Iron Man 3: Supply and Demand

No breakdown cause the movie is new. Go see it. In theaters, wif yer friends. (READ BELOW AFTER YOU SEE THE MOVIE. I AM TALKING FRANKLY ABOUT THE PLOT. DON'T BE AN IDIOT AND RUIN THE STORY IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY SEEN IT.)

TL;DR Not a bad story, fun to watch but ultimately fails to build on the marvel world or Tony Stark's character. I gave it three thumbs up.

Your movie was bad and you should feel bad (1)
The loneliest star (2)
arbitrary numerical assignment identifying an average performance (3)
* three thumbs up(4)
ALL THE STARS!!!!(5)

Things I think IM3 succeeded in doing:
Setting up Tony's mental state post Avengers, and this was largely done in the trailers, but still it was done well, the guy is a mess and he doesn't trust himself to be the awesome bad ass he used to think he was. Setting up the evil charismatic sinisterness of "the mandarin" again this began with the trailers but the first half of the film the whole presentation of the mandarin is cool and mysterious and charismatic. Pepper's time in the suits, 'bout damn time she got to play with Tony's toys. The (stealing from a friend) "Tony Stark P.I". feel of the story, I think that ultimately the pacing and flow worked really really well, even if the focus on characters in the plot was misguided. Misguided you say?

Things I feel failed, were wasted, or didn't execute in IM3

The Marvel Movie Universe is a universe of gods, monsters, and mutants. And in the middle of it all, we have Tony Stark. A super smart human being. The heart warming tale of a boy and his sentient computer system. Tony Stark's mutant power isn't his intellect, its his charisma, the fact that everyone (including himself) loves him unconditionally. Each of the Iron Man films centers around people who stop loving him. His business partner betrays him for money, The rival business man betrays him for money, and the Mandarin betrays him for...shit we've hit our first speed bump. In Iron Man 3 No one gives a shit about Tony, Tony is narrating as if this is his story but ultimately there is no inexplicable failure of his charisma. The mandarin's scheme centers around getting the vice president into office so they can for ever run the war on terror and use super soldiers to fight it. Yes the villains were slighted by Tony Stark thirteen years ago but the ONLY reason Tony Stark gets involved with the actual plot of the movie is because his friend gets hurt. And it is here that we have to ask ourselves what kind of story is this? It's NOT a super hero adventure film, it's Shane Black telling another P.I. story that happens to involve Iron Man. It's a decent story but ultimately we see no real progression of Tony's mental state or self actualization, he narrates that he changes but ultimately the ONLY thing that is shown is him building the Home Depot suit and a one liner about how special Pepper is. Tony's panic attacks only ever effect him when its useful for comedy or when we need him to bond with the kid. In fact we get a clearer understanding of Tony's instability through the consistent failure of MK42, first it can't fly, then it can't shoot then it can't fly again, then it spends half the movie inert (recharging) after which it can take a fucking beating over and over and over again. In lieu of actual character development the MK 42 barely works at the best of times and gets the shit kicked out of it repeatedly and in the end sacrifices itself to kill the villain (which ultimately fails). What we see happen to the MK42 we NEEDED to see happen to Tony, but every time you think he's about to get hurt or should have gotten hurt he wasn't actually in the suit. 

If it wasn't any clearer by the end action sequence IM3 is one long shell game of false build ups and reveals, that end action sequence in which 20 suits fight guys we only see as random henchmen. And literally Tony uses the suits as a sort of flying shell game. Even the villain gets his bait and switch reveal which almost ruined the movie for me but we were rescued by the actual mandarin being genuinely a creepy cool bad guy and the fake mandarin being played by a legendarily good actor.

All of this I was ok with, until the shot of the burning iron man mask. Movies can be silly and fun and shallow and random and just mindless action, I don't require every movie be deep or well thought out, or logical. The shot after the MK42 explodes and 'kills' Mandarin when tony see's the head piece and fire comes up from the eye and it's sinking in that they might have had the balls to REALLY kill pepper pots and that last line he said about her already having been perfect gets to him and he realizes that while he has no iron man suits left to fight with, she was his heart and he has no heart to fight with any more, he has nothing left, and the burning face is staring back at him and you get this tremendous sense of foreboding of everything Tony Stark touches turning to ash, his whole life nothing more than one long cleansing fire of hubris and fear. We are seeing the moment Tony officially begins down the path of super villain, he is now as hollow as his suits, his charisma used to bend the earth to his twisted will to NEVER be vulnerable again, to wipe the earth clean of anything that could ever even contemplate doing him harm, and anyone who would ever even dare to reach him emotionally, this man would scour the planet clean of danger and feels. BUT NO the Mandarin is still alive and Pepper pots is too and she uses her itchyburn heals and some IM suit pieces to finally kill the Mandarin once and for all and rob us of something that could have been a CLASSIC movie moment, the moment that Tony Stark became the villain for Avengers 2.

Instead we get pepper with itchyburn heal which gets narrated away, along with Tony's chest piece, the vice president, and any questions about what the hell happened to his PTSD/Panic attacks and why any of this shit helped him get over what happened to him in NY, why it mattered at all that the villains knew him in 1999 (Seriously the movie would have worked just as well without the 1999 connection, it MEANT NOTHING).

I hear a lot of people really didn't like IM2 and I kind of feel like while IM3 wasn't a bad movie I like it the least of the trilogy, it wasted some great set ups on the same old shit we saw in the first two movies ( real villains hiding behind other fake villains) and ultimately wasn't really the movie I was hoping for from the trailers, In a world of Gods and Monsters there is nothing wrong with telling a human story about a human guy who has human fears and deals with them humanly. I feel like having all the suits be able to kick ass without him in them meant that when he says "I am Iron Man" at the end of the movie all I wanted to do was sort of roll my eyes and respond "yeeeah ok Tony, what ever helps you sleep at night." Which kills me because Bruce Banners reaction to the story was EXACTLY the way I felt about the whole mess.