Iron Meh

First, I want to say: library day was a big success. I ended up reading the first three Manga volumes of Naruto. (I'm totally hooked!) Mason read the newest "janitor" book as well as one called JINX, which he'd had on hold. It was kind of cool to pick out books, check them out, read them while sitting there, and return them before we left for the day. We also had money on a Noodles & Co. gift card we got for Christmas, so we had a free lunch (and they say there's no such thing!)

In the middle of the day I got a text from my Marvel Movie buddy seanmmurphy . He's been wicked busy, so he finally had some time to go see Iron Man 3 and did I want to go? Of course I did!

A lot has been said about this movie. I read Charlie Jane Anders' review in io9 and so I was expecting big things. Entertainment Weekly also gave it a A-.

I... was less impressed. As I've said on Facebook, I was never a huge Iron Man reader back in the day, so my comic book canon fu is low when it comes to villans and story lines in the Iron Man title. ("The Wolverine" is going to be a tougher sell for me because Silver Samurai and the whole Japan storyline was a favorite of both Shawn and mine back in the day.) But what I'm saying is, my problems with Iron Man 3 had nothing to do with any kind of canon fail... at least not in a nit-picky kind of way. But it also meant that the SPECTACLE of the suits worked for me, but only so far...

I will say in what I hope is a spoiler-free way, that Marvel very carefully gives its heroes weaknesses that are critical to the character, and I felt, at the end, perhaps Tony Stark's was severely undercut.

I think my problem was very simply that Tony Stark never changes. A bunch of stuff happens to him in this movie that sort of parallel Thor's fall from grace, but, unlike with Thor, I never felt a real transformation from Tony. I never bought he was humbled by any of it, because he remained the quippy, surface guy he was in the very first Iron Man movie (well, more like who he is in the 2nd Iron Man and Avengers, because at least in the origin story he has to go from military industrial playboy wanker to superhero playboy wanker.)

[ Spoiler (click to open) ]
But what about the panic attacks, you argue? My problem there was that, while they were a good character moment (and possibly the first on-screen version of superhero PTS) he got over them INCREDIBLY EASILY and, more importantly, they never happened to him during battle, when losing his nerve could have actually cost himself his life OR SOMEONE ELSE's. Thus, they were kind superflious to the plot... and honestly to his character development. He doesn't seem to learn anything having gone through them, about the perils of being a hero. Sure, he's worried about Pepper and throws away his electro-magnet heart, but I just don't buy it. He'll be back. He's Iron Man. He says so at the end, which, again undercuts any real tension and character development.

So, yeah, I felt Iron Man was sort of Iron Meh.