Iron Man 3 or “We create our own demons”

Well, I decided to get back into the game, even though this means I will never be taken seriously when I make another flounce again. But ah well.

To keep from getting too bored and/or frustrated and following the advice of the poll I made on Slacktivist, I’ve decided to do both of my proposed projects: MCU Obsessed and Utopia Defined. Whether this counts as cheating, I don’t know. I’ll post the parameters of Utopia Defined at some point. For now, I’ve decided to pick up where I left off.

Let’s face it: a major problem regarding Phase Two is the question, “Why doesn’t the title character call the other heroes for backup?” It’s especially bad with this one. Yeah, Tony, I’m fairly certain that Captain AMERICA would care that the AMERICAN president has been kidnapped.

Then again…

It must never be forgotten how much Captain America secretly hates America. Bah, he might as well call himself Captain Cuba or Captain China, or one of those commie bastards.

For the subtitle, I thought of going with a more comedic quote, one said by Tony early on in the film: “I’m a piping hot mess.” Because that does adequately describe Tony for this movie. But for some reason, I leaned towards the very first line in this movie. It so accurately reflects the nature of Tony’s problems; over the course of the MCU, Tony will literally create many of the villains he does battle with, but there’s also the metaphorical sense. Because ultimately, we all wind up creating our own demons and often, said demons are your best traits turned against you. You’re analytical? Well, congratulations, you’ll drive yourself crazy ruminating. If you have a strong sense of dedication? Well, then, you’ll struggle with hanging onto things, people, or situations that you should really walk away from; sometimes, you need to quit for the sake of yourself.

Anyway, it is in this movie that I begin my chorus of, “Someone get Tony into therapy,” a song I will repeatedly sing when it comes to Tony. So many of the MCU’s problems could be solved if someone had just gotten Tony into therapy.

I enjoyed Iron Man 3 more this round than I did when I watched it in the theaters. Seeing the full scope of his Tony’s arc, helps me to better understand what this movie was trying to do. Unfortunately, need I repeat what I’ve said before about how a good movie stands on its own and if you need a bunch of supplemental materials to appreciate/understand a film, then it’s not a good movie.

But that feels a little unfair to this movie. Iron Man 3, for all its faults, deserves to be celebrated for all that it attempts. This is what Iron Man 2 should have been: a chance to put Tony through the psychological wringer, really test his desire for the superhero life. I would have loved for this to be the middle installment of Tony’s trilogy with another film brought in to resolve it, because while there are traits of an ending, in many ways, it feels more like the middle of the story. Maybe it’s because this is really the beginning of a key trait of the MCU: Tony’s PTSD.

The MCU doesn’t do a perfect job with its exploration of PTSD— and I will criticize where it falls short—but it deserves credit for attempting it in the first place. Because just as the MCU subverts the secret identity trope, its use of PTSD is a novelty; we had seen very little of it in prior franchises.

The Christopher Reeves Superman is very much a creature of the Silver Age, meaning that while Superman has his kryptonite weakness, he doesn’t really have any others. We’re a ways away from the John Byrne rewrite of the character, which did a lot to ground the character and make him much more compelling as a protagonist.

I suppose you can make a case that the Batman films delve into. Not the Schumacher films obviously, but both Burton and Nolan put the titular character through a lot. Still, most of Batman’s inner turmoil expressed in the form of angst, which is considered a more appropriate way for male characters to express emotions.

We don’t get to see what we do with Tony, where so much of his façade is peeled back, enabling us to see the very human character underneath it. 

This scene introduces Tony’s PTSD, when he has a panic attack after a child asks him for an autograph. I, despite the numerous diagnoses to my name, have never experienced panic attacks, but everything I’ve read, says that Iron Man 3 is a very accurate portrayal of them. 

Considering that the team-up was overwhelmingly triumphant in its tone, it seems a little jarring for Tony to have PTSD over it. To the extent most people think of PTSD, they associate it with Vietnam or Afghanistan-style military quagmires. 

But even knowing that you were on the right side in the conflict, doesn’t make the horrors of war go away. Plenty of WWII veterans returned home with PTSD, but since that war has been romanticized as “The Good War,” this fact is often overlooked. An example can be found in Dutch Schultz. Immortalized as an innocent and happy paratrooper in The Longest Day, in reality, Schultz spent the rest of his life drinking as a way to deal with what he went through and suffered from nightmares every night, according to his daughter. However justified the war may have been, however villainous the Axis Powers may have been, it doesn’t change the fact that the Allied soldiers faced death on a daily basis and regularly saw their fellow soldiers butchered.

Of course, this may be something of an insufficient analogy. The Battle of New York in no way compares to the average level of butchery seen in a WWII battle. Even that, however, doesn’t change the fact that Tony went through some serious shit. He nearly died and though he tried to play it off as a joke, a defense he often uses, that’s still a plenty scary thing to have gone through. And you know just as Tony beats himself up for all the deaths his weapons caused, he beats himself up over what happened to Coulson. What if he hadn’t been so distracted by his petty squabble with Steve? Maybe he would have realized what Loki was up to earlier.

Of course, Coulson got better, but with the exception of Nick Fury, none of the other Avengers know about it. Which is admittedly a really scummy thing to do, Fury, even if them knowing Coulson is alive would probably really throw a wrench into the workings of the overall plot of the MCU.

Posted this picture because it’s pretty much how things play out in the MCU, complete with everyone ignoring how Tony’s obviously mentally ill, which is sadly realistic. Once again, I applaud the MCU in how it shows PTSD affecting Tony’s actions. Because it does hamper him in many ways and though it may not always be center stage, it is always in the background, affecting things.

As if that isn’t enough, a terrorist known as the Mandarin is stirring up shit. 

And Tony, being the sensible thinker that he is, decides the best course of action is to call out the Mandarin and give him his home address. Hijinks ensue.

Tony makes a lot of dumb decisions in the MCU, but giving the Mandarin his home address has got to be one of the dumbest, if not, the dumbest decision he’s ever made.

Long story short, his house blows up and Tony winds up stranded outside a small town in Tennessee. And it’s here Tony meets a ten-year-old boy named Harley Keener. 

Iron Man 3 is, at times, a mess, but it deserves credit for introducing the concept of Mentor!Tony to the MCU. 

Fandoms can often be divisive what with the various ship fights and debates over fanon, but usually there are a few things which unite the fandom, aside from love of the original materials. Like with Harry Potter, we all hated Dolores Umbridge more than we ever hated Voldemort, and we all wish JK Rowling had immediately dropped dead after writing “The End” on book seven.*

:deep breath: 

In the MCU, one of the things which unites the fandom is that we all love Mentor!Tony. And I completely understand why.

Tony, as we all know, has all kinds of issues. He is a womanizing alcoholic anxiety-riddled mess, raised by the kind of father who would knock him out with a shot of whiskey when he got a little too rowdy. So he’s probably the last person who should be a mentor. Watching him try to be a good teacher towards his young protégés (Harley and later, Peter Parker) is fascinating for a lot of reasons Tony is fascinating as a character; he is a mess and screws up massively in the process, but on the whole, he is genuinely trying, sweating and striving to do the right thing. And it’s nice to see Tony try to improve the world in ways that don’t involve blowing shit up.

The interactions with Harley are particularly interesting, because Tony almost demonstrates some plot-savvy. Tony spends much of these interactions practically being like, “Oh, I see. This is the part of the story where I, the crusty adult, am supposed to soften towards the wide-eyed kid. Well, I’m not going to do it. I’m going to remain the same old crusty adult as before.” Of course, part of why we do love him so much, at the same time he’s being like that, Tony is softening towards the kid. 

God bless the fabulous Robert Downey Jr. in how he can layer so much in his performances, be able to subtly indicate how Tony is softening up towards the kid, at the same time, he’s being his snarky self. 

Both Tony and Rhodey have been trying to track the Mandarin down. Tony has more luck, managing to track him to Miami.

Tony and the Mandarin meet and it’s discovered that the Mandarin is a false flag terrorist, played by a dissolute British actor named Trevor Slattery.

And it’s at that moment you hear every Iron Man fan cry foul.

Because this is a grave departure from The Mandarin’s comic book self which has him serving as Tony Stark’s Lex Luthor, only he’s also got ten rings which give him various powers.

Iron Man fans had reasonable expectations that The Mandarin would show up in the MCU. Even as early as the first Iron Man movie, there were hints. The group of terrorists that kidnapped Tony called themselves “The Ten Rings” with its leader, Raza, wearing a large ornate ring. 

For those who don’t remember, “The Ten Rings” were rather unceremoniously killed off by Obadiah Stane, but there were enough hints for Iron Man fans to assume that maybe these guys were an offshoot of the organization or were just claiming to be a part of the organization, and assume that the real version would eventually show up.

So you can understand why the fans cried foul. In fact, they pitched enough of a fit that it was later retconned that the Mandarin was actually real with Trevor just pretending to be him.

On some level, I can understand why Marvel opted for the false flag terrorist idea when it came to the Mandarin. While the character has been redesigned and rewritten over the years, the character’s history demonstrates that he began his career as a Yellow Peril caricature, much as Tony’s origin has Yellow Peril elements. Maybe Marvel feared a potential backlash, even if they stayed away from the Ming the Merciless trappings.

According to IMDB, the director, Shane Black, explained the concept of the Mandarin being a front for Aldrich Killian, as a play on perceptions and expectations: "I wanted to do an interesting story choice, something that was about our own fear, and our own ways of viewing villains. What if he's sort of this all-things-to-all-people uber-terrorist? What if he is the myth, and in the end, that is what we're dealing with: a created myth perpetuated and cobbled together from popular consciousness?" Producer Kevin Feige admitted it was a huge risk to do, "But it's sometimes important to break with tradition, even at the risk of alienating some purists. Shane had really great ideas about identity and anonymity and false faces."

The idea of the Mandarin being a false face was co-writer Drew Pearce's idea. Shane Black took to it like a shot, saying, "Who would be fool enough to declare that he is an international terrorist?"

But the audience didn’t like it, so this was eventually retconned.

And I suppose we should take this moment to talk about the real villain, Aldrich Killian, and where he ranks on the villain scale, which runs from one to five, five being represented by Loki because for a while, he was the only interesting villain in the MCU. 

Credit where credit is due, unlike Stane and Whiplash, when he faces down Tony, he doesn’t just wear his own version of Tony’s armor, which gives him a few creativity points. His backstory is similar to Syndrome’s from The Incredibles: he was snubbed by his idol and from there, dedicated his life to destroying Tony’s. This motivation is disturbingly common when it comes to Tony, where a surprising number of villains are like, “Tony Stark bumped into me and didn’t say, ‘Excuse me,’ so now he must die.” And I freely admit that I am exaggerating, but not by much. Again, Tony, eventually you need to look in the mirror and see if the problem isn’t you.

But back to Killian…the more I think about it, I think I’ll give him a Two. The armorless aspect does make him a little interesting, but not a lot. So for those of you who had wondered if he is Zero, he’s not.

Well, the final battle goes down. The day is saved by Pepper, rather than Tony, this movie continuing to prove that Tony would be better off if he let Pepper or Rhodey do the superhero stuff, while he just designs the gadgets; Tony would be better off, physically and emotionally, if he did.

In the course of the fight, Tony blows up all his armors, and the film ends with him committing himself to a quiet life with Pepper. He also gets the shrapnel from his chest removed, something which always bothered me regarding this movie. If it was that easy to get the shrapnel out, why didn’t Tony try having it done in his second movie when his arc reactor was poisoning him? 

Of course, as the existence of subsequent films demonstrates, this retirement doesn’t last. No matter how much it costs him, Tony can’t seem to walk away from the superhero life. A simplistic answer is that Tony is addicted to the adrenaline rush, but my opinion is the same one I posited regarding the first movie, that for Tony, the armor becomes a super-powered hairshirt; he feels he needs to be punished for his mistakes, all those years he spent sowing misery in the world. And this turns into a vicious cycle as his trauma and PTSD builds on each other, leading him to make more mistakes Tony feels like he should be punished for.

There’s much to admire and like about this movie:

Again, knowing how things play out in subsequent films helps me to look at this one in a different light, better admire what it was trying to do, but that is the film’s weakness. This film is, much like its hero, a mess that doesn’t know at times what it’s trying to accomplish, but it’s a strangely compelling one.

And that’s it for Iron Man 3. Next on the slate is Thor 2 or Thor: The Dark World for those wanting to follow along. I don’t know if I’ll post the parameters of Utopia Defined or another MCU Obsessed review next, so just stay tuned.

*And that’s as far as I’m going to go when it comes to that bigot. Long story short, TERFs can choke. It’s safe to say that they belong on the list of People Who Ruin Everything along with Nazis and Ayn Rand. And for some mysterious reason, there’s a shitton of overlap between TERFs, Nazis, and Ayn Rand acolytes.