The Razors Edge: Regarding Iron Man 3

How does a guy like Tony Stark, who thinks he knows better than anyone else, who can explain the inexplicable, and to whom the potential for defeat isn't even a possibility confront the idea of aliens with destructive power dwarfing anything he could ever imagine and narrowly escaping his own untimely demise in the heat of battle? Not well.

The big challenge for Iron Man 3 was narrowing the scope back down to individual characters after the superhero jam session that was the previous year's The Avengers. As it's the first solo superhero movie to gross over $1 billion at the box office, I would assume they succeeded but it's a movie that I feel like a lot of people forget exists which is kind of sad because I think it's leaps and bounds better than, say, Iron Man 2 or Thor. It just kind of completely whiffs on the third act after a spectacular opening and decent character study into Tony as he finds himself laid particularly low.

When we first see Tony (not counting the prologue's flashback to 1999), he is suffering from a form of PTSD that sees the normally snarkily confident tech genius suffer from severe anxiety attacks leaving him breathless and unable to sleep; Tony remarks that he's been awake for 72 hours straight in the opener. Since The Avengers, he's constantly been holed up in his workshop developing an armor that can be with him at all times; the equivalent of the loaded gun always under his pillow is the 42 suits of armor he keeps in his Malibu subbasement. Plain and simple, Tony Stark has seen some shit.

But this time Tony is going to see his worst fears realized: He's quickly left alone, Pepper is kidnapped by new enemy Aldrich Killian, Happy Hogan rendered comatose by a suicide bomber (PTSD and suicide bombers in a Disney flick? Check out the big brassy ones on writer/director Shane Black!), his mansion in ruins, and left to his literal own devices. That was all a deliberate move to prove Tony is Iron Man whether he wears that suit or not and he's doing it all while facing foes that internalized tech to each become living, [fire]breathing weapons of mass destruction. Obadiah Stane was Tony Stark's Ghost of Christmas Present, Ivan Vanko a Ghost of Christmas Past. Aldrich Killian/The Mandarin and his bleeding edge tech is the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come all threatening to render the Iron Man obsolete.

The big controversial thing among the fans was turning the Mandarin into a front for Killian's true criminal operation with booze-swilling Ben Kingsley as its face. I never really had a problem with that because the comic book Mandarin is one of those old racist Asian caricatures in the vein of Fu Manchu (who is also a Marvel character?) or the old Wonder Woman villain Egg Fu.

No, I'm not making any of this up.

The idea behind The Mandarin is fascinating though if only he wasn't usually drawn as a Mortal Kombat villain. And the idea of a superhero facing PTSD while trying to prove himself against a villain that uses a media front for corporate shenanigans is wonderfully postmodern. But it has subsequently leaked that studio execs above Black and producer Kevin Feige were worried about elements of the film. Rebecca Hall's Maya Hansen was originally a much more villainous character to heighten the impact of her betrayal rather than just randomly shooting her soon after her turn but this was nixed as they felt female characters don't translate to good toy sales (see the absolute lack of Black Widow merchandising from The Avengers to corroborate this point). The finale feels rushed and dialed in with Tony's suits doing the majority of the heavy lifting while Guy Pearce declaring himself to be the true Mandarin falls flat and anticlimactic. Tony's resolution with his trauma-induced anxiety issues are easily resolved to the point where it feels like a disservice to anyone with actual anxiety issues; probably from an edict to make it more family-friendly.

But damn do those first two acts move along at a great clip.

Perhaps the most curious thing about Iron Man 3 is that it was co-financed by a Chinese production company perhaps further explaining the radical shift in The Mandarin. Apparently, as part of the financing deal, there is a Chinese exclusive version where Iron Man promotes an energy drink and parties with Chinese schoolchildren. No, I haven't seen it.

But I'm not making it up either.

Iron Man 3 is still a pretty entertaining film and an interesting glimpse at what could have been and foreshadows Marvel Studios breaking free from its original parent company Marvel Entertainment to become its own Disney subsidiary with the internal strife behind the scenes starting to visibly affect the final product (You could argue it was evident with Iron Man 2's handling of Tony's alcoholism which was then conveniently brushed under the rug). In the meantime, what we get is perhaps the first postmodern MCU film and proof that the franchise had legs even as their various properties went solo for the next several years again.