THERE WILL BE SPOILERS *************************************************************************************************************************YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

 

 

 

I went to Iron Man 3 with great anticipation and equally high hopes.  All the pre-release buzz had presented this movie as better then even the first movie.  Which was high praise indeed.  The first Iron Man movie ranks for me as one of the top five superhero movies that have been made thus far.

We expected a crowd so my friends and I decided to go to a 10:15 feature.  It wasn’t necessary.  The theater was pretty much deserted, proving yet again that Santa Fe just isn’t much of a movie town.  We settled in, and I was ready to love this movie.

Except I couldn’t.  There were some cool bits and some huge missed opportunities.  Tony Stark’s PTSD could have been a powerful and meaningful thread for this film.  Instead they used it as a gag and to get laughs which I found insulting to the thousands of men and women who are currently dealing with the debilitating and dangerous effects of PTSD.

As the movie spooled out I kept trying to figure out what it was about?  What was the theme, the issues that would illuminate the human condition?  I kept coming up with nothing — just confusion.

It started with the bad guy.  I mean the real bad guy.  They gave me at least three different explanations of why he was doing what he was doing.  Reason one — Tony Stark had dissed him years before.  Reason two — he wanted the government to fund his research so he was creating false flag/terrorist events.  He was creating false flag/terrorist events so the government would pay to use his super soldiers to fight off this terrible threat.  I never did figure it out which left me confused and cranky.

Tony does something stupid — gives the “bring ‘em on” speech, and bad guy destroys his house and kidnaps Pepper.  Okay, big flashy scene, but I kept wondering why the FAA never reacted to these military helicopters heading toward Malibu presumably without any kind of flight plan.  If the movie had been working for me otherwise I probably wouldn’t have gotten tripped up on this little real world issue, but it wasn’t and I did.

Tony is now back to a guy without resources just a faulty suit that he has to repair.  We go into some of the best moments in the movie as Tony interacts with the little kid, but then they completely undercut the scene by having Tony summon a bunch of remote guided suits for the big final fight.  If he could do that why did he spend all this time trying to repair Mach 42?

And that also completely undercut the whole PTSD thing.  If Stark was afraid to be the “man in the can”, well, he didn’t have to any longer.  He could be a remote drone pilot and run the suits from a safe location in Tierra del Fuego.

Next there’s turning Pepper into a superhero.  I guess, though even that is unclear because at the end Tony says he’s “fixed” Pepper thus proving he is not just an engineering genius, but also a brilliant biologist.  I guess he’s a scientist with a capital S.  Anyway, I’ve always liked Pepper.  She is an independent woman who can run a giant multi-national power, and she has a super power.  She can stand up to Tony Stark and tell him when he’s being a douche.  And make him listen.  Now they made her Nuke Girl or Fire Girl, and I really didn’t need that unless Robert Downey Jr. is not planning on making any more Iron Man movies and it’s going to become about Pepper Pots fights crime.

Finally we come to the end of the piece where Tony orders his faithful computer to destroy all the suits, and he fixes his heart and removes the device that not only kept his heart beating, but apparently powered the suits, and then he throws it in the ocean.  Which means he can no longer power the suits even if had some.  Which means he’s no longer Iron Man.

And then as if they writers/director realized what they had done they throw in this line at the very end where Stark declares “And I am Iron Man.”

No, you’re not.  You’re a really rich guy who threw away the device that powered your awesome fighting suits.

I’m disappointed.  So much money and so much talent and not a coherent story to be seen.