I saw it in 2D, because I finally learned my lesson on 3D after The Avengers – why would I pay more for a slightly less pleasing visual experience? Answer: I don’t any more. I also went with very little in the way of expectations. Because I haven’t spent the last six months in a sensory deprivation chamber, I knew that this instalment featured Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin. I don’t read news or study trailers of movies I know I’m going to see, because I’m savvy enough to understand that parsing the prelude has two possible outcomes:
• I’m wrong about stuff, in which case I was unduly excited about any positives my imagination created and unduly worked up over stuff that didn’t actually make it into the movie. The former breeds disappointment and a sense of being cheated, while the latter breeds bitterness for the entire period up until the actual viewing of the movie. None of that increases my pleasure.
• I’m right about stuff, in which case everything I’m right about is no longer spontaneous or fresh, and can only “meet expectations” at best. This produces an experience equivalent to opening a Christmas present you already knew about in June. Oh boy. How exciting. None of that increases my pleasure.
So for those of you feeling a little bamboozled after dissecting the Iron Man trailers every time Marvel Studios yanked your leash with a few more scenes to pant over….well, you bought your own pain, there, didn’t ya? Cause what you were expecting was a gargantuan battle for the ages between Iron Man and Mandarin.
What you weren’t expecting was a remake of Mr. Mom.Surprise!
Yes, that’s right, Mr. Mom. You know, the one where Michael Keaton played a very successful businessman and alpha male. Extenuating circumstances caused him to separate from all of those things he was really good at and obsessed over. He becomes a mental basket case. The character arc here is to reach inside and become a better man with a new identity forged in the fires of relationships with kids. The far more mature wife still sort of needs to be saved from a lecherous baddy in the third act, but she doesn’t need nearly as much help as he thinks she does. In the end, the family unit is stronger for the man realizing that he can maintain competence without sacrificing intimacy.
And there you have it, that’s Iron Man 3, only this time Guy Pearce gets socked in the nose by Gwynneth Paltrow instead of Terri Garr blasting Martin Mull in his mug. Oh, there is another key difference. Because the folks at Mr. Mom didn’t have comic book fans to consider, they just told the story and didn’t have to try and swindle you into thinking a funny little addict was really an evil mastermind. But no, Marvel Studios is still comics at heart, so they bent over backwards to make sure you were “wrong”, regardless of the cost.Let’s pause here and let me clarify a few things. To be fair, the cost of losing The Mandarin wasn’t terribly high, in my opinion. I say that because all of the Ben Kingsley scenes were terrific, whether he was the television construct Mandarin or the actual goofy Trevor Slattery. When Kingsley switched between the two characters mid-sentence, I nearly stood up and clapped it was so wonderful. Yes, it does cheapen the menace of the movie a bit. The Killian character wasn’t a total catastrophe, though, Guy Pearce was good.
It goes deeper than that, though. Remember in the first movie when Tony first gets captured in Afghanistan, and there’s that bit about the Clan of the Ten Rings? The Iron Man franchise has been promising us comic fans that we were getting an Iron Man/Mandarin tilt from the beginning…and now that all turned out to be bullshit. This is in lock step with the current Marvel business model. We’ve paid for out tickets three times, and now that it’s effectively done, Marvel is able to point at us and say “Fuck you, we fooled you!” Which is great. Congratulations. You won, never saw it coming and you made a lot of money in the short term. Why is it that Marvel “winning” always involves a bunch of pissed off regulars?
I think 90% of the people going to see the film won’t register the bait-and-switch as an issue, because they don’t have anything invested in 40 year-old comic stories. That Clan of Ten Rings stuff? The vast majority don’t remember and don’t care. So again, the cost wasn’t terribly high. But there was a cost.
The second thing I wanted to clarify is that I think it’s a fairly interesting and ballsy thing to turn the third act of your superhero magnum opus into a Mr. Mom remake. These days I sometimes prefer an ambitious failure over a well-executed piece of expected cookie-cutter filmmaking. And I don’t think I consider Iron Man 3 a failure at all, really. Because of the film’s conceit, it necessitated a lot more screen time with Robert Downey out of the suit, and all of that is fantastic. He’s incredibly charming, and there was some value in watching Stark try to solve problems without using the armor as a crutch.
On the flip side, I don’t know that I ever fully bought into the concept that Tony Stark, or any other sane person would actually go that route. I had a hard time digesting the idea that Tony would spend so much time mucking about a prototype Mark 42 suit that didn’t work when there were clearly 900 other fully functioning suits available. And by the way, if that army of armors was available to him at the end, why didn’t he just call one or three or seven of those suits to help him from the start instead of dragging his broken suit through the snow with a length of rope or something that inexplicably sprang up from out of nowhere. Why go through the process of storming the castle with jury-rigged equipment from Home Depot when he could have just called in the cavalry at any time?
The answer, of course, is that it wouldn’t have served the story. We needed that time for Tony to be externally vulnerable but building strength internally. We needed that space to build up a rapport with the little kid. And as you’re able to let the logical stuff go, the emotional stuff resonates pretty well and there were a ton of laughs to be had. Well, for me at any rate. I was in the theater with about eight other people, and I was the only one making a sound about anything. So I made a bit of an ass out of myself being the lone gunman of guffawing, but there were lots of funny moments in that movie.
And lots of maddening ones, too. Operation: Clean Slate? Really? The lesson is just to blow all that shit up? Ridiculous. Ridiculous and irresponsible. Also, I think if I saw one more suit of Iron Man armor fall completely to shit because something tapped it, I was going to scream. I can build Lego structures with more stability than Tony Stark assembles his combat armor. Embarrasing.
So yes, Iron Man 3 giveth and taketh away. This will sound bizarre, but I’ll tell you the moment that sold me on the movie forever. When Harley tells Tony about his father abandoning him, Tony’s paraphrased response is:“Yeah, that happens sometimes, but you don’t have to be a pussy about it.”
First of all, it’s a really funny line. More importantly, in a world increasingly devoted to the worship of victimhood, I applaud anybody with the balls to suggest sucking it up and moving on. And that’s what those two do. Tony’s got anxiety attacks, and Harley has a bullying problem and daddy issues, and it could have been all too 21st Century Bunnified. But nobody crawled up into the fetal position and took a bunch of medication. They problem-solved. They acknowledged the hurt and pushed through it. These are tenets the Ugly American can get behind.
So yeah, Iron Man 3. Is it what you were expecting? Hell no. Will you laugh a bunch of times? Damn right. Does it make some interesting and also baffling choices? Check, and check. Is it a good film? Ehhhh….yes? Yes, I think it is. But if I’m going to watch that story, I think I’ll just go back to the original, when it was called Mr. Mom.
This is the film to kick off the Summer Movie Season and it starts thing off pretty well. Good review.
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