Iron Man 3 - One for the Junk Pile

Arguably the worst of the MCU films, Iron Man 3 (although I find it more watchable than, Spider Man Far From Home) left a lot to be desired, and as we got the "twist" in the film, it wasn't a thrill, it was a direct shot to the unarmored iron balls.

When it was announced that Ben Kingsley had been cast and it appeared that he was playing the Mandarin, I was thrilled, this is one of the greatest actors of the last century.  Then I saw the movie and felt like chucking my large Sprite at the screen.

For the longest time, the Mandarin has been one of Stark's greatest enemies, now it seemed that they were dialing it up to 11 by making him a terrorist leader as well as everything else he's supposed to be, but just another angry CEO... didn't we do that with Obie and Hammer?  This was the opportunity of a real hardcore Ironman villain, and Marvel failed big time.

The one good thing I'll say about the film is that it was still a lot of the nuts & bolts Ironman and not that nanotech nonsense they would later use to screw up the character more.

It started off great, the video threats from the supposed Mandarin, matching up with a lot of the way terrorists like to operate, it was a change for him, but it was okay, kinda matched up with reality a bit more, I could live with that.  Using human bombs that could go off and walk away, VERY COOL, could leave those investigating it fooled for who knows how long, no evidence.  

Stark meets this really cool kid in Tennessee, a kid with some of the same talents as Stark, nice appeal to younger audiences but not to over-cutsie as Disney products tend to overdue it, it was working so far.

This could have let up to an even better Shang-Chi if the real 10 Rings had been in play, like the Mandarin used in the comic.  At Mandarins defeat the rings could have gone to Shang-Chi's father, and we could have seen that unfold in their film.

But the moment we learned that the Kingsley character not only wasn't the Mandarin but just an actor, the film died, right then, it was over and not worth another kernal of popcorn, and it was such a bad choice it took credibility from the entire MCU.  If they were willing to make a decision this bad on an Iron Man movie, what else might they severely screw up?!?

I'm not a fan of Guy Pearce anyway, I'm not impressed with his acting and can't understand how anyone is, he comes off as slimey from the first second, even when he's not trying to.

Let's hope that Shane Black just goes away and doesn't return to the MCU anytime ... at all, the writing was terrible and the direction was abysmal.  Let him go make B-level action flicks with Z-list actors where he belongs.

In the end, this was just a really bad addition to the MCU and probably shouldn't have been done if they weren't going to do it right.

Overall this film gets half a star, but for a single film, it gets none, it was just a mistake, plain and simple.

This film will forever be in the ranks of Indiana Jones 4 and the Star Wars sequels of, WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING!?!

 

MRM: The band is finally together, The Avengers

The buildup of the MCU Phase 1 came to a head in this groundbreaking film, that brought these heroes together to fight against the invading army of ... Loki, well sort of.

In the very first scene we learn that the villain isn't really the main villain, just someone doing his bidding.

Nick Fury shows up at SHIELD HQ to find the teseract has been "misbehaving" as we're reintroduced to Dr Selvig (from Thor) and Hawkeye  who points out that the teseract is a door and that doors open from both directions, which it quickly does, and Loki starts blowing things up, as well as taking Selvig and Hawkeye as his "personal flying monkeys"... no worries, Cap gets the reference.... or does later... 

One of the more important scenes that a lot of people might overlook is when Nick is speaking to the "shodowy committee" and we see that they are just bureaucrats and don't really get what should/needs to be done, but still people in a position of power that can cause problems.

The recruitment scenes are good, get the job done, but (other than Nat & Banner) really don't have a lot of emotion.  Bringing Cap & Banner onto the Carrier is good stuff, seeing Cap have to pay off his $10 bet with Fury is great bit between "old soldiers".

Thor is drawn in just in his search for Loki, but they make up for that in an really well written scene between Thor and Coulson on the Helicarrier.  Helmsworth should have been on an episode or two of, Agents of SHIELD, maybe a two parter with he and Coulson working, just the two of them, good matchup of characters.

Arguably the best scene in the film is the confrontation scene in the Helicarriers lab, when Loki's influence is affecting all of them, and stirring the pot.

"The world is filling up with people who can't be matched." is one of the phrases that Nick uses to justify more movies about hero's that are already there before The Avengers.  Who else is Nick talking about?  This is probably the biggest hole that they never really address.

This is also when we get that great scene between Cap & Stark when Cap challenges, "Big man in a suit of armor, take that off, what are you?"  But also in that scene, Stark shows his latent hate for Cap by calling him "you're a laboratory experiment Rogers, everything special about you came out of a bottle." which anyone knows, that's really the least of Cap, but they put it in to pump up the Star character and tone down Cap.  The scene didn't achieve what it should but did some of what they wanted, even if it was bad for the story.

The scene is interrupted by Hawkeye's attack on the Helicarrier.  Banner and Romanov fall to a lower level where Banner does his "party trick" and the Hulk is loose on the carrier, just as Loki wanted.  The ensuing battle on board splits the team up with Hulk and Thor knocked off but Hawkeye is brought back with a little smack to the coconut.

This also leads to the tragic loss of Agent Phil Coulson (yeah, I know 😉) as Loki stabs him in the back.  Fury uses the incident to motivate the team, and while in deep thought over what happened, Stark gets a revelation... "son of a b*tch", and he knows where Loki is heading.

Another great scene is the dialogue between Loki & Stark, sorry Tony, the threatening... it's a scene where we see Stark playing with Loki's emotions about Thor and then a final line about Coulson.  But in here we also get to see the real Iron Man, the nuts & bolts Iron Man instead of that nanotech nonsense.

The battle in New York is outrageous and a great climax for this phase of the MCU, but we see another issue when Cap lands on a police car and tells some police what he needs, the officer looks at him and says, "why should I take orders from you?".... IT'S CAPTAIN FREAKIN' AMERICA... so we have to see him smash some aliens for one minor laugh in the script, not a cool thing.

During the battle, here comes the shadowy committee again, bureaucrats making fool decisions for a fight they aren't part of and don't get, and Nick trying to tell them how foolish they are.  We see them again at the end of the film, where Nick pretty much brushes them off, too bad he couldn't do that earlier.  We get hints at this committee but overall in the MCU, they really never make a difference either way from here out.  One has to wonder, how many were on our side and how many were Hydra.  Looking back now, that committee seems like it was pretty useless in the MCU.

An end credit scene finally shows us Thanos, which was pretty cool but it was a bit obvious to begin with, studios let too much slip out before films are released, or many put the whole story into their trailers, not great filmmaking. 

In the end, Nick's plan worked, but was it by design or did he get lucky with the Avengers?  Did they get along because they could or because they had to?  We see some of that answer in a great, and simple, post credit scene of the crew having schwarma (I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it).

The film gets 🌟🌟🌟 and a half stars out of five, it was great to see the team together, the fight is good, but overall the film doesn't hit as hard as it could have.

 

MRM : Iron Man 2 aka, Tony's Ego part 2

Marvel doubled down with the 2nd installment of the MCU as Iron Man 2 took to the screen.  Looking back from today, we realize that the MCU isn't what we thought it was back then, so much centers around or leads back to, Tony Stark.

We start the film with Tonys tribute to Tonys ego, his resurrection of the Stark Expo, a whole year of it, or it was supposed to have gone on for a year... we never found out if they tried to finish it or not.

On his way out, a cameo by the always hot, Kate Mara, who serves Tony with an order to appear before the senate armed services committee hearing, which turns into a fun scene of Tony (Robert Downey Jr) making complete fools out of Senator Stern (Garry Shandling, who later turns out to be part of Hydra) and a political committee attempting to forcibly take the "Iron Man weapon" from him.  He also makes a fool out of fellow billionaire/designer (not really hard to do with this guy) Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell).

Another film where the Stark family history comes back biting, this time in the form of the son of a man who helped Howard Stark (John Slattery) design the arc reactor and then was shuffled off to Siberia to keep him from the world, never sharing a penny for his work and creations.

Ivan Vanko, the supervillain known as, Whiplash (Mickey Rourke, who should have won the Oscar for, The Wrestler) is the son of Starks former scientist and is out to avenge what was done to him, in a vodka fueled rage.

Back in his hotrod workshop, we find out that Stark is being poisoned by the cell in his chest that is keeping him alive and that the use of the Iron Man suit only makes it worse, but he does everything to keep it to himself, and he turns control of Stark Industries over to Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow).

This film introduces Natasha Romanoff, aka The Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) as part of Stark Industries staff, he first scene in a funny bit with the films director, Jon Favreau, in his role as, Happy Hogan.

Tony, Pepper, Happy and Natasha travel to Monaco, where Elon Musk makes a cameo, Tony then subs himself in for his own Formula 1 driver, but the race is interrupted by Whiplash.  In another of the moments that is the way Iron Man should be, we see Tony change into the suit via a special briefcase, again the nuts & bolts of the suit being far better than the weak and lazy writing with "nanotech".

It's here that the MCU touches, ever so briefly, on one of the biggest parts of Tony's past, his alcoholism, as was featured in the comics in the 1970s, but came to help define and humble the character, this version could use some humility, they didn’t take this part seriously enough at all.

During one of Starks benders, he throws a massive party as his mansion and uses the Iron Man armor to blow up water melons.  James "Roadie" Rhodes (Don Cheadle) steps in and takes one of Tony's Iron Man suits.

Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) and Black Widow stage an intervention in a donut shop, where Widow sticks Tony with a sirum that helps to curb the effects of the paldium poisoning, for now.

Agent of SHIELD, Phil Coulson is assigned to babysit Stark as he's locked in his mansion to review a bunch of his dad's old work and movies from his version of the Stark Expo.  It's in these films that we hear Howard Stark's comment, "all things are possible through technology", and Marvel seems to want that to be their new motto over the classic, With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, because hey, who should be or needs to be when your a, playboy-billionaire-philanthorpist... right?

Coulson leaves to "take care of something more important in the southwest (the discovery of Thor's hammer), Tony takes off to tell Pepper happy birthday and apologize.  While in his old office he gets a revelation while looking at the old scale model of his dad's Stark Expo.

To cure himself and to defeat Danko, Tony must fulfil his fathers dream, that he didn't have the technology back in his day.

Justin Hammer frees Danko and gets him to work on his own line of iron men, but Danko has a different plan.  The final battle is a pretty good one, although Whiplash being regulated to just another battle suit seems to be a slap to the classic villain.

Overall, the movie is really a lot about Tony's ego and little to do with the Avengers and/or the MCU, except to introduce Black Widow (which they could have done with her own movie) and War Machine... oh, and we also see Tony save a young Peter Parker at the Stark Expo (which the kids identity was thrown in LONG after the films release).  As far as an Iron Man adventure, it was too much Stark and not enough Iron Man, they could have done better.  It gets 🌟 and a half stars out of five, just because Scarlett Johansson looked so good in that suit.  The film is mainly about pushing the, "all things are possible through technology" 💩 than anything else... but the third film is even worse, but we'll get to that...

 

MRM : Iron Man (2008) aka, Tony’s Ego Part 1

 

In the actual kickoff of the MCU, we get, at least through our worlds timeline, Tony’s Ego : Part One…. I mean, Iron Man!

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) is pushed as the MCU's "golden boy" instead of Captain America so that Hollywood can push the, "all things are possible through technology" 💩

We start with Stark's motorcade being attacked with an IED in the Middle East, then flashback 36 hours to give everyone an idea of Tony's "priorities" in life, like sleeping with hot reporters, or gambling while he's supposed to be at company functions.

Here, we're introduced to James "Roadie" Rhodes (Terrence Howard) who is Tony's old friend and military connection, Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) who is Tony's butler/top guy, and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) who is Tony's secretary/handler.

Then back to real time, after showing off his latest weapon system, The Jericho, the motorcade is attacked and Stark is injured, then put back together in the cave/stronghold of a terrorist group so he can build a Jericho system for them.  instead, he builds what is known in the MCU as the, Mark I suit, a crude version of Iron Man that look a lot like the comics early rendition of the character that he uses to escape his captors.

When he returns to civilization (nice product placement, Burger King, although I don't remember the stores doing anything around the film, at all) he decides that mass weapons manufacturing isn't his thing anymore (in a VERY public press conference, where we first meet, Agent Coulson).  Back at the mansion we see Tony & Pepper have a funny buy crazy moment of, Operation, when she helps him change out the reactor in his chest. 😆  It was good he interrupted her when he did as she was wasting her time with that screaming idiot and stock market wanna-be analyst, Jim Cramer.

He then goes on to design the, Mark II suit, gold and hotrod red (introducing us to JARVIS) and starts his campaign against terrorists that are using his weapons against innocents.  In one fight he's pursued by American fighter jets and has to admit to Roadie that it's him in the armor.

One of the major mistakes of the film is them acting as if they don't have the name, SHIELD in place yet, when in other films we know that it's been in use for decades, going back and watching this, it makes Coulson really look bad, and he's one guy they shouldn't do that to.

In a bid to overthrow the company, it turns out that his number two guy, Obediah Stain (Jeff Bridges, who is awesome, too bad they killed him off) was behind the attack on Tony in the Middle East, he wants to take control of the company so he can keep supplying weapons to whoever has the money, no matter who they are used against.  In that, he takes the reactor from Stark's chest to power his own version of the Mark I, best known in the comics as, Iron Monger.

Of course Tony wins the day & saves the girl, finally realizing that Pepper Potts is the one for him, as he announces to the world, "I am Iron Man."

The post credit scene of Tony and Nick Fury would be the kickoff of the MCU, but really could have/should have been done a bit different with Fury trying to knock down Tony's ego a bit more by telling him that  he's not the only super hero in the world, but since he's Tony Stark he has to do things in public instead of under the radar like "the others".  

Overall it's a pretty good super hero film and origin story for the modern age.

The best part of this movie, is that it's the nuts & bolts Iron Man, the way it should be, the real machine work, clockwork style, not the weak and foolish "nanotech" nonsense they go for in later films.  Seeing that first time he locks on the armor to go after the bad guys and first "super hero landing" is really a great thing!!!

The use of classic rock, namely AC/DC is incredible and greatly helps in connecting the different generations of fans for the comic books and the new films.

Robert Downey Jr is perfect for the role, he comes off as a spoiled brat billionaire playboy, that you want to cheer for but also wouldn't mind slapping the hell out of here and there.  Downey really put his life back together after years of substance abuse, he now uses his role to help people, especially kids needing prosthetics, he's turned into a real life hero.

For the film alone, it get's 🌟🌟 and a half stars but for the kickoff of the MCU, just one, Cap should have been the focus, that  isn't about Downey or Favreau, it's about Marvel's mistake.

I'm always sorry we never got to see this model of the the Iron Man armor from the late early 70's, it's an obvious punchline just waiting to happen, as Tony could call this one, his Horny Armor 😆 given the look of the helmet...  But, there are several versions of the armor that I wish we could have seen.

MRM : Captain America The First Avenger

It's #MovieReviewMonday and time to review one of the MCU's best, Captain America : The First Avenger, as we begin our weekly series to review all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with who knows what else, thrown into the mix on other days... 

Like I said, I think this is one of the best of the MCU films, it is true to the character but still has a flood of holes and mistakes in respect to the characters and their history.

Marvel decided to begin the MCU with Iron Man instead of Captain America, which I think was the first mistake.  This was to push the silly notion mentioned in "Iron Man" made by Howard Stark, "All things are possible through technology" and pushing the agenda that tech is the only savior of mankind 😵.  Now don't worry, I'm not going to get biblical on you, that's not my point at all, it's about Heart.

Like too many super hero films in the past, they tried to force far too much into the first movie, there is so much more to Caps story, the 1990 film (poster at right) being a great example. Second mistake, too much in one movie.

The Howling Commandoes, The Invaders, even the legendary character of the Red Skull deserved more than just one movie, despite his later appearances to lead souls in their search for the soul stone.  It just wasn't right given the history of the character of the Red Skull.  So their third mistake was just one film taking place in World War Two.

Personally, I'd have ended this film after Cap has rescued Bucky & the rest of the 107th, and quitting his duty as a chorus girl.  "Let's hear it for, Captain America!" should have been the final line of the film before going to credits.

Throughout the history of the character, numerous villains have admitted that Captain America is the "most dangerous" Avenger because of his leadership and inspiration of others, that should have been the focal part of the film, like the scene at the flagpole or the scene with the grenade, Heart.

In the end of the original film, when Rogers wakes up in modern times, they are playing a replay of a baseball game, we should have already heard part of it, by them doing a scene of Rogers and Barnes at the game together, showing more of their friendship, so not just Cap is alerted when we hear the game playing later.

The cast was terrific, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Dr Abraham (Stanly Tucci), The Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), Col Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones), Dum Dum Dugan (Neal McDonough were all amazing and it's too bad that most were wasted on one movie.

The story of the Howling Commandoes and The Invaders could have also teased at later films and characters involvement in the MCU, as well as introducing Baron Zeom Sr (another reason for his son to hate Captain America and the Avengers) who could have been the key villain for the 2nd or 3rd film.  Now I know what you're thinking... "third film, when does he go in the ice?", in my plan, not until the 4th film, but I'll go through all that in my, Ultimate MCU post on January 1st 2022 😉.

There is just so much lost on today's fans by only doing one Captain America film during WWII, the importance of war correspondents, morale at home and Patriotism for, not just America, but the world to win that one.  People need to understand what Rogers and others went through and why those experiences changed so much.

One of the mistakes the studio made was not making an official poster that remade the classic Uncle Sam recruiting poster of Cap pointing forward, it seems to be like a simple given to me and many people that I've talked to, but for some reason they didn't put those out, it would have made a great teaser.  

Here we see a fan made poster about War Bonds from his showtime and work as a US Army "chorus girl" as Col Phillips called him.  The marketing for this movie was pretty disappointing, but today's Hollywood isn't much into American Patriotism, one of their major downfalls.

Compared to the rest  of the MCU, this film gets a decent score of 🌟🌟🌟 out of five, but as a stand alone film, I'm afraid it only gets 🌟🌟 out of five.  They dropped, tripped over or just plain ignored all kinds of opportunities with this one.

 

What happened to Area 51?

 Remember two years ago when we were all going to storm Area 51?  It was the hip hashtag and the main thing to talk/joke about in social media, then it actually kinda started to gain some ground, less than a year later, the nightmare hit… coincidence?  No. 😆

But it was funny as hell, especially when you realize who posted about it, we had Stone Cold Steve Austin, Chuck Norris, and freakin’ Iron Man ready to go with… well, Austin if someone brought him beer, I readily volunteered, he got a kick out of it.

It came up in my “memories” on a social media platform so I thought I’d share the FUN we were having 2 years ago… and need to start having again, badly … too many killjoys and buzzkills out there whining and crying like that one whiny kid we all had in our home room in grade school, always tattling, always spoiling the fun, grown up and hosting videos online ruining movie plots, “busting” myths, and telling you a little too much about what’s in your favorite hotdog brand 😡 I guess it’s his revenge for always getting picked last for dodgeball 😆 

Crashing and invading Area 51 sure sounded like fun at the time, and honestly still does, maybe some celebrity needs to post up about it and get it started again… 😉 I’m not a celebrity, so don’t look at me… but oh the team we had going back then… 🍺😎👊