Posted by: @ru1977

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this was a point in Roth's career where I wasn't as into him. Though he is great on Lie To Me.

I wanted to like that show, specifically because of Tim Roth, but I found the gimmick didn't overcome the kind of pedestrian mysteries.

Posted by: @ru1977

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I usually skipped to the college part

Daylight Hulk IS what we all came for.  The college fight still comes across as a little too contained for me to really feel the menace of the Hulk, though.  There, he's laser-focused on the soldiers, with no collateral damage to the campus or risk to the students.  Factory Hulk, meanwhile, feels more like the ticking time bomb he should be, where just some local bullies can lead to massive destruction.

Special Bonus Review:

I watched the one-shot The Consultant which only resulted in me already questioning my movie timeline.

The one-shot leads straight into the post-credit scene of the Incredible Hulk, but I think calling Stark the consultant is a reference to the ending of Iron Man 2.

I think maybe I should've watched Iron Mans 1 & 2 and THEN the Hulk.  But wait, doesn't Coulson leave IM2 to go to the start of Thor (and *that* one-shot)?  So is it IM 1&2, then Thor then Hulk?  

I'm definitely over-thinking it, but then I can't think of anything else this one-shot adds to the MCU.  This is actually the first time I'd seen it and was expecting something more like the Agent Carter one-shot which is an actual story.

It did kind of make me want pancakes, though.

@fletch Yay we're back!

The timeline is definitely not perfect, and things like those one-shots just shine a brighter light on how much they didn't have it planned it. Which is fine, doesn't diminish my enjoyment at all. They tried.

but I think it's supposed to be Iron Man 2, Hulk, and Thor all take place during the same week, so there's a lot of crossover in the timeline. If you wanted to really watch it in order, you'd have to watch (something like) the beginning of Hulk, half of IM2, then the first act of Thor, part of Hulk, some more IM2, and so on. I don't know exactly, but that kinda idea.

And yeah, the Agent Carter one shot is the high water mark for those. Mostly they're simple scenes probably shot in a day in one location.

Oh, the one with Justin Hammer wasn't bad actually.

A surprising discovery in re-watching Iron Man 2 was that it's not as good as I remember it being.  It still holds up as a good movie, but it's a good leap below Iron Man 1 in quality.  These are the scenes I'm thinking of when I think that Gwyneth Paltrow couldn't keep up with RDJ's improv, and everybody just seems kind of a caricature of themselves.  Like, Pepper is *just* the loyal employee struggling to work around Tony's antics, Tony is *just* making bad decisions designed to cause confusion and conflict, and so on.  They're filling their story purposes more than being a person, if that makes sense.  Plus, we're already repeating ourselves with the "villain is an evil version of the hero" finale and starting with adding characters just to expand the cinematic universe.

Fortunately, Sam Rockwell is there to be an absolute star as Justin Hammer.  He devours every scene he's in and there's subtext in every gesture.  He's so good, I'm mad he hasn't come back for anything except maybe a one-shot down the road.  In my version of Phase 4, he comes back as the Titanium Man ("everybody knows Titanium is stronger than Iron") for my Dark Avengers movie, but that's looking very unlikely.

On to some specifics:

• Clarifying my question last post about the timeline between Iron Mans 1 and 2 and Hulk, this movie starts exactly where IM1 ends, with Vanko Sr. watching Tony's press conference.  We get a time jump during the opening titles, as shown by the news articles he has pinned to his wall, but I feel they could've taken better advantage of the idea.  Aside from one "Iron Man stabilizes East-West Relations" and a very vague "Iron Man Person of the Year" cover, there isn't a lot to show what he's been up to.  Since we're very soon at his senate hearing, it would have been nice to see several instances of how Tony has privatized world peace.  
• I love Walt Disney Howard Stark.  What a great interpretation.
• Yay, Olivia Munn.  At the time, we only knew her from Attack of the Show on G4, so this felt like her making it big. Who knew we'd eventually see her as Psylocke and then...nothing, I guess.  I wonder whatever happened to her.
• Don Cheadle is a great replacement for Rhodey and the blunt intro of "it's me, deal with it" was so baller.  I'm retired Navy, so I have all the jokes about the Air Force, but I think the character they created needed to be a tougher guy than what Terrence Howard offered.  Cheadle also gets a pass on my earlier opinion that everyone was just filling movie rolls.  He does such a great job of showing that he's still Tony's friend while having other, bigger responsibilities.  You can really feel how he's stuck between two conflicting positions.
• As a plot device, the palladium poisoning is fine.  I get that it's the driver of a lot of his decisions in the movie, such as having Pepper take charge of the company and creating a suit with an independent arc reactor that Rhodey can use, but I would've liked to see that more explicitly said at some point.  Like, toward the end someone can realize this is why he's been such a dink.  Without that, he's just kind of being a dink.  I also have a little trouble with that being the big character driver since it just seems like he could replace it with something not toxic and call it a day.  
• Having Tony put "Natalie" in the ring so that Happy could try to sucker punch her is one of those  things that doesn't make sense outside the context of it being a power demonstrator to show her fighting abilities to the audience.  It does, however, get that amazing "oh my god" out of Pepper which may be the finest bit of acting in the entire movie.  It's so authentic I have to wonder if they actually did something off-camera to get that reaction.  Also, I'd forgotten how overly-sexualized Natasha was in this movie.  I'm glad Scarlett Johansson was able to grow beyond that as the MCU went on.
• I forgot to talk about Mickey Rourke.  What a scary actor.  I might've had a hard time visualizing what a tech genius who'd done hard time in a Russian prison looked like, but he nailed it exactly.  I've heard that a lot of the tattoos came from his own research, so props for his professionalism. He really defined a very specific character, and I can't think of who else could have gotten his ass beat by Iron Man and still convincingly claim victory.  His electro-whips at the race track were so unique and striking so I'm disappointed they just changed him into another big, grey version of the hero again at the end.  I can see why they'd combine Crimson Dynamo's story with Blacklash, but 'Lash is my favorite Iron Man villain *because* he goes up against him with just powered whips.
• The armor-up and -down sequences are still great.  We saw at the Expo that he's perfected the disassembly compared to what we saw him in the first movie, and the briefcase sequence was still on the advanced side of believable (aside from the bit where Happy drives wrong way against race cars.)  It may seem odd that Happy's able to just carry the whole Iron Man suit with one hand, but I just accept that it's a lighter suit than usual.  Vanko just tosses him around like he's nothing.
• I like the fight between Stark and Rhodey.  The Chekhov's repulsor explosion is kind of dumb, but I like the demonstration that, even drunk, Tony's got way more experience fighting in the suit than Rhodey does.
• But you know what is the dumbest idea in this movie?  That Tony's dad had an idea for a new element and hid in the layout of his Expo 30 years prior.  And that's ignoring that Tony would find those plans right when he needed that new element to power his armor.  Now, I really dig that they made the synthesis of that new element just a visual, manual labor task (that's good filmmaking), but I know just enough about science to know that you don't have to guess about the layouts of as-yet-undiscovered elements.  Tony wouldn't need a map to show him how electrons and protons are laid out. They just needed a way for Tony to have a character arc about his father that would solve his problem in the tidiest way possible.  And if you can sneak in some references to Captain America's shield and the Cosmic Cube while you're at it, all the better.
• One of these days I'm going to have to learn Hammer's arms sales pitch as an audition monolog.  So great.
• Runner up for dumbest thing in this movie is that they make such a big deal about Tony being on house arrest after his drunken blow-up, and then he just leaves anyway and nobody cares.  Why even make the house arrest a thing?  Sure it leads to one of Coulson's best lines, but at what cost?
• Third movie in, so there isn't any onus to having an army of faceless drones attacking the hero like will become more common later.  Even more, they make sense with Vanko's plan and the variety of the military branches gives them different uses and effects.  It's a shame they were only shown at night in the dark, 'cause I'm a fan.  I also don't care for how they were so effortlessly mowed thru by Iron Man and War Machine.  Once they cornered Tony and Rhodey in the "kill box," they stopped being a threat.  And then, like I said, it's a big step down to see Vanko show up as another big, grey armor guy.  It feels weird that my favorite part of the finale was the faceless drones.

So yeah, Rockwell and Rourke really carried this movie and Cheadle is a great addition to the cast.  Unfortunately, RDJ and Paltrow felt a bit by-the-numbers and the story got bent a bit to fit into the "Save the Cat!" checklist.  Honestly, that whole bit where he's on house arrest until a home movie inspires him to go to where there's (coincidentally) the diorama with the secret that will save his life needed a second set of eyes on it.  It really could've been as simple as Tony hearing his dad say that he trusts his son to create things he's never even imagined that inspires Tony to test hypothetical elements and then does the whole atom smasher in the garage bit.  We'd miss out on a very awkward scene with Pepper and the kids, but that can be a phone call.

I did extra work for two days on IM2 - I'm part of the Expo crowd and visible. 🙂 Got to see the Iron Maidens do their thing and RDJr vamp - a lot. And it did not work. It felt muddled and unfocused and I was really worried the whole thing would fall apart.

Day 2 was much better. Don't know if it was rewrites, a re-thought-through performance, all of the above, but it felt *better* and much closer to what's in the movie. They had Howard's video practical, which was cool. Gave me hope it would eventually work. And it pretty much did.

They also grabbed us taller people to stand in for the drones on stage at the end of the day. I was an Air Force Drone - which means I have an action figure of myself. It counts! 🙂

This book is a fantastic read for those who like in-depth background on the MCU. I knew a lot of the information already but I enjoyed it a lot and it reveals just how much by luck the MCU came about. Which is something I experienced in real time and as a fan.

(BTW, the Happy Hogan Christmas episode of What If? S2 is a fantastic watch if you like Justin Hammer. Darcy is the Avengers intern [this should have happened in the real MCU], Cobie is in it and Natasha has one of my favorite line readings ever and Happy gets a chance to shine.)

Posted by: @schizm

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They also grabbed us taller people to stand in for the drones on stage at the end of the day. I was an Air Force Drone

You should be proud, that was one snappy salute.

I thought I posted this already but I guess not.

Rewatched Iron Man 2 and 3 recently.

Iron Man 2 is more solid than I remember, I think the biggest problem is the CGI-fest at the end during the night. It's just not that exciting to see then blow up robots, and Whiplash doesn't pose enough of a challenge. Racetrack scene is the standout here, and may be one of my favorite Iron Man moments.

Iron Man 3 suffers from a convoluted plot and weak villain motivation. Ben Kingsley is great in his role. I hated the twist at the time but in hindsight it's not so bad with the corrections they've made. A lot of people complained about the lack of actual Iron Man in this movie, but I think it works in the context of the wider MCU. We get plenty of Iron Man action throughout, so seeing Tony do some cool stuff without his suit is actually welcome.

@popoman, I think it was years later that I figured out what the villain's plot of Iron Man 3 was. Which is weird because there's at least two. 

And despite some maturity since then, I still think the Mandarin reveal was awful. They really did it to themselves, though. Ben Kingsley was so scary as the Mandarin that it was already a big let down that he wasn't real. Add in the over-the-top comedic elements and it was a real gut punch. And that's without even acknowledging that the Mandarin is one of Iron Man's greatest enemies. It's like if the Riddler turned out to be a series of cute notes Aunt Harriet put in Bruce's lunchbox.

So yeah, IM3 didn't work for me on a lot of levels, but more on that when I get there. 

Bonus mini-review: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer.

Also the first time I saw this one-shot, and I liked it way more than The Consultant. From the Roxxon cameo to highlighting Coulson's quirky style and abilities.

I think the reason Phil resonated so well with audiences is that he was such an understated yet capable character. He's competent and so confident that he doesn't need to be flashy about it. 

This is a fun detour with a great character who would die to great affect but way too soon and neeevver go on to start in a TV series. So sad.

The One-shots were a very cool idea - wish they did more of those.

I think the Mandarin fake-out would have worked better if they did more than the 10 Rings being in IM1 and have some reference to them in IM2 or an Avengers film, or have Tony be obsessed with them for awhile as a subplot across a few films, trying to figure out who the leader is, and so on. Then the idea of someone portraying the Mandarin to trick Tony, with the rug being pulled out with Killian pulling the strings, and on top of that Tony being no closed to getting to the Mandarin, would have played better. I think they kind of had that framework but it wasn't explicit enough. Tony being tricked by the fake Mandarin didn't have the impact it would have if we knew that Tony was obsessed with finding him, so we were waiting for this to resolve itself as part of an MCU storyline, not just from the comic history.