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Iron Man 3
207 Plays3 years ago
Perry's long said that Iron Man 3 is the only MCU film he dislikes, and now he's going to have that challenged. Professors Sy Islam and Gordon Schmidt are the guests in this episode to talk about their book, Leaders Assemble: Leadership in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and also for an in-depth discussion about Iron Man 3. We discuss the legacy of the controversial Mandarin portrayal in the wake of Shang-Chi, Tony Stark's characterization in the MCU, and Shane Black's role as a director.
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Transcript
The Mandarin Revelation
00:00:14
Speaker
All right, enough. You're not him, the Mandarin. It's the real guy. Where? Where's the Mandarin? Where is it? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He's here. He's here. But he's not here. He's here, but he's not here. What do you mean? He's complicated. Hey, it's complicated. It is? It's complicated. Uncomplicated. Ladies out. Get out of the bed. Get in the bathroom. Sit.
00:00:46
Speaker
My name's Trevor, Trevor Slattery. What are you? What are you, do you call you a double, right? Well, I can't study, no, absolutely not. Don't hurt the face, I'm an actor. You got a minute to live, fill up with words. Just a roll? The Mandarin? See, it's not real. Then how did you get here, Trevor? Um, well, I, um, had a little problem.
00:01:15
Speaker
with substances and I ended up doing things, no two ways about it, in the street that a man shouldn't do. Next. And then they approached me about the role and they knew about the drugs. What did they get you off of? Said they gave me more. They gave me things. They gave me this palace. They gave me plastic surgery. They gave me things. Did you just nod off?
00:01:43
Speaker
No, a lovely speedboat. And the thing was, he needed someone to take credit for some accidental explosions. He? Killian? Killian. He created you? He created me. Custom-made terror threat? Yes!
00:02:07
Speaker
Yes, his think tank thinked it up. The pathology of a serial killer. The manipulation, the Western iconography. Ready for another lesson? Blah, blah, blah. The culture of my performance brought the Mandarin to life. Your performance? Where people died? No, they didn't. Look around your costumes, green screen.
00:02:34
Speaker
Oh, honestly, I wasn't on location for half this stuff. When I was, it was movie magic love. I'm sorry, man. I got a best friend who's in a coma and he might not wake up. So you're gonna have to answer for that. You're still going down, pal. You're in a... Okay, Trevor. What'd you tell him? I didn't tell him anything. Nothing. No. You should've pressed the panic button.
00:03:03
Speaker
Well, I panicked, but then I handled it. Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast.
Introduction to Superhero Cinephiles Podcast
00:03:08
Speaker
I'm your host, Perry Constantine. And I just got an email about a week or so ago with a pretty interesting request. And it looks like we're getting slightly more academic than our usual episodes today. And we've got we've got two of those academics here. And that's Sai Islam and Gordon Schmidt. How are you guys doing today?
00:03:26
Speaker
It was great. Thanks. Yeah. I'm glad you guys emailed me. It was completely surprising because most, pretty much everybody I've had on the show is someone I've had some interaction before. So this is the first time I've gotten something completely different. So I thought, so it's a really interesting opportunity, I thought. But before we jump into the movie, why don't you guys talk a little bit about yourselves?
Psychology and Leadership through Pop Culture
00:03:49
Speaker
Sai, why don't you go first?
00:03:51
Speaker
Sure. So I'm an associate professor of industrial organizational psychology at Farmingdale State College in Long Island, New York. And, you know, I'm also a consultant on the side. So for those who don't know, industrial organizational psychology is the study of psychology at work. So any sort of experiences you might have at work, that's something that IO psychologists might research and study.
00:04:17
Speaker
And one of the areas that Gordon and I have an interest in is leadership and that's part of what our book is about. So I'll hand things off to Gordon to continue. Yeah. Hi, I'm Gordon Schmidt. I'm an associate professor of organizational leadership at Purdue Fort Wayne in Indiana.
00:04:34
Speaker
My, my PhD is in organizational psychology so sign are in the same branch of psychology that focuses on the workplace. I do research on a whole bunch of different areas, the future of work is a big area technologies effect on the workplace. A big area is leadership.
00:04:53
Speaker
And so sort of out of that interest in leadership in this book series exploring leadership practices through pop culture, Si and I saw a call for these books ideas and we're like, hey, Marvel would be great for this. There's so many great examples of leadership, both good and bad. And so thankfully they accepted our pitch for a book and
00:05:18
Speaker
We've got that book coming
Leadership Lessons from the MCU
00:05:19
Speaker
up. June 7th is coming out by Emerald Publishing. And so it looks at all of the aspects of how Marvel movies help us to learn about leadership concepts that are empirically supported and based on the existing research that's out there so that people can be better leaders and all that. So that's the big picture of that.
00:05:39
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds really interesting. And you guys gave me the chapter to read on Tony Stark, because today we're going to be talking about Iron Man 3, which we'll get to in a minute. But I want to let you guys talk a little bit more about the book at first. So you said it was this series about leadership in pop culture. What made you guys think about the MCU? Did one of you have the idea and pitch it to the other? Or how did it all kind of come together?
00:06:09
Speaker
So that sounds more like who's to blame for this whole thing, which I think is Gordon. I think you and I were talking about it, right? And you saw the call, and then he was like, hey, we should marvel. We talk about Marvel all the time. And just to go into our nerd bona fides a little bit, we don't just talk about the movies. So Gordon and I will sometimes talk about the old school Avengers issues, because he's doing a reread.
00:06:36
Speaker
And we'll talk about how silly some of these things are or about like Mysterio popping up in Spider-Man and he says he's hated Spider-Man what for years, but he was only, he'd only shown up the year before. He's been plotting his revenge for years. He appeared in issue 13 first appearance and this is issue 24.
00:06:55
Speaker
Not even a year. Like we talk about comic book time where people are in, you know, high school for 40
Humor in Comic Book Timelines
00:07:01
Speaker
years. Right. This is like accelerated time. I don't know. Like Peter should be graduated already based on this line. They've always had that weird thing in comics aging where Franklin Richards is a kid for like, you know, 50 years. But then teenage heroes are adults who premiered a lot later than he did.
00:07:21
Speaker
yeah yeah it's it's crazy on that yeah the timeline of those old those old issues of uh stanley and ditto are like crazy yeah because dr octopus gets out of jail on he served his time um within a year i guess yeah and they don't take their weapons the beetle gets out of prison in a recent episode that i read i don't know it's in the 20s and they're like well we gotta give you your super suit
00:07:46
Speaker
It's part of your crime, but we can't keep it from you. There's nothing wrong with you using your criminal. I don't think they really understand how the police work in confiscating stuff. Yeah, the Beatles, like, I'm going to commit crime right away. They're like, well, I guess do it. We can't we can't take the Beatles suit from you. It's a very ugly Beatles suit at that time. It looks a lot better now. Oh, is that the one with the suction cup fingers?
00:08:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny, so many of the Ditko designs and stuff in there look so good, but the Beatle, yeah, I think it came from a different series in life. Well, you know, having a, being something of an artist myself, like after a point, you kind of just start getting like, eh, you kind of run out of ideas.
00:08:29
Speaker
Oh yeah. Well, it's what you get used to too. You know, we're just, we're used to certain things on these characters and they all look weird. That's like the Avengers reread I'm doing. Like everyone just looks off model a little bit of the villains. You're like, why did you do that?
00:08:41
Speaker
Yeah. The Grim Reaper wears like seven colors that are all bright in his costume, which is just, it's a horrible look for the Grim Reaper. Yeah, for the kids. Yeah. Still for the kids, Gordon. We need it to be multicolored. You can't have a Grim Reaper. We're all black. Yeah, I understand. But you know, it's interesting because we, one of the interesting parts about Marvel Cinematic Universe is that it's taken over pop culture in a way
MCU as a Leadership Teaching Tool
00:09:07
Speaker
And that's part of the reason that Gordon and I really thought that this would be a great vehicle to explain leadership theory. Because one of the things that we saw in our teaching and in our consulting work was that there were a lot of ideas out there and a lot of them about leadership are like not great and not rooted in the science. And so this becomes a really great way for us to talk about examples that people can relate to. So especially for college students,
00:09:34
Speaker
I don't know what it's like where you're teaching now Perry but for us, you know, not every student is going to understand like political example, or like a military example, or other examples but a lot of them get
00:09:47
Speaker
you know, Marvel Cinematic Universe example. So they'll understand, you know, Captain America is a servant leader. He gives himself and is willing to sacrifice himself for others. You know, they understand that Tony Stark is, you know, a certain type of leader, right? And he's kind of searching for something in his leadership skill set, right?
00:10:08
Speaker
I think that it works well with students and they really seem to understand and get the concepts more easily than some of the other examples that we usually use in class. There are also easy references in terms of clips, things like that. So I think that it was a really easy transition for us to kind of think through that process.
00:10:28
Speaker
Yeah, and Si and I both use pop culture in our classes to illustrate stuff already. So this book, to some degree, seemed like a nice extension of that idea, as we're already talking about some of this stuff. Like when the Avengers, I think, came to DVD, we did an Avenger movie event on campus, and we talked about leadership concepts.
00:10:48
Speaker
And so they're all kind of these things where it was a really good fit of saying, well, how could we make this book and make it really do a well of teaching these leadership concepts through these movies that we love, we love the comics, you know, we grew up with them and these movies that are so popular and have so many interesting things. There's so many strong characters as well.
Complexities of Leadership in the MCU
00:11:09
Speaker
where we've got people in conflict, we've got people with very different perspectives coming together. And, you know, we love that about all the Marvel stuff, the MCU stuff anyways. And so it's really cool to kind of analyze that and sort of this is our field we love and all these concepts make them more understandable. At least that's the goal.
00:11:32
Speaker
That's a yeah that's really cool and I, I like a lot of what I'm hearing here and going back to something you said, Sai. Yeah, here in Japan, I think it's probably even more extreme as far as people not getting the, as far as students not being able to get like the political examples or anything like that.
00:11:48
Speaker
as youth in Japan, especially, seem to be very disconnected from any sociopolitical type stuff in general. And they like, we do, one of my classes, we read a book of essays and one of the essays, and it's written by an American who has lived in Japan for a long time. Not me, but he is a friend of mine.
00:12:14
Speaker
But he in his book he one of the essays is talking about, you know, being involved with politics, you know, when you're living in another country and
00:12:25
Speaker
you know, being involved in the politics from your home country when you're living in another country. And he talks about, and one of the questions I ask about my students is, you know, and I bring up this idea that youth in Japan are so politically disengaged and are pretty apathetic. And I asked them what they think about that idea. And almost universally, I'd say like 90% of the students say, I don't pay attention to politics.
00:12:50
Speaker
And so yeah, it's, and so when I do teach these ideas in some, like I do teach a film class and I use a lot of like Japanese film to help teach them about history, about different political aspects of Japanese society. And it really, I think you guys have found this as well, which is probably use it. It really helps illustrate it. It helps them, helps make it easier for them to understand these concepts when you present it through that kind of lens.
00:13:21
Speaker
Yeah, and that's something like for us when we so when we talk about psychology in the workplace, it's already kind of a barrier because usually when people think about psychology, they tend to only think about it in a clinical setting, right setting. But for us, we're looking at psychology in in the workplace, how people kind of communicate with each other, how they deal with one another.
00:13:43
Speaker
And leadership kind of falls very easily into that into understanding what makes a leader in understanding what a what a leader does. And there's a lot of great research on the topic and we'd love for students to be able to engage with it in a way that's a little bit deeper than here's this textbook enjoy it and then you know just memorize it and take my test. Yeah.
00:14:06
Speaker
And something else too, you guys talked about how there's a lot of stuff out there that's not rooted in the science. And especially for me personally, I had no idea there was even a scientific aspect to this field because there are so many charlatans in this kind of field. So I think it's really cool that not only do you have a science-based approach, but you're using it in a way that
00:14:31
Speaker
that makes it easy for people to understand. I think that's a really cool last way of doing it. We get into that a little bit in the first chapter in the intro to kind of give our perspective because I think it's very true with leadership in these areas that we have sort of misconceptions. So there's a lot of ideas of people are born as leaders, that you've just got sort of like CEOs are the only people that are really leaders in this type of thing.
00:14:57
Speaker
And so our perspective really is everybody can be a leader and everybody engages in leadership by influencing other people. We do it all the time, but we don't really see it that type of way. And so much of how we learn about leadership in public is about famous CEOs of the past and they were successful, so therefore we should be like them. So things like leadership quotes and all that. Most of those quotes aren't even by the correct person, mind you.
00:15:26
Speaker
But, you know, the problem with folks on the internet is that you can't judge their veracity is what Abraham Lincoln apparently said, according to the Twitter. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So that's so there's there's definitely this disconnect between sort of the science and the knowledge and sort of this
00:15:43
Speaker
a group of leadership examples and stuff out there that's not really connected to anything and so the book takes that pop culture that's appealing and puts the actual science into it uses it that way and I think that that hopefully helps people to learn the material versus just kind of just go with whatever they happen to hear out there, the meme that somebody shared.
00:16:08
Speaker
So who would you guys, I'm not sure if you guys actually get into this in your book, because judging from the chapter I read, it seems like you're just kind of using different examples. But who would you say is the best leader in the MCU and who would be the worst? So this is this is a dangerous, dangerous topic. Because, you know, Gordon and I actually talked a lot about this. And I think I think we have we have different favorites, depending on who we think is kind of kind of best at any given time. But I will say
00:16:37
Speaker
Gordon and I discovered something interesting as we were looking at the book. So before we give her favorites, I do wanna mention something. So there's a part of the MCU where we don't see a lot of leadership and that's with Black Widow. And I think Gordon, you were the one to first point this out that she leads the Avengers during the blip, right? And we don't see it, but she must've done a great job to keep the Avengers going.
00:17:02
Speaker
Yeah, you've got five years of which half the people are missing from the world, the biggest crisis possible. And we see at the end of that period, Black Widow is like the one leading everything. And frankly, the world seems in pretty good shape considering, right? Yeah, yeah. It's like, it seems like it's functioning. People are
Black Widow's Leadership in the Blip
00:17:20
Speaker
happy. Some people have PTSD, you know, a lot of the heroes are suffering trauma as you'd expect, but like, we at least kind of really feel that probably she did a pretty good job during this.
00:17:31
Speaker
Well, one of the interesting things about about that scene in Endgame is it feels like the Avengers are more on top of things than they ever have been before, because, you know, she's got them monitoring things not only in different parts of the world, but she's also got, you know, Captain Marvel and Rocket often space monitoring stuff. Yeah.
00:17:48
Speaker
Yeah, because a lot of these people weren't connected, right? They weren't connected. They weren't doing stuff together. But the blip has kind of, and with Black Widow in this leadership role has kind of gotten all this stuff well connected. And it seems like they're doing pretty good in the situation. And also, as we've got a chapter on women in leadership, and, you know, it's kind of like all of the male leaders left. And so finally, Black Widow gets a shot to lead, right? And if we look at sort of the group of leaders at that time,
00:18:18
Speaker
We've got multiple female leaders that are there that are part of this sort of meeting, right? I think I can't remember all the heads that are there, but we got war machine. We've got, you know, somebody from Wakanda. We've got we've got basically women in charge of all this stuff. Right. What happens once Ant-Man comes up with an idea to save everything? Well, all the white dudes come back.
00:18:41
Speaker
Iron Man comes back and suddenly Black Widow's back to being, you know, she's a spy person on the side. She gets to die so Hawkeye can have an MCU series, TV series. You know, it's just really, it's really interesting and really sad to some degree because I feel like she did a good job that we've never seen.
00:19:01
Speaker
Yeah, I've said that I've maintained that two ideas I'd have for like either an MCU tie in comic or an animated series would be one would be what happened to to cap in this other timeline that he lived to be an old man and
00:19:16
Speaker
And the other is what happened in those five years? What were the Avengers getting up to in those five years? I think there's so much story potential that you could mine. And we only get just a taste. The Falcon and Winter Soldier kind of shows some of the impact of
00:19:34
Speaker
when people come back in this displacement and this trauma, but really we just kind of move on. Cause you know, we got a movie, we've got to end this phase of the MCU. We got to beat Thanos, but like, yeah, it seems like a really interesting world to really get into. You know, in the comics, it was a pretty short period of time. Nobody remembers anything really. It wasn't even like, I mean, it was like maybe like a week at most or something.
00:19:59
Speaker
That's how it feels in the comics, right? I don't know the exact like Marvel official timeline, but it doesn't seem long. And there doesn't seem to be like anybody's affected. They're like, well, crossover's done. Maybe some future Silver Surfer comics will talk about this. The rest of us are done until this is too popular and we have to fight. I guess we have to fight the goddess or whatever because they were popular enough. It's just wild.
00:20:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I do think, yeah, that's, it's interesting that that's like the one time period that I think Gordon and I are really excited to like hear about and see.
T'Challa's Exemplary Leadership
00:20:35
Speaker
And it's, you know, I don't know if they're going to be able to bring a big enough truckload of money to ScarJo to get her to make that, that five year, like Disney plus series. No.
00:20:46
Speaker
Oh, so back to your original question, Perry, I think the leader that I would say is maybe the best, this might show my personal bias because I love the character so much, is probably T'Challa, probably the Black Panther. I think he's got this right balance of some military expertise, some scientific knowledge. And he's also, out of all the leaders in the MCU,
00:21:16
Speaker
He's the one who's able to turn an enemy into into an ally in Baku. And I think that really means something, especially in the MCU where we think of conflict, especially in comic book movies where conflict between
00:21:30
Speaker
hero and villain usually ends in death. He even offers to Killmonger at the end. He tells him like, hey, I'll save you. I can still save you. Just, you know, tell me, give me the go ahead. And he was willing to forgive. And I think that's a really powerful lesson and a really important lesson for leaders is figuring out a way to like work together, you know, and kind of manage things through crises. I think, you know, Black Panther really touches on all of that.
00:22:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good answer. Gordon, do you have a different one or? So I think if we're just looking at objectively best leader, I do think T'Challa does a great job of sort of getting people on his side of really dealing with, despite being in theory, kind of the new
Comparing Leadership Styles: Star-Lord vs. Captain America
00:22:17
Speaker
leader. He's already had impact, but was not the top guy. He certainly seems like he's been developed. I think it's interesting with teams, like who makes a good leader?
00:22:26
Speaker
So somebody like Star-Lord with the Guardians of the Galaxy, you might not think of him as a leader in a traditional sense or somebody that like, you know, everybody does what he says, but that's just such a crazy team of different personalities and people with different experiences and different skills. He does a good job of like,
00:22:48
Speaker
Staying out of the way when that's the right thing so when like rockets like this is how we're going to escape from prison. A bad leader but a very common leader would be like I'm the leader, not this this weird raccoon right I know what's going on, but rocket is the right person for that job. And I think that that's a nice thing and we talked about in the book was shared leadership and guardians is
00:23:09
Speaker
Everybody kind of has points where they're sort of in charge or they're the one you listen to a lot more. And that can be a great way to sort of do that leadership as it goes. You know, obviously with the Avengers, I think Captain America is a very good field commander. He does a good job of saying, OK, you do this, you do that and present it in a way that people do it. The first Avengers movie, I think, does a good sort of job is there the aliens are coming down. He's like, OK, the Hulk should do this. Black Widow do this.
00:23:38
Speaker
Hawkeye, you know, call somebody on the phone and tell them what they should be doing, you know, whatever it is that each person is supposed to do. And I don't think, I don't think Tony Stark is the best leader, but his growth and development, and we can certainly talk about that as a movies to me, is very interesting. I don't think at any moment he's the best, but he does seem to really develop and work and figure out who he is, which I think is really helpful.
00:24:03
Speaker
Something you said in there really made me think about Star-Lord and how he's got this very kind of chaotic kind of leadership style, which works for the Guardians, but it wouldn't work with probably any other team. And I think Infinity Ward does a good job of kind of illustrating this when Tony is trying to make the plan and you've got Drax yawning and not paying attention. And
00:24:30
Speaker
And you kind of see it in Tony's face when he realizes, you know, two things I think, like one thing I think is like, he's thinking like, I got in a fight with Captain America and this is my consolation prize. But the other thing I think is like, you know, how the hell am I supposed to get these misfits to, you know, to work together? And so like that kind of leadership style would work for the Avengers, but when he's putting the situation within the Guardians, he's got no idea how to bring them together.
00:25:00
Speaker
Yeah, and we see that we talk about in leadership, some of the basic breakdown of leadership behaviors is relationship behaviors and task behaviors.
00:25:08
Speaker
And what complicates that as well is not only, so relationship is, you know, we're all connected, we like each other, we have a good working relationship, so you need to build some of those things. Otherwise, people don't want to still be part of it, they don't trust each other, stuff like that. Task behaviors is more about doing the things, so beating Thanos, organizing what we're going to do to beat these aliens, that's the task behaviors.
00:25:32
Speaker
What's kind of interesting, and I'm teaching a course on diversity management this semester, and so I've been thinking about a lot more, but there's also the very big differences between the groups and teams, right, as we talked about with the Guardians versus the Avengers. It's a good task behavior in one place, like Tony's method might work for the Avengers, but it may not really work for the Guardians, it may not work for other groups. It's just not a good fit for what's going on. I think we see that sometimes with sort of
00:26:00
Speaker
The X-Men, which will be exciting when they're in the MCU. But a lot of the X-Men movie and some of the comics and the early comics are like this, Professor X is like, I'm your teacher, you listen to me and obey. And people are like, yes, Professor X. Now, some of the comics suggest he was affecting people's minds a little bit. Maybe that's why they listen so well. But just thinking about going to the Guardians or the Avengers with that version of Professor X,
00:26:25
Speaker
Like that dude ain't the leader for long. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's how I feel. Right. And you need people like Wolverine to push back a little bit. Otherwise it's just, you know, everybody's the good student that wants to get an A. That's probably part of the reason the Avengers took or the X-Men took a while to get popular is it's, it's a weird, it's a weird, like we're in school learning to be mutants and happen to fight the blobs sometimes. Yeah. Which doesn't really gel to my mind at least.
00:26:50
Speaker
Yeah, I was I was also thinking of in the early defenders issue like back in the Steve.
00:26:59
Speaker
Oh, God, I'm blanking on his name. And I'm going to feel like an idiot when I remember it. But he did this great run on defenders. And it was very much like the ultimate misfit team. And it's like Dr. Strange with the Hulk, but he's got a very childlike mentality. And it's like all these completely disparate personalities. And you just imagine that off panel, Dr. Strange is off having to throw back a few scotches or something. Yeah, absolutely.
00:27:29
Speaker
And I think, I think one interesting thing that we're noticing as well is, you know, leaders' perceptions of their situation really do impact like how they handle these situations.
Adaptability in Leadership: Stark vs. Star-Lord
00:27:39
Speaker
So Tony Stark is used to like the best of everything, right? And he's just sort of like, what is this mishmash of random people that showed up to be a part of this team? Whereas Star Lord, that's what he does all the time. He's just like picking, picking up a family, picking up friends and saying like, Hey, let's get together. Let's work on this.
00:27:57
Speaker
And so sometimes one of the things we talked a little bit about in the book is like being open to things as a leader and being kind of adaptable. And sometimes if you're too used to coming from money and being able to like order things and get things done the way that you always want, that can get in the way of your own leadership capabilities.
00:28:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good point. Tony's always used to, and I think, you know, like in an Infinity War when Dr. Strange says, unlike everybody in your life, I don't work for you, where there's never, I don't think there's ever been a situation where Tony didn't, wasn't employing everybody who's taking orders from him in some form. Even when he was with the Avengers, you know, it was his money that was funding the team.
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah, and he says that at times. We talk about that some of our conflict chapter where he's like, I'm paying, I should make the decision. Cap doesn't necessarily accept that argument, but he always feels that way with a lot of those things. Yeah. What about worst leader? Do you have a, do you have a, do either of you have a nomination for worst leader in the MCU?
00:28:57
Speaker
This might be too easy, but I would say Drax. Drax cannot concentrate enough to possibly lead anything. So, you know, I think that he probably is not built for leadership on any level. You know, I actually think Groot might be able to lead more effectively than Drax. I think that's a good point. Yeah, I think he probably would be able to. Gordon, how about you?
00:29:22
Speaker
I think there's also a question of experience and what you think you can do. And so to me, the MCU Spider-Man is really to the team who is sort of neurotic and kind of like, ooh, I get to meet Tony Stark, that's cool. And so I think at least in a lot of his time in the main MCU, he can't be a leader because he's sort of this kid with these adults.
00:29:49
Speaker
And I think it's, I actually really liked that Spider-Man version, you know, growing up and reading comics in the early nineties and stuff. We already had like Spider-Man's a dude married to a supermodel with a successful photograph book called webs or all this stuff. Um, so I kind of grew up with like adult Spider-Man, but like teen Spider-Man to me is the best Spider-Man and watching him, you know, enact the MCU and with Tony Stark, you're just like, that kid's kind of annoying. And I understand completely why you would be if you were.
00:30:19
Speaker
Peter Parker, you're a team, you're a quipster, you're super smart and kind of awkward. This is how you would behave. People would be like, Spider-Man, he's great to team up and be like,
00:30:30
Speaker
That kid, he's pretty annoying. He's so annoying to deal with, but he's helpful. As Peter gets more experience and stuff, we see him in a leader and stuff in the comics, but as sort of that teenage kid, he doesn't necessarily have the respect of others enough for them to see him as somebody that could lead. And so I think it'd be very hard for him to be successful with where he's at in the MCU, generally. That's my feeling, at least. It's interesting, in No Way Home,
00:31:00
Speaker
Right. Like the different versions of Peter are maybe, maybe the, the Garfield version of Peter is a little bit better of a leader. He might be the best leader out of that, out of that trio. Right. Like team, team Spidey with Tom Holland, not ready to lead. Uh, I felt like, uh, I don't know, Perry, do you saw no way home? Oh yeah. Yeah.
00:31:22
Speaker
Okay, so yeah, and I feel like Toby's, Peter was a little too laid back and quiet, but maybe Andrew Garfield, you know, Peter could actually lead, because he's on that maturity scale. I think, yeah, I think no way home I thought did wonders for, I was always a proponent of Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man, and we did a pair of episodes covering his movies not too long back, but he,
00:31:50
Speaker
He had a really good take on Spider-Man especially. His Peter Parker, I think I kind of maintained that he's a little bit too charming, a little bit too cool to be Peter Parker, I think. But I think in no way home, he really, it really gave him like a second win and really made me wish we could have seen what he would have been able to do with a better script.
00:32:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's interesting, you know, if we go a little bit off MCU, like the Spider-Verse, into the Spider-Verse, it's kind of interesting to see all the different Spider-Mans and we don't have a big leader flashing lights. We've got sort of peers working together and, you know, sort of a, if we look at them as a team or as sort of this peer mentoring, they work with each other, but there's not any of those, even the more experienced Spider-Men,
00:32:41
Speaker
are not like, oh, this guy's this guy's a leader. This is who you'd pick for it. It's like we're all kind of working together and we've got a shared vision of the world, you know, seeing all their origins playing out, even with, you know, Spider-Ham being we've got a similar origin. And so we have a similar perspective, even though we're all over the place.
00:33:02
Speaker
in terms of our realities. But it's interesting that none of them seem like this, this is the this is the leadership version. This is the CEO version of, of Peter Parker. Well, yeah, because the the leadership guy got killed off right in the first 10 minutes. He gets killed off right away. So I don't know, maybe he would have been a great leader, but you don't make it. Well, we do we do get his version of, you know, the Jingle Bell
00:33:26
Speaker
the Spider-Man jingle bells, too. So that's the most important part of leadership, actually. Oh, definitely. You get a great jingle. So before we jump into the movie, one other question, because you guys had both mentioned that you had kind of grown up a little bit with comic books. So what is kind of your how did you get into comic books in the first place? So my the way I get into comic books is my brother
00:33:53
Speaker
gave me his big box of like 70s and 80s comics. And the first comic I think I ever read was Mighty Thor 138 with the gray gargoyle. And I thought it was okay. And then I started reading a bunch of like Fantastic Four and a lot of Spider-Man. I got into Black Panther because I bought a bunch of old Jack Kirby issues from a flea market at a church near my house. And I was like, wow, these are great.
00:34:21
Speaker
And then my parents would like reward me if I got good grades. They'd be like, okay, let's go to the comic store. You can make some stuff out. And so I really got into it and still read comics now and it's loads of fun. So yeah, it's not much of an origin story, but it's just, you know, for a nerdy kid in New Jersey, that's kind of how I got hooked.
00:34:43
Speaker
Gordon, how about you? Yeah, so my dad was a comic fan in the late 50s and 60s, but not of superheroes. He liked war, he liked cowboys. I've got, what is it, adult, amazing fantasy 11. And I'm just like, ah, if you just got, it's got a Steve Ditko like weird monster type thing. And I'm like, man, could you just went a little bit later
00:35:09
Speaker
And I remember reading as a kid, one of his issues and like, there's a house ad for like Avengers, whatever with the first appearance of Baron Zemo. I'm like, why don't we have these comics? We've got the first period of the ice cream soldier and Sergeant Rock or something, right? Complete. So as I was a kid in elementary school,
00:35:30
Speaker
I had read his comics, but I got into stuff like G.I. Joe and He-Man and this stuff that I'd watch, and we started going to some comic shops and buying those, which is a great time to get them in discount bins because they weren't as popular. Them and Transformers and all this.
00:35:47
Speaker
And then we had went to this flea market near our house, the fireman's flea market. And my dad was always interested in buying stuff and selling it for a profit at the garage sale. And so he bought this big box there of comics. And so it's a bunch of 70s and 80s, like Marvel Comics and some DC. And so out of that box,
00:36:08
Speaker
And my dad's like, oh, you can keep some of the comics too. We'll sell some at the garage sale. So I read a bunch of stuff. Before the garage sale already, the Spider-Man were mine. I took them. They're in the like the 130s and 140s in that. I was like, Spider-Man's cool. And that's really how I got to know him. And then during the garage sale itself, I was like, you know, those Avengers books were really kind of fun. I want to keep that. So somebody bought one of the Avengers issues.
00:36:34
Speaker
at the garage sale. I was like, oh no, Avengers 286. I read it just that one time when I was, you know, in fourth grade or whatever. And so that was really what got me into the superheroes. Like I had all these like toy property comics I've gotten. We've gotten a lot of them in, you know, the quarter bins and stuff, but then we ended up going to the stores and
00:36:54
Speaker
This was an era where a lot of the Avengers books weren't doing particularly well in sales. The Roger Stern era, I think is great. Those books were awesome, but they weren't, you know, the X-Men were popular, right? Spider-Man was popular. And so I got a lot of Avengers from those cheap ends. I subscribed to Amazing Spider-Man in the early 90s, got the first appearance of Carnage, sent to me in the mail for Marvel and that subscription. And so that got me really hooked. And so those Avengers,
00:37:22
Speaker
from the cheap bins and Spider-Man as it was coming out were kind of my big intro into that world of Marvel Comics. And as I got older, I expanded into more stuff and found out what DC was really. I knew those characters some, but they weren't as appealing as a kid. And so that's kind of how I got involved in all of that. And Sion are both those old fans that were like, maybe they'll make a good movie someday.
00:37:49
Speaker
of this type of thing you know we're just waiting for something that's actually going to be okay and so something like the the first x-men movies just being like a revelation they were pretty they're good and we do a chapter on x-men those x-men movies in the book going a little off the MCU and just watching x-men again and being like oh man Hugh Jackman is great
00:38:11
Speaker
as Wolverine and Anna Paquin as Rogue is pretty appealing like the first movie with X-Men when I watched it again I was like this might suck a lot it's possible because at the time like the standard was so low that just the fact it wasn't really bad was like amazing and I feel that way as well honestly about Iron Man
00:38:29
Speaker
we're just getting Iron Man. Iron Man felt amazing, especially after the Hulk was, you know, okay. And felt like this is cool and Tony's awesome. And I still feel I've kind of felt that way when you reviewed it for the book again as well. Whereas it's like this movie is pretty good. Like I'd be a little shocked how good I still think Iron Man is at the start of this, this whole MCU thing, it was a great way to kind of get it going.
00:38:54
Speaker
Yeah, we did an episode on the first Iron Man, I think about like maybe two years ago, every year ago now. And when we had done that, and when we had gone back and rewatch it, I was like, you know, even after Endgame and everything, like this movie still holds up really well. It's still really solid.
00:39:13
Speaker
Yeah, like I wouldn't have been surprised if it sucked, honestly. But it was, I was like, this is good. I enjoy watching this movie again, you know, and watching it more closely because we're writing it for the book. So it's like, I'm really paying attention. So yeah, I was pretty excited about how good. Well, I think something also that that first Iron Man movie did that I don't think any other, at least not live action superhero movie had ever really done.
00:39:40
Speaker
I mean, I think you probably have to go back to, you know, Superman, the movie in 1978 to find a superhero movie where the main character actually likes being a superhero. Oh yeah. Where it's not a terrible burden that you have to carry. Exactly, yeah, yeah. He's like, you know, I'm Iron Man, this is actually pretty cool. Yeah, that does, you know, and that is part of the appeal of the comic books, right? Is like, as a kid growing up, you know, this is definitely like, oh, I want to go into adventures.
00:40:10
Speaker
Um, actually thinking about being like an older comic book fan, one of the weirdest experiences with the MCU is growing up in the eighties and nineties, like X-Men was everything, right? X-Men was everywhere. And to see the Avengers sort of eclipse them over the last like 20 years.
00:40:26
Speaker
has been one of the weirdest experiences for me because I remember you know the the 70s Roger Stern era was really good some of the 80s Avengers comics are really really good I don't you know the 90s Avengers comics were rough there were some rough yeah rough eras then
00:40:42
Speaker
And I could never imagine that they would ever overtake X-Men. And to just see them everywhere is kind of an amazing thing. Well, I mean, yeah, it got so bad that they had to hire Rob Liefeld to try and revitalize it. Oh, yeah. We don't talk about that. We don't talk about her anymore.
00:40:58
Speaker
It's crazy too because I feel like this MCU version of the Avengers is actually a pretty good fit with the Avengers in the comic and it feels like in the continuity because frankly if you had asked me however many years ago what the Avengers movie would be that'd be successful
00:41:14
Speaker
I thought it'd be kind of like the Bendis years because Bendis was like of Avengers was when that kind of the Avengers actually sold well. We got Wolverine. We got Spider-Man. We've got everybody. The Hulk's here. Everybody you like is thrown on the team. And we've got sort of the, to me, slow pacing of Bendis stuff, which I don't know what it worked in a movie.
00:41:35
Speaker
But I just assumed that was the Avengers that was popular, that actually sort of hit that, oh, this is popular. And I thought that would be what the movies would be, but they're not really that. Yeah, I thought I thought they would have gone with the Ultimates that Mark Miller was doing at the time. Yeah, really. Yeah, I thought a very ultimate focus. But I was and I think that's what that was originally was the plan. Zach Penn had originally wrote the screenplay for Avengers. But then when Josh Whedon came on, he had kind of rewritten everything. And I think, you know,
00:42:06
Speaker
you know, we could say, you know, Whedon is, you know, he's a monster, obviously, but, you know, he's also he also knew what he was doing with this, because he, he was, and I think he him being a fan of the old school comics, I think he really brought in a lot of those sensibilities. And I was, frankly, kind of surprised when, you know, I saw the first Avengers movie, I'm like, oh, wow, this is actually a lot like those 70s and 80s issues.
00:42:32
Speaker
Yeah, the banter for sure. And then they did, it was an interesting tightrope because they do basically the ultimate storyline with the Chitauri and all of that, but with more of that 70s, 80s feel. So it's not like full-on Millard, like Captain America doesn't say that the A doesn't stand for France, right? That never happened. So, you know, but it's kind of cool. It's like, they really thread the needle to make something modern
00:43:00
Speaker
out of that old original group of Avengers. And it really, it actually really works.
00:43:07
Speaker
It's interesting too, cause you do have like Hawkeye and Black Widow working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and all this is very much an ultimate concept, but we don't have sort of the extreme Mark Millar way of doing it with some diminishing returns. I never got that much into the ultimate, so I wouldn't have preferred that. Although again, I would have thought that could have been what the successful Avengers were at the movie. In theory, that's what the ultimate universe was supposed to do, right? Get rid of this continuity and do modern,
00:43:36
Speaker
in many cases, edgy versions of the heroes that we could sell to Hollywood. So it's interesting how much that didn't become what this MCU is. And I think also kind of what you guys were talking about, and I think this kind of like sums it up, is I think the MCU has done a really good job of distilling like the purest versions of these characters and like kind of like taking all these different
00:44:02
Speaker
you know, these different interpretations of them over the decades and just kind of like finding that perfect essence as opposed to say like, you know, you look at all the different Batman films, each one, each director, it's like their version of Batman. It's not like we haven't, outside of the animated series, we haven't seen like a pure distillation of that character, I don't think.
00:44:24
Speaker
And, you know, same thing with Spider-Man. You have these, you know, each director's kind of putting their own stamp on it or with the X-Men as well. But the MCU, they really kind of found those, you know, those big perfect essences of those characters and really kind of distilled it pretty perfectly into something that's, you know, a little bit modern, a little bit different, but it feels right. Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:49
Speaker
And for sure. So actually your comment there, Perry, is a good transition to Iron Man 3, which I think actually is very much a Shane Black movie first and like a Marvel movie like second,
Critique of Iron Man 3's Mandarin Portrayal
00:45:02
Speaker
right? So yeah. So we're talking about Iron Man 3 today. And so, you know, when it comes to the MCU, you know, basically I love all of it. I mean, I even love the dark world.
00:45:15
Speaker
And when I go back and I marathon these movies, Iron Man 3 is the one I leave out of my rewatch because that is the one that I, that is the only one that I think I can actually say I dislike. There are ones that I, all the others I like on some level and a big part of it was the Mandarin stuff for me when I saw it in the theater because I felt like
00:45:37
Speaker
If this had been Batman or the X-Men, like you would never do to the Joker or you would never do in an X-Men movie to Magneto what Shane Black does to the Mandarin. You'd never completely tear apart that idea of the of the arch rivals so much.
00:45:57
Speaker
my view has softened now because now Marvel has done some backpedaling and we had the all hail the king one shot and then and then we got and I remember back in the day arguing with people I'm like you can do a good version of the Mandarin if you get someone like Tony lung to play him and then sure enough in Shang Chi we get Tony lung playing the real Mandarin and it's perfect so I'm a little bit so I've softened on it since then because I think that
00:46:21
Speaker
It's hard. I don't think you get to Shang-Chi and Tony Lung's Mandarin unless you have this movie first. So that aspect of it I've softened on, but I still do have some other issues with this movie, although I do remember at the time, so summer 2013, there were three big comic book movies that were coming out.
00:46:37
Speaker
It was Iron Man 3, it was Man of Steel, and it was The Wolverine. And I remember thinking, going into that summer, I'm like, man, Iron Man 3 is going to be the best movie of the year. I'm going to love it so much. Man of Steel, it'll probably be okay. And The Wolverine, my hopes aren't really that high for it. And it turned out to be almost a complete inverse of that after I saw those three movies. That's really interesting. So, you know, I
00:47:02
Speaker
I'll be honest, I'm biased. I'm in the bag for Shane Black movies, like all the Christmas stuff, the banter with the kids. So I'm a big fan of Last Boy Scout, all of like the Lethal Weapon movies. So Shane Black, like I even like parts of the bad Predator movie that he made. I think it's okay. But I really enjoyed this movie. The beginning of it, I think Gordon and I were talking about this in preparation for today's episode.
00:47:30
Speaker
And the beginning of the movie is really, I think, a little wacky. It stops and starts at all these weird points. And the storyline, I think, has a hard time kind of like coming to fruition. And it's interesting that I think a lot of fans really hated the Mandarin thing that Shane Black did.
00:47:49
Speaker
But I think at the time, I remember thinking to myself, like when they were, before they cast Ben Kingsley as Mandarin, I really didn't know how you could get away from a yellow face, like a yellow terror version of that character. And I really, I appreciated that, that they are really, they were trying to do something a little bit different with the character to kind of like, you know, make him still like sort of a terrorist, but also,
00:48:17
Speaker
There's a lot of commentary in this movie about, and for us from a leadership perspective, like the perception of what this terrorist leader should look like that he's made up and that he's, you know, puffed up for corporate profits. So it's really, it's a really interesting movie from that perspective.
00:48:36
Speaker
I wonder a little bit on, so I think the movie plays interestingly over time.
Tony Stark's Personal Growth and PTSD
00:48:41
Speaker
With the rewatch here, I think it's kind of interesting situation, because I think Psy is very much on team, Iron Man 3 is a good movie. And Perry, obviously you're not on team, this is a good movie. Watching it again, and I'd watch it for the book as well, I'm a little bit more towards the middle, that I think it's okay, and I see some of the value. One thing I do wonder with the movie and the Mandarin is,
00:49:04
Speaker
do you think there'll be more Iron Man movies after this one? And so if you think there's gonna be more Iron Man movies, I think Burning Mandarin is a bad idea. But if this is the last Iron Man movie, which I kind of feel like that was the idea, it's crazy how early the Iron Man movies are done.
00:49:21
Speaker
They get done so early. It's barely past Avengers. This almost blows up this whole MCU thing. It was a weird time because you had this was the last movie in Downey's original contract and you had that aspect of it. Plus, this was also
00:49:43
Speaker
Right smack dab in the middle of when the Disney bio to Marvel was happening. So you also had this is really kind of this is like the last movie that Paramount was involved in. And so in a lot of ways it it's weird because it's
00:49:58
Speaker
It's, I think it's considered the start of phase two, but at the same time, it's also like this ending of, it's more like an epilogue to phase one than anything else, I think. So I feel like too, there's a weird part where, yeah, this feels like this could be the end of Iron Man.
00:50:14
Speaker
But it doesn't, it isn't that at all because they kept he stayed around and they kept making movies. So kind of the message of the movie to some degree is he doesn't need the armor. And we talked about this in the chapter he doesn't need the armor he, he needs to trust others and let them in.
00:50:30
Speaker
But then as he says at the end of the film, like, I'm Iron Man, I don't need to be the suit, I'm just Iron Man as a person, even if I don't have the suit on. I think from an art perspective, I think that's reasonable for him. It just plays so weird now because
00:50:48
Speaker
He's going to put the suit back on. Yeah, there's a way. Rewatching that. Sorry, go ahead. And it's just strange because to me his arc, and Perry, if you looked at the chapter some, to me his arc, the rest of the movies is like he needs, he wants to be the hero. That's the, he's not the behind the scenes financer. He's not the guy playing it safe. He needs to be the hero doing that.
00:51:13
Speaker
And so he might be Iron Man inside, but he also needs the iron suit outside to still save the day. So to some degree, we've kind of invalidated the ending of that film. He is Iron Man on the inside and I think he grew some from the film and he doesn't need to depend on the suit, but he still needs it. So I don't know. It's a weird mess of as he's so many more movies and so many bigger stakes that he didn't end there, which it kind of set up for him to do that.
00:51:41
Speaker
Yeah, it does, it's so weird rewatching it the other night and just seeing how, you know, we get to that, the clean slate protocol and he blows up all the suits. And then, and in my mind, I'm just, I'm just thinking of like, as soon as he drives off to this, you know, wherever he's moving to, he's just going to build a new suit. Yeah, I think that's actually, so I actually think it's super interesting because the story of the movie is that the suit is a crutch, right? Like he went into the wormhole
00:52:10
Speaker
And I think in the chapter, Gordon, we do talk about this, right?
00:52:14
Speaker
that he's got this PTSD and it's very much entwined with the suit, right? He keeps building new suits because he thinks he can prepare for every situation, every scenario. And he has to kind of like, at least metaphorically give up the suit so that he can just live his life. And that's one of the things I really like about the movie is that it does have this like complete arc within itself where at the very end, sure, you know he's gonna wear the suit again at some point if he comes back.
00:52:41
Speaker
But at least for the purposes of his PTSD, he's kind of gone through that and he's kind of come to terms with that experience. I also absolutely love the ending to the movie. I think it's one of the better action sequences in the MCU. The idea that you've got all of these suits and every suit that like, you know, when you were a kid and you thought about Iron Man,
00:53:04
Speaker
That's what you thought of. You're like, oh, I'm going to pull out the Hulkbuster armor. I'm going to wear the underwater armor. I'm going to do this armor. And that was so much fun to kind of watch and see, and especially taking on all the extremist guys. That was super cool. So I think that's where I'm also a sucker for action. So if a movie has some good action sequences, I'll forgive a lot. And I think one of the complaints about the MCUs is that the third act, they always seem like big CGI fests.
Iron Man 3's Action Sequences
00:53:33
Speaker
but this one really brought the theme of the movie, the theme of the character together in a very nice way. So I was like, oh, this is really, this seems cool to me. Even though like I knew, you know, everybody knows like, oh, sure, you know, he's going to hang up the suit. Sure. Sure, Tony, you're not coming back. One of the things I thought about this movie and inside you'd mentioned, you know, being a big shame black guy, like,
00:54:01
Speaker
I love Shane Black, don't get me wrong. Can't agree with you on Predator. I couldn't really find anything redeeming in that. That's another story. But, you know, like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, brilliant movie. And, you know, I love his style. And I think one of the issues I had with this movie beyond all the Mandarin stuff is it's a little bit too Shane Black, right? It kind of feels like Shane Black just wanted to
00:54:30
Speaker
be able to parody himself on Marvel's dime. And I think that, and I think that his sensibilities, his vision, it kind of overpowers the character of it. And I think that's one of the biggest issues. That's a good question where the balance is too, right? Yeah. So I feel like with Eternals, Eternals, it didn't feel specific enough to the director, but also didn't have, like it's a Marvel movie you can tell, but it doesn't,
00:54:58
Speaker
It doesn't do it that well. And the Shane Black maybe is a little bit too much on the end of this. This is a fun Shane Black film. You know, I think there's a tonal question between this Iron move and the previous ones and where we're going, where to some degree it's like the guy from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang happens to have the Iron Man suit and he looks the same. I'm not against that.
00:55:24
Speaker
Cause I like that, but it is there. I would agree with you. There's some question of, is this too much? Is it not enough of the house style? Yeah. I think of all the directors who have done MCU movies, I think James Gunn is the one who had managed to completely blend those two ideas of, you know, this is my own personal style, but I'm also matching it with the MCU style.
00:55:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think the first hour of Guardians of the Galaxy is the best, most enjoyable overall MCU experience. It's just, it moves so quick too because a lot of these movies don't, you know, they're like two and a half hours long and they're set up. Like, we've got them, we've got the orb, we got that fight at the beginning, we've got everybody fighting, we go to jail, we're doing a jailbreak.
00:56:14
Speaker
That stuff happens so quick in Guardians that you're just like, I don't know how the other movies couldn't have done this more well. The pacing is just great in that first hour of Guardians and Gunn really takes it well. And the pacing in Iron Man 3, the first hour is not great. It's like starting, stopping, happy gets hurt, you know, I'm going on this mystery. Hey, there's a kid.
00:56:36
Speaker
There's all these weird things that are just kind of clashing into each other, and it isn't until you get well into the second hour that things really gel, the mystery starts to formulate, you start to really get some cool, some more fun action, and also some interesting introspection from Tony.
00:56:56
Speaker
I think for me actually that up until the attack on his mansion like that that first act of them I actually love that part. I thought that was I mean you make it you make some good points about the pacing and those are definitely valid but I think what intrigued me so much was just like the buildup and just like
00:57:21
Speaker
Oh man, Tony's gotten all these issues and we've got like the worst villain he's ever faced and he's got no backup. And it's just like this slow buildup of tension. And then it really loses me when he teams up with 80s stereotypical team sidekick. Yeah, reject from stranger things. Yeah, yeah.
00:57:49
Speaker
Like right down to the name, Harley Keener, which is like the most 80s, 90s kid sidekick name ever. Yeah, it literally just walked off the set of Last Boy Scout to join this movie, right? Like, yeah, it's totally like, and I think that that's like a jarring, especially there in Tennessee, they're on this like, it's almost like a video game where you go on like this side quest, right? Like there's the big Mandarin problem that you've got to deal with, but before you can do that, you have to like, you know, figure out what's going on with this kid
00:58:19
Speaker
figure out what's happening. But I think that's important for at least to kind of get some of that stuff about the PTSD and some of the stress that he's dealing with to sort of face that outside of the suit.
00:58:31
Speaker
And I think if, I think it's tough for, you know, you know, in comparison to the other Iron Man moves, but I think move a little bit quicker in that middle part, it does sag a little bit. So it makes it a little weird. Yeah. From a plotting perspective, like I think the kid is there important to be like Tony interacting with not his own employees in a different environment, but like he goes to Tennessee to like see some burns on the wall and then somebody hands them a folder of info.
00:58:58
Speaker
information out of note. Like if I remember correctly, it's just like the lady was bringing it in for somebody else. And Tony just happens to show up and be like, hey, give me that folder. And then I guess it was the extremist people that wanted the folder. And then, you know, they burned down various places in town and he's like, I got the folder, which I didn't know I need. I'm leaving is interesting. So to me, the kid part
00:59:24
Speaker
other than being precocious makes sense for his arc. But the whole being there really does, as Cy says, feels like a weird side quest. Because like, why do I need the fold? Like, does Tony use that for anything really? Like, I don't feel like that was the case based on when I was watching. Yeah, it feels like that was when it felt the most Shane Blackiest to me. That was when he's just, you know,
00:59:50
Speaker
I think if ever you had a doubt that Shane Black was just kind of doing a self parody here, I think that moment when he meets the kid, I think that kind of like dispels
01:00:01
Speaker
any doubt we have about that at that point. And that's like, even now the Mandarin stuff, like I said, I've softened on it because of what we had afterwards, so I can deal with it. But that stuff aside, like it is still like these, the very shamed black of it that kind of takes me out of the movie a lot when I'm rewatching it. And
01:00:26
Speaker
Even, but I think there's also some really good stuff in there. And I think like the whole idea of Tony being separated from his tech and having to kind of do all this stuff on its own. I think this movie does do a good job with that aspect of it and showing like how he has to, you know, basically MacGyver his way into these situations. And I really liked that aspect of it, especially when you contrast it with
01:00:51
Speaker
the the end scene where Rhodey's like the take is the one who's taking charge before the armor round shows up and Tony is completely out of his element he has no idea what he's doing I thought that was a really good way of showing just like these two how he's very specialized in this one area but just because he's you know he's a brilliant engineer doesn't mean he knows how to be an action hero yeah that's that's true
01:01:16
Speaker
You know, I think that's a good, like a really interesting contrast. I noticed you said something really interesting that I wanted to come back to, which was, do you really think the Mandarin is like the number one Iron Man villain? I always thought it was Justin Hammer going back to like armor wars and stuff like that.
Debate: Iron Man's True Nemesis
01:01:33
Speaker
And so a lot of people told me later on when they were talking about Iron Man 3 that they love the Mandarin and they think he's like the big villain for him. And I've never really felt that way
01:01:43
Speaker
about the Mandarin character. I don't even think there's a particularly great comic book story. And it's interesting because this movie takes like what comic story I actually really like, which is Extremis, and then graphs that onto the Mandarin.
01:01:58
Speaker
storyline as well. So I think that's kind of cool and then brings in A.M. with Aldrich Killian. Have you ever read Haunted? It was came out in like the post-Civil War era. That was a Mandarin story. That was a really good one and I think if I and I had argued back at the time when this came out that if you want to do a good Mandarin story that completely divorces him from the yellow peril
01:02:21
Speaker
stereotypes. Haunted does a really good job of doing that because he, in fact, he's not even wearing the rings anymore. Now he's had them grafted onto his spine. So like the powers are all kind of like inborn. And I think there's a very, because the Mandarin's rings originally in the comics for anyone who doesn't know is they're alien technology. And I think there's a very
01:02:44
Speaker
easy way to kind of fit that into what Tony's going through because he's just had this alien encounter and he has all this PTSD, he's having trouble dealing with it. And especially which, and I think there was kind of a missed opportunity there because we had all this stuff dealing with the Chitauri tech that was left over. And I think there was a real kind of opportunity to kind of introduce the Mandarin that way in that he's someone who, whereas Tony,
01:03:13
Speaker
is completely terrified of this tech and this alien stuff. The Mandarin is someone who is able to adopt it and integrate it into himself so much. I think there was a very, you could have done a very good contrast between them if you had gone with that take. Now you do pose an interesting question going back to what you said about, is it Justin Hammer or is it the Mandarin? It's,
01:03:40
Speaker
That's a good question. And I think it depends on where the conflict lies, because if you're thinking about it in terms of ideology, I think you make a stronger case for the Mandarin, especially if you're looking at it in the Cold War context, because you had the
01:04:01
Speaker
Tony Stark, the symbol of capitalism, whereas, and the Mandarin, you have the symbol of feudalism. So you have these, you know, this real generational struggle there. Whereas, and with Justin Hammer, you know, it's, he's just like the evil Tony Stark, basically. So it kind of depends on how you want to define that relationship about the arch nemesis. And I think it's, it's kind of like asking who's Spider-Man's greatest villain? Is it the Green Goblin or is it Dr. Octopus, right? And it's, it depends on how you want to define that relationship.
01:04:31
Speaker
I do think for me, at least, for Tony Stark, his greatest villain is always himself. Yeah, I mean, I think that you definitely make better. Things like Civil War, it's going too far. And I do think that that's sort of Tony not getting out of control. And I think a lot of the movie is like Pepper being like, hey, interact with the world. And he's like, I'm building a robot.
01:04:55
Speaker
and cracking jokes to myself in the basement, right? And so to me, Tony is somebody who often is working off of others versus somebody that needs that villain to work off of it. Tony is, you know, at times a mess. And it's getting himself together and doing what he needs to do to get him to be successful.
01:05:18
Speaker
And also, I think it's a question of where he is as an individual or on a team. Tony Stark on a team to me is very different in what his role feels. Where on his own, his personal demons can do more stuff. While you don't have that working as well, while the Avengers are fighting, you know, fin-fan-foom or something, he needs to do stuff and be smart. Well, on his own, he can be like,
01:05:40
Speaker
You know, I've lost grip on reality and I'm drinking a little too much. And then the villain doesn't matter as much. Somebody else who's a technocrat, some use of his stuff being used by evil people to me is a good enough Tony Stark arc on his own.
01:05:57
Speaker
I think it might come down to Justin Hammer is the best Tony Stark villain. The Mandarin is the best Iron Man villain, I think. Especially if you look at it in the more classic depictions of the Mandarin, where he's much more anti-technology, then I think you have a much stronger contrast between the two then.
01:06:19
Speaker
But yeah, it's a good question. I think, and, but I think Gordon makes a really good point that it ultimately is both of these aspects. There are dark reflections of these different aspects of Tony Stark's worst attributes. And, you know, it's Justin Hammer. It's basically, you know, if Tony Stark had no moral compass whatsoever. And, you know, the Mandarin is if, you know, if Tony Stark had just, you know, completely,
01:06:49
Speaker
you know, allowed him to just, you know, completely gone mad with the power he has, the wealth, the technology, all that. So I think, yeah, I think, but I think it definitely comes down to, it's basically, you're right, Tony Stark himself is his own worst enemy. And I think that's probably why, you know, the most famous Iron Man story in the comic books isn't, you know, Armor Wars or Hand of the Mandarin or whatever, but the most famous story arc is Demon in a Bottle.
01:07:17
Speaker
Yeah. Well, an armor wars is about my armor. I made this. I call it. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so I think there is definitely, you know, and Tony himself is self centered. So his, his, his villain would be himself the best villain out there. That's me, Tony star. Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny because we do have a technocrat villain in Iron Man three. We have the Aldrich Killian, right? He's, he's there.
01:07:43
Speaker
as this evil version of Tony Stark. He even wants the same girl. He has this whole setup that's almost like a shadow organization. And it's interesting, because unlike Tony, he doesn't build a superhero. He builds his own supervillain.
01:08:01
Speaker
to be like the engine for the story. And so he takes on the fears of terrorism to build the ultimate terror leader to attack and strike fear into the hearts of the West for all intents and purposes. So that's a good transition. What did you guys think overall of Killian as the villain here as a character?
01:08:29
Speaker
I'll go first. So Guy Pearce is a great actor, but getting Guy Pearce in that role I think makes it better than probably it's written. This is definitely something of a movie where we're looking at Tony Stark's past misdeeds have caused bad things to happen.
01:08:51
Speaker
Um but it is sort of a weird I think if you actually watch the movie it's hard to be like well he was a jerk to Killian once and Killian became a terrible person because of it. Like I think the movie kind of wants you to think that but it's a very long
01:09:07
Speaker
Like Tony was mean to him once and he's like, well, I guess I'm gonna create a terrorist out of this. It's sort of a weird, to me, it doesn't quite follow. I think Guy does it okay. But there even is the Gwyneth Paltrow, the Pepper Potts part where I don't know why he is so like, oh, Pepper Potts, she's the best. We don't see a very clear reason for it. It's just like Tony was a jerk and so therefore we're on the opposite sides.
01:09:37
Speaker
So I feel like Guy Pearce with more material could have been better in the role. I think Killian could have been better and the Extremis is like this interesting, instead of the armor you're kind of pumping yourselves up with this power. It's an interesting contrast.
01:09:54
Speaker
But I don't know whether I really buy the arc there. Like, we're supposed to blame Tony, but I don't really blame him.
Analysis of Killian as a Villain
01:10:02
Speaker
If everyone he was a jerk to earlier became a supervillain, there would be no one but supervillains, I assume, in the MCU. Well, plus too, I mean, like, are you supposed to entertain everybody who comes up to you with the business card when you're the head of a company? I mean, you know, there's...
01:10:18
Speaker
there's an aspect, I mean, I know it's supposed to portray is like, you know, well, come on, Tony, you could have been nicer to and yeah, maybe, but also, you know, I kind of I kind of get where Toby's coming from, too, because, you know, you know, no matter what field you're in, and I've seen this, being a writer, sometimes, like, you know, people come up to you, and they're saying, like, you know, oh, you know, could you could you do this? Could you do that? And at some point, you're just like, you know, no, I got my own stuff that I got to worry about.
01:10:46
Speaker
Well, it's interesting because there is another character that is inspired by Tony, right? There's the random guy, camera guy in the van that he needs help with from, who like models his whole look after Tony, tries to read from Tony. Hispanic Scott Mayo. Yeah, Hispanic Scott Mayo, that's right. My favorite kiss, kiss, bang, bang reference, right? You know, like, and so they're trying to draw this connection. But I also think it's the fact that like, from a, you know, when you're, when you're a scientist,
01:11:16
Speaker
You know you want to have if somebody you meet another scientist or supposed to have like some sort of mutual respect. And I think we're supposed to read that as Tony Tony could just blown them off, but he plays this prank on him that actually inadvertently inspires all of this other stuff. And that's a theme that continues from Iron Man to where we saw Justin Hammer.
01:11:37
Speaker
kind of like doing everything he could to be as much like Tony as possible. Like, you know, the suit, the style, everything's everything like Tony. And it's really interesting to see Aldridge Killian in the sense that I think Guy Pearce brings a lot of shading to that character. And it's also interesting to see that he's
01:11:56
Speaker
trying to like deal with a real life disability that he's got. And he's kind of like trying to improve himself physically, whereas somebody like Tony, he's really using that whatever technology he's building, he's trying to protect himself from the outside world, building the shell. Now, I don't think the movie communicates all that stuff very well, having watched it now like three or four times, maybe I'm picking up on something, but I do think that that's what they're trying to go for. And I think he does a good job
01:12:25
Speaker
you know, in the film Guy Pierce, I think does a good job as that villain, but I don't think he can keep up with Ben Kingsley's ridiculous Trevor Slattery performance, which I think kind of that twist, even though the rewatch made me laugh really, really hard. And I really feel like that once that reveal happens, the rest of it is just sort of like barreling towards action scene to action scene to action scene. We're just trying to kind of
01:12:52
Speaker
try to finish the movie as quickly as possible. To me, the Mandarin reveal feels better now because we've gotten a very good Mandarin. And I kind of understand Travis now. I know at the time I was kind of like, what is this? It just felt really weird at the time. I don't think, like Perry, I think you had much more of a negative reaction. But for me at the time, I was like, what is going on?
01:13:16
Speaker
Like it just felt kind of strange and this weird Ben Kingsley type role. Like when I heard that character was coming, when the character came back and I hadn't seen the short that he was in. So I had like no context in Shang-Chi. And I was just like, this dude, they brought back him. And I was like, oh, he's fun. I like him. I never thought of him as somebody that was interesting or appealing.
01:13:41
Speaker
But Ben Kingsley does a great job. It's just in the context of where the movie was, it made no sense to me at the time. It just seemed like, the reveal I wasn't against as much as like, this is so strange, just processing it to something great. I'm gonna come back to the Ben Kings because I do wanna talk about him. But taking it back to Killian is, Gordon, I think you pretty much nailed it when you said that.
01:14:09
Speaker
you know, Pierce plays this role a lot better than it's written. And I think part of the problem is that Killian was not originally supposed to be the villain. Maya Hansen was originally supposed to be the villain, but then, you know, this was before Feige had basically taken full control of the MCU and
01:14:27
Speaker
Ike Perlmutter, who was still calling the shots at Marvel, who's also a notorious misogynist. He's basically like, we can't have a female villain because kids won't buy an action figure of a female villain. And so they had changed the script basically because of that. And Rebecca Hall even talked about this in interviews, how when she was cast, she was supposed to be the villain, but then it ended up getting changed to Killian.
01:14:50
Speaker
I had no idea. Oh, yeah. And I think that works. It works so much better if it's if it's my handsome, because then because killing it, it kind of feels like, you know, we're dealing with another version of.
01:15:06
Speaker
Justin Hammer, but it's not Justin Hammer. Whereas if it was Maya Hansen, then it would have been this other aspect of Tony Stark's reckless behavior coming back and haunting him, the whole womanizing type of stuff. And that would also have played interesting with the fact that he's now in this relationship with Pepper, which has only recently started in the aftermath at the end of Iron Man 2.
01:15:30
Speaker
Uh, he makes a joke when he sees her again of like, I can't remember everybody I've slept with basically. Right. Yeah. In terms of invalidating her as a person in a joke. Yeah. To me, that would have been a lot stronger on it of what the case is.
01:15:46
Speaker
You know, and yeah, I think that that being developed more and to be killing being developed more. I like size idea of sort of this, you know, I fixed my disability, but it made me kind of a jerk. And, you know, I'm more into all into it because of it would have been a good angle for Killian in that setup. I think Maya's angle, I'd be curious what she was doing as the villain on her own, you know, is her motivation just being like Tony was kind of a jerk.
01:16:14
Speaker
to me back in the day, I'd be curious what you put as the other element of what's going on there. I'm not sure, I'd have to think about that, but that's just one aspect that came to me off the top of my head. Although I think, Cy, when you were talking and you mentioned Justin Hammer, that really kind of made something click to me. And I think this role would have worked so much better if you brought back Justin Hammer and you had him taking on that role. I think there, because there's such a stronger connection with that and it's, you know,
01:16:43
Speaker
Because literally as Tony Stark is falling apart, you have Justin Hammer coming in and building himself up. I think that would have had another good interesting contrast between the two.
Sam Rockwell's Villainous Performance
01:16:54
Speaker
For sure. And you already established that he's like a wannabe Tony, which, you know, you spent a whole movie about that. So you could have just slid him into the place of Killian. And that would have been a really interesting situation. I'm actually, I'm genuinely surprised that they never brought Sam Rockwell back as
01:17:12
Speaker
villain even a side villain in one of the Avengers movies because he was really good in Iron Man 2. He did appear in the at the end of the one shot All Hill the King in prison. Oh that's right. But yeah I've been wanting to because you know I know a lot some people had issues with his performance in Iron Man 2. I love Sam Rockwell in Iron Man 2. I thought he was like one of the best parts of that movie.
01:17:34
Speaker
And I thought, and, you know, they're doing an Armor Wars series on Disney Plus, starring Don Cheadle. So I'm hoping they bring back Sam Rockwell for that, because I think that is like the perfect opportunity. And if you don't get him back in that, I don't think you get him back ever, basically.
Ben Kingsley's Dual Role in Iron Man 3
01:17:50
Speaker
But and I did want to talk about Ben Kingsley, and I think the
01:17:55
Speaker
The reveal, it completely took me out of the movie when I watched when I was sitting there in the theater and that scene when, when, when roadies like he's like kind of dumbfounded and he's like he's like what are you, and then Tony's like are you serious and Tony's like yeah it's embarrassing. I felt they were speaking for what I was feeling at that moment.
01:18:16
Speaker
And, but, but that aside, you know, I think Kingsley is, he does a brilliant job in this and I think he, you know, so seamlessly transitions between those two aspects you know the Mandarin persona and Trevor Slattery edits.
01:18:34
Speaker
You'd be forgiven for thinking it was two different actors because, you know, he's, you know, then that's kind of also why I was kind of disappointed in the in the reveal is because not only from being the perspective of an Iron Man fan, but also the perspective of Ben Kingsley is just so damn chilling in that beginning of the movie.
01:18:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think he's really good. The accents that he's able to pull off, the weird speeches that he gives, I think are really, really terrific. And I think that's what makes the reveal so jarring for a lot of people, because you really, especially in the promotional material leading up to Iron Man 3, he was a big part
Terrorism Theme in Iron Man 3
01:19:16
Speaker
of that. You were like, whoa, this is legit Mandarin happening with Ben Kingsley. What can we expect? And I remember looking at some of the promo materials and going like,
01:19:25
Speaker
how far are we gonna go to the war on terror in this movie? And I was a little nervous about what they were gonna end up showing in terms of that part of the film. And so maybe that's why I took the kind of turn a little bit better than a lot of other people that were the theater with me that day. Gordon, how about you? What did you think about Ben Kingsley's performance?
01:19:52
Speaker
I think his performance is really good. I do think a lot of the early part
01:19:57
Speaker
he does seem very menacing and it's interesting, but it makes so much sense as him being an actor. So like him talking about fortune cookies and all this in sort of this very dramatic way. Like I think it sucks you in early, but then when you're like, oh, that dude's an actor who's, you know, he's just, you know, he's just good at emoting. You're like, oh, that makes sense. So I think it pulls together well in that regard.
01:20:25
Speaker
You know, I think the movie and its discussion of terrorism and all of that. It could be more integrated if it's important, you've kind of got the Mandarin doing stuff in the opening and he's out there and he's the threat and he blows up Tony's house.
01:20:40
Speaker
But what this terrorism means or how it connects, you don't really get. It makes sense with it being sort of just a fame versus a real thing. But it does kind of hurt the, what is the message of this? I think the concept of, oh, this is where we build up these boogeymen of various sorts.
Impact of Multiple Villains in Iron Man 3
01:21:00
Speaker
And that's bad because it justifies bad behavior or violation of rights or killing people. But it doesn't do it's not central enough to the plot to really be unpacked in a meaningful way to my mind. I'm glad it wasn't to some degree as size, I can completely understand size perspective that
01:21:21
Speaker
It could be done very poorly of blaming people and being really about and othering and instead it goes in a different direction where it doesn't do that because that is something with some of those original Mandarin stories. They're very, in retrospect, very racist.
01:21:39
Speaker
you know, the Mandarin is this sort of idea. There's a bunch of early Avenger issues with communists where it's like the communists only do evil things and they're secretly evil robots. And there's a lot of weird stuff where just like this feels really racist and also it's just strange. Like it just doesn't even make sense. The first issue of Fantastic Four when Sue's whole rationale is like, you know, we have to get to space because we have to beat the commies to space. Yeah, yeah.
01:22:06
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of that going on. And I think you guys both touched on something. I think that's kind of one of the issues I still have with this movie is it's got so many ideas I like, but they don't quite seem to connect. And I think like the whole idea of, you know, creating your own terrorist threat. I mean, that is, it's such a smart commentary on the history of US foreign policy and the military industrial complex. And there's so much,
01:22:36
Speaker
unpack there. And I think it gets kind of lost in the whole idea that, you know, this is basically about a guy who got snubbed by some other guy at a party. Yeah. Listen, I was heard at a party once and I, you know, I was joker-pilled and I caused a lot of problems. So I can relate very clearly to this. But it is interesting that it seems to boil down to that. I wonder if now that I know that Ike Perlmutter just like decided to
01:23:05
Speaker
throw in another villain. There's always that rule that when you have two villains in a movie, you can make things a little harder. Now that we've got that three, maybe that threw things off a little bit in terms of like getting things to work and kind of function the way that Shane Black had originally conceived of the movie.
01:23:23
Speaker
I think this is kind of a personal story too because it's sort of this story of Tony getting over his addiction to the armor. I would argue the movie makes it sound like he's going to stop being Iron Man and that's not what happens as we know he's back. But it's sort of a personal story with a thrown on political element that doesn't get well
01:23:44
Speaker
I think there's that question with you know war machine across movies as well of being actually part of the military. What's the role of sort of a superheroes that really work for the government work for the military.
01:24:00
Speaker
Um, some comics have gotten out of that better or worse, but there's always that question of what does that mean? Because I always feel like if you had superheroes in real life, they'd either be really corporate like Ecstatics or some of these other, or they'd be really, they'd all be just government, government.
01:24:16
Speaker
propaganda pieces, or they'd be trying to rule us like the authority or other groups or various dystopian, like Kingdom Come and these types of areas where the superheroes take over, the power take over, or we see that with mutants and X-Men as well in those dystopias.
01:24:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think that it's so weird because that personal element of Tony's story, it does really connect to that theme of the military industrial complex and creating your
Character Arcs and Themes in Iron Man 3
01:24:47
Speaker
own enemies. And I think that the movie
01:24:50
Speaker
I think the movie's trying to do too much with all these different themes. And I think that's kind of the curse of this being the third and what everyone at the time thought was more than likely going to be the final movie, that it's kind of like, okay, well, we got to deal with what happened to him in Avengers, but we also have the relationship with Pepper. We got to give Rhodey something to do because he just became War Machine in the last movie.
01:25:13
Speaker
And, oh yeah, we forgot to use his biggest supervillain so we have to throw him in in some way too. I think it's trying to mix all those different elements together and it. I think that's, and then also you have, you know, like we said, Ike Perlmutter coming in and saying like no we got to do this we got to do this we got to do this and it all just kind of mixes everything together and.
01:25:32
Speaker
you don't get a real coherent, I guess in that respect, I mean, it's kind of amazing that the movie is as good as it is. Yeah, I wonder too, if you spread out the Iron Man movie, what that effect would be. So if you look at them, they're made so quickly, especially compared to the overall line is you've got Iron Man one and then Iron Man two, and that's like the next step practice, you know, in the MCU and Iron Man three starts phase two.
01:25:59
Speaker
And then it's done. I feel like there almost wasn't enough time to figure out what arc should Tony have in these individual films. Because I do think there's a decent amount of these characters get sucked into the overall arc.
01:26:15
Speaker
and they don't get their same amount. So even like, you know, Captain America Civil War, that's really an Avengers movie with a Captain America focus. We kind of lose a lot of that, of that suddenly these characters, single movies become
01:26:33
Speaker
really stealth Avenger movies or stealth most Captain America and the Avenger movies type thing, which I think is an interesting question. Iron Man kind of gets to do his whole arc without bringing in anyone other than his own people, but it does, I think, gives a little bit of disservice to giving time for it to breathe and figuring out who is Tony and, you know, where, how does he fit in with his stuff as it goes.
01:27:00
Speaker
A later one, once we've got all these superheroes, it'd be interesting to see how Tony interacts with the world when he's not in the middle of, you know, this huge Avenger mission or whatever. Yeah. I thought we got and we got some little teases of that. Unfortunately, not enough for my taste, but we got a little bit of that in Civil War. We got a little bit of that in Homecoming. It would have been nice to see more of that and where that would have where that would have gone.
01:27:25
Speaker
Well, it's interesting. I think he, you know, Iron Man actually totally historic repeats some of these stories, right? Like if you think about, you know, end the game, he's got to make the ultimate sacrifice. Well, he already did that in Avengers one. He was willing to go into the, in civil war, he's trying to protect the planet. He wants to build the perfect, you know, way to protect everybody. But he kind of already did that in Iron Man three, right? He kind of- And also in Age of Ultron as well.
01:27:52
Speaker
That's right. So I feel like maybe the MCU arc is sort of like repeating a little bit because they want Robert Downey Jr. to maybe play some of the same notes throughout the movies, whereas I think Captain America and some of the other
01:28:09
Speaker
characters get to grow a little bit more, maybe movie for movie. I think that's a good point too. And I was thinking about, and I think that's another reason why I kind of leave this out of rewatch is because I think a lot of the stuff that this movie does for Tony, other movies do, and they do it a little bit better. I think like the whole idea of like the PTSD and all that, I think that's covered a lot better in Age of Ultron and Infinity War.
Dynamics between Tony Stark and Supporting Characters
01:28:33
Speaker
I think the whole, the idea of like, you know, the,
01:28:38
Speaker
the, you know, relying on the armor as a crutch and, you know, relying too much on the superhero aspect. I think he kind of, he kind of learns that lesson in other movies as well through like, you know, his experiences in civil war and end game and all that kind of stuff. And I think, so it does kind of feel like this movie doesn't really offer anything different in those aspects of it.
01:29:03
Speaker
I feel like you could make some argument of his own personal arc, and then his arc of working with others. So something like civil war, we've got sort of this conflict of who should rule the Avengers, should it be like the UN, or should it be the team.
01:29:20
Speaker
And to some degree, even if Tony's in a better place of himself, he doesn't really know how to compromise on this or work with people to save the Avengers versus the whole thing kind of blowing up. And we've got a chapter in the book about conflict. And it's really interesting to look at that fight between Cap
01:29:40
Speaker
And Iron Man, where Iron Man's like, we should just abdicate our responsibility and let, you know, the government take care of this. And Cap is like, we shouldn't let the government of any say in what we do, we should make the call. Which is interesting when you think about Cap as a whole movie of big conspiracy.
01:30:00
Speaker
taking, you know, S.H.I.E.L.D. is a big conspiracy to say, let's give over to some faceless bureaucrats. I can completely understand that's not a good, that's not something that he would want from a practical perspective or from his own perspective on it. But there's so much room for compromise to my mind, where you could have come up with something where the U.N. safeguards in some way, the comics have
01:30:23
Speaker
Guy rich and other people, you know, be involved in the team from the government, but instead it's either Tony either do Tony's or do caps, no one tries to come up with some compromise that would work and leads to all the problems.
01:30:38
Speaker
You mentioned Gyrick in there, and I think, you know, just a little side note. I thought basically in Civil War, Martin Freeman was essentially Peter Gyrick in that movie. He had like the exact same personality, the exact same characteristics. I don't know why they didn't just go with making him and repeater Gyrick, because it fits him so much better than Everett Ross, I thought, because he's like completely different from Everett Ross. That's another story. Oh, yeah, yeah, that would be good. He might have set him up for Black Panther. Yeah, yeah. Set him up for Black Panther. Yeah.
01:31:08
Speaker
One of the things too, I think is interesting about Cap and Tony's story arcs in these movies is Tony goes from being kind of rebellious and almost like anti-establishment to some extent, to being very much like pro-establishment, whereas Cap is the opposite. He's very much starts off as this pro-establishment, do what you're told figure, and then he becomes the rebel. I thought that was a really interesting contrast in their progressions over these movies.
01:31:38
Speaker
I feel with the Avengers 2 and this drawing of the whole country type stuff, it really needed to be played more because I could see you being like, we caused so much death. We are the danger. We need to let the government take over or somebody. But I don't feel in Avengers 2 well enough to feel like, oh yeah, Tony's perspective, that it makes sense that Tony in Civil War is like, abdicate responsibility.
01:32:07
Speaker
You know, I think we can talk about his arc as a character where he's not, it's not just progress for him. He goes back and forth and he's got these multiple spheres of life, but it feels kind of weird for him to abdicate, especially if you look at kind of Civil War and the comics being very different in sort of how that plays out. It feels kind of like he's passively being like, oh, the government should run stuff. They just need to tell me what to do. That doesn't really fit that well with him, to my mind at least.
01:32:37
Speaker
I think in the context of Age of Ultron, I think it works for me because I think that one of my biggest things about Civil War in the comics is that Tony basically becomes a straight up supervillain. Yeah, there's problems there. Yeah, there's a lot of problems with that. I mean, he's very fashy in that comic. Whereas I think in this, he kind of
01:33:03
Speaker
I think, you know, this, and if in retrospect if they had planned this out a little bit better but you know Marvel is, it's not as well planned out as people think it is like they are kind of like, you know, flying by the seat of their pants a little bit. I think if they had planned it out a little bit better you could have had something set up with, you know,
01:33:23
Speaker
like an Armor Wars type of thing or something similar to that in Iron Man 3. And then you go on to him creating Ultron and the Avengers. And then you really have kind of a reason for it's like, oh shit, I'm going too far. I need someone to hold me back. I think there's that subtext there, but I think you make a good point. It's not quite illustrated as well as it could have been.
01:33:50
Speaker
Well, I think I understand that's the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Like it seems like he could have. It just wasn't built up and right. Yeah. Well, you know, he's a military contractor, right? So like, if you're thinking about an ultimate authority that Tony Stark would appeal to, to like keep things under control, you know, what were the superpowers before everybody had superpowers, right? Those governments.
01:34:12
Speaker
So it kind of makes sense on that level, I think, that he would just be like, listen, we need some UN board or somebody, because that's what he would do. That's who he worked with as a weapons manufacturer. He'd be like, OK, I'm going to sell to the government. And I think that part of it clicked for me when I watched that transition for him in Civil War. Of course, he's going to say, yeah, we need a government body in here, because that's who he would appeal to. I think Captain America also had, it's weird, in the first Avenger,
01:34:41
Speaker
He's part of a military establishment, but it's like outside the normal reigns of government, right? So shield or whatever the proto shield was back in World War II, they were doing their own thing, fighting their own villain. And I feel like he carried a lot of that and then it got worse in civil war because he's like, no, not civil war, sorry. Winter Soldier, when he realizes that this has been corrupted, he's like, no, we can't have anybody controlling us now.
01:35:08
Speaker
we need to as superhero or super powered people, we need to be the ones in charge, because these other government agencies can be infiltrated by bad guys, and we need to kind of hold that responsibility. So I think from that level, maybe it wasn't so clearly communicated, but I think it kind of works for that. And it makes the conflict really interesting. Now rewatching Civil War
01:35:31
Speaker
watching it like that in quick succession, I think it's easier to see a lot of those connections rather than like, oh, we waited two years to see this. Now it's a little bit easier to connect. I think it's a cap to me is motivated very reasonably. I'm so cap. I'm not surprised that at all. To me, Tony needs more to do that because also this isn't like
01:35:52
Speaker
I he's selling weapons to like the US government right and he's just like well just like the UN the general world I don't know the world government will take over running the Avengers it's very vague because it doesn't see any relationship with them so if it was like oh like Rhodey's gonna run he's gonna be our liaison to the
01:36:12
Speaker
whatever government you want to call it, I'd feel a lot more reasonable if that was the case. I just don't see him as a relationship with it. I think, Saina, you talked about, we talked about before, who exactly is taking over? Is it the UN? Is it something in the UN? It was vaguely defined, I feel like, a little bit. As I recall, it was a UN panel.
01:36:33
Speaker
That's what it was said in the movie, I believe. Literally the shadows at the end of Avengers. Those shadow guys, right? Yeah. And it just feels like it's not people they know or like if I felt Tony had a relationship with the shadow guys or something, I'd be like, yeah, of course he trusts these people, right? Whether he should or not is an open question. But I don't see why he's trusting like unknown government bureaucrat feels weird to me.
01:37:00
Speaker
Yeah, I can see that it does ultimately come up to I think both of it comes up to shell shock from their most recent adventures, whereas for for cap, you know, it's.
01:37:12
Speaker
you know, he trusted Shield and then Shield had gone bad. And he's just like, oh, no, no, no, we can't leave these decisions up to, we have to make all these decisions ourselves. Whereas Tony is, you know, he made all the decisions himself and, you know, created a genocidal robot. And then he's like, okay, clearly I'm not the one who should be making decisions. And I think it's an overreaction, but I think you're making a good point. Maybe it's the PSD and stress. Yeah. Where it's really like, I'm abdicated. Cause it is a very extreme abdication of that.
Happy Hogan's Role in Iron Man 3
01:37:42
Speaker
One other thing I wanted to talk about, and this is really the kind of like final point I had about this movie, is I really like the elevated role that Happy got in this movie to an extent, at least in comparison to the first two movies, and I think a big part of that is because, you know, Jean Favreau's not directing this time, so he's
01:37:58
Speaker
he was able to just kind of like, and he had said this in interviews, he was able to just kind of like relax and just kind of like, and I really liked his, I really liked his portrayal of Happy and I'm really glad we got to see more of that in this movie. And of course we ended up getting it in great effect in the Spider-Man trilogy. But also I really liked how the relationship is done between Tony and Rhodey. And I think this was kind of touched on a little bit in Iron Man 2, whereas I thought
01:38:26
Speaker
Terrence Howard felt very exasperated. Terrence Howard's roadie felt very exasperated with Tony and I had a hard time believing that they were really friends because it kind of felt like he was just, it kind of felt like the military was telling him to be Tony's friend as opposed to him actually caring about Tony.
01:38:44
Speaker
Whereas with Don Cheadle, I got more of a sense that there's a relationship between his roadie and Downey's Stark. And I thought they really play it up in this movie. And I love the whole lethal weapon of it when they're working together at the action scene at the end. Yeah, that actually, that's part of what I really loved about that action scene is how they
01:39:08
Speaker
can share the screen as almost equals. And I mean, we do talk a little bit in the book about something called Leader Member Exchange, where there are people that are followers. And ostensibly in this movie and in the other movies, Rhodey is always like a follower of Toni almost.
01:39:28
Speaker
And they have this good relationship where they can kind of joke around and even when they're kind of far apart on an issue or wearing the iron patriot armor, they have a strong enough relationship where they can come back together and still work together. And I really enjoyed that. I also saw that with the relationship between Tony and Pepper in the same end of this movie. I really feel like they were able to show them as like equals and
01:39:55
Speaker
that they were able to give her a couple of good, you know, moments like, you know, fight moments to kind of protect Tony, especially without the armor. But that's also part of the theme of the movie is being able to kind of share the responsibility of this armor, not just with, you know, with Pepper, but also with, with Rhodey himself and being able to say like, yeah, when I need them, I can depend on these folks. I think that's also a big part of the story arc of the film.
01:40:24
Speaker
Even though he had sort of that moment in the Avengers, since we're talking about the cyclical nature of Iron Man storylines, you would think that that would carry over, but he still in his own personal life also needed to be able to kind of hand things off. And you kind of see that a little bit with the happy story because he doesn't want happy to pursue this, you know, this investigation that ends up getting him hurt. But he kind of comes to terms with that and recognizes how much happy means to him.
01:40:51
Speaker
especially in the first movie, he doesn't seem to have that kind of relationship with Happy at all. He's kind of like an elevated bodyguard, driver kind of guy. But by this third movie, he seems to have a much stronger relationship with Happy.
01:41:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think it's such an important part of Iron Man 3 is those relationships and trusting these people and their input really matters. And we mentioned that in the chapter as well. A little bit is just sort of, he needs these people, Captain America, Pepper, to kind of call him on stuff. And he needs to be willing to listen to it, which I think is the harder part.
01:41:32
Speaker
I think he really, he cares about these people and respects them, but he's always kind of done his own thing without listening because it's went well for him and he's often been the one paying. And I think in theory, Iron Man 3 with blowing the stuff up and all that is partly, I need to depend on other people, not the armor and myself. And to me, that's a very interesting arc for the movie to go with.
01:41:59
Speaker
He's gonna need the armor later on, but he's still Iron Man inside regardless. And he's got these people in his life. He's willing to get the heart surgery. He can trust others to do so. Now he doesn't do that consistently. He backslides. He has some other issues. But I do think from that perspective, it's a step towards that level of trusting others and being who he is versus Tony Stark, the man who does what he wants and doesn't need to listen to
Final Thoughts on Iron Man 3
01:42:28
Speaker
anybody
01:42:28
Speaker
you know, in that way. Okay, um, so I think that's pretty much all I really want to say about Iron Man 3. Do you guys have any, any final thoughts you wanted to say about the movie? Let's start with Sai. Alright, um, you know, if you like Shane Black,
01:42:45
Speaker
and you're okay with a weird middle and maybe kind of stopping and starting in the beginning a little bit, then I think Iron Man 3 might be the Iron Man for you. It might be, other than Iron Man 1 and Iron Man 3, like Iron Man 3 is a little bit lower than Iron Man 1 for me in terms of the movies, but I really enjoyed it. I like watching it again. I may revisit it one more time, who knows?
01:43:11
Speaker
But I really enjoyed it and I think it's a nice melding of a couple of different Iron Man stories. I do wish, I would have liked to have seen an Iron Man, maybe an Iron Man 4 to see what else they could have done with his solo adventures. Because there are some other villains that they never really got to.
01:43:28
Speaker
with Iron Man that pop up in other movies like Ghost, I think it's a really cool villain, but they kind of used it, Ant-Man and The Wasp, but still really cool movie and a lot of fun. And you know what? I didn't think that we would have this kind of discussion about Iron Man 3, but it really lent itself to some really cool alternate universe takes. Hopefully in the multiverse, I'll be able to watch some other versions of Iron Man 3. Gordon, how about you?
01:43:57
Speaker
So if you watch MCO movies for what's essential for the forward-moving plot of this huge behemoth series, Iron Man 3 is among the least essential. Because again, as we talked about here, you can get pieces of it in other places for Iron Man's character arc, and we even get the ending of that arc in Endgame.
01:44:21
Speaker
So if that's what you want, and for some people that is the most important thing, yeah, I think Iron Man you don't need Iron Man 3, you don't need to see in that regard.
01:44:30
Speaker
Now, as Cy brought up, if you like Shane Black movies, if you want to kind of see Iron Man stripped of a lot of his stuff, if you want to see a cool Ben Kingsley performance, and kind of think about Iron Man kind of figuring out he's got the Iron Man inside him all along, I think this movie is very good for those aspects.
01:44:54
Speaker
And so I certainly recommend watching it. I will not watch it again in the next couple of days. Like Sai seems to be suggesting, that seems excessive to me. But I do think it's worth watching. And if you're thinking about Iron Man in particular, this is a worthwhile movie to do. It's not the most important continuity movie. It's got its issues, but it's a lot of fun overall to my mind.
01:45:18
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely soften on the movie. And I think a big part of that is thanks to Shang-Chi and what they've done with the Mandarin concept and with also Ben Kingsley as performance too. And I really like the relationships in the movie. I think the roadie and the Tony stuff is the far away, probably my favorite part of the movie is that relationship. But as far as
01:45:49
Speaker
You know, like you guys said, as far as being an essential part of the MCU, a lot of these same story beats are hit in other movies, a lot of the same character beats we get in other forms. And in some respects, you could argue better, I certainly think so.
01:46:08
Speaker
And also the Shane Black of it all, it's still a little too overpowering for my taste as much as I like him. I wish this would have been an Iron Man movie first and a Shane Black movie second, but it ended up kind of being the opposite. And I think, Cy, you're right. I really would have liked to see like an Iron Man 4. And especially, you mentioned the ghost. I mean, that is...
01:46:31
Speaker
Like, I'm amazed that because that would have been a perfect adversary for Tony in the MCU, because the ghost is a in the comics is a corporate saboteur. And that would have been such a really cool thing, a cool take on the character, because that's especially in, you know, in this world we're living in now, that's a character that would be very appealing to a lot of people, too. So you could actually have a lot of he could have very much been like almost like kind of Tony's version of Killmonger.
01:46:59
Speaker
in that, you know, he's someone who's, you know, yeah, he's a bad guy, but he's making some good points. And I think that would have been really interesting to see because we never really got that Tony challenge on that level. It's always been, he's being challenged constantly by other corporate guys. So, and when you have him up against a worse corporate guy, Tony ends up looking better by comparison. But if you have him up against a guy who's anti-corporate, I think it would have been a much more nuanced
01:47:27
Speaker
take on the characters. My pitch for Iron Man 4, Tony Stark, Squirrel Girl, together. I see that dynamic. There you go. Squirrel Girl comic has some pretty funny Iron Man stuff in it. If you haven't read that stuff, it's pretty delightful. I'd love to see Tony paired with somebody just completely different with perspective that really isn't affected by the Tony charm in that same way, or the Tony, I'm paying your bills perspective. I think that'd be fascinating to see, honestly.
01:47:57
Speaker
That's what I loved about him interacting with Cumberbatch in Infinity War, and it kind of made me wish we could have seen like a Doctor Strange Iron Man team up movie. Okay, guys, this has been a fun conversation. I wasn't sure what to expect from this going into it when you guys pitched me the email, but this has been a lot of fun. Thanks so much for coming on, and please go ahead and tell people one more time about your book, about anything else you want to promote.
Podcast Farewell and Book Promotion
01:48:23
Speaker
Sure. Well, the book is called Leaders Assemble, Leadership in the MCU, and you can get it anywhere books are sold. And we're really proud of it. Really happy to be here. You know, when we, when we talked about this and we heard that you didn't like Iron Man 3, I was a little concerned about what the conversation would go, but this has been so much fun.
01:48:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, so definitely check out the book. We're both online, feel free to check us out online as well. We don't talk about superheroes all the time with our professional accounts, but we've been talking about it quite a bit lately. And so we'd be happy to talk to anybody else about this. We love these movies, we love the comics, and we enjoy our field too and sharing about it.
01:49:09
Speaker
Yeah, this is such a fun conversation. Thanks again for coming on. Really interesting discussions. I wasn't sure where the conversations have gone, but they've gone in some really, really interesting areas that I could not have predicted. So if you guys ever want to come back again, definitely let me know.
01:49:25
Speaker
But as for us, that does it for this episode of Superhero Cinephiles. The website is SuperheroCinephiles.com, SuperCinemapod on Twitter and Instagram, and Superhero Cinephiles on Facebook. Please make sure to like us, give us a review on Apple Podcasts, anywhere you get your shows, and if you want to support the show, you can do so through Patreon. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
01:49:50
Speaker
You have been listening to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at SuperCinemapod. Join our Facebook group by searching for Superhero Cinephiles, where you can interact with us and other superhero fans. If you'd like to support the show, you can become a regular supporter at Patreon or make a one-time donation through PayPal, both of which can be found at our website, SuperheroCinephiles.com.
01:50:12
Speaker
If you buy or rent any movies through the Amazon links at our site, it helps support the show. Please be sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening. And as always,
01:50:42
Speaker
Good night. Good evening. God bless.