IRON MAN 3 (2013)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*




SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS




I didn't have much to write about IRON MAN 3 when it first came out, since it was easily the least impressive of the Armored Avenger's three outings.  But this weekend's viewing of THE WOLVERINE gives me a new take on the "wrong way" and "right way" of current Hollywood's rendering of franchise superheroes.

From the POV of a longtime comics-reader, Hollywood has improved mightily since the days of such dubious gems as the 1977 SPIDER-MAN teleseries.  In earlier decades most live-action film and television adaptations of comics properties showed a cheery indifference to the original stories.


The success of the 1989 BATMAN, freewheeling as it was, validated the eclectic approach of its scriptwriters, borrowing what worked in the original stories and crossbreeding those elements with the standard Hollywood format of the "big loud action picture." 

That said, it's not hard to find examples where Hollywood scripters made only token efforts toward adapting original comics-stories.  For instance, both FANTASTIC FOUR films reduce the stories they adapt into a dumb-show of meaningless plot-points.  The 2008 IRON MAN pumped new life into the genre, finding a clever way to update the themes implicit in Iron Man's origin-story for the internet generation.  The second film was considerably less insightful, but some of its best moments stemmed from the script's take on the "Tony Stark, alcoholic" storyline.

Though some of the early publicity for IRON MAN 3 touted the presence of the Mandarin as the film's villain, the scripters of IRON MAN 3 probably congratulated themselves on producing a witty "deconstruction" of Iron Man's Asiatic antagonist.  To justify the SPOILERS above: there is no real Mandarin; he's an actor hired to project a phony, Osama-like presence as a superterrorist.  I have not read the 2005-06 IRON MAN "Extrenus" story-arc, so I can't say how closely the film hews to that original, but in this film the villain behind the phony Mandarin proves to be little more than "Wolverine crossed with the Human Torch."  It might be impossible to render a "yellow peril" menace like the original Mandarin for modern audiences, but the poor excuse for a major villain here shows contempt not just for the original stories, but for the superhero genre as well.

Similarly, IRON MAN 3 is the first film in which the hero perfects a new and showy ability to have parts of his armor automatically fit themselves upon his body from afar.  Call me old-fashioned, but I like a hero who presents a somewhat stable appearance and set of powers when he takes arm against a sea of troubles.  As if to mirror this disintegration of the iconic status of Iron Man, Tony Stark has yet another twitchy mental breakdown.  He also whips up a small army of robotic Iron Men and in a pinch causes his flying armor-sections to engirdle fiancee Pepper for purposes of protection, rather than following the tried-and-true "heroic rescue."

I might approve these assaults on iconicity if IRON MAN 3 was a satire on superheroes. But in a film that's selling the excitements of superhero action, they add up to nothing more than Hollywood hackwork.