WARNING: SUPER LONG POST AHOY
You guys are all crazy. This movie is awesome, and the plot makes perfect sense.
Dave wrote:What a fucking mess.
I alluded to some issues in the chat box - those primarily being an incomprehensible script, and Pepper suddenly becoming a killer-ninja fire beast.
Additionally, it wraps up with (and I kid you not), "I fixed everything" as a voice-over, and vague shots of tony having the circle glowing thing removed from his chest.
Don't understand your problem with Pepper's transformation, but we'll get to that later. The voiceover at the end didn't bother me. You'd rather an extra 20 minutes of sciency bullshit showing how he fixed Pepper? He did it. The end. The movie's over.
Maggot1300 wrote:trying to write coherantly isn't my strong point, hence why i dont post much on here or any forum. there is too much to list for me but i didnt get out of the cinema before it annoyed me. there are characters who are introduced to give a funny slap stick punch line and go nowhere, a kid missing his dad to give it some emotional grounding as there isnt any really in the main story who does nothing other thanhelp out by escaping from a situation that was only causedy him being there,, it feels like a contrivance as the whole plot serves no puropose oter than an excuse for a feel good clip in the afformentioned everything's fine montage at the end.
The main protagonist and his minions are able to tear dozens of iron man suits apart with their bare hands and survive explosions and occasionally being blown up and regrowing half their heads (depending on whats needed sometimes they survive a 3000 degree explosion and others dies when a sparky microwave ignites a bit of gas after walking through an inferno) not to mention suddenly Guy can breath fire for one scene that never comes back. All this and suddenly super fire ninja pepper kicks his ass and wins.
Im not great at articulating why i really, dislike this film, its disjointed, setups arent paid off some payoffs have no setup and never occur again, suddenly tony has an army of ai iron man suits that are all fully functioning when tony jumps into them and fully autonomus as well as seemingly made of aluminium foil (bad guys tear them apart with their bare hands cause they're hot i guess) and the kit even breaks off a finger from one of the suits...
rant over, there is plenty more that i dont like but as mentioned man times on theis site your milage may vary, did not work for me at all and the fact it had glimmers of great lines or the odd entertaining scene made the fact it was so bad much worse. im done, bloody hate typing but have soo many more prblems with this film.....
I'll try and take this point by point.
Not sure what characters you're referring to about the characters only showing up to be slapstick. Certain Extremis soldiers show up only to get killed, but that's par for the course in action movies, especially the 90s movies that this was so clearly an homage to. The kid missing his dad was an emotional red herring. The punchline of that sequence is that Tony totally blows him off, and they don't have the cheesy sentimental relationship that happens all the time in movies like this. And the whole Tennessee sequence served a MAJOR function in the plot, so not sure what you're going on about there. It's where he figured out the truth about Extremis. Also not sure what you mean by "escaping a situation that was only caused by him being there." Yes, the villains followed him there and he escaped. That makes sense. You could say the same thing about literally any other scene in the movie.
The Extremis henchmen can maybe be a little hard to buy, but I had no problem with them. That one woman wasn't killed by the microwave explosion. She was killed by landing on some power lines and getting electrocuted. And so what if Guy can breathe fire? You're okay with him melting a metal suit with his bare hands, but fire-breathing is too unrealistic? Please. And I loved Pepper saving Tony at the end. It calls back to her covering him during the attack on his mansion. It gives their relationship a dynamic that no superhero movie (save The Incredibles) has had before.
Loved the ending, too. The suits were being controlled by JARVIS, but only in the simplest way possible. They were told to target the Extremis heat signature, that's it. They weren't fully-functioning AIs. That's why they accidentally targeted Pepper. Tony jumping in and out of suits was fun too. And I'd rather the suits be made of aluminum foil than indestructible, because when you've got that many suits already, you can very easily make things too easy for the hero. The kid breaking a finger off the suit was because the suit had been heavily damaged already.
Maggot1300 wrote:As a skydiver, yep the falling scene was fun to watch. not remotely feasable but well captured (good luck talking to anyone in freefall and i won't bother asking how the "i'll electrify your arm so you cant let go" bit worked). again its the fact it has good moments that make me more dissapointed with the overall film. i dont expect any type of reality from an iron man film but i do want some level of consistency with the two other films and the avengers since its mentioned constantly throuought IM3. we have had previously a fight between iron man and Thor which was hard fought though Thor clearly had the upper hand being a literal god and all. now we have Guy Pearce (go aussie) and his minions who can shred the iron man suit with no effort which is something the god of thunder wasn't able to do and why, because they are hot??. If it was a stand alone film no problem but it's not, it has 3 films worth of hstory behind it and contradicts a hell of a lot of what came before it.
Tony having the panic attacs because of the new york thing was a nice touch but nothing comes of it, it allows him to have a moment with an inconsequential character (the kid) who tells him to build something then he's fine the rest of the film. I dont care about the random kid he meets, he does nothing to progress the story, neither does ben kingsly but at least the argument there can be made that he's the macguffin of the film.
As I mentioned before, the skydiving scene makes perfect sense as far as the arm-electrifying goes. Extremis, yeah, is a little ridiculous, but Killian is a great bad guy for Tony. He's everything that the Iron Man 2 villains failed to be. He's the darkside version of Tony, but he's also a physical match for him. He's a mutant super-soldier with fire powers. Thor's a big guy with a hammer, who was throwing Tony around and not attempting to cut him in half because he's a good guy.
TechNoir wrote:I saw it and the overall feeling was "meh". I felt almost exactly like I felt leaving Oblivion. Not a waste of 2 hours, but I've already forgotten it and I don't really think I'll ever watch it again. Maybe it's just the fact that I am not a comic book reader, and after 3 movies of Iron Man destroying things the novelty has worn off.
But also I hate it when consistency is disregarded just to serve the plot. In the first movie the Iron Man suit is almost indestructible. And in this one the suits are made of cardboard. It takes the movie from "Oh yeah, Stark is in the suit, now to wreck some shit" to "Being in a suit means he can fly, no other advantages".
The main villains are, atleast in my mind, the biggest "oh really?"-moment I've had in a while. Maybe I cannot completely disconnect reality when watching live-action movies, even if they are based on comic books where science and logic sometimes go out the window, but Guy Pearce repeatedly heats himself up to 3000 degrees, enough to melt steel, and yet his pants stay on. And his tattoo on his chest somehow stays intact aswell? Also the justification for being able to heat himself up to 3000 degrees is "something-something-DNA-upgrade". F--- you.
And yeah, the end is rushed, and the "my girlfriend was a firebreathing DNA-enhanced mega-demon for a while, but I fixed her, it's what I do" moment was also incomprehensibly lazy.
Also Tony's anxiety attacks have no bearing on anything. 2-3 times he freaks out a little but it seems to be there literally just to give him some kind of dimension. In the 1st film he became Iron Man, big arc. 2nd one he and his relationship with his father was the focus. Here his girlfriend gets kidnapped and he has anxiety attacks that are used for comedic effect.
I don't know, I think I'm more or less done with these types of movies overall. It seems you need to read the comics or additional material to get a deeper connection with the characters. Watching the movies, after the origins story and the occasional gem of character study and plot structure (Dark Knight, Avengers), there isn't much more to gather from them. Things blow up in slow motion. Seen it.
If you can't maintain suspension of disbelief because Killian keeps his pants on, you must have hated The Avengers with that Hulk character. And if you hated the "DNA upgrade," the X-Men must be your least favorite series, right? None of this is out of the ordinary for a comic book movie, even movies in this very franchise! Again, the ending wasn't lazy. Maybe it was rushed, but I'd rather that then a lengthy sequence explaining how he fixed Pepper, which for some reason you guys seem to want.
Tony's anxiety attacks were fascinating, and a fantastic addition to the movie. It's a superhero sequel where the hero has PTSD from the final battle of the last movie. That's brilliant. And to say that they had no bearing on anything? Did we watch the same movie? Tony's entire character arc was fueled by them. He's afraid to be outside of his suit. He's become too dependent on his suit. He has a psychological obsession with the suits. But by the end of the movie, he realizes that he doesn't need the suit, because he's the real hero. The suit is just a tool. That's the whole point of him jumping in and out of them in the finale. Iron Man is in the title, but Tony Stark is the superhero.
Dave wrote:Can I just point out that Tony stark handily encountering a television truck, then using said television truck to hacks government satellite (after checking his connection on speedtest.net), which then served him shocking video exposition, fucking sucked.
Shittiest way to deliver that information, ever. That entire sequence felt like it was written so Stark could use that fucking website in the film.
Stark is in a television van with a dish on the roof. What the ever loving fuck is a website that checks your connection speed going to do? Measure your point-to-point connection to a military satellite, using a man in the middle attack?!
Product placement is fine when it works with the flow of the script, but that website isn't something you use on the way from point A to B (like eating a burger in a car, the car itself, or a telephone). It's a product you need to fabricate a reason to use.
I stipulate the entire sequence about the TV truck / mil sat / handy plot-essential video, was the result of a paid advertisement by speedtest.net.
Don't get why people have been complaining about this. The logo of that website was on screen for literally a half a second. It's not like the sequence was all about Tony being saved by SPEEDTEST.NET, which he loudly thanked for being such a helpful website. For the average audience member, it might as well have been one of Tony's gadgets. The connection is too slow. Take that half-second of a logo out, and you probably wouldn't be complaining about the scene. The entire sequence was for a few funny moments with Tony's biggest fan.
Now, that Verizon FIOS logo at the end was fucking horseshit. I'll give you that one. The camera lingered lovingly on that shiny logo for far too long.
Holden wrote:Why the hell doesn't Mk42 run off of the near-endless power source built into his goddamn chest? The car battery thing drove me nuts.
Because it needs to fly to him at a moment's notice, so it has to run off its own power source. And the entire finale is about all the suits running of their own individual power supply.
So, to sum up, this movie was great. The villain's plans are a little muddled, but I'm willing to forgive it because the writing is so great and the action is so much fun. You guys can quibble about tiny plot details, but none of the things you guys mentioned were actual issues. They all had explanations, and not ones I pulled out of my ass. Explanations in the movie. Maybe it doesn't take itself as deadly seriously as The Dark Knight, but so fucking what? It pulls of the "slow-mo explosions" genre with an addition of interesting character work. I didn't go in asking for anything more, and after The Avengers (which did the same thing) I don't understand how anyone else could. Sorry if this came off as shitty or condescending, because it's not intended. I just disagree strongly with your issues with this film. I'm sure that the film does have problems to discuss, but they haven't been mentioned in this thread yet.
Next time, I guess.
