The humor was pretty great. It was subtle and didn’t seem as forced as most Marvel movies do.
The plot twist with the Mandarin was pretty decent, but they could have at least salvaged his character in some way. It’s like having Bane pop off his mask half way and be like “just kidding I’m actually a street performer who lives with my mother”.
The movies nowadays take advantage of the fact that people don’t actually have a solid grasp on the capabilities of protagonist and antagonist. I left the movie wondering what is Stark is actually capable of? What is Guy Pearce’s character capable of? At some points both sides seem invincible and then at others they seem really fragile.
I know it’s just Iron man, but where the hell are all the other members of the Avengers? I mean, isn’t this catastrophic enough to rebuild the team? Even if it’s not, don’t the other members owe it to the guy who recently, I dunno, saved all of humanity?
I can’t help but think that if Stark made a custom suit for Captain America and Bruce Banner, he would not be nearly as relied upon.
I feel like Stark didn’t really develop. In IM he turns from being a bad guy arms dealer to a saviour. IM 2 saw him learn that he’s not invincible, and that he has more than himself to care about. Avengers made him realize that he alone cannot solve the world’s problems by himself. This really brought nothing new.
There was the other girl who was a good guy turned bad guy turned good guy? Yeah… They didn’t really play her character out too well.
Overall, I liked it. But I really hate how they shift the abilities based on the plot line. Guy Pearce is damn near invincible to the Iron Man army but gets manhandled by Pepper Pots. That, and the lack of a backstory on the villain. We only see the one scene where Pearce is on the rooftop as a disabled dude. Suddenly he’s all better. If they dived into that a bit more and we saw his progression the story would be infinitely better. Good examples of this is Bane in TDKR, Skyfall, even Sandman in Spiderman 3.
This movie made me realize that the superhero genre topped out at The Amazing Spiderman, The Dark Knight Rises, and the Avengers. Maybe Man of Steel will be good but now it’s becoming a cash cow.
The humor was pretty great. It was subtle and didn’t seem as forced as most Marvel movies do.
The plot twist with the Mandarin was pretty decent, but they could have at least salvaged his character in some way. It’s like having Bane pop off his mask half way and be like “just kidding I’m actually a street performer who lives with my mother”.
The movies nowadays take advantage of the fact that people don’t actually have a solid grasp on the capabilities of protagonist and antagonist. I left the movie wondering what is Stark is actually capable of? What is Guy Pearce’s character capable of? At some points both sides seem invincible and then at others they seem really fragile.
I know it’s just Iron man, but where the hell are all the other members of the Avengers? I mean, isn’t this catastrophic enough to rebuild the team? Even if it’s not, don’t the other members owe it to the guy who recently, I dunno, saved all of humanity?
I can’t help but think that if Stark made a custom suit for Captain America and Bruce Banner, he would not be nearly as relied upon.
I feel like Stark didn’t really develop. In IM he turns from being a bad guy arms dealer to a saviour. IM 2 saw him learn that he’s not invincible, and that he has more than himself to care about. Avengers made him realize that he alone cannot solve the world’s problems by himself. This really brought nothing new.
There was the other girl who was a good guy turned bad guy turned good guy? Yeah… They didn’t really play her character out too well.
Overall, I liked it. But I really hate how they shift the abilities based on the plot line. Guy Pearce is damn near invincible to the Iron Man army but gets manhandled by Pepper Pots. That, and the lack of a backstory on the villain. We only see the one scene where Pearce is on the rooftop as a disabled dude. Suddenly he’s all better. If they dived into that a bit more and we saw his progression the story would be infinitely better. Good examples of this is Bane in TDKR, Skyfall, even Sandman in Spiderman 3. [/quote]
Agreed on number 3.
In many of these movies they’ll show something like in Avengers…that jail cell made for the Hulk. It’s supposed to look threatening and dangerous and maybe we’re supposed to think it’ll hold the Hulk, but we all know it really won’t.
And it’s hard to show Thor or Loki in danger because I don’t know if like a 500ft fall will kill him or just make him smirk.
And yeah, Tony’s armor…he can take a smash from Thor’s hammer, but other things like a truck hitting it will break it to pieces.
[quote]Nards wrote:
Also, I’m a guy that can become comfused in these types of movies as to what can and cannot kill the bad guy ( or even the good guy)…I mean the bad guy may take 50 bullets to the face and smile ,then a grenade makes him look up and wordlessly mouth “…oh shit…” so I had that with this movie a couple of times. I may just be dumb.[/quote]
I think I know exactly the part you’re referring to.
Saw it yesterday. As a casual fan of Iron Man I enjoyed it but I do know a decent amount of the story line. The surgery thing irritated me though. I also thought the final battle was too fast. I was watching it in 3D and it definitely felt like it was all a whir and there was no real focus on any of the different suits. And I HATE that Pepper Potts is the damn savior. I think I just dislike Gwenyth Paltrow. Most beautiful woman my ass
Why was Stark wearing his worst suit throughout the majority of the movie?
Why was Stark proficient with handguns and combat in the Mandarin compound and then on the oil tanker he’s useless?
This movie somehow needed more Iron Man.
Really? Gweneth saves the day?
What the fuck did the vice president have to do with anything? His daughter was an amputee, so why wouldn’t he just get a hold of the extremis formula and NOT help assassinate the president?
Scene after the credits did nothing to move the Marvel universe story line.
(as others have said) this is a multi national terrorist attack. Where the shit were the avengers?
Mandarin being a fraud served no purpose. Would have been fantastic if him being a fraud was just a sham to get out of getting killed by Stark.
What kills the extremis guys?!
All the suits being able to autonomously fight kinda renders Stark useless.
Why was Stark wearing his worst suit throughout the majority of the movie?
Why was Stark proficient with handguns and combat in the Mandarin compound and then on the oil tanker he’s useless?
This movie somehow needed more Iron Man.
Really? Gweneth saves the day?
What the fuck did the vice president have to do with anything? His daughter was an amputee, so why wouldn’t he just get a hold of the extremis formula and NOT help assassinate the president?
Scene after the credits did nothing to move the Marvel universe story line.
(as others have said) this is a multi national terrorist attack. Where the shit were the avengers?
Mandarin being a fraud served no purpose. Would have been fantastic if him being a fraud was just a sham to get out of getting killed by Stark.
What kills the extremis guys?!
All the suits being able to autonomously fight kinda renders Stark useless. [/quote]
Agreed on all counts. I was entertained by this movie (the visuals and humor) but I’m also 100% confident that it was terrible.
It seems like their answer for each sequel is to add more suits flying around. It’s lame as fuck.
I’m OK with The Avengers not showing up in the sense that in the world of comic books they have The Avengers as a monthly book, but there’s still an Iron Man comic every month and a Thor and Captain America etc. so that makes me OK with them working alone and not needing some excuse as to why they didn’t help…or else even the comics if they tried to be true to that would just be All Marvel Characters Helping Each Other with a 100 page issue coming out every day.
[quote]Nards wrote:
I’m OK with The Avengers not showing up in the sense that in the world of comic books they have The Avengers as a monthly book, but there’s still an Iron Man comic every month and a Thor and Captain America etc. so that makes me OK with them working alone and not needing some excuse as to why they didn’t help…or else even the comics if they tried to be true to that would just be All Marvel Characters Helping Each Other with a 100 page issue coming out every day.[/quote]
Even still… Woulda been nice to have the hulk lol.
[quote]Nards wrote:
I’m OK with The Avengers not showing up in the sense that in the world of comic books they have The Avengers as a monthly book, but there’s still an Iron Man comic every month and a Thor and Captain America etc. so that makes me OK with them working alone and not needing some excuse as to why they didn’t help…or else even the comics if they tried to be true to that would just be All Marvel Characters Helping Each Other with a 100 page issue coming out every day.[/quote]
While I do agree that they should have their own separate franchises because it allows us to really enjoy their individual character developments and nuances,lately comics have moved further into the crossover realm than every before. In the new Marvel Now campaign, all the current running titles will have cameos because it flat out makes sense.
Ex: Thor #3: He needs to find a cave based on a GPS location so he calls Stark. Why the heck would he even attempt to use a computer when he has access to one of the most technologically advanced geniuses in the world.
In Captain America, he is travelling through time so he gives Cable a call.
In the Uncanny Avengers they give Spider Man a shout because they need all the help they can get.
This list goes on and on. I just think a cameo of some sort or even just a quick name drop “I tried calling the Avengers but they seem to have more important stuff to do.” or a funny answering machine message from Thor would have been super cool.
They spent an entire movie building camaraderie between all of these characters in the Avengers, would have been nice to show that some of that still exists.
For me what they did to Mandarin was just too much, it was very funny but it ruined an insanely frightening villain with no real purpose.
How they killed Aldridge didn’t make sense to me either, exploding encapsulated by an Iron Man suit doesn’t kill him… but throwing a missile at him an setting it off in his face does? Not sure how that works.
Too many gripes to name, most people in the thread addressed it well. This is typical “movie studios ruining a good thing” behaviour. Seeing Thanos at the end of Avengers got me so excited, now this took away all that confidence again.
