Starring:
Robert Downey Jr.
Gwyneth Paltrow
Don Cheadle
Guy Pearce
Rebecca Hall
Director:
Shane Black
Likes:
- The humor was good in this movie, especially Tony’s camaraderie with the kid, Harley. Any time an adult avoids the trope of forced parenting as a means to become a better person is alright by me. How this took a complete turn by the time Homecoming was released is the very reason I almost never saw that movie. How dare they make Tony Stark a responsible father figure! Just four years ago he was calling a twelve-year-old a pussy!
- The twist with the Mandarin is delightful and refreshingly different from other villains. As is Pepper Potts’ graduation to rescuing her own damn self for once.
- I’m unsure of how to take Stark’s anxiety/PTSD in this movie. I like that they’re showing his humanity again, and that maybe it’s not so easy to save New York City/Earth and not have some bit of psychological trauma come back with you. Literally every other superhero ever depicted always rolls with the punches. Sometimes they’re racked with guilt because a few lives were lost, the bad guy got away, etc., but you never see them grappling with their countless near-death/end-of-the-world experiences. I find it a little strange that the New York Event is Tony’s trigger, but overall, I’m happy with the decision to address it at all.
Dislikes:
- A famous playboy forgot to meet you, a nobody, on a roof for New Year’s and you spend the next decade and a half obsessing over it. What kind of motivation is that? And props to having Yinsen show up for a second to tie the event to the first movie, but he also mentioned Tony being plastered that night, and even if he wasn’t, 13 years is a long time to retain tiny details about people you couldn’t even remember ten minutes after meeting them.
- What the hell, this whole time Stark could have just had a surgery to get the shrapnel out? Why didn’t he do that in the second film?! You know, when the arc reactor in his chest was fucking killing him??
- A little nitpicky, but I’m finding it hard to pinpoint what I didn’t love about this film. It didn’t wow me, but I don’t hate it either. It just hovers in the middle ground of ‘meh.’
