The problem with superhero movies, broadly speaking, is that they struggle to convey a sense of balance. This is because every superhero film needs to establish two contradictory things simultaneously: on the one hand, in order to justify the classical modifier, the hero of the film must be depicted as at least nominally “super”, which is to say somehow exceptionally proficient and powerful. But on the other hand, in order to maintain some vaguely plausible illusion of suspense, the hero of the film must also be depicted as vulnerable, which is to say credibly at risk of losing to whomever is defined as the principal threat. An audience wants to feel impressed by a hero’s power but concerned that their power may be overcome, and what this means from a filmmaking perspective is that a superhero has to seem both indomitable and fragile at the same time.
I used to complain that I could never take the second and third “Matrix” films seriously, not only for the obvious reasons, but for the simple fact that they reject the rules of their predecessor. At the end of “The Matrix”, Neo has finally awakened to the reality around him and in doing so has become The One, a transformation which various characters have spent the better part of two hours explaining will make him essentially invincible. But it’s a hard to write a sequel to action movie, let alone two sequels, when you’ve just made your protagonist impervious to physical harm, which left the Wachowskis with two choices: either rob the hero of his powers at the outset (a colleague calls this “Metroiding”) or introduce new antagonists whose own powers up the ante, sort of a deus ex machina in reverse. The Wachowskis went with the latter option, which is why, in the first moments of “The Matrix Reloaded”, it’s explained that, oh right, the agents are new and improved, and also, oh yeah, we forgot to mention this but there are also evil programs roaming about with just enough power to be a believable threat, and I guess we just didn’t see them in the first film because…something.
Though it’s more pronounced in the “Matrix” sequels, this is a problem that plagues superhero franchises—extending past comic book heroes to cover even the last few Bond movies—inherent from their inception and increasingly difficult to write around as the follow-ups pile on. Over the last several years, it seems as though Hollywood screenwriters have devised a new approach to the superhero strength problem, one as stupefyingly simplistic as it is mildly effective: rather than tidily reconciling a hero’s omnipotence with the looming threat of the hour, these films opt to beat their supermen into the ground early, making the central dramatic tension a case of reconstitution. Slant Magazine’s John Semley, writing about the recent prime example of “Skyfall”, calls this the “tear-the-hero-down-that-he-may-rise” narrative, an arc that neatly writes film-school musts like crisis, trauma and redemption into the prefab dramatic folds, addressing the issue of too much power by sidestepping it entirely. And so we are now treated to endless bouts of broken-warrior syndrome: “The Dark Knight Rises” takes its lead out of the picture with a broken back for half the running time, “Skyfall” nearly kills its man of action in the first five minutes, “Thor” made its Nordic god human, and so on. Taking his power when at 100% for granted, the question no longer becomes “will our hero prevail?”, but the marginally distinguishable “will our hero become a hero again?”
What’s irritating about these narratives—and I trust everyone agrees that the preeminent example remains “Spider-man 2”, which perhaps inadvertently kick-started the trend—is that, even if they manage to be dramatically compelling, they do so by effectively cheating the system. By making the crisis the hero’s temporary lack of power, they’re essentially proposing that the hero’s victory is guaranteed once their power has been restored; in other words these movies are making the task of creating an interesting conflict for an ordinary superhero even harder. This occurs through admission: a film like “The Dark Knight Rises” basically shrugs and says, look, if Batman were kicking around Gotham right now he wouldn’t let Bane get away with any of this, so in order for all of that to go down we’re just going to relegate him to a dungeon halfway across the world with a broken back. And once the Dark Knight inevitably Rises, the dynamic is restored: he handily defeats Bane and, after a few last-minute twists, stops the plot to destroy Gotham City.
Also check out: Our “Iron Man 3? review
From a conceptual standpoint, no superhero franchise has a harder time establishing balance than the “Iron Man” films. Part of the problem is that Iron Man only qualifies as a super at all when he rests comfortably inside that cherry-red suit—the man side of the equation, though charming, isn’t particularly capable on the battlefield—which, once donned, allows him to shoot rockets and lasers and break the sound barrier and generally just own. The only interesting conflicts in the first two “Iron Man” films, and the only interesting Iron Man-related conflicts in “The Avengers”, related to whether or not Iron Man was actually Iron Man. The thinking went thusly: Tony Stark is useless (and therefore boring to watch in a fight) and Iron Man is invincible (and therefore boring to watch in a fight), so the only way to make fight scenes interesting to devise increasingly complicated ways to briefly prevent Tony Stark from finding and getting into his suit. “Iron Man 2”, especially, never tired of obstructing the process for the sake of strained excitement: its most memorable setpiece, in which Mickey Rourke interrupted a bit of Nascar, was nothing more than ten minutes of watching Stark evade death until his wife and chauffeur could show up and get him dressed.
SOME “IRON MAN 3? SPOILERS FOLLOW.
“Iron Man Three”, rather than simply follow suit (and unsuit), reconceives the character, and in doing so becomes perhaps the first superhero film in years to effectively reconcile our sense of power with our concern for danger. The importance of getting this one thing right can’t be overstated: it fundamentally changes the nature of the franchise, transforming it from a low-stakes action film about a smarmy millionaire and his untouchable toy to a dynamic, well-balanced film about an innovative engineer and his problem-solving abilities. The genius conceit of “Iron Man Three”, as simple as it sounds, is that it reimagines Tony Stark as the superhero, not Iron Man; the suit becomes simply one tool of many in a creative technician’s arsenal, as useful as it is utterly disposable. And what’s remarkable is that not only is the film aware of this reconfiguration, it actively works the reconfiguration into the narrative fabric of the film: this is a film that’s actually about a man recognizing that he doesn’t need expensive future-tech to be heroic and to save the day. It’s about a man realizing his true potential through ingenuity and perseverance—not some vain attempt at “rebuilding” a hero but building a new one from the ground up.
One of the most striking things about “Iron Man Three” is its central visual motif, one very much in keeping with its major themes: breakdown and failure hang over everything, disrupting plans, wiping out public spaces, making it impossible to get from point A to point B. Director Shane Black—who’s written these kinds of film-wide conceptual girders before, to similar effect—charts a course not from breakdown to perfection but from breakdown to nothing, its arc building not so much to an improved model as to a rejection of the model altogether. This plays out a bit like Brad Bird’s “Mission Impossible 4”, which also used technical failures as a motif; but where Bird employed malfunction as a kind of running gag, played always for laughs, “Iron Man Three” takes its constant defects much more seriously, viewing them as much a manifestation of internal crisis as a lack of care or maintenance. The point of the film is that Stark has to cope without: he has to overcome his foes without relying on the invincibility of his suit, but he also, more importantly, has to understand that the suit itself has been a crutch.
And even in the most superficial sense, the motif proves enormously fun to watch: we’re so accustomed to seeing Stark dodge foes until his suit becomes available (at which point he swats threats down like flies) that finding him fend for himself with what he has at his disposal is every bit as refreshing it as it is amusing. The film still has recourse to get Stark suited up, but the important distinction is that he’s rarely fully suited (and only ever momentarily): the tech is always failing, being dismantled, coming together in bits and pieces. At one point he fights a helicopter brigade without flight or combat power, and so he downs one with a carefully shoved grand piano; later he takes on a group of gunmen with only his right leg and left hand suited, and he flies by spinning in an impromptu corkscrew. It’s the hero as makeshift-super, his powers cobbled together and unwieldy.
One of the most spectacular setpieces in the film is one of its most low-key: Stark is facing off against a seemingly invincible woman in a small-town diner, ducking punches while handcuffed, when he’s forced to hot-wire homemade explosives out of a microwave and a set of metal dog tags. We’re made aware that Tony Stark was never just an ordinary guy in a powerful suit: he’s an exceptional guy in a suit of his own design and creation, and his capacity to make something like Iron Man is not only what defines his character, it’s what makes that character worth watching.
Categories: FeaturesTags: Calum Marsh, Iron Man 3, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Shane Black, Superhero Movies