summercomfort (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summercomfort) wrote2013-05-12 09:00 am
summercomfort) wrote2013-05-12 09:00 am
Iron Man 3
Watched Iron Man 3 yesterday with philena !
At first I wasn't sure if I wanted to go, since the trailer had this super-racist Mandarin villain in it, but then I looked up some spoilers, and suffice to say, the movie actually kind of subverts that? So I went and watched it.
I really liked Tony Stark's overall story arc! He's clearly dealing with a lot of PTSD issues from the events of the Avengers movie -- having anxiety attacks, insomnia, constantly surrounding himself with his suits and obsessively upgrading them because that's the only way he feels able to protect others and himself, etc etc.
There were also some really cool fight scenes! Cool innovative suits, and great new ways of using the suits.
The villain's special fighty abilities are also really cool. The basic idea is that the villains are injected with this serum or whatever that allows them to (a) regenerate any lost/wounded body part, a la Wolverine, except even more, like limb regrowth, and (b) this regeneration process involves... heat? So they can choose to heat up their body and use that aspect as a weapon, too. It's a really good counter to Iron Man, b/c it's all biological versus machine, and the heat melts the steel, etc.
That said, I found myself really wishing the villains' motivations were better developed. This wasn't a big issue during the movie, since I was sufficiently distracted/placated with cool fight scenes, witty repartee, and well-paced plot/character development re: Tony Stark. But after I got home and thought more about it, I feel like there's really a missed opportunity with the villain. Or maybe the villain suffers from the very common comic-book villain problem of "Why the heck do his minions work for him?" It's like, okay, fine, I can buy the fact that you're a crazy psychopath, but why is your team of unkillable soldiers equally ruthless?
In this case, there is something interesting going on with the technology that I wish they explored more. Basically, this serum or whatever, can regrow parts of your body, but you have to "regulate" it -- if you don't, you overheat and explode. The people injected with this are soldiers who have lost a limb in the war, and it seems that being stressed/anxious makes you more likely to explode. So I think it might have been cool to play up the PTSD aspects of these soldiers (especially since Tony Stark is also dealing with his own version of it) -- that in order to "regulate" their body temp and not explode, they basically have to close off the anxiety/fear/love part of themselves. It would then explain why these soldiers were all kinda-crazy minions who were helping the villain kill the president. (Otherwise, wouldn't these soldiers say "hey, killing the president isn't what I signed up for..."?) Plus I think it can make good commentary on the whole military-industrial-complex thing that Iron Man loves commenting on...
In addition, I think it would have been a cool twist to the final boss fight. The villain is vengeful psychopath who has full control of his regeneration/heat powers -- wouldn't it have been interesting if, instead of physically killing him with this weird Pepper moment, that Tony/Pepper did or said something that caused a "deregulation" moment?
Anyway, I have a few more minor logic gripes with the movie (Mark 42 is specifically coded to Tony's body, and required multiple injections into Tony's body to set this up -- and yet it latched onto Pepper and Killian no problem? Tony is bad at sneaking onto a giant oil tanker, but is remarkably proficient in sneaking into a guarded mansion in Florida? Pepper magically knows kung fu? If Tony fixed the regeneration formula so that people won't explode anymore, why shouldn't that tech be much more widely available?), but what kept me up last night was thinking about all the missed villain minion justification opportunities.
philena !At first I wasn't sure if I wanted to go, since the trailer had this super-racist Mandarin villain in it, but then I looked up some spoilers, and suffice to say, the movie actually kind of subverts that? So I went and watched it.
I really liked Tony Stark's overall story arc! He's clearly dealing with a lot of PTSD issues from the events of the Avengers movie -- having anxiety attacks, insomnia, constantly surrounding himself with his suits and obsessively upgrading them because that's the only way he feels able to protect others and himself, etc etc.
There were also some really cool fight scenes! Cool innovative suits, and great new ways of using the suits.
The villain's special fighty abilities are also really cool. The basic idea is that the villains are injected with this serum or whatever that allows them to (a) regenerate any lost/wounded body part, a la Wolverine, except even more, like limb regrowth, and (b) this regeneration process involves... heat? So they can choose to heat up their body and use that aspect as a weapon, too. It's a really good counter to Iron Man, b/c it's all biological versus machine, and the heat melts the steel, etc.
That said, I found myself really wishing the villains' motivations were better developed. This wasn't a big issue during the movie, since I was sufficiently distracted/placated with cool fight scenes, witty repartee, and well-paced plot/character development re: Tony Stark. But after I got home and thought more about it, I feel like there's really a missed opportunity with the villain. Or maybe the villain suffers from the very common comic-book villain problem of "Why the heck do his minions work for him?" It's like, okay, fine, I can buy the fact that you're a crazy psychopath, but why is your team of unkillable soldiers equally ruthless?
In this case, there is something interesting going on with the technology that I wish they explored more. Basically, this serum or whatever, can regrow parts of your body, but you have to "regulate" it -- if you don't, you overheat and explode. The people injected with this are soldiers who have lost a limb in the war, and it seems that being stressed/anxious makes you more likely to explode. So I think it might have been cool to play up the PTSD aspects of these soldiers (especially since Tony Stark is also dealing with his own version of it) -- that in order to "regulate" their body temp and not explode, they basically have to close off the anxiety/fear/love part of themselves. It would then explain why these soldiers were all kinda-crazy minions who were helping the villain kill the president. (Otherwise, wouldn't these soldiers say "hey, killing the president isn't what I signed up for..."?) Plus I think it can make good commentary on the whole military-industrial-complex thing that Iron Man loves commenting on...
In addition, I think it would have been a cool twist to the final boss fight. The villain is vengeful psychopath who has full control of his regeneration/heat powers -- wouldn't it have been interesting if, instead of physically killing him with this weird Pepper moment, that Tony/Pepper did or said something that caused a "deregulation" moment?
Anyway, I have a few more minor logic gripes with the movie (Mark 42 is specifically coded to Tony's body, and required multiple injections into Tony's body to set this up -- and yet it latched onto Pepper and Killian no problem? Tony is bad at sneaking onto a giant oil tanker, but is remarkably proficient in sneaking into a guarded mansion in Florida? Pepper magically knows kung fu? If Tony fixed the regeneration formula so that people won't explode anymore, why shouldn't that tech be much more widely available?), but what kept me up last night was thinking about all the missed villain minion justification opportunities.