Can We Talk About "Iron Man 3" Now ?

So unlike most you cats, I got to see "Iron Man 3" earlier than some of you so I was sitting on quite a bombshell for a few days. Now that "Iron Man 3" has been released to the general public, I can discuss my thoughts in greater detail and discuss some spoilers. So if you haven't seen "Iron Man 3" and want to stay away from spoilers, DO NOT READ BELOW THE BREAK! However if you don't care about spoilers please continue on;

So welcome! In this article I'm going to discuss why "Iron Man 3" is a MAJOR fail for Phase 2 of The Marvel Cinematic Universe. But I'd like to clear up a few things...am I saying this movie is terrible? No. This movie did keep me entertained. However plot-wise and potential wise, this movie is a MAJOR FAIL! Let's get to the obvious and work our way down.

The Mandarin is one of Iron Man's most noteworthy villains, many complained about his exclusion from the 1st and 2nd Iron Man movies, but for what The Marvel Cinematic Universe was doing, it'd only be right for them to hold off on a character as impactful as The Mandarin until after "The Avengers". Well it's Post-Avengers time and The Mandarin was announced as being the big bad for "Iron Man 3". This got be PUMPED to see it, and when Ben Kingsley was announced to be playing The Mandarin, it was an odd choice (personally I would have gone with Hiroyuki Sanada) but Ben Kingsley is a very good actor and has played villains before. The Mandarin is essentially The Chinese Bin Laden with Bruce Lee's skills and Tony Stark's brain. A triple threat of global terrorist, mad scientists, and mixed martial arts master rolled into one. Basically Tony Stark's ultimate challenge.

Good choice for The Mandarin...Yes? No?

My vision of "Iron Man 3" would've had The Mandarin show up at Tony's house in typical global terrorist fashion, face off against Tony in his Iron Man suit only for The Mandarin (with his Rings) destroy The Iron Man suit in ONE BLOW and then proceeding to kick Tony's ass (Tony Stark is NOT a trained fighter like Batman) and steal The Iron Patriot suit, and then have Tony's house blown up by helicopters, leaving Tony broken and left for dead. In the end of my movie Tony Stark would be stripped without an Iron Man suit and would have to beat The Mandarin with the only ace in the hole he has, HIS BRAIN!

After all after The Avengers, Tony Stark is deeply concerned about his own abilities to make sense of the new world around him, commenting that "I'm a guy in a can.". By the end of my movie Tony would have realized that he doesn't NEED the suit to be Iron Man, Iron Man came from his brain, and as long as he has his intelligence (the thing that saved his life in the first movie) he'll be okay.

But that's NOT the movie we got OR The Mandarin we got, SURE, we almost got him a very chilling and well done scene where The Mandarin held a gun to a White House staffer's head and "murdered" him on live national television in front of everyone...but when we found out that scene was fake and The Mandarin was really some drug abusing actor...you can imagine our fan rage.

Tell me this wouldn't be AWESOME!

Our fan rage stems from the fact that Tony now lives in a Post-Avengers world. Now is a PERFECT time to introduce a character like The Mandarin with ALL his sci-fi Fu Man Chu elements. They could have played up the fact that The Mandarin IS just as smart as Tony and is physically threatening as well. Likewise they could have played up the fact that The Mandarin controls a global organization of operatives while Stark does not. All of these elements could have found their way in the movie but alas...they did not.

Overused...but for good reason...

My second biggest issue with "Iron Man 3" was the plot twist. Basically involving The Vice President in Killian's scheme. This is probably what made the movie much worse than it needed to be. I was fine with Killian wanting to create super soldiers and wanting to create a biochemical agent that can regenerate limbs, fine, cool and dandy...HOWEVER when you involve The Vice President in the scheme, this leads to a few glaring issues that must be addressed.

We're led to believe that The Vice President was WILLING to commit treason and allow some wack job with an untested biological agent to help his daughter with one leg walk again? Ummm, No. HE'S THE VICE PRESIDENT he should have access to medical treatments up the wazoo! Furthermore, Tony Stark was a defense contractor for the military, not to mention the man has performed heart surgery ON HIMSELF (inserting an arch reactor in his own chest), so it wouldn't be TOO much of a stretch for The Vice President to give Tony a call and ask him if he can make a prosthetic leg for his daughter...after all the guy did create an entire suit of armor that flies and shoots lasers out of it's palms.

Instead of being 100% logical, The Vice President included himself in a scheme SO stupid that it was doomed from the start. My personal beliefs is that the writers made The Vice President an accomplis because he was played by Miguel Ferrer...and he ALWAYS plays the bad guys...

Seriously though, I love this guy!

Honestly in a post-Avengers world, NOW is the time to go BALLS OUT with characters like The Mandarin...I mean Hell next year we're getting a talking Raccoon...so don't feed me any bullshit about believability or making stuff realistic, we just had a Norse God who can command thunder with his hammer, an alien invasion and a giant green rage monster, WE DESERVE THE MANDARIN!! Those are my thoughts, lemme know what you think.