Random Thoughts about Iron Man 3
Apr. 27th, 2013 06:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labellementeuseI went to see Iron Man 3 with my Marvel posse at the midnight premiere. I'll see it again, but when I did this with Batman my thoughts changed really dramatically from the first viewing to the second viewing, so I wanted to get some of it down on electrons. For other aspects, I recommend you to this post on Tony, Pepper, and keeping tension in established relationships, which I really liked.
On the whole I really loved it. I think my key, overriding thought is that it became very clear with this movie that Iron Man 3 is no longer really set in the same world as Iron Man, and to be honest, I like it better that way. Iron Man was deeply preoccupied with making it seem as though it were set in the real world, talking about real issues. That was really interesting but it meant I had trouble with the politics - Tony's crisis of conscience about weapons manufacturing is obviously delightful, but I struggled with the (completely in-character) individualised-response-to-terrorism thing.
By Iron Man 3, though, Thor, Captain America and the Avengers have all happened. They even called out to that, with one character saying something like "The world hasn't been the same since the big guy with the hammer fell out of the sky". Tony no longer lives in a particularly real world.
Which isn't to say that Iron Man 3 doesn't try to say something about the real world; it's just not set there anymore. I really enjoyed that Iron Man 3 superficially seems to be preoccupied with the same thing that Iron Man 1 is - terrorism and the politics of fighting terrorism. But you can't make the same movie in 2013 that you could in 2008 and you can't make that movie in a universe populated by Thor and the Avengers. Instead, Iron Man 3, by the end, is about *the discourse* of terrorism and fighting terrorism - or even fighting terror.
Someone I follow on twitter said they hated Iron Man 3's racism, which they described as being Orientalist, yellow-face and anti-Muslim. I was genuinely shocked by this, and I think they profoundly misread the film and the portrayal of the Mandarin. Yes, Ben Kingsley, although I don't think he was in yellowface (he is in the posters but in the film he speaks like an American and he's surrounded by so much confused cultural imagery I don't think you can pin any intended ethnicity on him), dresses in robes, is surrounded by base iconography that is supposed to symbolise/draw on cultural fears around Muslim terrorists, Bin Laden, Orientalism. But even quite early on, before it's clear that the Mandarin is totally manufactured and insincere, the film specifies that the Mandarin is a pastiche - he speaks like a Baptist preacher, they say, even as he dresses like Bin Laden and surrounds himself with Oriental imagery.
By the end of the film it's very clear that Killian has created The Mandarin in a pastiche that draws on American media's worst and most reductive fears around other races and cultures, and is using that to manipulate the media and the population. He exploits a dozen different traditions and renders them completely hollow, Hollywood versions of themselves - and this is revealed gradually over the film, so where at first the viewer is completely credulous, it becomes more and more clear what exactly is happening. I thought this was a brilliant choice: create the pastiche, and then tear it down. Show the viewer that Islamophobia, Orientalism, etc are built on something hollow, are built on something reductive and meaningless and designed to manipulate you. The guy behind the curtain is the wealthy white guy and he knows what he's doing and he's doing it deliberately because it makes you easy to control.
(Sidebar: there's an argument there about, well, we're supposed to be pleased that once again it's the white guys with all the power? Maya is just used and thrown away (hated HATED her death, btw, so Bond Girl disposable woman, disgusting), he's the REAL power. On the other hand there are already so many bad guys who are POC that I don't have much of a problem with that although, yes, it sucks that the brilliant villains are so often portrayed by white guys and the brute-force villains are portrayed by people of colour.)
So anyway I really loved that aspect. The bait and switch. Oh, you think we're making another movie about a terrorist? Well we are - but not in the way you think. (I also loved that Tony created Killian. Our sins return to us and try to blow us up.)
Another argument I've seen is that this Tony was now more Robert Downey Jr than Tony Stark. I'm fairly sympathetic to that on the whole.
I liked Maya a lot. I was pretty gutted by the way she died; I would have liked to see her be less of a tool in Killian's hands, to be honest. Oh, I did also love the way the film's action sequences are bookended by Pepper saving Tony - once at the beginning when Tony's beautiful house gets blown up and Pepper ends up in the suit (I wouldn't hate seeing that 100x more) and once, of course, where Pepper gets to kill the bad guy. Which I loved. I particularly loved it after the scene where Killian has reduced Pepper to a trophy, no more, a damsel to manipulate Tony with. Oh yeah, says Pepper? Fuck you I'm a trophy. I think Pepper's characterisation has been remarkably consistent across the films. She's not an action hero, and that's fine; she's a businesswoman and most of her skills are business-related. She doesn't undergo some dramatic transformation and become Natasha, she just doesn't have time, she's too busy being Stark Enterprises' CEO. But fuck you for thinking she's a trophy; fuck you for thinking she's not important and she'd just be wiped away in a fire because if you give her the tools and you put her in the situation where that's what she has to be, where she has to become a physical badass, she will.
I think that's all the coherent thoughts I have at 6 am! Sigh
On the whole I really loved it. I think my key, overriding thought is that it became very clear with this movie that Iron Man 3 is no longer really set in the same world as Iron Man, and to be honest, I like it better that way. Iron Man was deeply preoccupied with making it seem as though it were set in the real world, talking about real issues. That was really interesting but it meant I had trouble with the politics - Tony's crisis of conscience about weapons manufacturing is obviously delightful, but I struggled with the (completely in-character) individualised-response-to-terrorism thing.
By Iron Man 3, though, Thor, Captain America and the Avengers have all happened. They even called out to that, with one character saying something like "The world hasn't been the same since the big guy with the hammer fell out of the sky". Tony no longer lives in a particularly real world.
Which isn't to say that Iron Man 3 doesn't try to say something about the real world; it's just not set there anymore. I really enjoyed that Iron Man 3 superficially seems to be preoccupied with the same thing that Iron Man 1 is - terrorism and the politics of fighting terrorism. But you can't make the same movie in 2013 that you could in 2008 and you can't make that movie in a universe populated by Thor and the Avengers. Instead, Iron Man 3, by the end, is about *the discourse* of terrorism and fighting terrorism - or even fighting terror.
Someone I follow on twitter said they hated Iron Man 3's racism, which they described as being Orientalist, yellow-face and anti-Muslim. I was genuinely shocked by this, and I think they profoundly misread the film and the portrayal of the Mandarin. Yes, Ben Kingsley, although I don't think he was in yellowface (he is in the posters but in the film he speaks like an American and he's surrounded by so much confused cultural imagery I don't think you can pin any intended ethnicity on him), dresses in robes, is surrounded by base iconography that is supposed to symbolise/draw on cultural fears around Muslim terrorists, Bin Laden, Orientalism. But even quite early on, before it's clear that the Mandarin is totally manufactured and insincere, the film specifies that the Mandarin is a pastiche - he speaks like a Baptist preacher, they say, even as he dresses like Bin Laden and surrounds himself with Oriental imagery.
By the end of the film it's very clear that Killian has created The Mandarin in a pastiche that draws on American media's worst and most reductive fears around other races and cultures, and is using that to manipulate the media and the population. He exploits a dozen different traditions and renders them completely hollow, Hollywood versions of themselves - and this is revealed gradually over the film, so where at first the viewer is completely credulous, it becomes more and more clear what exactly is happening. I thought this was a brilliant choice: create the pastiche, and then tear it down. Show the viewer that Islamophobia, Orientalism, etc are built on something hollow, are built on something reductive and meaningless and designed to manipulate you. The guy behind the curtain is the wealthy white guy and he knows what he's doing and he's doing it deliberately because it makes you easy to control.
(Sidebar: there's an argument there about, well, we're supposed to be pleased that once again it's the white guys with all the power? Maya is just used and thrown away (hated HATED her death, btw, so Bond Girl disposable woman, disgusting), he's the REAL power. On the other hand there are already so many bad guys who are POC that I don't have much of a problem with that although, yes, it sucks that the brilliant villains are so often portrayed by white guys and the brute-force villains are portrayed by people of colour.)
So anyway I really loved that aspect. The bait and switch. Oh, you think we're making another movie about a terrorist? Well we are - but not in the way you think. (I also loved that Tony created Killian. Our sins return to us and try to blow us up.)
Another argument I've seen is that this Tony was now more Robert Downey Jr than Tony Stark. I'm fairly sympathetic to that on the whole.
I liked Maya a lot. I was pretty gutted by the way she died; I would have liked to see her be less of a tool in Killian's hands, to be honest. Oh, I did also love the way the film's action sequences are bookended by Pepper saving Tony - once at the beginning when Tony's beautiful house gets blown up and Pepper ends up in the suit (I wouldn't hate seeing that 100x more) and once, of course, where Pepper gets to kill the bad guy. Which I loved. I particularly loved it after the scene where Killian has reduced Pepper to a trophy, no more, a damsel to manipulate Tony with. Oh yeah, says Pepper? Fuck you I'm a trophy. I think Pepper's characterisation has been remarkably consistent across the films. She's not an action hero, and that's fine; she's a businesswoman and most of her skills are business-related. She doesn't undergo some dramatic transformation and become Natasha, she just doesn't have time, she's too busy being Stark Enterprises' CEO. But fuck you for thinking she's a trophy; fuck you for thinking she's not important and she'd just be wiped away in a fire because if you give her the tools and you put her in the situation where that's what she has to be, where she has to become a physical badass, she will.
I think that's all the coherent thoughts I have at 6 am! Sigh
