Post-Avengers-Stress-Disorder (Avengers Movie project part 6)

     Now it's time for a story that is decidedly a bit more dark than some of the previous MCU movies, one that includes domestic and foreign terrorism, PTSD, puppetmasters leading shadow threats, and worst of all... actors? Iron Man 3 is a weird movie, partially because it's the only one directed by someone other than Jon Favreau, and because of that, there is a slightly different feel to the proceedings. It's perceivable in the first moments that there are some real stakes in this movie, and a bit more peril and finality to it than some of the other ones. Pepper has a bigger role in this one, and this time around, for the first time, Tony really seems out of his depth. We get to see him outside of his element as the suit that he has is out of commission for most of the movie, and his house is destroyed. He ends up in Tennessee for a lot of the movie and... let's just get into this adventure that contains maybe the most twists out of any MCU movie.

Is he still Iron Man?

    This movie is a strange one, where I may not do a shot by shot analysis as I have done in past articles. The movie starts out with all of Tony's Iron Man suits getting blown up with a voice over from him talking about how we all create our worst enemies, then enters into a flashback of the first time he met Aldrich Killian, a guy with a big idea who wants some of Tony's time, but he gets ignored. Flash forward to present day and Tony is having nightmares after all of the events of The Avengers, causing him to spend all of his time making new suits just in case, and implanting himself (and Pepper) with nanomachines to react to his brain patterns. This causes some bad scenes when combined with Tony's bad mental state, such as having a suit appear by his bed when he's having a nightmare, and his isolation/obsession of making new suits all the time is driving Pepper away, slowly but surely. Happy is a bigger player in this movie as he's acting as security guard when Aldrich Killian shows up on the scene with an offer for Pepper to join a "brain trust" that is being led by him. Happy tells Tony about it and that he looks a lot better than he did when they first encountered him many years before. Happy is working as a security guard at a movie theater which is having an event, when someone suddenly explodes. Happy is knocked into a coma, and Tony is furious. Everyone is convinced that this was a terrorist action from The Mandarin, a terrorist mastermind intent on showing the people of the world why America is weak, who has already caused a few terrorist attacks before the movie starts. Tony calls The Mandarin out on TV and his house gets blown up by missiles soon after. An Iron Man suit saves Pepper and flies her out of the house, leaving Tony to fall into the ocean with the rest of his house. He only barely survives it, the suit flies over to him once it gets Pepper out, flies him out of the ocean while he's unconscious and goes on autopilot to Tennessee, a place where another bomb similar to the one that went off at the theater went off. The suit loses all power and crashes him into the snow, making Tony have to make a very confused on foot journey to the nearest town with the suit in tow. He finds his way to a local garage and starts fixing up his suit and meets up with a little kid who has a promising talent for making his own inventions. Tony and the kid (I think his name is Harvey?) quickly develop a sweet bond similar to father/son, and Tony investigates the site where the guy exploded in this community a month ago. Tony discovers that he wasn't a suicide bomber, but rather there was some sort of parasite or virus that caused him to explode. 

    Tony fights a bunch of people who have fire powers who seem to be related to the guy who blew himself up, and it destroys a lot of the buildings that are in this poor town, and destroys the only Christmas Tree farm in the MCU, which is a true shame. We see Rhodey all throughout this movie searching all around the world for any information on the Mandarin's whereabouts as "Iron Patriot" which is just a new rebranding for War Machine, but he eventually gets kidnapped in his suit to be seen sometime later in the film. In the meantime, Tony gets a tip somehow that The Mandarin is holed up in a house near Miami and he goes to check it out, finding out that "The Mandarin" is actually just an actor that was paid by Aldrich Killian to distract the world from his villainous deeds. Tony eventually gets captured and is held captive by Killian who it turns out has been testing his Extremis formula, which is why everyone suddenly has fire powers, as well as why so many people have exploded recently. Tony is able to summon the now fixed suit from Tennessee which flies to Miami just in time for Tony to break out and save Rhodey who is also being held here, but Killian has broken through the safeguards of the suit and taken it for himself, and then flies to kidnap the President who is on Air Force One. 

    Killian succeeds in this mission and kidnaps the president with the intention of killing him so that the Vice President can take power. He is one of Killian's cronies and will do whatever he says in return for the Extremis virus giving his daughter use of her legs. Tony shows up with Rhodey to a shipyard where Killian has strung up the president in an Iron Man suit. Conveniently, Pepper is also here after he kidnapped her earlier in the movie, perfect for Tony to rescue her. Tony realizes that these fire people can melt Iron Man suits, so he keeps calling in more and more suits, all flying in at once, in what's the coolest shot of the movie (Iron Legion is a cool concept, I don't make the rules). Tony is constantly losing suits and getting more in as he keeps fighting Killian, but then Pepper falls to her death in a flaming pit, but it turns out that she was injected with the Extremis virus which... not only allowed her to survive, but also become super strong? I don't really get it either, but she kills Killian, and they save the President. Tony blows up all of his suits as a fireworks show for Pepper, in addition to making a promise to spend more time with her. In a wrap up scene, it's shown that Pepper gets treated for the Extremis virus and Tony finally gets the shrapnel out of his heart from the first movie, which is a nice little resolution to that arc. In the Post-Credits scene, we see that the entire movie has actually been Tony talking to Bruce Banner about his traumatic experiences, but Bruce fell asleep right at the beginning apparently, and Tony starts the story over again.

Whoo... This Movie was a lot.

This movie was really interesting because it's one of the few times when the MCU tackles mental illness of any kind. The PTSD storyline is pretty well handled, with everyone constantly asking Tony about what happened in New York and him just panicking, it shows a much less cool side of the character which is pretty interesting to see, considering he was actually dying in Iron Man 2 but still played things pretty cool for the most part. This movie in a way unlike the first two kind of plays out like a love story between Tony and Pepper. Pepper is constantly worried about Tony, thinking that he's dead for a lot of the movie, and Tony is constantly trying to fix his suit so that he can make sure that Pepper is safe. The idea of puppet leaders is also a very interesting twist to this film, especially considering that they could have made just a straight movie with the Mandarin being the main villain instead of an actor portraying him. Honestly people didn't like this movie a lot because they thought the Mandarin was going to be the actual villain, and the real one was revealed to be not as interesting or exciting as they thought. Personally, I think this movie is pretty good after I was given about 10 years to temper expectations. 

    This was one of maybe two MCU films that I didn't see in theaters, and the only one that I hadn't seen until I was showing it to my parents, and though I had the major twist spoiled for me by many people ranting about it on social media or just hearing it through the grapevine somewhere, I did end up enjoying it, and was really surprised by a lot of the things that happened in this movie. I knew that Tony's house would be destroyed because I saw that in one of the first trailers, but I didn't expect that he would fall into the ocean and be knocked unconscious as the suit saved Pepper from the wreckage, only for the suit to collect him from the sea and fly him to Tennessee. From the trailers, I really assumed that this movie would be mostly the same as the first two movies in one way or another, but instead, he doesn't spend a whole lot of time as Iron Man in this one, it's more about him learning to manage without a suit. This actually fits really well into the storyline since Pepper is tired of Tony putting himself into dangerous situations all the time and ultimately, that's what he does at the end of the movie by blowing up the suits. Unfortunately this story beat is completely sidestepped later on by Avengers: Age of Ultron when the movie starts with him calling in the Iron Legion again and having them be instrumental in the story of that movie, but for where this movie wants to go, it's a fitting point.

    My dad really liked this movie as well. As I've said before, my dad is a big fan of Tony Stark as a character, just because he thinks he's really funny how he's all snarky and quick witted. He especially liked the way that he bonded with that little kid and taught him how to invent different things, especially citing the improved potato gun as evidence for Tony's hidden soft spot for the kid in general, and potentially seeing this as Tony warming up to the idea of having kids at some point in the future. We'll just have to see what the future holds for this character! Iron Man 3 is a good way to give Tony a temporary happy ending, as we still see him in other movies, but this is his last solo venture. I think the story is definitely taken to a  a good place, especially how it deals with the idea of "his legacy" that was introduced in Iron Man 2.

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends! I think I'm going to take a few weeks away from Marvel films after this and think about how I want to structure the future installments, just because this one was pretty tough to write about, just because of how all of the twists and turns get extremely complicated over time. I really appreciate your support, as always, and I hope you're all doing well too! Until next time, I've been your Self-Proclaimed Iron Man, and I'll talk to you next week!