Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3 was great and there are several reasons why. It’s a great action flick, it has great humor, a fantastic plot, and does what the others have done so well, just better. Everything the second did wrong, it corrected. Everything the first did, it improved upon. I don’t know if I’m willing to say it was better than Avengers, but it was certainly close.

And while there is a lot to this movie, what I want to discuss is the twist. It’s not really a review. If you want a review, well, it’s great, go see it. Done. If you don’t want to know anymore, don’t read any further.

Really, don’t.

Everyone who hasn’t seen it, just to make sure, you’re gone, right? Cool.

Anyway, so it turns out the Mandarin is a fake and Guy Pierce’s character is running everything as a puppetmaster behind the scenes, using his own custom designed Bin Laden as a scapegoat for everything he’s doing. It’s a good, imaginative plot, but there are two things I really love about it.

One, it’s ambitious as hell. Imagine if the Joker from the Dark Knight had been fake and all a part of Harvey Dent’s plan to become Mayor. That probably wouldn’t have been as good in that case, but that’s the extreme they went to. They took the single largest villain from the Iron Man universe and did away with him. And they did a really, really good job of replacing him with an interesting villain of their own design.

And that brings me to the second part. They didn’t half ass it. The marketing was all about Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin. Even if you watched the trailers multiple times, you barely even see Guy Pierce. They chose a triple A actor to play a character that isn’t a big deal and then they did what no one in Hollywood is willing to do. They cut the trailers so it would appear as something other than what it was.

And then we fell for it.

They do that all the time, but usually it’s to make a crap movie look good. They made a great movie look just good. It was a big risk, but well worth it and I am just so impressed that they had to good judgement to not give it away in the advertising.

It’s something I’d like to see more of in Hollywood.

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