Hitting All Your Right Nerves!
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I realize that much of the world has been waiting to see this flick because you wonder what I have to say about it.
Your wait is over. Finally, you’re released to see it. I’ve digested the movie and found it to be a delightful feast.
I enjoyed the movie. A lot.
In liking it as much as I do, I’m in the minority with some people I know who love comic book-related movies. But my opinion is the only opinion that matters to the world…
I went early, on a mid-weekday afternoon, to a theater that is the least-attended theater in town. The result? I was the only person in the entire large theater. I had the perfect seat: perfect center, perfect row, and no distractions from narcissistic teens and narcissistic third-generation welfare adults. In other words, the movie was there Just. For. Me.
I grew up not being a Marvel comics fan… but an ultimate Marvel comics fan. By the time I was 14, I had the original issues of Spider-Man #1, Fantastic Four #1, Daredevil #1, and about 3,000 other issues, many of which were extremely rare also.
Just so you know I grew up normal! That means, when I found out that girls existed in late junior high/early high school, I completely overnight lost interest in comic books. But the fact I was such a fan early means they stay in a special place in my heart and I love comic book movies, especially those based on Marvel Comics.
Overall, I left the movie high on it. I was thrilled with what I saw.
I always dislike the standard superhero movie formula where the movie spends half its time on the villains.
Movies such as Spider-Man 1 (I never cared for the first three Spider-Man movies as much as I could have because of the incredibly bad selection of Toby McGuire as Peter Parker) and the Batman/Dark Knight movies, especially DK 2 and 3, spend way too much time developing the villains.
Do you remember those 1970s shows where you’d watch every second of each hour of those incredibly boring shows like Kung Fu and The Incredible Hulk and you’d as a kid watch every bad second so you didn’t miss the two obligatory action scenes where the hero would make mincemeat out of the bad guys? We still sort of have that hero-doesn’t-appear-much dynamic in modern superhero movies because the producers consider the villains far more interesting than the heroes.
Not me.
Iron Man 3 turned that formula upside down. It is virtually all Tony Stark and Iron Man. The hero is the movie.
That to me makes Iron Man 3 one of the most satisfying movies in superhero movie history.
The enemy and the enemy’s technology – the threats promised and delivered by the enemy – were over-the-top, not explained well. You sort of have to take it on faith that Tony Stark somehow instantly understood the enemy’s technology and could work to overcome it as the movie progressed.
I prefer a more believable explanation of both the heroes as well as the enemies. The bad guys were so powerful and their self-reconstructive powers were too automatic, except at the end when they weren’t.
Note: I am guessing, or at least hoping, that the extended Director’s Cut, when released on DVD, will fill in some of these gaps. Movies such as the superb Daredevil movie had such gaps that the Director’s Cut explained completely. The studios and their cutting-room floor decisions are almost never to help a story.
Tony’s depression…
We love a superhero who jokes and stays positive. Yet, we need some darkness also. Superman just gets way too simple which is why his sales waxed and waned over the years. Only when his stories got dark, once when he actually died, did sales pick up. A hero who is too good is boring.
But a hero who is too dark is too depressing to be a hero.
In the comics are long runs where Tony Stark had severe drinking problems. This was an important part of the Iron Man legacy and development. This movie didn’t mention alcoholism, although Iron Man 2 did began to allude to it and show a drunk Tony Stark. Iron Man 3 used an equally-dark problem of “depression” throughout. Tony had his own inner-demons to fight as well as the real-world enemies.
I didn’t think this was over-done as it could have easily been. I didn’t think it was done all that well either but to ignore Tony’s inner problems by the third movie would not be being faithful to the original source. We purists want faithfulness to the original source material always.
So it was time to put more of this in an Iron Man movie and they did it here. Yet, in the battle scenes, he still kept that old Tony Stark charm and humor. Some fans don’t care for all the witticisms as he battles in this movie but anybody who read the Stan Lee-written runs of almost every Marvel comic in the 1960s and 1970s will know, humor during bad battles is the foundation of a traditional Marvel hero and I always like seeing it.
Many of my friends who get into the comic book genre love to update their Top Ten Superhero Movies or Top Ten Comic Book Movies lists every time a new one comes out.
I tend to stay away from doing that. First of all, I have a life. But…
Also I have a tendency to count only Silver Age comics (from the 1960s to the late 1970s) as true “comic book” movies. That isn’t valid but it’s what I do because that’s when I read them as a kid and teen. So to put The Watchmen in your Top Ten Comic Movies of All Time list doesn’t seem right to me, even though you are correct in doing it and I understand. I’m narrow in my time frame for what counts in such Top Ten Comic Book Movie lists. (And I am a huge fan of The Watchmen movie.)
Iron Man 3 would be in my top three or two favorite comic book movies ever if I were to break my rule and create such a list. It was a little disjointed at times but not too much so. I still didn’t like the villains having so much unexplained technology as I state above in The Ugly section but it wasn’t a deal-breaker at all for me.
Not one homo or homo-related innuendo was present. It’s always so refreshing – and rare – to see two hours of homo-free movie fare out of Hollywood.
I heard one curse that was strong. There may have been more but only one hit my radar. It was said by a bad guy.
<Spoiler Alert: if you haven’t seen the movie, don’t read this.>
The villain turns out not to be the villain.
Iron Man’s biggest enemy throughout the comics was The Mandarin, an Asian enemy that was always Iron Man’s arch enemy and still is.
I wasn’t a huge Iron Man fan growing up – just a fairly big fan – but the issues I always hated were the ones with The Mandarin.
This overuse of Asian villains is primarily why the old Shadow pulp stories from the 1930’s and 1940’s were so less entertaining than Doc Savage. Asian enemies for some reason just don’t cut it for me. Much of my distaste has to do with all the “intriguing, exotic, mystical Orient” stuff with all is faux-spiritual mysticism… it just bores me.
So… in Iron Man 3, The Mandarin is the lead villain, the guy running the show… <Spoiler Alert is really about to happen!>
…
But it turns out he’s a patsy. It’s not The Mandarin whose calling the shots. The Mandarin is really just a guy used as a pawn for publicity. Another guy is behind the scenes being the real villain.
For me, that meant that the third act would not be Iron Man in Asia battling it out with mystical Oriental magic along and The Mandarin’s oriental mystic henchman. I was thrilled he wasn’t really the villain.
It’s a surprising turn. Why would Marvel make the number one, most important Iron Man villain in history turn out to be phony and not actually a real villain? It is akin to saying there really never was a Doctor Octopus who fought Spider-Man or there never was a Joker who fought Batman.
I have a suspicion that The Mandarin was the one behind the scenes and that the patsy was actually The Mandarin being coy. I suspect The Mandarin will come back huge in a future Iron Man movie. That’s just a guess, I’m no prophet.
The fact that the Number One Opening Weekend Box Office totals of all time are Marvel movies: The Avengers and Iron Man 3, is like a gift to me from God given how important as these stories were to my early life. In my wildest boyhood dreams, never would I think I’d be seeing all my heroes, even the second-tier ones such as Thor and Black Widow, on the big screen done well.
If you haven’t seen Iron Man 3, you should. And as with all Marvel movies, you need to wait until the credits end before leaving your seat. There are almost always extra gifts after the final credits roll in these movies.
Iron Man 1 was a better overall movie. But as I alluded to earlier, you really can’t rank “superhero” or “comic book” movies. They are each good and bad for so many different reasons. Comparing one to another just isn’t possible.
Many will unfairly compare Iron Man 3 to Iron Man 1 in the same way they compare X-Men 3 unfairly to X-Men 1. “Too over-the-top, too many Iron Men robots show up, too hectic of fight scenes,” and so forth.
But what those critics don’t realize is every 25 or so issues of any comic book there was a massive, huge, chaotic storyline where many heroes had to get help from others to battle massive, huge, chaotic enemies. The purists need to recall their fondness for these big stories.
Iron Man 3 is big and chaotic, Iron Man 1 was a perfect story and perfectly executed. Both are good for different reasons.
Iron Man 3 is better than Iron Man 2 for all reasons by the way (and I enjoyed 2.)
If you haven’t seen Iron Man 3, go see it. And again, sit there past the final credits.
So –
I was thinking back on a few of my life events recently. I think the odds of me ever being in a store that is robbed are extremely low! Wow. Great, no reason to fear that.
Also… and I realize very few of you can say this but I’m one of the fortunate few! – The chance that I will ever live in a house that an airplane crashes into are basically zero.
Maybe I’ll cancel my life insurance!
A few weeks ago I was in a T-Mobile store. It is a small one, sort of like a tiny mobile home kiosk store in the parking lot of a strip mall. A guy walked in with big cutters, snipped the security cable of their most expensive phone on display (the HTC One S which I lust after far more than I should), grabbed it, and then ran out of the store with the clerks going, “uh… hey… HEY… WAIT A SECOND!!!” but a lot of good that did.
(Fortunately, the guy didn’t have, or at least he didn’t use a gun; therefore, I didn’t have to either.)
To the clerk’s credit, of course one never expects that sort of thing really. We always try to be prepared, but there is always that, “Oh, it’s a joke,” or “I’m not really seeing this” moment of hesitation where you expect some prank show to barge in the door with cameras clapping and telling all of us how many thousands of dollars we’ll each receive if we sign waivers that allow them put the whole show on TV.
No cameras came. Ashton Kutcher didn’t burst in lifting us off our feet and mocking us for how well he punk’d us. So after that 2-second hesitation and shock, we all realized exactly what had happened.
So, naturally, I run after him. As I exit the store the clerk yells at me, “No, don’t go after him!” which I ignore. I grudgingly admit, however, that his advice was good.
But I wasn’t planning to tackle the thief, that’s for sure. I just wanted to see what car he jumped in, or see the direction he was going. Amazingly, he was fast as a cheetah. I saw just a glimpse of his back as he turned a corner at the far end of the strip center. There was no way to follow this athlete by foot and if I jumped in my truck, he surely would already be hidden in the neighborhood or away in a car he had waiting.
The reason I tell this story is it’s similar to what happened about 15 years ago when Jayne and I were eating dinner at an Italian restaurant in Tulsa. It is called Ti Amo’s.
(This was before muslims bought the formerly-Italian restaurant. We haven’t been back.)
We were sitting right next to the bar area. It was not really an open bar, but they were set up to have it open. As it was, it was where the servers waitresses would prepare the tea, coffee, water, and I suppose alcohol if someone eating ordered it.
Yea, I’ll get back to the story, but while I’m on the subject:
Why is it that perfectly good terms, used for decades without a glitch, like waitress, mailman, and stewardess are considered curse words these days?
I refuse to say server, postal carrier, or (ugh!) flight attendant! If anything, Waitress in the Sky is the best term for a lady who serves food and beverages on an airplane.
And speaking of Waitresses in the Sky, did you know that several years ago they were all required to be single? What a fantastic job for a single girl! She could work a couple of years seeing the world, meet a handsome business passenger and fall in love, he marries her and rescues her from the workforce, and she then gets to stay home and be a homemaker and his help meet. What a great concept!
But the left, see, the left despises women. They want to see women fail at every turn which is why they have rigged the world to be so anti-women. The left screams that women should be just like men. Because only then, according to the left, can women be fulfilled.
Which of course is the opposite of reality. But destruction is the way of the left, not productivity. Not the incredibly high female esteem built by correct and proper roles. The left desires most: the destruction of the lady.
Yea, I’ll get back to my story. But first another word from your host.
As with virtually all “Italian restaurants” in America, this was an American restaurant that served pasta. So I want to be clear that I always use the term “Italian restaurant” loosely when discussing places to eat in the USA.
Jayne and I have spent a grand total of years in Italy over our long, intensive, incredible nine trips there, and we have searched high and low all across the United States searching for a true Italian restaurant. One is in San Francisco, The Steps of Rome, and one is in Boston. Actually, it’s just a coffee bar in Boston, Bar di Sport.
And given a normalized standard deviation, those two are the only ones in America.
So statistically, and statistics comprise the focus of this whole article, the chance that an American restaurant serves authentic Italian food is zero. That is a mathematical certainty.
That is statistics.
Or, as they often say here in Oklahoma, that is satistics.
So, you thought I’d forgotten where I was, right?
To repeat so you can finally catch up (sometimes you can really lag behind when I’m talking to you):
We were sitting right next to the bar area. It was not really an open bar, but they were set up to have it open. As it was, it was where the waitresses would prepare the tea, coffee, water, and I suppose alcohol if someone eating ordered it.
Also, the cash register was there at this bar area where the waitresses rang up the checks and such.
We were eating, minding our own business, when we heard a somewhat surpised, “What’s going on???” from the waitress behind the bar. We turned and a big guy was leaning over reaching into the cash register she had opened and grabbed a wad of bills from the register and then bolted out of the place. This all happened two feet from my chair.
As he races out the door, of course we all go through that two-second phase of, “That couldn’t be a robbery so I wonder what’s going on?” before we realized it was a robbery.
Looking back, I wish I’d tripped the guy but there are a few reasons why I didn’t:
So my point of all this is this: I’ve now been in two places where a live, active robbery took place right next to me.
Sure, as the government schools graduate more and more thugs who cannot read their own diplomas, robberies certainly increase over time. But still, I figure the chance of being somewhere that is going to be robbed is slim. I figure that for me, I am fortunate, because the chance to be somewhere a third time where an active, live robbery takes place is virtually zero.
I’ve done my time, I can now rest easy. For those of you who haven’t twice been in places that were robbed, I’m sure glad I’m not you!
In the first house I remember, the one my family lived in for most of the first dozen or so years of my life, before we moved there a plane had crashed into the corner of the house!
Isn’t that amazing? Right in the middle of town. It was a small prop airplane of some kind. And that whole corner had been taken out by the plane. They got it all cleaned up, and rebuilt the house.
Keep in mind, this was back before people learned if they don’t work hard the government will take care of them so the work was done right. It was difficult to see the seams and the home did seem structurally fine. I’ve driven by there lots of times since and it’s still standing just firm after all these years.
But my point… and you who are INTJ’s have probably figured out where I’m headed… my point is I think for the rest of my life I can live in any home I want to live in, even those 3 feet off a major airport runway if I so choose, and the odds of an airplane crashing into my house are astronomically low.
Note: Full disclosure. For those mathematicians out there, yea, I do understand numbers and odds and statistics. I realize that past occurrences do not change current odds of an event happening. But I also know that probably hardly any home in the history of aviation has ever been crashed into twice.
(That is, if you don’t count Tony Stark’s home/headquarters or Professor Xavier’s mansion.
But there are some homes, especially if you count all the homes around the world, that have had planes fly into them once. As mine was. But most never have had that happen. And the odds of it ever happening twice are slimmer than a Chocolate-Covered Cheesecake’s chance of survival on a plate in front of Oprah Winfrey.
So I figure, it’s all good for me, myself, and I.
Actually, I have no conclusion.
You get the point.
Maybe I should go to Vegas?
(For those Christians reading this who don’t believe in luck, notice I never used that word anywhere in this article. I have it on Good authority that Christians should believe in chance however. I’ll leave the reference to that as an exercise to the reader.)
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