are somehow a good team.

[Hollywood Heidi]

I gave it 3 stars.

I've only seen this one time in theater before and it's the only movie in the MCU that I don't own on DVD. Because it's been so long, I had very little memory of exactly what happened and what my issues had been with it.

We started the movie and while I was watching, I was having a great time and laughing and liking what was happening. I was starting to wonder why I had had a problem with the movie. But then the first hour ended and things shifted. The first hour was great. It's about the time when he bumps into the kid that things start to go a little bit downhill. While his interactions with the kid and how he talked to the kid were hilarious, I didn't quite understand the point of having the kid there. He didn't really do much for the story.

Also, as for Tony's panic attacks, I can see that being a good idea but the execution wasn't quite right. I thought it was PTSD but then while they were happening, people were saying it wasn't and that it was a panic attack. I couldn't quite understand what was going on with that. It almost feels like something thrown in for drama. They could have handled it so much better. First of all, his attacks were very, very few and the situations that prompted them felt forced. The fact they were playing it off as a panic attack took away from it also. Tony is not the type to panic. What he went through in the caves in the first movie seemed far more personal and directly related to him physically and mentally. Yes, we saw how it affected him. It was handled really wonderfully. He's a tough, egocentric man. It took him down a couple notches but nothing like this.

Maybe if he showed the start of these panic attacked towards the end of Avengers, it would have felt more natural. But he seemed confident and strong until the end. There seemed to be not very much motivation for the writing of these panic attack scenes. They were weakly handled and felt forced weakly thrown in a couple times. Just didn't flow naturally with the scene or situation or even how they came on and how they were handled.

I have trouble expressing exactly what my issue was with those because I don't understand why they were thrown in and what triggered them.

But I'll move on. Another issue was the villain. I didn't fully understand what drove him. Yes, Tony was a complete asshole to him back in 1999. He was to everyone. But the bad guy seemed like a really smart guy. So why would he spend hours waiting on the roof? First of all, I think he'd be smart enough to have picked up on the blatant sarcasm from Tony. Tony was telling him right to his face that he'd throw away one of the cards and keep the other to not call him. So the bad guy should have thought, well, I'll go the roof and wait for a bit but he basically laughed in my face so he's probably not going to show.

So one thing, he waits for hours to the point where he said he thought about jumping from the roof. Wow. Did he really work it up in his head that Tony was going to show and that he was going to make it big? That moment on the roof is what drove him to this anger and hatred that formed him into this villain when Tony made absolutely no indication that he was interested in what the guy had to say? In fact, opposite, saying mean things right to his face and so blatantly brushing him off?

That led me to some more confusions. What was with that woman from his past? The one who showed up at his house and later we find out is working for the villain? I know she decided to keep his card so I guess she reached out to him and worked with him. But the story didn't make it clear what purpose she served in getting the villain to where he was. We did see her plant explode in the flashback and she referred to it as her research and told Happy not to touch it, but that's it. No explanation. I almost forgot about the plant even exploding by the time we got to see that she was working for him. Some explanation on this research she was doing would have been great. If she'd said something in the flashback that would later make us go, "Oh!!!" But it's almost like the writers were trying to be sure we were surprised so they used a method of telling us nothing, which made it confusing.

I'm still really confused about the whole exploding soldiers. They never said specifically that it was her plants that provided the base of the injections and so that's still a total guess on my part. And something about Tony having scribbled something on the back of a napkin while he was drunk? I feel like that could have been shown better also so we'd remember when she eventually pulls the napkin out. Heck, I can't even remember if they even SHOWED him scribbling on a napkin at the beginning. They should have done something to make that stand out.

I'm not sure if turning the Mandarin into a total joke was the best of ideas. I think if he would have been an actual bad guy also using the villain's explosions to create more fear and panic for himself while he was actually creating other threats may have been better. I remember people being upset about that because I believe the Mandarin was this great villain in the comic books. I think people were upset he was turned into a joke. It was funny, yah, but I think the story would have been stronger had he been at least a little of a threat.

Okay, another gripe I had. All this time, he had all these Iron Man suits underground. Why the heck didn't he call them out sooner? Like when he didn't have a suit and had to go to a hardware store to make stuff? That was cool to watch him do and so neat to see him work with such rudimentary gadgets but when all of a sudden he calls forth this army of metal, it completely took away from the point of his little side trip to make those rough gadgets. It's like it was thrown in there to remind us how smart he is. Like they were stealing a little bit of something from back in the first movie in those caves. A scene the writers knew that the audience loved about him.

Last gripe, how easy it was to take care of his problem with the shrapnel in his chest! What?? A huge part of the second Iron Man movie was the fact that the arc reactor was saving his life by keeping the shrapnel out of his heart but at the same time, it was slowly poisoning him. By doing this two minute scene where Tony quickly narrates the surgery in this total whatever "yah, just gonna stop procrastinating and do this" kind of attitude, it completely took away so much of the validation of the second movie.

Gosh, I'd completely forgotten that he wasn't dealing with that anymore from the rest of the movies. I don't remember a mention of it and I don't remember that that blue light in his chest is gone. I guess because his suit still has the light. It was such a great part of his character though to always have the danger of those shrapnel getting into his heart looming over him. I think such a strong reminder of mortality was something that kept him grounded.

Okay, that's enough complaining. I didn't hate the movie. I just thought it wasn't well thought out and wasn't well put together. Especially when compared to the other Iron Man movies and the MCU as a hole. I'm not sure what happened here but there was definitely a potential for an amazing trilogy but they missed the target for me.

Let me turn to a positive note. I liked his new upgrade to the suit, throwing his arms up to call the pieces forward. That was epic. Like a conductor bringing on the music of ass kicking. I loved how he saved Pepper by making the suit go on her and then watching her save Tony while she wore it. That was really neat. Seeing him jump into the different suits at the end was really neat and would have been neater if I could have stopped wondering where they all came from and why he didn't use them before!

Another thing I loved is that Tony had some really great one-liners. I did laugh a lot during the movie. Watching his house get completely destroyed was amazing but also made me so sad! Oh man, that house and all his cars. Watching them get pulverized just hurt! Lmao, I was like, "Oh no! His cars! No! Omg that beautiful house!" XD

I so love Jarvis! His dry sarcasm is amazing! I also got a big kick out of Happy's obsession with people wearing their badges. There's a character in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that we meet a couple times that's also obsessed with people wearing their badges so I laughed harder than I should have at Happy. I really love Tony's technology. Especially his computer technology. He can turn his whole lab into a "monitor". Where can I get me one of those?

Stan Lee sighting: He's a judge at the beauty pageant!

Stinger: That was so hilarious! Tony and Bruce scene, Tony acting like Bruce was a therapist and Bruce nodding off at Tony's egocentric talking of himself. I'm so using the phrase "are you actively napping?" from now on. Lmao, when my mom is over watching stuff with me, she sometimes nods off. So gonna be using that!

I can't wait to continue the MCU! Iron Man 3 was by far my least favorite. It had its flaws but wasn't terrible so that's really saying something about the rest of the MCU!

[DarkSideCookie]

I see your issues with that, above all as for the panic attack scenes. Something was bothering me with them too. But I don't think they wouldn't fit to Tony Stark or something. It's just one perspective of him we haven't seen yet. Sure he had a hard time already before, but well... Can't explain XD Just I liked this perspective too.

But maybe though, it is actually rather a 4 star movie for me. But then, I felt really entertained. It's hard to compare it to next ones, as they seem to get better and better lol. Can't there be more than 5 stars? XD

What you mentioned about the shrapnel was exactly what I didn't like about the end. It destroyed the second movie a bit. Actually not only a bit. I tried to not look at it that way though. But then... I liked that part of the character Tony Stark a lot.

Oh and btw, totally agree with you the first half of the movie was the greatest! I think that made me give it such an amount of stars lol. I love Tony.

[DarkSideCookie]

I changed from 5 to 4 stars. Not because of your review would have pushed me to it, but because I realized the story really isn't that good put together as in the other MCU movies. And the next movies were 5 stars movies for me, comparing to this though, I liked them more.

But the first half hour of Iron Man still is a 5 for me.