Iron Man: A Proper Movie Trilogy (VIDEO SCRIPT)

Iron Man, Iron Man 2, and Iron Man 3. Not only is this the franchise that established Marvel Studios as a force to be reckoned with in the blockbuster genre of superhero movies, but it also helped revitalize the career of Robert Downey Jr.

And with 2013’s Iron Man 3 marking the last solo adventure for the character within the MCU, it marks the Iron Man franchise the first franchise from Marvel Studios to reach the status of a trilogy. But is it a PROPER trilogy? And if not, then how can we MAKE it one? Let’s find out.

INTRODUCTION

Iron Man was released on May 2, 2008. It’s the first movie directly made by Marvel Entertainment under the newly christened moniker of Marvel Studios and was the first installment of what would eventually evolve into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

/Starring Robert Downey Jr. as the titular character billionaire arms dealer Tony Stark, it tells the story of his superhero origin and how he acquired a change of heart regarding manufacturing weapons after being captured by terrorists and building an arc reactor in his chest in order to keep metal shrapnels from his own missiles from reaching his heart. He becomes Iron Man to right the wrongs he established, but Jeff Bridges’ Obidiah Stane, his father’s old partner and the manager of Stark Industries, wants him out of the picture so that he can once again own Stark Industries himself./

Distribution for Iron Man and pretty much every MCU title within the Phase 1 slate of films was distributed by Paramount Pictures, produced by Kevin Feige and THIS asshole (Avi Arad).

/And thanks to solid storytelling, Jon Favreau’s direction and a budget of 140 million dollars, Iron Man was a tremendous success for Marvel Studios’ first film, raking in a box office total of just under 586 million dollars./

Iron Man 2 was released 2 years later, once again directed by Favreau and this time written by Justin Thereaux, as opposed to Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway who wrote the first installment.

/This time, Tony is dealing with a slew of things; a disease caused by the arc reactor slowly killing him, a PG-13 attempt at adapting the famous “Demon in a Bottle” arc from his comics upon revealing to the world that he is Iron Man, and the one-two combo of arms dealer rival Justin Hammer and Ivan Vulko attacking the Stark legacy. It also shows the debut of James Rhodes as War Machine, previously played by Terrence Howard and now played by Don Cheadle, with Kevin Feige as the only producer this time around./

The film was pretty heavily criticized for using the majority of its story to help set up the Avengers instead of trying to find a proper balance between that and being a proper progression of Tony’s character, which, upon retrospect, was an understandable critique considering everything that was in the works over at Marvel Studios.

/Nevertheless, it performed just as well as the first movie. With its increased budget of 200 million, it made just under 624 million at the box office, bringing in a profit of over 420 million similar to Tony Stark’s first flight in theaters./

So with the acquisition of Marvel Entertainment by Walt Disney, the release date for the inevitable third Iron Man movie would be slated for sometime in 2013; one year after the release of Marvel’s The Avengers and kicking off Phase 2 of the MCU, in order to better signify the end of the Paramount Pictures era.

Jon Favreau opted to direct the now shelved Disney film Magic Kingdom instead of returning the third installment, and Robert Downey Jr. suggested Shane Black to write and direct, having worked with him before on the film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

And after a lost battle with previous Marvel owner Ike Perlmutter regarding making Rebecca Hall’s Maya Hensen the main villain thanks to sexism hidden under the excuse of toy sales that resulted in Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian being made the villain instead, Iron Man 3 -- the most financially successful installment of the franchise -- was released in theaters May 3, 2013. And with it, one of the most intriguing -- yet clumsily handled -- stories for Tony in the MCU.

THE CURRENT STANCE

/Iron Man 3, despite the plot twist regarding in-universe actor Trevor Slattery, provided a very weighty list of positive achievements for Marvel Studios. It was the first Phase 2 film and the last one that visibly acknowledged their partnership with Paramount Pictures before being able to make them independently thanks to the Walt Disney acquisition of Marvel Entertainment. It was also the second movie from Marvel Studios to break over 1 billion dollars in the box office -- the first being the first Avengers movie -- and at the time of its 2013 release, it became the fifth highest grossing film of all time./

And honestly, it’s rightly deserved. Lethal Weapon creator and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang director Shane Black did a great job adapting the buddy cop formula he helped pioneer in Hollywood to Tony’s overall mythos on screen. Both in regards to his relationship with Harley and building more on it with Rhodey near the end of the movie.

The inclusion and use of Tony’s PTSD however, remains a mixed bag with me.

/One of the key ways the movie links itself to both Iron Man’s solo franchise while still acknowledging his involvement in the greater MCU is by having Tony suffer from insomnia because what he had to do in order to save New York in the Avengers has caused him to develop Post Traumatic Stress. Factor in Aldrich Killian’s plot for revenge against Tony for leaving him on the roof during that New Years Eve party in 1999 and the events that caused the limitation of his resources in discovering the true mastermind behind the Extremis plot, and you can see why the breakdowns happened over the course of the film./

My gripe with it is that, for every instance they respect and properly interpret how his panic attacks and insomnia plays a factor according to how PTSD works in real life, there are just as many instances in which it's either played up for laughs or brushed off.

/Especially since there has never been an instance in the movie for Tony to find a sort of breakthrough in his condition, or a healthy medium of dealing with it by the time the third act hits and he has to buckle down with Rhodey to stop Killian once and for all./

I think it's safe to say that the flashbacks, nightmares and traumatic flashes can serve a purpose in both showing the severity that trauma victims and war vets deal with on a daily basis, especially for someone with a history as grand and dangerous as Tony Stark. I just personally think that the way they handled that hurdle for him was a missed opportunity for development that could’ve easily carried over to the other Marvel Studios projects starring Tony such as Civil War and both Infinity War and Endgame

But what’s ALSO a missed opportunity with Iron Man 3 is the fact that despite having the tools necessary in order to do it, the movie as it currently stands does not make the necessary connections to the first Iron Man in order to make all three movies work as a proper movie trilogy

Now remember Readers. In order for a trilogy regardless of its medium to be considered a proper one, the main thing that plays a factor is that there always has to be an element of the first film’s plot that plays a significant role in the third in a way that makes all three films work together as one cohesive story.

From there, you can use the third film to reveal new information about what's being carried over from the first, and expand upon it in various ways; the most common form being a plot twist.

/While it’s undeniable that -- despite critiques regarding the way the Mandarin was used in Iron Man 3, and even my critiques about how Tony’s PTSD was a missed opportunity to further develop his character -- the movie was, in fact, good, the truth of the matter is that the screenplay that was used treated the sequel as yet ANOTHER installment of the franchise without any TRUE effort to connect to the film that started it all for both Tony and the MCU in general. And what it DID do was, in retrospect, less than the bare minimum./

The tragic irony of Iron Man 3’s situation is that not only are the decisions it made to tell its story already act as the perfect vehicle to house the multi-layered story thread from the first movie for it to expand upon, but it also utilizes those that same multi-layered story thead in the movie, and chooses to do little to nothing with them. Allow me to explain.

THE THREAD

/In order to realize what elements Iron Man 3 has within it from the first Iron Man but never really utilizes in the final version of its narrative, we have to take a look at what plot points -- aka strings -- are present in the 2008 film that can be combined and used to reveal new information about in the 2013 sequel in the form of an overall connecting thread.

/And the most obvious one -- considering who the film uses as a scapegoat villain -- is the first film’s use of the Ten Rings logo./

Considering that every one of Killian’s Mandarin broadcasts started with the same image of the small militia of terrorists that held both himself and Yinsen captive for 3 months, and that Tony WATCHED those same broadcasts in Iron Man 3, I was incredibly shocked that there were NO narrative decisions within the final version of this movie to associate them together in any way, shape or form.

And considering that the movie was actively trying to instill PTSD as a situation Tony had to deal with over the course of the movie thanks to his involvement in the Avengers, why was it JUST that considering the Ten Rings logo is so closely associated with him?

/Why was he not triggered seeing the logo of the terrorist sect partially responsible for why he has a mini-arc reactor in his chest, but triggered when a kid asked him THIS question?/ (how did you survive the black hole)

I’m not saying that someone suffering from PTSD can’t have multiple triggers or that one can’t be more dominant than the other. I do not have PTSD, nor have I studied or researched it enough in order to have a say in how it works, so it is not my place to say what can and should activate such a disorder.

But I also know that trauma is trauma. And, considering how heavy an experience it was for Tony to the point where his current life is shaped by the events that happened regarding the experience he had with the sect that utilized that logo, something should still be there.

/Especially since this individual named the Mandarin is now utilizing said symbol and is taking responsibility for multiple terrorist attacks that happen over the course of the movie./

Speaking of Yinsen, he’s another string in the 2003 movie that could’ve been better interwoven into the thread that Iron Man 3 utilizes but never truly expands on.

/In the first Iron Man, Yinsen -- in a way -- acts as Tony’s motivation for change. It was him that sparked Tony to create the mini arc reactor during the week he had to live strapped to a car battery/(Is this the legacy of Tony Stark)

/It was him that showed Tony that he lived the majority of life after taking over Stark Industries as an asshole/(we met before)

/And it was both his actions and his sacrifice that helped motivate Tony to become the hero that he is in the MCU/(don’t waste your life).

/The way Iron Man 3 uses him? By referencing the one time the two met before they became prisoners to the Ten Rings terrorist group Obidiah Stane hired to off him 8 years prior./(Perhaps another time?)

And while it does establish the continuity established in the first Iron Man movie as the first time the two characters “met,” I feel that considering how proper trilogies let the third installment better reflect on the events that happened in the first -- along with the Mandarin’s association with the Ten Rings -- Yinsen could’ve been better utilized as part of Tony’s overall journey in not only taming his PTSD, but in remembering why he became Iron Man in the first place

So Iron Man 1 provides us two very strong story strings that when weaved together provides a thread that 2013’s Iron Man 3 can EASILY expand more knowledge on and utilize in Tony’s development respectively that the movie never really FULLY incorporates into its narrative:

Aldrich Killian’s use of the Mandarin’s association with the Ten Rings symbol directly connected to the terrorist cell Obidiah Stane hired to kill Tony Stark in 2008, and the moral compass that was his fellow cellmate Yinsen who is only used as a cameo to establish continuity in the movie’s flashback that helps establish the motives for Aldrich Killian and Maya Hansen as the film’s main villains.

So how do we make changes to the narrative of Iron Man 3 that still allows it to be the Iron Man 3 we initially received, but better expand upon the thread from the first movie that it never really utilized? Let me break it down for you.

THE RECONSTRUCTION

/In 2008’s Iron Man, Tony Stark is captured by an Afghanistan terrorist cell called The Ten Rings by the order of Obidiah Stane as part of a plot to take over Stark Industries. He’s assisted in both saving his life and escaping the imprisonment of the terrorist cell by his prison mate Yensin, who helps open Tony’s eyes regarding how his business is being used as a pawn of war and starts him down the path to become Iron Man.

/In Iron Man 3, Aldrich Killian forms the persona of the Mandarin around actor Trevor Slattery -- using the symbol of the Ten Rings used by the same terrorist sect as the ones Obidiah Stane hired to kill Tony Stark -- to take the heat of the Extremis soldiers that blow up from overactivity, and aims to gain a foothold of control in global terror to make his company AIM and Extremis the #1 line of defense across the globe./

So lets have Killian’s decision to create his version of the Mandarin have an active association with the terrorist cell that kidnapped him in the first movie in a way that’ll give more agency to Killian as a villain, factor into Tony’s already established pride and brashness, and better reflect the movies method of using PTSD to help develop his character by having him face the ghosts of his past once and for all.

Now I don’t usually do the reconstruction in the way I’m about to, because I don’t want to give off the impression that I’m just basically tossing out the original movie in favor of the pitch that I came up with.

But with the way I’m establishing things in this version of Iron Man 3, I feel that you’ll get a better sense of how I’m trying to make what we initially received in Iron Man 3 feel better associated with the 2008 original, if -- instead of just sharing the changes and then explain why they work better for the trilogy overall -- we play things out in the movie as they happen.

So with that being said, the beginning of Iron Man 3 would essentially play out as it did originally. We see Tony working on a new suit, trying to work out the kinks. Then he turns on the news and sees the symbol for the Ten Rings; the same symbol from the terrorist cell Obidiah Stane hired to kill him 5 years ago.

/He sees that they had a leader in the form of the Mandarin. He puts two and two together from the video they sent Stane that was given to him by Pepper from the first movie and both verbally acknowledges it in his narration and displays it on his face clear as day. The reveal of the Mandarin is a trigger for Tony that sets him on his path of post traumatic stress and nightmares, that -- at first -- only reflect his involvement in the Battle of New York./

But over the course of the panic attacks, there’s a familiar face buried in the recesses. That face belongs to Yinsen, and two phrases are constantly echoing throughout his nightmares and panic attacks: “This was always part of the plan,” and his dying words “Don’t waste your life.”

/Then when an Extremis soldier goes off at the Chinese Theater and it puts Happy in the Hospital, the next Mandarin message is more personal. As a matter of fact, it happens right before Tony’s about to leave Happy’s room. And of course, Tony’s watching./

It’ll go along the lines of “Mister President. Ready for another lesson? You think your nation is impenetrable; that your soldiers and your heroes are untouchable. In 2008, I was able to prove that America can be bought like any other trinket by purchasing Stark Industries warmonger Obidiah Stane. My price? Tony Stark -- your Iron Man”

/And then he shows the beginning of the ransom tape from the first movie./

“Now this is nothing in comparison to the hundreds of millionaires currently controlling the strings of your...upstanding politicians that would rather line their own pockets than give the people of your...third world nation the help it TRULY deserves.

“Millionaires like Mr. Stark, who I thought might have finally learned his lesson the FIRST time I taught him. But he didn’t. Instead, he killed my men, constantly operates out of the jurisdiction of your nation, despite being a citizen of it, and welcomed extraterrestrial threats; way worse than any terrorist. So I deemed it necessary to remind your Capitalistic Avenger just how untouchable he TRULY is.”

/Then he shows the aftermath of the Chinese theater bombing, with Happy as one of the casualties./

“You are not impenetrable Mr. President, and your heroes are MORE than touchable. They are MOLDABLE. And as I have shown one of yours, I can place them in any position I deem fit.

“Mr. Stark, if you are watching, you may be the Iron Man. But without me, there is no you. You may have created your armor under the noses of my men, but answer me this: Do you really think that if you have an idea, that it belongs to you?”

And THAT sets off Tony.

/Because he remembers Stane asking that exact same question when he pulled out his arc reactor in the first movie, immediately unlocking a level of trauma that his PTSD takes advantage of almost simultaneously./

And the combination of reliving being captured by the Ten Rings and the Mandarin claiming the attack on Happy’s life -- already compounded with the panic attacks and nightmares he was getting since the first Mandarin video...

/Causes him to outwardly challenge the Mandarin upon leaving the hospital./

The Mandarin -- aka Killian’s goons -- then proceeds to attack Stark Manor, and things pretty much transpire the way they did in the actual movie.

/After Pepper is safe, Jarvis uses the armor to transport a passed out Tony to the coordinates he set during his initial investigation of the Mandarin’s American attacks, which is rural Tennessee./

But while Tony is passed out in the suit, he has another nightmare. He’s flying the bomb that was sent to Manhattan to level it during the events of the Avengers through the portal made by the Tesseract, and takes a look at its side. It’s a Stark Industries bomb.

/And suddenly he’s back in the cave, looking at one of the same Stark Industries bombs the Ten Rings gave him to make the Jericho weapon, as he’s about to scrap it for supplies to make the arc reactor./

Then behind him he hears Yinsen say “Is that how you want to go out? Is this the last act of defiance of the great Tony Stark? Or are you going to do something about it?”

/And from there, the movie plays out pretty much the same. Tony wakes up and crashlands in snowy Tennessee and teams up with Harley. He fights more of Killian’s Extremis goons in the process while investigating the soldier that went too hot and exploded, all the while trying to come to terms with why he’s having panic attacks and why they trace back to his time in the caves when he thought he was just suffering from the aftermath of the Battle of New York./

Then when Harley helps trace the Mandarin to Miami, Florida, Tony pulls over after Harley says the suit isn’t charging and has one last panic attack.

/But this time is a bit different. During his usual stint of trying to fight through the panic attack while sitting against his car, he passes out from it instead. And he wakes up in 2008 back in the cave, with his chest attached to the car battery, and Yinsen sitting across from him. And realizing that this is something Tony needs to confront, he takes the time to discuss with the projection of Yinsen why all of this is happening to him./

And we find out that despite things working out the way Yinsen wanted them to when he escaped, Tony -- in one way or another -- still felt responsible for his death.

/Tony’s never truly acknowledged that he’s now the way that he is because of Yinsen’s sacrifice for him to escape and needs to accept the fact that what Yinsen did was “always part of the plan,” and that the plan in question can’t be his all the time./

Because ultimately, what SHOULD be the main piece in the puzzle regarding Tony getting to the root of his PTSD is how he normally conceptualizes control and how he reacts when someone or something causes him to lose his sense of it.

/He would rather experience a sense of dread and terror that was brought about by a decision HE made and he made ALONE a thousand times over, -- a decision like the one he made to send the missile through the wormhole during the Battle of New York -- than experience it through a situation like the caves 5 years ago, in which -- thanks to Yinsen’s decision to draw the attention of the Ten Rings cell away from Tony while his Mark 1 suit was charging -- he couldn’t control every single element of./

And it's in this breakthrough that gives him the strength to do what needs to be done in order to put a stop to Killian and the Mandarin uninterrupted. It isn’t a CURE for his PTSD, per se, but it helps him get in a better mindset to properly deal with Killian and digest the TRUE twist of this reconstruction of Iron Man 3.

That realization plays out a bit of the same as the original movie. The Mandarin isn’t the Mandarin, but instead a British actor named Trevor that Killian is using as a scapegoat to monopolize global terror and its response to it.

/But while he and Maya have Tony restrained giving his villain monologue explanation, Killian reveals a bit more. Like how after Tony brushed him off on New Years Eve of 1999, he willingly helped Obidiah Stane carry out his plan to kill Tony while Maya and himself worked on Extremis, with plans on leaving Stane in the dust and absorbing Stark Industries into AIM once the deed was done.

/He reveals that while hiring the Ten Rings to perform the hit was all Stane, Killian did his own research on them once they sent Stane the ransom video. He reveals that there’s a fairy-tale like myth about the Mandarin that he discovered upon looking in to the cell’s logo, and not only did they believe he existed, but were trying to get into his good graces and join his army, trying to use the remnants of the Mark 1 armor Tony left in the desert to blackmail Stane in creating enough suits to gain his attention.

/But then, once Stane eliminated them and Tony eliminated Stane, it gave Killian and Maya all the time to not only perfect Extremis to their current understanding, but set up a theatrical version of the Mandarin to take the blame for the ones it rejected and set up AIM as the only response to his threats, while also allowing him to play mind games with Tony considering the association he had with the Ten Rings once upon a time; a form of psychological warfare, as it were./

And in this way, we now make Killian one of the most dangerous enemies Tony has faced in the MCU so far. Because while it's true that Killian still holds a grudge for Tony leaving him high and dry that New Years Eve night, being the instrument of Tony’s downfall was never his endgame. It’s manipulation. It’s power. It’s having people like the Vice President, Obidiah Stane and Maya Hansen in his pocket in order to manipulate them in ways that give him what he needs.

The way he utilized his version of the Mandarin was just a very convenient way of hitting multiple birds with one stone; Tony’s mental state chirping the loudest. And the only reason why he took these many measures against Tony in the first place -- even injecting Pepper Potts with Extremis -- was because after learning he survived the destruction of his Malibu mansion, Maya was able to convince Killian that Tony could still be useful to his cause.

/According to Aldrich, because he has done more with the identity than whoever is supposed to be the TRUE one/ (I AM THE MANDARIN!).

At least, until we get to the mid-credit scene that I’d add. Yes, I’m deciding to add a mid credit scene and change the actual end credit scene in this movie; shut up

Yes. Like the Avengers before it and Thor: The Dark World after, I’d give Iron Man 3 a mid-credit scene of its own. And what I’d do would pretty much be a minute or so condensed version of the short “All Hail the King,”

/Showing an incarcerated Trevor being approached by one of the REAL Mandarin’s peeps to properly set up Marvel Studios’ use for him in Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings./

And the reason I’m changing the END credit scene is mostly because I think the reveal of Tony recalling the events to Bruce Banner just to throw in a therapist gag kinda undermines the story as a whole.

/And I already don’t like how Marvel Studios handles therapists in the first place./(Really? A staring contest?)

So MY proposal for an end credit scene for Iron Man 3 would be something similar to how the mid credit scene in Avengers set up Thanos.

Because this is the first installment of Phase 2, let’s have SHIELD Agent and Hydra Mole Jasper Sitwell handle some documentation regarding transferring ownership of AIM to an interested buyer now that Killian is dead and SHIELD has absorbed its assets.

We see it being handed off to a technician who used to work for the company, who I’ll say in this case is played by Jason Bateman.

After a bit of small talk and some coded language that may be made more clear once people watch Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the two stand up, shake hands and Sitwell says something along the lines of Congratulations, George Tarleton. You are now the new owner of Advanced Idea Mechanics.”

Then we see a close up and possibly fisheye lens security camera image of Tarleton’s face, stretched out across the camera, foreshadowing the day he will eventually turn into the Avengers villain MODOK.

BECAUSE WHO JUST INTRODUCES AIM WITHOUT AT LEAST FORSHADOWING MODOK, WHO THE FUCK DOES THAT SHANE BLACK???

CONCLUSION

Iron Man 3 had all the building blocks to properly tie its narrative with the first movie. But for some strange reason, it never made an effort to stack them together.

Which is a shame. Because considering everything already in the narrative of Iron Man 3, this could’ve truly been the solo piece Shane Black, Robert Downey Jr., and even Kevin Feige aimed for when they sought to craft a story that allowed Tony Stark to truly show who he is -- both in and out of the suit.

It also would’ve made his decision to remove both the arc reactor and the missile shrapnel from his chest all the more meaningful if it was more closely associated with Tony coming to terms with not only gaining a better understanding of his new self, but if it also was the result of the movie’s already ridiculously abrupt end to Tony’s post traumatic stress

Because having a breakthrough in dealing with trauma that allows you to deal with it in a more healthy way, is more believable than it just randomly going away once the villain gives their monologue.

So if I were able to find a way to properly make all of these slight changes to the Iron Man 3 we actually received in order to:

1 - acknowledge Killian’s depiction of the Mandarin to Tony’s backstory

And 2 - utilize the panic attacks and insomnia induced by Tony’s post traumatic stress he endured since the introduction of his character into the overall development of it...

Then I am absolutely sure that someone who actually gets paid to write these things can mold Iron Man 3 to make the franchise as a whole work as a proper movie trilogy.

Right now you can stream the entire Iron Man trilogy on Disney+, because of course.

But if you want to own them for yourself and also help financially support the channel, I’ll have affiliate links in the description down below.

So with that being said Readers, your homework assignment for the day:

Write in the comment section below what you think of the Iron Man trilogy if you’ve seen it.

And if there’s a trilogy you wanna see me cover in this segment later on, feel free to leave it in the comment section as well.

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But until then, this is Readus 101. Class dismissed.