If you look at this list, you'll notice that, since I'm working from the bottom, I have apparently skipped over two movies. Well, fair reader that's because I already reviewed them. You can read my thoughts on Civil War and Doctor Strange in other places on this blog. But now I'm going to move on to the best Iron Man, assuming you rank your movies based on the soundtrack.
And what the hay, let's start right there. Iron Man 3 has among the best soundtracks to ever come out of a superhero movie. It's a perfect blending of who Tony was before The Avengers and where he is in his life now. All that, communicated through music. It's lovely, and put Brian Tyler on my radar in a big way. He has since created quality scores for a bunch of movies, and has pretty firmly cemented himself as my favorite movie scorer currently living (RIP, James Horner).
And another thing! There are 42 unique suits of armor in this movie. This is a minor thing for most people, but I notice stuff like this. No, I did not actually count to see if there were actually 42 suits shown in the movie. But the number is, at the very least, close to that, and I was paying close attention to whether or not they were reusing models. They were not. And I appreciate that. It makes for some really fun action that I think is objectively more entertaining than the first two Iron Man movies.
A third thing! And this might just be my favorite thing about this movie, but it's really nice to see Tony's character arc carry over from The Avengers. Iron Man 2 didn't inspire much confidence in the franchise's ability to work with a character across several different movies, but The Avengers did, and it was nice to see Iron Man 3 carry that trend on. Sure, there were things Tony did that didn't make sense, and his PTSD was basically resolved by a simple analogy. Believe me, if you could handle an anxiety disorder with a simple personal comparison of that sort, it would be a far more trivial issue than it is. But that said, I was so happy to actually get a Tony Stark informed by his experiences toward the end of the last movie that I could totally overlook those issues.
So while the first Iron Man was maybe a more entertaining movie overall, Iron Man 3 was the movie that gave me hope in the ongoing serial nature of these films. It was timely.
My biggest complaints with this movie are, as addressed above, the treatment of PTSD and Tony's kinda obvious stupidity. I was impressed that the writers were willing to deal with the probable aftermath of a civilian like Tony going into battle against an alien army, at first, but they really just put on the kid gloves and sorta half-heartedly tossed the idea in there before moving on rather quickly. The sense of continuity lends some realism, but it wasn't a great treatment of what dealing with an actual anxiety issue probably feels like.
I mean, I don't have one, so I don't know. But I sure did not feel especially enlightened after watching this movie, and a dollop of common sense would indicate that what happens here probably isn't representative of much.
Then there was Tony, who on occasion made some... I mean, it's just a little odd that... Okay, yeah, he called out an international terrorist on live TV and then decided to go back to his house without immediately deploying his autonomous drone fleet for some reason. Like, why else would you have an autonomous drone fleet? Pepper shouldn't have even had time to throw her luggage over the balcony before every suit Tony owned was in the air and on the ground around his pad, just scanning for something suspicious.
Like news choppers loaded with missiles. The Iron Man suits are perfectly capable of shooting those missiles out of the air, and he only would have needed like ten on that job while the rest systematically dismantled the vehicles doing the shooting. With 42 self-piloting suits, Tony should have been able to throw up a really secure no-fly zone with a flipping phone call.
But aside from an early misuse of possibly the coolest thing in the MCU (say "autonomous drone fleet" out loud and then see if you can disagree) and the writers wussing out on the chance to do some justice to anxiety disorders, the movie is good, and in a scene filled with blockbusters like Battleship, that's all it really needed to manage.
And what the hay, let's start right there. Iron Man 3 has among the best soundtracks to ever come out of a superhero movie. It's a perfect blending of who Tony was before The Avengers and where he is in his life now. All that, communicated through music. It's lovely, and put Brian Tyler on my radar in a big way. He has since created quality scores for a bunch of movies, and has pretty firmly cemented himself as my favorite movie scorer currently living (RIP, James Horner).
And another thing! There are 42 unique suits of armor in this movie. This is a minor thing for most people, but I notice stuff like this. No, I did not actually count to see if there were actually 42 suits shown in the movie. But the number is, at the very least, close to that, and I was paying close attention to whether or not they were reusing models. They were not. And I appreciate that. It makes for some really fun action that I think is objectively more entertaining than the first two Iron Man movies.
A third thing! And this might just be my favorite thing about this movie, but it's really nice to see Tony's character arc carry over from The Avengers. Iron Man 2 didn't inspire much confidence in the franchise's ability to work with a character across several different movies, but The Avengers did, and it was nice to see Iron Man 3 carry that trend on. Sure, there were things Tony did that didn't make sense, and his PTSD was basically resolved by a simple analogy. Believe me, if you could handle an anxiety disorder with a simple personal comparison of that sort, it would be a far more trivial issue than it is. But that said, I was so happy to actually get a Tony Stark informed by his experiences toward the end of the last movie that I could totally overlook those issues.
So while the first Iron Man was maybe a more entertaining movie overall, Iron Man 3 was the movie that gave me hope in the ongoing serial nature of these films. It was timely.
My biggest complaints with this movie are, as addressed above, the treatment of PTSD and Tony's kinda obvious stupidity. I was impressed that the writers were willing to deal with the probable aftermath of a civilian like Tony going into battle against an alien army, at first, but they really just put on the kid gloves and sorta half-heartedly tossed the idea in there before moving on rather quickly. The sense of continuity lends some realism, but it wasn't a great treatment of what dealing with an actual anxiety issue probably feels like.
I mean, I don't have one, so I don't know. But I sure did not feel especially enlightened after watching this movie, and a dollop of common sense would indicate that what happens here probably isn't representative of much.
Then there was Tony, who on occasion made some... I mean, it's just a little odd that... Okay, yeah, he called out an international terrorist on live TV and then decided to go back to his house without immediately deploying his autonomous drone fleet for some reason. Like, why else would you have an autonomous drone fleet? Pepper shouldn't have even had time to throw her luggage over the balcony before every suit Tony owned was in the air and on the ground around his pad, just scanning for something suspicious.
Like news choppers loaded with missiles. The Iron Man suits are perfectly capable of shooting those missiles out of the air, and he only would have needed like ten on that job while the rest systematically dismantled the vehicles doing the shooting. With 42 self-piloting suits, Tony should have been able to throw up a really secure no-fly zone with a flipping phone call.
But aside from an early misuse of possibly the coolest thing in the MCU (say "autonomous drone fleet" out loud and then see if you can disagree) and the writers wussing out on the chance to do some justice to anxiety disorders, the movie is good, and in a scene filled with blockbusters like Battleship, that's all it really needed to manage.
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