Hacker Cinema
Iron Man 3
2013 · Film · 130 min
Part of Iron Man Collection
Directed by Shane Black
ActionAdventureScience Fiction
When Tony Stark's world is torn apart by a formidable terrorist called the Mandarin, he starts an odyssey of rebuilding and retribution.
1 positive8 negative1 mixed11 neutralfrom 21 commenters
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21 comments on Hacker News
The Iron Man thing… MCU Tony Stark wasn't as smart as he thought he was. He should've allowed surgeons to help with his heart immediately, rather than the entire B-plot of Iron Man 2; Iron Man 3's plot could've been averted in a whole bunch of ways if he'd been less arrogant and thoughtless, and also shows him as a loner unwilling to call for assistance despite (by this point) being allied with what passes for gods in the MCU; Ultron was his own hubris punching him in the face; the justification he gives for the Sokovia Accords was a stupid response to an act of self-defence that, sure, could've and should've been handled better, but it isn't like Stark himself was great at avoiding collateral damage during emergencies in the other films; his rage-fight against Barnes in Civil War, while understandable, was wildly unprofessional and a sign he was not a suitable person to be in possession of a one-man weapon system like the Iron Man suits have been shown to be; his tech gift to Peter Parker had wildly inadequate safety measures to be gifted to someone still in school, even if they had been to space.
Basically: yes, Musk is just like Stark. Half as smart as he thinks he is, has main-character syndrome and/or narcissism.
He had a PR team working overtime to boost his image. Remember he had a cameo in movie Iron Man 3 back in the day.
He meticulously worked on his image for decades.
I was just watching the X-Men films. I only went up to 2014, but that appears to be basically contemporary - Rogue One is from 2016 and the MCU apparently has a formal division into phases of which "phase 2" centers on 2014.
The X-Men films have the property you want, with plots and characterization included in the movie instead of relying on you to bring them with you in your mind.
(Are the later films good? They're not great, but if you watch one you'll come out with a sense that the movie had a plot, the things that happened were related to that plot, and the characters had reasons for the things they were doing. The films are quite inconsistent with each other, but they're very coherent considered individually.)
The MCU films of phase 2 have already lost it. (For context, phase 2 starts with Iron Man 3 and is mostly garbage with the exception of Winter Soldier, concluding with Ant-Man.)
My conclusion is basically just that someone at the MCU decided "we can save on the budget if we stop using writers".
If anyone cares, I actually like a lot of the vaporwave/outrun/whatever it's called now stuff when coding.
I can listen to music with lyrics when I'm writing code, but not when I'm reading. So coding calls for metal or hip-hop for me most of the time, but reading usually demands synthwave, darkwave, horrowave, retrowave, classical, etc. If I'm sitting at my electronics bench working on hardware stuff, I particularly like to do the "put on a movie that I've seen so many times that I won't get drawn into paying attention to it" thing. Lately I've been using Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, Hackers, Sneakers, etc. for that.
You can definitely notice when a Hollywood film has decided to suck up to the Chinese audience, such as with Pacific Rim 2 or Iron Man 3.
I would comment as follows.
Iron Man - sort novel for setting marvel tone but mostly banal action movie
Iron Man 2 - banal action movie
Thor - banal action movie
Captain America: The First Avenger - particularly banal action movie
Marvel's The Avengers - banal action movie
Iron Man 3 - banal action movie, sort of interesting to see protagonist suffering PTSD anxiety from being a superhero
Thor: The Dark World - banal action movie
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - first interesting take. Patriotism is not the same as government obedience. Real fight choreography approaching a soft john wick.
Guardians of the Galaxy - Early rock and roll aesthetic pretty interesting
Avengers: Age of Ultron - banal action movie, perhaps mcu lowpoint
Ant-Man - superhero heist movie, literally deconstructs larger than life superhero tropes. I think thumbs up
Captain America: Civil War - by this point doing the mcu's own thing, which is novel, but probably not interesting outside
Doctor Strange - banal action movie
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - aesthetic still feels mostly fresh.
Spider-Man: Homecoming - super down to earth high school drama, frustrated working class villains suffering the fallout of superheroes, seems interesting to me
Thor: Ragnarok - great film, very genre savvy. Rare achievement to make godly strength brutes feel really engaging to watch. Taika Waititi is a genius.
Black Panther - pretty good. interesting aesthetic. directly addressing racial tensions.
Avengers: Infinity War & Endgame - Mostly fan service and not too surprising but honestly still novel.
Ant-Man and the Wasp - Ehhh I really don't remember
Captain Marvel - Beginning had some great hard sci fi imo. Thought the ending message of newly apotheosizied female not needing to prove herself to her evil male mentor was a solid take, whereas a classic "mano a mano" kind of showdown would be so typical of the genre
Spider-Man: Far From Home - Villain emphasizing themes of the power of deceptive media? heck yeah.
Wandavision - Really bizarre and interesting start. Unfortunately non-self-aware conclusion
Falcon and Winter Soldier - Active discussions of race and the problematic nature of superheroes being supremacists? Very good.
Loki - kind of a super cliche topic (time cops) that is also somehow really rare? eh.
honorable mentions for Logan and Deadpool for being just great; and the Amazing Spiderman for its excellent aesthetics despite terrible writing.
Sure, and I agree that sex scenes aren't inherently more complex / difficult to film than fight scenes (caveats around CGI, green screen, etc complexities that are more likely required in the latter).
As intimated though, the challenge is keeping China happy - there's been a constant series of articles about this phenomenon.
Beyond the acceptance of ultra-violence along with a distaste for sexuality, consider all the political hand-wringing that led Disney to the Iron Man 3 fracas. [0] Or informed their decisions around promoting any films with a non-white protagonist. [1] But really, any web search on 'how are the chinese market cuts of marvel films different' will get you a slew of results.
Aside - about 15 years ago, while in Hong Kong, I picked up a bootleg DVD of Love Actually (a highly popular, but arguably shite, film). Turned out that the local cut of that film excised every appearance of Martin Freeman & Joanna Page.
[0] https://screenrant.com/iron-man-3-china-version-different-scenes/
[1] https://qz.com/quartzy/1231764/the-story-behind-the-racist-responses-to-black-panther-in-china/
Just to talk in concrete terms, Jon Favreau only directed Iron Man 1 and 2. He was executive producer on Iron Man 3, and Avengers 1-3. Plus acting credits in MCU Spider-Man films.
He deserves plenty of credit for his work on Iron Man and launching the MCU (and the MCU's film making formula). Favreau has contributed to the MCU's continued market success with the Avengers films.
In my view Favreau's contribution ends there: the MCU is far more than just the Iron Man character, and Kevin Feige seems to me to be the one who has been pushing the MCU forward and keep it relevant.
I don't think this is a sustainable criticism.
Iron Man 3 is all about PTSD. Black Panther has a atrong theme about the damage done to children when they are abandoned. Captain Marvel is about the way women are taught to keep their strengths in check. Endgame has Thor's whole plot being about dealing with dismal failure and depression, and how this doesn't have to define you as a person.
I mean, sure, they aren't incredibly deep approaches to these topics. But there is definitely a thread of emotional, psychological experiences running through the Marvel movies.
Something I've noticed in recent superhero movies is the idea that:
* For all the talk about "heart", superheroes are extraordinary by some aspect the rest of us can't expect to get
* Yet supervillains are often just normal people who got too pissed off. The villains in Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, Spider Man: Far From Home, Captain America: Civil War, Ant-Man, etc are just people that got ticked off.
We have to count on others to be superheroes, but we're all one bad day from becoming supervillains.
Also shoot whole new scenes for movies just for the Chinese market. I worked in post-production on Iron Man 3 and there are scenes that exist for that movie for China that don't exist in the US release.
Not sure if it's a contractual thing to get the coveted release window there or extra $.
Or look at The Meg, which was a US-Chinese co-production that was like a tourist video for Sanya Bay towards the end of the film.
But Hollywood isn't going to stand down over taking Chinese money. Right now, most of the money is made overseas on the big movies. Much like Germany was a huge overseas market in the 30s.
I'd think Ragnarok doesn't work too well unless you've at least got the gist of several of the other films, like the first two Thors (which... ugh, especially 2), probably the first two Avengers, Civil War AKA Avengers 2.5 which in turn drags in the first two Captain America movies (you'd think it should drag in Iron Man 3 too, at least, but they just kinda ignored what happened in that movie for some reason, so it doesn't). Especially lots of the jokes, but also much of the character development. Could be wrong about that.
Here's one of the better compilations I've found:
http://www.businessinsider.com/hollywood-movies-in-china-2016-10/
I'm not an expert on this, but I think the China-set scenes are generally included in the U.S. theatrical cut, Skyfall's sniper fight in Shanghai being an example [0]. I did a little more Googling and found there were a few examples of scenes meant only for China and left out of the U.S. release. Iron Man 3 apparently had 4 more minutes in which Dr. Wu gets some time to hawk Chinese products [1]. Apparently, some notable Chinese bloggers/moviegoers didn't like the obvious shilling [2].
There are far more examples of things being cut out than being added. In Skyfall's Shanghai scene for example, Chinese censors apparently didn't like the bit where Bond kills a security guard. The listed reasoning for the cuts are heavy-handed to the point of amusement, e.g. ""Mission: Impossible 3" dropped a shot of clothes on clotheslines in Shanghai for the Chinese cut. Apparently, the lack of dryer ownership is a sensitive issue." [2]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMW4dN5sGb0
[1] https://kotaku.com/why-many-in-china-hate-iron-man-3s-chinese-version-486840429
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39m85puOQok
[3] https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/05/18/407619652/how-chinas-censors-influence-hollywood
edit: Apparently Looper, which changed one of its locales from Paris to Shanghai, has extra scenes for Chinese audiences:
http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the_extra_looper_scenes_y
Iron Man 3 is one such movie. There is a rather out of place China only product placement scene for some drink, a scene where Iron Man is seen visiting china on TV and a final scene where Tony goes to China to have a Chinese doctor (played by a famous Chinese movie star) help operate on him to remove the shrapnel from his chest.
All the scenes can be found of Youtube.
i am less convinced
i read a long time ago someone's interpretation of the history of film as being invented in reverse: starting with impressionism and developing hyper realism;
it's an overly simplistic break down with all the standard caveats but it has a certain amiable pithiness to it
look at some of these movies that are attempting higher frame rates and you'll see the audience is suddenly unimpressed by the same set tricks and computer effects that were stunning them days before in another film at lower frame rates
i remember the first time i saw an HD tv that i was truly impressed by they were playing a battle scene from film i had seen many times before, i walked by and stopped in my tracks because the wall mount appeared to be a window, the title characters were riding horses on an expanse of pasture before the battle, it was stunningly beautiful, but after some dialogue they took off running down a hill to meet another army and the camera panned back and i could very easily pick out which ten of the hundreds of charging horses were real and which were drawn in triangles, i could nearly count the triangles
very similar to the effect while watching an animated film with lush painted backdrops: you see a forest scene and you just know that one tree branch is going to break off because it was painted by the animators and the hue and stroke is just slightly off
i think efforts like the one in the article, and the one in the comment above linking the shinobi 3 video, may come prebaked into visual media
i buy a copy of iron man 3 in the year 2071 and it will display on my super pixel screen in such a way to make it appear like it is being watched on the tech it was built for, smudging those lines between organics and triangles
with the option to turn it off, then right back on again
China is now such a big market and a big power that every industries, countries downplay any criticism. I think one of the biggest example is Hollywood, it has long gone the time where there was movies on the Tibet, now Hollywood is even making special versions of its movies to include few minutes with chinese actors (see Iron Man 3).
I don't know what other people think. But as someone who loves Sci-Fi, I loathe this man and his approach to what he calls "art". I can't stand the many series and movies he's made.
Did not like Lost, I tried to watch a couple episodes of Fringe, I just hated it. It was bland, boring and feels so calculated. And Star Trek was a great example on how Hollywood movies are made nowadays, piece together a buncha action scenes and hope the story makes sense(I'm looking at your Iron Man 3).
Now I say this because I am not that big of a fan of Star Trek, I really liked TNG, Voyager and Enterprise, but I barely know anything about Star Trek(haven't even watched TOS) like many people do. But this man claimed on TV that he didn't like Star Trek, how on Earth can you expect someone to even understand it well enough to make a half decent movie. Especially considering the level of quality Star Trek is suppose to have.
"Iron Man originally used to be about fighting communism, now it is about fighting terrorism"
Uh? Let's look at the villains in the recent movies:
Iron Man 1: Terrorists, later revealed to be puppets of a corrupt American military contractor.
Iron Man 2: A Russian scientist with a personal grudge, later teams up with a corrupt American military contractor.
Iron Man 3: Terrorists, turn out to have been entirely made up by a corrupt American military contractor.
In every movie the real villain is a representative of the military-industrial complex. In two of the three, cutting-edge American military technology is publicly and embarrassingly subverted and used against American citizens. In the related Avengers movie, American military authorities order a nuclear attack on New York City.
There is a lot of American propoganda in American movies (oh God, Battleship), but Iron Man is a pretty poor example.
>Studios want to make films that will bring in buckets of money. Audiences in the US are far more willing to go and watch patriotic films than those that question the actions of the military or government.
>A good example of this would be Iron Man 3, which had several minutes of additional footage added in for the Chinese market.
Yeah, doesn't seem like it worked too well for them[0]… if they really wanted to make 'buckets of money' in this case, why not add footage that would resonate with the audience (possibly non DoD supportive stances) instead of irrelevant shots of a local pop star? How can one go about hand-waving this situation that presented itself? They didn't feel like taking the time to understand the Chinese audience? Easier to employ Edward Bernays techniques of misdirection and diversion in order to try and associate good feelings with the movie?
[0]: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2013/0510/Chinese-roll-their-eyes-at-local-footage-added-to-Iron-Man-3
I think people here are making this out to be a considerably bigger deal than it actually is.
Studios that make war films like having DoD support. It is a useful benefit. However, it's not required. Indeed, if you're shooting your film in Canada or Australia (which is fairly common) you're not going to really be able to make much use of the platoon of extras the US army is willing to lend you.
Similarly, the DoD doesn't have to spend money 'buying' the support of movie studios because the American public already want pro-US military films. Studios want to make films that will bring in buckets of money. Audiences in the US are far more willing to go and watch patriotic films than those that question the actions of the military or government.
You'd have lots of pro-US war/military films with or without DoD support. What's interesting is that we're starting to see films being edited - and entirely new scenes being added - for non US markets that are not quite so American-centric. A good example of this would be Iron Man 3, which had several minutes of additional footage added in for the Chinese market.
Here's what the position should be. You're free to use other people's stuff that appears online, but not for commercial purposes.
Putting someone's picture (that happens to be on the web, publicly available) in a post on a site, where you happen to have ads does not count as "using your image" for commercial purposes. Putting your image in an ad would.
My point is that you shouldn't be able to just claim having copyright over someone's work, and then profiting from it as your own. I shouldn't be able to take the HD version of Iron Man 3, and then sell it to my local cinema. That's as far as copyright should go.