Marvel Movie Marathon: Iron Man 3: meeeeeeeeeeeeh.
This is the first of the MCU films I’ve only seen once, out of the 18, and it’s because my original feeling on the film, which apparently matches my rewatch feeling, was, “Meeeeeeeeeh.”
There were many things I liked. I thought dealing with Tony’s PTS was great and important. I liked that a lot. I loved Ben Kingsley. I LOVED SEEING PEPPER IN THE IRON SUIT AND I STILL WANT A RESCUE MOVIE JFC MARVEL JUST SUIT UP AND TAKE MY GODDAMN MONEY ALREADY altho I did notice literally everybody post-Tony who puts on an iron suit seems to instinctively know how to use it (Stane, Rhody, Guy Pearce whose character definitely had a name besides “creepy greasy haired dude”)…except Pepper. Pepper, who lives with Tony, does not know how to use the suit. Which sucks. But let’s put that aside for the other things I didn’t like.
God, I hated the kid. I hated the kid so much. Not the kid himself, he was fine, although he would have been 100% cooler and more agreeable to me if he had been a she which I thought he was in the first moments he was introduced, but the child’s presence at all just…I hated it. I mean, I can see the argument that the kid’s incessant questions forced Tony to deal with his trauma in a way no adult around him would, but I. hated. the kid. I felt like the kid was a cheap trick to earn audience sympathy and bleh bleh bleh cloy ugh agh i hate it. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate. Hate hate hate.
I also haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated that apparently Tony somehow harnessed the Extremis…stuff…at the end to not only cure Pepper but also himself (I’m not sure it’s *said* in the film, but the implication is very, very strong, that that’s what’s happened), which means that he’s essentially created a universal panacea and…nothing is ever done with that. I hate that a lot. Because it’s big and important (and I mentioned this on Twitter a couple nights ago when a discussion of IM3 crossed my timeline seconds after we’d finished watching it, and, unbeknownst to myself, I was responding to someone Far More Famous than I am, and he replied to me (with “comic book science!” which is totally legit in terms of why they do what they do but is still ANNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOYING) and anyway for a while my mentions totally blew up and I was kinda O.O, it was funny :) and *mostly* the MCU is very good at following through on things, so dropping that like a hot potato just got right up my nose. She said, mixing metaphors in an actively painful fashion.
Also, this time I noticed there was a blonde woman reporter asking Tony questions and it *wasn’t* Christine Everheart, which makes me really sad, because she totally deserved to be in the third movie.
My favourite moment in the whole movie was, and remains, “Oh my god. That was really violent!” when Pepper went all Extremis Superhero on everybody’s asses, because I thought, “Wow. That was really violent for Pepper!” and I was really grateful and amused that the character recognized it too. :)
But yeah, no. I wanted so much more for Pepper. I want a Rescue movie, simple as that. Give me an all-female Avengers line-up. Gimme Rescue and Widow and Shulkie and Wanda and Wasp and I will be *here* for it, because…I want more, man. Me and goddamn Ariel.
Really, though, out of the…6? Yeah, 6. Out of the 6 MCU movies we’ve watched so far, IM3 is far and away my least favourite.
But that’s okay, because we’ve got Thor: Dark World coming up next… o.O