The onslaught of summer movies is upon us.
We’ve caught the first of them, Iron Man Three. Here’s Irfan with Benedict Cumberbatch behind him just before he watched the movie.
Irfan and Cumberbatch
Yes, yes, yes. We saw Iron Man and not Star Trek that evening.
SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT
I SAID SPOILERS!!!
Iron Man Three
- The story takes into account Tony’s PTSD he suffered after fighting Loki and the Chitauri army in “The Battle of New York City” during The Avengers. I guess you would have panic attacks when you are suddenly aware of a multitude of unknown and powerful alien species in space (and other dimensions). We hope he doesn’t go into full catatonia when he learns of highly evolved space raccoons.
- Aldrich Killian, the founder of AIM has Chinese dragon tattoos? Breath attack? Wears underpants? That’s Earth-199999’s version of Fin Fang Foom.
- How did they write around the fact that the Mandarin was a pulp villain that was adapted from the Yellow Peril trope? Especially when the movie was partly funded by China? By going metatextual, and lampshading it by having him monologue the fortune cookie analogy. Which I thought was somewhat clever for a summer movie.
- As we know from the comics, Fin Fang Foom’s origin is connected with the Mandarin, just like this movie.
- Yay! Extremis technology!
- Awww… no Extremis-activated suit. (I was hoping we’d see him interface with and assemble the Mark 42 (or 43) suit using Extremis in conjunction with the subdermal control chips we saw him inject himself with at the beginning of the movie.)
- Tony does not talk down to the boy Harley who isn’t just a precocious, wide-eyed kid designed to be cute onscreen.
- And finally, I just want to list out Mark15 Sneaky, Mark 16 Nightclub, Mark 17 Heartbreaker, Mark 18 Casanova, Mark 19 Tiger, Mark 20 Python, Mark 21 Midas, Mark 22 Hot Rod, Mark 23 Shades, Mark 24 Tank, Mark 25 Thumper, Mark 26 Gamma, Mark 27 Disco, Mark 28 Jack, Mark 29 Fiddler, Mark 30 Blue Steel, Mark 31 Piston, Mark 32 Romeo, Mark 33 Silver Centurion, Mark 34 Southpaw, Mark 35 Red Snapper, Mark 36 Peacemaker, Mark 37 Hammerhead, Mark 38 Igor, Mark 39 Gemini, Mark 40 Shotgun, Mark 41 Bones and finally Mark 42 prototype prehensile suit for no good reason.
I hope we see a few more appearances of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark in upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe films before he retires.
