May 3, 2013 Iron Man 3 announced (1 Viewer)

[RobertR]

I don't get your leap of logic here that the individual pieces must be powered by an arc reactor. What is shown very clearly on screen is that he needed to charge up the suit. Charge = storage as in some sort of battery. A reactor doesn't need charging as it is a producer of energy. I think it is entirely reasonable to view the new suit pieces as having some sort of battery technology that allows each one to fly and reassemble but once assembled are powered by the single arc reactor in the chest plate. The movie is consistent with normal comic book / movie physics and time spans (i.e. doesn't hold up under real world scrutiny but close enough overall for entertainment purposes).

I agree that comic book physics don’t work in the real world, but the physics in the movies should at least be consistent with the internal logic in them. The first movie made it very clear that the kind of things the suit does are made possible by a source of enormous power (the kind of power that can propel the suit or its components at several thousand miles per hour for hundreds or even thousands of miles), namely, the arc reactor. This was made explicit when Stane was unable to make his big suit work without Stark’s reactor. It simply doesn’t fit with what was previously established that “battery power” (what kind of battery? Some super duper Stark battery that's able to match the power output of an arc reactor? Doesn't that essentially make it an arc reactor? After all, neither can produce energy from "nothing".) can accomplish essentially the same thing as the arc reactor (the boot jets work as well as the repulsor rays without being connected to the reactor). That's why I said it sure seems like the pieces have their own arc reactors.

 

[Sean Bryan]

Saw it again this weekend. Enjoyed it even more the second time around, even though the theater was a terrible experience. This was the most disgustingly misconverged digital projection I've ever seen in a professional cinema. At least Cinemark gave me a refund. So if I was able to enjoy it at all in that enviroment, that says alot for me. I would have left, but I brought my parents with me and I didn't want to drag my Mom out of the theater since she said she couldn't see the problem.

Anyway, I'm not sure it's likely that there is much more to Trevor. Maybe, but nothing really jumped out at me on the second viewing that I didn't catch on the first viewing.

I didn't notice the cool chinese dragon tatoos on Killian/Mandarin the first time around. But I caught them on this viewing. Killian had said something along the lines of a "mandarian" being an "advisor to the King" or something like that, and one of the definitions of mandarin is "a person of position and influence". Killian's plan was to own the war on terror with the (Vice)President as his puppet in one hand and controling a terror organization with the other. So again, for those that that might be confused thinking that there was no real Mandarin (hat he was just an actor), there certainly was. The public face was a misdirection, but Killian was "The Mandarin". And he was a pretty significant foil for Stark.

In Ton'y voice over at the end, he said that after he got Pepper "sorted out" he thought "why stop there?" and went on to deal with his shrapnel problem. What do you think the "sorted out" means for Pepper? Do you think he managed to completely remove Extremis from Pepper, or did he figure out how to stablize it? Is Pepper going to continue to have superpowers in future films? I did read somewhere that someone in Marvel, Feige maybe, said this may not be the last we see of Extremis.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

Is Iron Man3 better than Iron Man2? Yes but that's not saying much. And not by much.

Both possess half baked and overstuffed plots and the drive to turn the Iron Man suits into a toyline continues unabated. Really dislike the change on the fly suit stuff too. Didn't buy the PTSD storyline either.

Movie's strong point is how much Downey is in the flick. And the interaction between Pepper and Stark. Mandarin turned out to be a Bane-bust and apparently the driving motivation to become a ubervillain requires nothing more traumatic than to be left out on a cold rooftop.

At the end Tony Stark declares he is Ironman. Too bad that declaration came at the end of a movie that just demonstrated that any videogamer with decent skills would make a better one.

 

[Sean Bryan]

It officially crossed the 1 billion dollar threshold world wide.
Go Marvel!
http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=ironman3.htm

 

[Sean Bryan]

Just in case there is any doubt about Marvel's intentions regarding Tony Stark continuing to function as Iron Man, Joss Whedon says:

“Well, I feel like in Iron Man 3, even though he said, ‘I’ve changed' -- he blew up his remote suits, but I don’t think anybody thinks he doesn’t have one anymore. The question is, if The Avengers are called, does he show up? And the answer is, ‘Yes!’”

http://www.superherohype.com/news/articles/176981-joss-whedon-confirms-quicksilver-and-scarlet-witch-talks-iron-man-returning

 

[Sean Bryan]

Took in a third viewing this weekend, and I have to say this has been the most fun and entertaining movie for me this summer so far. I saw Man of Steel this weekend as well and enjoyed it, but as cool as the spectacle was and as moving as lots of the stuff was with Clark and the Kents it wasn't as fun a viewing experience as Iron Man 3.

 

[Sean Bryan]

The new Marvel One Shot that will be on the BD of Thor: The Dark World will be called 'All Hail the King' and will focus on Trevor Slattery.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Nice! Trevor is awesome.

 

[Sean Bryan]

'All Hail the King' is a great follow-up if you enjoyed the Trevor character. This was quite the nice short, and it has a fantastic cameo that gave me a nice belly laugh. Good stuff. Plus, this kind of clarified something that can definitely be followed up on in future Iron Man films. Check it out.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Robert Downey Jr. would sign on for Iron Man 4... if Mel Gibson directed it.

 

[FoxyMulder]

Robert Downey Jr. would sign on for Iron Man 4... if Mel Gibson directed it.

It's about time the Hollywood top dogs let go of their grudge against Mel Gibson, whatever you think of the man you cannot deny he is a good director, also a pretty decent actor, it's good to see Downey Jr. sticking up for his old mate.

 

[Sam Favate]

I don't think Downey was 100% serious. I'm sure he'd like to see Gibson direct, but if the studio comes back with a generous offer, I bet Downey will sign on.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Road to Endgame Revisit #8:
I've spent a lot of time in these revisits discussing how each movie has contributed to the future direction of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what building blocks it contributed to the towering edifice that the MCU has become. Iron Man 3 is an interesting one to revisit, because it has ended up being more of an evolutionary offshoot -- a glimpse down a path ultimately not taken.

Production-wise, there are some notable changes from the first two Iron Man movies. While Jon Favreau reprises his supporting role as Happy Hogan, he's not in the director's chair. Instead, Shane Black takes on that role, and this is very much a Shane Black film. This movie was also made during the brief window when North Carolina was competing to be the Hollywood of the South, before ultimately ceding that status to Atlanta, Georgia. It was also the first Iron Man movie to be shot digitally.

Watching all three of the films in such close proximity, I do think the production values take a noticeable step down from Iron Man 2. The first third of the movie takes place in California, and the movie does an adequate but imperfect job recreating Tony's mansion and various prominent west coast locales in North Carolina. John Toll is a great cinematographer, and I do like the look of the film. But I really fell in love with Matthew Libatique's cinematography for the first two films, and I missed the way Libatique and Favreau visually told a story.

It grossed $1.2 billion, and remains in the top five highest grossing Marvel Studios pictures. But it was controversial with fans, and I think that scared Marvel away a little bit from leaning more heavily in this direction.

I do think I appreciated the movie more this time than the first couple times I'd seen it. There's a lot that works. The movie keeps the focus squarely on Tony Stark, and takes him on a journey we haven't seen before. At every turn, he succeeds by outthinking his opponents rather than the pummeling them into submission. The Iron Man armor had become a safety blanket for Tony, and increasingly magical in its abilities, so the movie very smartly took the armor away from him fairly early on in the picture. Mental illness and realistic portrayals of trauma aren't things we usually get from action movies, and seeing Tony grapple with agoraphobia, insomnia, and panic attacks as a result of the insane stuff he experienced at the end of The Avengers was a welcome acknowledgement that sometimes when horrifying stuff goes down, people don't always just bounce right back again. The villains weren't just evil versions of the protagonist, a well that the MCU had gone to far too often by this point.

And I loved the Mandarin reveal with Sir Ben Kingsley as Trevor Slattery, an English actor with substance abuse problems. The Mandarin, while one of Iron Man's primary villains, has not aged particularly well as a character. And one of his main draws, his ten alien power rings, wouldn't have worked with the more grounded focus of the Iron Man movies. It also feels too close to the Infinity Stones and the Infinity Gauntlet that the MCU was already doing a slow burn on. Instead, the movie acknowledges the issues with the Fu Manchu stereotype, and makes those problems work in the movie's favor. Kingsley is terrific as the faux-Mandarin, but he's even better as Trevor.

This was the first of Brian Tyler's serviceable but bland and unremarkable scores that so predominated Phase Two of the MCU.

I thought that Maya Hansen's death in the film was very effective, but I do wish we could have had more with that character. I thought Rebecca Hall brought a lot to that role even though there's not a lot to work with.

Until Tony and Rhodey go all Riggs and Murtaugh at the docks, Don Cheadle really doesn't have a lot to do in this picture.

I thought it was a missed opportunity to have Tony cure Pepper and make her fully human again. I think it would have been more interesting if he's perfected Extremis, and she would have gone through the rest of the franchise with superstrength, a significant healing factor, and the ability to breathe fire.

A wonderful appearance from Daley Dickey as the mother of Chad Davis, one of the injured soldiers who was injected with the Extremis virus and ultimately exploded.

Weta took over from ILM as the lead visual effects vendor on this movie. The one area where that was a step down for me is with the Iron Man armors. In the first two films, I can never tell when they're using the practical armor, and when the armor is CG. In this movie, especially during the final battle at the end docks near the end, I can. The big difference is how the armors interact with the light.

The scene where Air Force One is torn apart, and Iron Man gets all of the free falling staffers to link together is a real standout. They actually shot that doing real skydiving jumps, and it shows.

Tony's prickly relationship with the kid didn't really work for me. Some of the banter was fun, but I think it would have played better if he'd found an abandoned garage or something and did all of those solo without a kid sidekick.

One final note: I wouldn't recommend the audio commentary to anybody. I can't count the number of times Shane Black was on he precipice of saying something interesting or important, only to have co-screenwriter Drew Pearce interrupts with something much less interesting.

Connections to other parts of the MCU: William Sadler makes his debut as President Ellis, the first explicitly established American president in the MCU. His likeness is featured in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Sadler himself appears as Ellis in a few episodes of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." Shaun Toub reprises his role as Yinsen from the first Iron Man in the opening sequence.

 

[Sam Favate]

This movie was also made during the brief window when North Carolina was competing to be the Hollywood of the South, before ultimately ceding that status to Atlanta, Georgia. It was also the first Iron Man movie to be shot digitally.

Actually, Wilmington, NC, would have succeeded in being the Hollywood of the South, but the legislature changed hands in 2011 and the new party in charge took away all film incentives. Wilmington had a very large film community -- all the crew personnel and technicians lived there, not to mention the business it brought to caterers, daycare, etc., etc. But they all moved away, mostly to Atlanta, where most Marvel movies have been filmed since this one. Goes to show how one bad political decision can devastate a state's industry. Wilmington still has a small film community, but nothing like what it was, and it will never get back to where it was, now that Atlanta has welcomed film production with open arms and they're established there.

George Lucas sort of put Wilmington on the film production map in the early 90s, filming Radioland Murders and the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles there. IM3 was the biggest production Wilmington ever saw. BTW, the scenes at the port in IM3 are at the Wilmington port.