We just passed the one-year mark on the release of Iron Man 3, and it’s still generating
strong opinions on the internet. IGN just ran this (spoiler-laden) interview
with one of the film’s stars, Guy Pearce, about the major change to the Iron
Man mythos the film made.
If you’ve seen the film, I probably don’t have to tell you
this, but just on the off-chance that I do: in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
the Mandarin, classic Iron Man foe for decades, doesn’t exist. Well,
technically, he does; he’s just, a fictional character drawn up by Pearce’s
Aldrich Killian to use as a front for his terrorist schemes.
I actually loved this
plot twist. It genuinely surprised me, something that I can’t say about many
adaptations where I know the plot (to some extent) going in. What I haven’t loved is the reaction that the
twist has inspired. By which I mean: it’s almost impossible to have a serious
conversation about how good of a comic book movie Iron Man 3 is, and for reasons that I think are ridiculous. The two
big ones that I see are: 1) Tony didn’t spend enough time in the Iron Man suit,
and 2) the film “ruined” the Mandarin.
I just can’t take these complaints seriously, because they
just didn’t affect the quality of the movie in any tangible way for me. However,
to some, it apparently “ruined the movie”, and I just can’t comprehend this.