Relentless Bombardment Part II: Iron Man 3 – Bullets and Tanks
June 12, 2013 § Leave a Comment
Relentless Bombardment:
Part II: Iron Man 3 – Bullets and Tanks
Iron Man 3 (Shane Black, Robert Downey Jr.) is on the opposite technical spectrum of Oblivion in just about every respect. The framing is bland and conventional, the photography is mostly forgettable and the themes are coloring book outlined, connect the dots; fill in the blank spaces we’ve provided. Yet somehow it all works. I had the pleasure of seeing this movie in IMAX 3D, the 3D was non-existent and merely served to drive up the price and darken the screen, but the IMAX was glorious, as usual. I don’t believe I’ve ever had a bad IMAX experience.
America is attempting to strengthen its stronghold in the Middle East; an insane terrorist is retaliating by killing innocent Americans. Sound familiar? Well it should. This movie is a commentary on America’s role in the world and our responsibility and connections with the monsters we’ve created. The whole trilogy has been. And they have ensured that we get it. And we get it. And we get it.
But this time things are different. The brazen billionaire is scarred from the events of The Avengers and he can no longer handle the life threatening antics of being a superhero. He can’t sleep through the night, and has panic attacks at the very mention of New York, or Aliens, or Worm Holes, etc. So he begins tinkering with his suits in order to bolster his ability to ensure his survival at any cost. He can no longer take the risk of losing Pepper played by Gwyneth Paltrow. This is shown in the character of Aldrich Killian played by Guy Pearce. He is an old inventor who is slighted by Tony Stark thirteen-years prior.
Mr. Killian is back, and is trying to get Stark Industries to buy his new interesting but unstable technology. He arranges a meeting at Stark Industries that not only ends with him being rejected as a business prospect by not Tony this time but Tony’s girlfriend, it also serves to have him and his henchmen followed by Happy played by Jon Favreau who winds up at the scene of their next crime, a terrorist attack on Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Happy’s presence and injury at the hands of Killian’s henchmen raises the ire of Iron Man who embarks on an investigation, which involves more detective work than Batman did in the entire Dark Knight Trilogy.
None of this matters because Tony Stark goes on national television and gives out his address and is immediately attacked by famed terrorist the Mandarin in a hilarious portrayal by Ben Kingsely. As you can see the plot is quite ridiculous. However the unveiling of the plot is what is done with such precision and control as to warrant (more so than The Avengers) the massive billions it will make. For The Avengers was empty, not plot-less, but thinly plotted. While Iron Man 3 may be over plotted. And just where is Iron Man? Tony Stark is too busy hyperventilating and tinkering with toys in a shed, or running around with Don Cheadle aka Rhodes aka War Machine aka Iron Patriot aka Terrence Howard.
It is actually an interesting story, a superhero afraid to be Super. I think this was the most interesting thread in the tapestry of the film, obviously from an adult cinephile’s perspective. Tony actually saves a group of falling Air Force One passengers while remote controlling the suit. The scene is breathtaking and completely awesome, Tony Stark operating the suit from a far is not. You cannot put your life on autopilot; you cannot let robots take the jobs humans are supposed to be doing. All facetiousness aside, if he isn’t in the suit, then all danger is lifted, and along with it all dramatic tension, a hero must put his life on the line. And watching Tony grapple with this fact is intriguing although briefly sketched and never really properly engaged, it has all the surface and thin representation required of a popcorn blockbuster flick.
This film paints a scary, dark, and violent picture of America, and the world at large. It depicts a place where a mad man can kill anyone at anytime. This is also a re-occurring theme through these spring films. Death can and will come for the innocent as well as the wicked. Although the culprit often goes unpunished. However this is not the case in Iron Man. No here the bad guys always get their comeuppance. Even when those bad guys are American Army Veterans, no doubt disgruntled due to multiple tours and an inability to get Veterans benefits, they meet their doom at the hands of Iron Man, or Men. A chickens-coming-home-to-roost scenario that has been utilized in both of the other Iron Man films as well.
The theme here seems to be a commentary on defense, and arms build-ups, a sort of power breeding corruption; a greatest strength is also a greatest weakness. The U.S. has the most powerful Department of Defense in the world; this power invites an attitude of policing that world. This attitude paints a target on the country’s back for all the worlds’ problems. Dangerous people then attack the big bad country on the block, for pushing the little countries around.
The world as it is in the twenty-first century, a powder keg about to erupt. This is the foreground for Oblivion, Gatsby being the foreground for Iron Man, and Star Trek being a kind of Utopia where the countries of the world have put aside their differences and redirected their energies towards the ascension of mankind. Of course that Utopia is disrupted in Into Darkness but that’s for a later discussion. The future of Iron Man 3 is undoubtedly Oblivion, a world destroyed and mankind living in small desperate packs, the future of human civilization dependent on their survival. So Iron Man 3 is and isn’t about the end of the world. Perhaps it is a 200 Million dollar over-the-top mirror to our present predicament. Will we blow ourselves up or find a way to live in harmony with each other?
At the heart of the entire Iron Man Trilogy is the subtext of American Corporatism and Capitalism. Should the free market be free no matter the consequences? Do the ends always justify the means? Should stockholders and quarterly earnings always trump world peace, the moral core of the United States, the blood of children? Weapons manufacturers looking to bolster their profits, sell old weapons to Middle Eastern thugs who, surprise surprise, turn out to be terrorists, or affiliated with terrorists. So when the U.S. is attacked, or threatened, and the same Manufacturers then sell newer more deadly weapons to the U.S. Defense Department resulting in unending wars that drain the world’s economy as war profiteers line their pockets with green blood.
This is Mandarin’s/Killian’s plot to gain power and wealth, to squeeze the world between fear and economic turmoil, so that eventually the people will turn to him for protection, no doubt giving up their rights in the process. They will turn to him because he has the newest death dealing technology that will protect the world from bad guys like Mandarin/Ben Kingsley. Interesting that he began working on his technology before Tony Stark built Iron Man, yet it was only after the success of Iron Man that Killian’s biological weapon found proper funding.
Tony Stark is the billionaire responsible for this new technological boom in Marvel’s Universe, and also responsible for the escalation that this technology has caused. I’m reminded of something Jim Gordon said in Batman Begins:
“We start carrying semi automatics, they buy automatics, we start wearing Kevlar, they buy armor piercing rounds, and you’re wearing a mask and jumping off rooftops.”
In his attempt to police the world and fix the damages made by he and his father’s corporation and their contribution to the military industrial complex, he has created the opposite effect. His weapons are on steroids, and evil men have followed suit. Killian’s weapon is never referred to as nanotechnology but it is essentially placing some kind of computer chip or weaponized robotic virus in the body to override the human physique and enhance its powers. He gives this power to disgruntled veterans and uses them as his guinea pigs; those that survive become his henchmen. However some become addicted to it like a drug, partly because in order to sustain equilibrium with the human body, the nanos must be injected at regular intervals. Otherwise the human specimen explodes, not unlike a suicide bomber.
This is precisely how Killian uses the addicts, to strike fear into the hearts of U.S. citizens as well as government officials, whom along with Tony Stark believes that the Middle Eastern Mandarin/Ben Kingsley is responsible for the attacks, and not the rich, white, corporate Mandarin/Killian/Guy Pearce. Everything seems to be going swimmingly for our villain, until his own hubris and pride persuades him to antagonize Tony Stark by kidnapping Pepper Potts, blowing up Stark’s mansion and nearly killing Happy Hogan. All of which is done voluntarily by Killian without provocation, on the eve of the fruition of his evil plot. Had he not involved Tony Stark at this point in time, he would have successfully taken over the Government and used his Super Soldiers in coordination with the U.S. department of defense to take down Iron Man at his leisure. It would have been interesting to see how Iron Man wriggled his way out of that one.
These are all obviously comic book conventions, so we cannot decry a film based on its leanings towards its own comic lineage. However we can criticize the ‘blow everything up’ third act tactics that seems to be utilized by Iron Man, if not the Marvel cinematic Universe at large. It’s lazy screenwriting, by one of my favorite Hollywood writers Shane Black, but I cannot place all the blame on his shoulders as this kind of climax has been implemented on both of the other Iron Man films. Rather than untying the climax and bring it to its logical conclusion with strands from the first and second acts, we have the classic, more Iron Men is cool writing philosophy. Obviously this is designed for children and merchandising purposes, yet that in and of itself is not an excuse for lazy writing. The Toy Story franchise has been about selling merchandise since its beginning, yet it had one of the more satisfying climax and denouements to a film/trilogy in recent memory.
The Pepper Potts superhero moment is not a bad idea, yet here, it is merely mishandled. This brings me to my only real major gripe about the film. Tony Stark has no problem killing all of the war veterans turned walking bombs throughout the entire film, yet when Pepper is afflicted with the same problem he leaps at the opportunity to find the cure.
Somewhere along the line during this era of capitalizing off of comic books and the utilization of the anti-hero and the more ‘gritty’ style of film making, these corporate entities forgot that these protagonists are supposed to be heroes. Obviously Tony Stark was busy trying to foil the Mandarin’s plans as well as fix his suit (which by the way was his only means of communication with Jarvis to address some other criticisms of the film which I found invalid) and uncover the mystery behind the Mandarin. However he showed that he empathized with the veterans and had more than one opportunity to investigate the corpse or unconscious body of these nano-afflicted ex-U.S. soldiers. At any point he could have made even the gesture of attempting to find the antidote for these men rather than killing them all. If this were an actual subplot of the film it would have made his finding the cure at the end rewarding for the audience rather than off-putting.
In all this is a solid and entertaining popcorn blockbuster, with the best third act of the trilogy, by default.
3 out of 5 stars.
Up next –
Part III: The Great Gatsby – Superheroes & Explosions
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