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6th May 2013

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Iron Man 3 was a fun, flawed, exciting movie, and a hugely wasted opportunity for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It could have connected directly to the Avengers storyline, but instead, new director Shane Black did something I didn’t think could happen anymore — he made it as disconnected as he could, only paying lip service to the greater franchise.

Warning, SPOILERS below, if you choose to continue reading!

While the events of the Avengers movie are used as a driving force for the issues Tony has in the new movie, they are just referenced in that case, and in a few instances of people saying things like “Wow, gods and aliens exist!”

But none of the actions of the villain of Iron Man 3 have any connection to the events of the MCU, when there were so many ways he could have been tied into it. The biggest opportunity, and therefore the greatest waste, was the treatment of Mandarin as someone who doesn’t wield the 10 rings of power. 

In the comics, the Mandarin gets his 10 rings when he finds the remains of ancient alien technology from a dragon-like race. If that isn’t an invitation to make Thanos the source of the 10 rings in the movie version of the Mandarin, I don’t know what is.

It seems like such an obvious connection to make, it should boggle my mind as to why it wasn’t done. It should, but Shane Black explained why he wanted to go down the path he did in an interview two months ago, and the culprit is Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies.

Black wanted a realistic real-world style villain, he said. I am not sure how fire=breathing, human bomb super-powered bad guys fit that model, but I am sure it works in Black’s mind somehow.

So here’s how I would have done it. And WARNING, REAL SPOILERS COMING!

Killian gets snubbed my Stark. He develops Extremis with Hansen over the years.He turns to the Mandarin for help in stabilizing the tech. The Mandarin does so, but it requires repeated exposure to the Mandarin’s power rings. The Mandarin uses the Extremis tech to advance his own terror campaign, to lure Iron Man into the conflict, The goal is, we find out (but Tony never does), to take Iron Man out of the coming conflict with Thanos, the source of the Mandarin’s rings. The final conflict involves the same use of the swarm of Iron Man suits. Killian is killed, Mandarin escapes into space.

Joss Whedon, I await your call. :)

3rd May 2013

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Spoiler-free Iron Man Three quick impressions

Exciting, fun and funny, action-packed. Slightly less of an emotional heart to it (new director less adept at that than Favreau).

Very creative take on The Mandarin, ultimately unsatisfying resolution to him.

Some transcendantly nerdy individual moments.

Disturbing non-storyline implications to the end credits montage, and the fact that there is no Marvel Cinematic Universe reveal at the end. (Yes, there is and end-of-credits scene, but it has no reveal to future MCU stories).

26th April 2013

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Conspiracy Theories are Indulgent Political Cowardice

Since my birthday was a few weeks ago, I am going to give myself a present and tell you what being 53 years old brings to me — historical perspective. And yes this is aimed squarely at all my friends who think the world is especially horrible right now and use that to drive foolish conspiracy theories.

I lived through Vietnam, albeit as a kid and young teenager. I lived through a period when our government lied to us about how many troops it deployed, how many died, whether or not it was bombing a sovereign country not even involved in the war (two, actually, Laos and Cambodia). I have a cousin who barely missed having his legs blown off by a mine and spent years in painful physical therapy. We got through it, and without a revolution.

I lived through the Oil Crisis of the 1970s, when gasoline was rationed and people lined up at gas stations — LINED UP for miles like the US was Libya in the middle of its revolution last year. We got through it, without revolution.

I swam in rivers so polluted that we could tell what they were making in the factories upriver by the color of the foam that floated on the surface, from bright green to hot pink to blaze orange. Now I can swim in Boston Harbor without fear of disease or exposure. We got through it, without revolution. How? By the people demanding change so loudly congress created the EPA and passed the Clean Water Act.

Sitting on the political sidelines calling for revolution, and indulging yourself in elitism by thinking your time and political climate is somehow a special kind of awful is political cowardice. And you know who aren’t political cowards? The bigoted, rights-hating arch-conservative religious right.

They KNOW the only way to affect real change is to get inside the system and change it from within. And they have done so, to the great detriment of the level of education and therefore the future of this country. 

Vote for change. If you have the stomach for it, run for something. But get in the system, don’t whine about it from outside.