Iron Man 3 (2013)
It’s interesting to see the end of an era within another era, but sometimes, that’s how it goes. When said era is over going a decade strong and still pushing the envelope to this day, it’s not necessarily surprising. After all, the movie series that started it all eventually had to make way for different tales being told, as well as free its character up for the heavy hitting movies that were looming on the horizon.
Such is the tale of Iron Man 3, the last standalone Iron Man flick. This time around, a mysterious figure known as the Mandarin appears, leading a strong front against the American military in the Middle East under the banner of the Ten Rings. Tony, despite now living with Pepper and generally doing well, if starting to see the effects of being Iron Man, but not in the same way that Iron Man 2 approached it.
Tony, after all, came closest to meeting his end against the Chitauri back in The Avengers. In fact, it’s possible that he clinically died after falling from the wormhole that he sent a nuclear device through. That means that the movie is looking at something that many people, at least non-readers, likely never think of: the mental toll that comes with being a superhero. Comics haven’t shied away from such plotlines, but I struggle to think of a movie before this one that talks about the trauma that one can go through. After all, Spider-Man dealt with the consequences of being a hero on your social life, but not really on how it would cause you to jump at every reminder of that time you nearly lost your life in service of mankind.
The closest we got was probably The Amazing Spider-Man 2, as Police Chief Stacey’s final words to Peter show themselves throughout the movie visually, with Stacey himself staring disapprovingly at him from beyond the grave. This ramps up to eleven after conclusion, one I won’t spoil, but unfortunately, the planned Amazing Spider-Man 3 never came to fruition (though one can hope, after No Way Home), so the concept never truly got to stretch its legs.
Iron Man 3 asks how Tony would reconcile that near miss, and it does it with a steady, measured hand. I’m sure some found it to be ham-fisted at times, but having met many people who suffer from anxiety attacks, the slow, gradual slide that he exhibits, as he tries and fails to prevent the attack from washing over him, was all too real to watch. It isn’t simple, and someone like Tony, stubborn and calculating to a fault, would most certainly fight his attacks the entire way down. The fact that he fails, that he can’t rationalize them away, is what makes it so powerful to see in the film.
Mental health doesn’t get enough of a real look in media, and while I enjoy movies like Split, I also acknowledge the harm that they could do. After all, some people can’t read between the lines or see that there’s nuance, and so they take the wrong lessons away from it. Split shows us that those with Dissociative Identity Disorder are dangerous, to their mind. That’s all there is to it.
That’s what makes movies like this so important. No one would argue that Tony is awesome, going toe-to-toe with Thor in The Avengers and riding a nuke into the cosmos with no guarantee that he would return. If he can suffer a PTSD breakdown, anyone can. It shows the audience, especially the younger crowd, that it’s okay to not be okay - even Iron Man has his moments of weakness.
The story being told overall is a perfectly fine superhero romp. I know many were unhappy with the Mandarin, and I can understand to some degree. Such a huge villain getting changed so much would likely sting to the more hardcore comics fans. However, I am not such a fan. My knowledge of the comics is wide, but thin, so I know a lot of random fun facts and various, disparate plotlines, but things like this elude me. As such, my opinion is likely the opposite of biased, too open to truly be fair to those who wanted to see one of Iron Man’s greatest adversaries make their way to the big screen.
Despite that, I think that the choice they made serves the narrative better. The overarching theme is summed up in the very beginning, by Tony himself.
“You create your own demons.”
Tony’s greatest villain may have been the Mandarin, a powerful Chinese megalomaniac who lost everything to the Chinese Communist Revolution, one who forged the Ten Rings (the artifacts, not the organization) out of the carcass of an alien vessel, but he had no connection to Tony. To tell a tale like this one, you needed someone to be borne of Tony’s hubris, of his terrible treatment of others prior to a pretty thorough humbling. As such, Aldritch Killian and the Extremis storyline fit the bill. However, one could argue that they could have simply made a straight adaptation of the Extremis run, but then they would be throwing out the Mandarin entirely. This was known to be Tony’s final standalone movie. I’m sure the creators felt that they would be fools not to have the Mandarin in it.
Perhaps it would have been less of a problem if they HAD left the Mandarin in the comics, but I feel they at least paid it forward in Shang-Chi. Regardless, the story being told here doesn’t suffer due to the Mandarin’s treatment. It simply happens, and one can either accept it in the name of the narrative thread, or one can allow it to ruin the experience for them.
As for the moral of the story, I feel it’s delivered well. It’s not just Extremis that comes to roost in Tony’s life, but the realization of who he used to be. While Killian obviously shoulders the brunt of the blame for creating such horrible science, one must wonder how Extremis could have been used for good had Tony not simply slinked out that morning, leaving Maya alone with her project. Who knows what AIM could have become if Tony hadn’t snubbed Killian, especially in such a sociopathic way. Sending a man with a limp to the roof with no intention of making it worth your while is awful, dude. If Tony had simply told him no, I’d bet money that things would have been different.
Instead, in one night, Tony created the perfect petri dish for his own downfall to fester in. Tony created his own demon, the worst one of all, and it cost him nearly everything he loves. The Clean Slate protocol gets laughed at, since Tony nearly immediately returns in future movies as Iron Man, but that’s not what Clean Slate was about. It was about putting the past behind him, all of the bad things that he wrought, and being a better person for it.
The Tony we see in Civil War, especially, is a Tony who looks back on his own actions with remorse, with scrutiny. Some might say too much scrutiny, as I’ll no doubt get into once I get that movie, but regardless, he’s one that has learned from every encounter leading to that moment, and has matured beyond belief because of it.
Tony takes responsibility. That honestly could be the one-sentence recap of the movie, but it’s a good moral to go with, especially for one of Marvel’s most incorrigible heroes.
