Downward Trajectory: Ruminations on the Iron Man Trilogy / Michael French

Downward Trajectory:

Ruminations on the Iron Man Trilogy

Michael French

Man with the Iron Task

I was that kid who loved the Superman movies, saw Supergirl in the theater too, was there for Keaton’s Batman outings, really got pumped for Dick Tracy, and wondered with great lament why that Captain America poster in 1990 never became a movie (until I finally saw it and regretted my curiosity).

As far as comic books themselves went, I was a G.I. Joe / Superman / Spider-Man kind of person. I didn’t branch out much, mainly because Nightcrawler never got his own monthly book. I dabbled in Batman and that was about it. Awareness of the other characters was there, but I tended to be more interested in the ideas of most characters rather than their actual mythologies. Wonder Woman is the perfect example of this, a character I much prefer distilled to her essence in live action versus that attempt I made to read her convoluted and esoteric ongoing series which ended in waking up with the comic having fallen on the floor.

Therefore, when Batman fell flat on its face with Batman Forever, X-Men turned out to be as bland a film series as the comic was soap opera, and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy similarly got drunk and couldn’t get home, I figured comic-book movies would be forever hit and miss. Hence, walking into the theater to see Iron Man wasn’t a big event.

I expected I had a 50/50 chance of being entertained for two hours. In the background, what I didn’t know was just how monumental a task Iron Man had ahead of itself.

On a side note, the only Secret Wars action figure I’d gotten as a kid was Iron Man, because he looked cool. The coincidence of that wasn’t lost on me as the lights went down and the movie began.

Iron Man turned out about as well as anyone could have hoped for under the circumstances. Marvel-based movies were in the doldrums, having been scattered to the four winds in a licensing fire sale some years before. The idea of a cinematic universe seemed legally impossible beyond creatively complex.

Considering Iron Man wasn’t exactly a top-shelf character at the time in most households around the world, and yet the marketing and casting successfully brought everyone and their crazy uncle to the theater to see the movie, you have to salute the filmmakers and advertising reps on this one.

They didn’t just create an effective hype train. When you got on board, you realized the train wasn’t a cattle and coal carrier; it was a modern bullet variety that delivered the goods.

An origin story that works not just as a perfunctory thing, but an active part of Tony Stark’s arc, suspenseful in its own right. We have a race against time and it isn’t just Stark’s life on the line, but the life of the man he previously didn’t know who saved him from death. Stark isn’t just becoming Iron Man to protect his heart from further injury.

He must succeed at becoming a superhero or else he and his friend are dead men.

That’s kickass writing.

The special effects helped pull the story along beautifully. Nearly completely convincing in 2008, Iron Man is a rarified example of a modern film where the effects serve the story rather than supersede the script. Suspend your disbelief about what arc-reactor technology is capable of, and you’ll see a comic-book hero fully realized on screen with little-to-no visual compromise.

Iron Man also set the standard for Marvel’s difficulty in having memorable villains. Who was Jeff Bridges? Iron Monger? War Monger? Killmonger? I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. He’s an immoral wolf in the fold who wants Tony’s tech and Iron Man dead. Fair enough.

That exact plot was so solid, they reused it beat-for-beat in Ant-Man, so clearly the producers had faith in it.

Try saying enough about Robert Downey Jr.’s contribution to the success of this film and you’ll fail. The entitled son of a billionaire who’s a cocky arms dealer isn’t an easy sell in terms of making him likable. Downey does it effortlessly, and you believe in his transformation when he realizes he has to right the wrongs he’s willfully ignored while enjoying his lavish lifestyle.

Iron Man moves at a brisk pace and, while giving us time to absorb the key characters, never feels like it’s slowing down. This is despite the fact that the action sequences are somewhat rationed. There are really only three to speak of, not including flight testing, which I don’t count as action so much as “kinetic exposition.”

If there are any faults with Iron Man, it has to do with some casting issues. The first is Gwyneth Paltrow. She’s a great Pepper Potts, but Paltrow’s abilities to act intensely in front of a green screen have always been sub-par. If you don’t believe me, watch her run from the giant robots in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It’s like she’s running to the printer rather than in peril. Same goes with Pepper’s race away from Jeff Bridges’s attack at the climax of IronMan.

Maybe the more experience she gets in these kinds of films, the more her special effects performance skill improves? I’ll have to revisit this with Iron Man 2 and 3 to see for myself.

The second casting fluke is an unfortunate one. I thought Terrence Howard did an amazing turn as Rhodey, and when they teased that he would return as War Machine, I was really excited. Howard slipped seamlessly into that role. I’m not sure why casting negotiations broke down between the first and second films, but it’s a shame. I don’t have anything against Don Cheadle, and I like him as an actor, but I’m also not wild about re-castings in film sagas. Maybe it was unavoidable, but when I see Cheadle in the subsequent films, I get a facial tick for a split-second.

If Cheadle had been in Iron Man as Rhodey, this wouldn’t be an issue. Yet, fate rarely gives us what we want or intend.

Ultimately, Iron Man succeeded in launching a new filmmaking genre – the cinematic universe. It brought Marvel out of the cinematic doghouse, elevated comic-book superheroes into a viable and powerful entertainment genre. All of that would not have been possible if the film had been average. Iron Man is one of Marvel Studio’s best films, hands down.

Make no mistake. There was shrapnel sitting right near Marvel’s heart when Iron Man landed in theaters. This is the movie that saved Marvel’s life.

Cinematic Whiplash: Tone Shift Shock

The initial spate of Marvel Cinematic Universe films based around the “trio” of heroes took interesting roads. The Thor films were the esoteric “acquired taste” of the group that culminated in Ragnarok, which all but threw any grave universe plotting out the window and became a mainstream comedy. Captain America rapidly took on the responsibility of important plot advances between Avengers films, with Civil War essentially being Avengers 2.5.

Iron Man? Well, that’s not as easy to pin down. The initial Iron Man was an explosive launchpad for the MCU. One would think the Iron Man franchise would have taken on the job of the important plotting between Avengers films. However, it didn’t. After the original film, barring a few character introductions, the Iron Man sequels fall squarely into “optional” when watching the MCU.

Even the big plot idea of Iron Man 3 getting rid of all his drones is rendered moot in Age of Ultron’s first 15 minutes.

When I think back on Iron Man 2’s release, I make an effort to recall that at the time, the idea of an interconnected cinematic universe was still this thing people were claiming would happen, but none of us really held our breath waiting for that to occur. With previous comic series like Superman, Batman, X-Men, Fantastic Four and Spider-Man in the can, Iron Man 2 was that expected sequel with or without an entire universe afterward.

It feels like even the studio went at it with that attitude by and large, because Iron Man 2 doesn’t feel like a film with real importance. Yeah, we get Black Widow, War Machine and we see Captain America’s shield template at one point in a box of crap, but hell, we got Catwoman and Penguin in Batman Returns and that didn’t lead to anything at all. So why should this be any different?

All that aside, Iron Man 2 isn’t built like the other sequels in the MCU. Even Thor: The Dark World tried to progress the universe metaplot (albeit badly). Instead, Iron Man 2 feels like a derivative superhero sequel where the directive was, “Remember what people liked in Iron Man? Give us more of that. MORE.”

More Tony Stark being funny. More Tony Stark not remembering that reporter he slept with in the original. More Iron Man suit hijinks. Oh, and more crazy clever ways to get Tony into that suit. Like, how about if one is just in a thin briefcase? And then he steps on the briefcase and the suit kinda forms around him? The result is a film that doesn’t have the gravity of the original and the tonal shift is shocking. They play too lightly one moment and shift into abject darkness the next.

They’re pushing the wrong things about Iron Man at this point and the character is getting lost in the gimmickry. All of this will come to an unfortunate head in Iron Man 3. Iron Man is best depicted when the suit is a physically plausible construct and the only barrier between him and death.

It should not be something he can put in a tiny briefcase or make out of nanotech.

Mickey Rourke’s turn as Whiplash is interesting, but fruitless. He’s not a corporate turncoat like Jeff Bridges, but instead an angry rival inventor who is an amalgam of two Marvel villains. I doubt they would be so cavalier with their villains in today’s MCU. Oh, and he dies of course. No returns here.

Two villains, one death.

Meanwhile, Happy Hogan’s unconventional team-up with Natasha Romanoff is amusing, I guess. Stark and Pepper Potts have a few funny scenes together about relationships and the responsibility of doing business, while Nick Fury tries to get Stark to come around to help SHIELD stop Rourke’s Ivan Vanko from creating thousands of deadly flying drones.

Honestly, there isn’t a lot of impactful or interesting plotting going on here. It keeps your attention in the moment, but you don’t walk away with unforgettable scenes in your mind. As I said, it’s simply a competent superhero sequel, the kind of thing you’d have expected and hoped for in a pre-MCU world.

Iron Man 2 (and even Iron Man 3) seems unconcerned with helping build a broader cinematic universe, and is more of an inward-looking film that preoccupies itself with Tony Stark and the comeback kid who portrays him, Robert Downey Jr.

Where Thor and Captain America were film series that were forced to continue looking outward to the point that their third installments barely resemble solo-hero episodes, Iron Man was a series allowed to remain in its own playpen, and for better or worse, do its own thing regardless of what the rest of the MCU was trying to accomplish.

Iron Man 2 put the series firmly on this trajectory. Iron Man 3 would slam it into a mountainside.

A Sideshow of a Sideshow: Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3 came quickly on the heels of The Avengers. It stands to reason. By this point, Iron Man was the focal point of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with two dedicated films and the most appearances in total across the series. However, the third outing saw the departure of director Jon Favreau and the entry of director Shane Black.

Black previously directed Robert Downey Jr. in his ‘soft comeback’, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, right before the launch of the first Iron Man film. Black was also still obsessed with Christmas; having previously set Lethal Weapon and Kiss Kiss at Yuletide, he made sure to do the same with Iron Man 3.

I’d heard Iron Man 3 was a disappointment, probably one of the biggest of the MCU. I never saw it in the theatre. When I finally watched it, the first half rooked me pretty solidly. Tony Stark sends a, well, stark message to terrorists threatening his life to take him on and gives them his home address. He is almost killed in a major attack that destroys his home and almost kills Pepper Potts in the process. By the end of the battle, he’s down to a single badly-damaged suit and his lab is in the ocean.

Suffering serious PSTD from his near-death in The Avengers, Stark isn’t doing so well. He allows the suit to fly him to Tennessee where it promptly loses power and crashes. Now, dragging the suit behind him in the snow, Stark is trying to survive and stay out of the path of the terrorists who want him dead, led by a mysterious evil guru, The Mandarin. Stark befriends a small boy in a one-stoplight town in Tennessee and they try to investigate the mysterious attacks in which people seem to just explode in massive fire blasts.

Remember how I said the first half rooked me? I was completely into this movie at this point. Stark had been stripped down to his base resources. The story was exploring a compelling conspiracy. Stark wasn’t omnisciently powerful as he was in Iron Man 2. One last suit, one last chance. It was pretty awesome.

I thought, “Everyone must have been wrong. This movie is not bad.”

Everyone was right. The movie is bad.

Not what we’d hoped or expected. Another subversion gone awry.

Not content to follow the compelling plot, the filmmakers force an unnecessary twist on the audience. Yes, I get they were nervous about racial stereotypes as the original Mandarin could have been questionable; however, Ben Kingsley was rocking the role just fine. No need to give us a bait and switch. Guy Pearce as a fire mutant just isn’t as cool. He’s just not.

Yeah, The Mandarin is all an act orchestrated by Pearce’s Killian while he meddles with his bio-weapon, Extremis, originally and accidentally created by an old flame of Stark’s. Killian subjects a kidnapped Pepper to Extremis, which had the goal of helping people regenerate lost limbs and fight off diseases, but unfortunately it has a bad habit of eventually making people explode. Killian wants Stark’s genius to solve the problem and he uses Pepper as leverage.

By this point, the plot is so unnecessarily convoluted, it’s tiresome. Everybody is somebody, there’s turnabout after turnabout, and I blame M. Night Shyamalan for all of it.

Killian could have been direct with Stark in an open meeting and appeal to his company for help in solving the problem with Extremis. No. He needs to create a terrorist organization to kidnap Pepper to compel Stark to action instead. It’s the kind of plan Senator Palpatine would concoct.

And all tension just vanishes instantly in a CGI hellscape.

In addition, the limits placed on Stark with the loss of his lab were all a lie. His last suit becomes the punchline of a joke because it never works right. Any tension that could come from that is annulled by the deus ex machina when Stark summons fifty drone suits from the ruins of his home to come fight Killian’s mutants. Stark was never in any danger apparently, so what was the point of all this needless drama?

By the way, that Extremis thing that’s so dangerous it makes people explode and now Pepper has it in her bloodstream? No worries. Stark says he can solve it somehow, and does in a few hospital shots amounting to fifteen seconds. Pepper is healed and all is well.

What a con this movie turned out to be….

I could waste more of your time talking about Killian’s attempt to steal Rhodey’s Iron Patriot suit, which also led to nowhere. I won’t.

Or how about Stark destroying all of his drones for the love of Pepper? Nice sentiment. So where the hell did all of those new drones come from in Avengers: Age of Ultron? I guess that doesn’t matter either.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe actually makes more sense if Iron Man 3 is eliminated from your viewing order. It’s a complex equation that has no solution. It’s a zero-sum game. And the worst part of it is, the film tricks you into considering the possibility that it’s going to be something interesting, right before it melts into pure pablum.

As the end credits roll and imagery from the previous two films is showcased, you can see that the MCU still wasn’t sure how to proceed, and Iron Man as a trilogy was never fully-integrated into the broader story. They saw it as its own trilogy entirely, but with a broader universe and hindsight, that doesn’t serve the Iron Man sequels well in the evolution of the MCU. Rather than being key to the core mythology of the MCU as Captain America’s films became, Iron Man’s sequels are simply side quests.