"Finally saw Iron Man 3, and Stark was a moron..." Topic

… but I loved the film. Exciting, suspenseful, surprising and very funny. A great Iron Man movie and an overall fun flick.

So, how was Stark a moron?

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Simple— the Extremis soldiers (and Mandarin) are all nothing more than ordinary humans with an excessive healing factor, who can also generate intense heat. But they're still humans— unarmored, requiring oxygen, food, etc.. So the solutions for killing them are myriad:

1.) Decapitation. They aren't gonna re-grow a head, or a body. Not at least before you boot the brain case into orbit… which brings up option…

2.) Fling 'em skyward. Catch up, catch 'em, flip 'em skyward again. Repeat till you exceed 30,000 ft. or so. Let 'em suck vacuum. Bet they can't regenerate from that. Or, if that would take too long, the other option…

3.) Drown 'em. Bottom of the sea drown 'em. Sure they can boil the water, but they can't breathe it. And I doubt they can take the pressure change that the suit can take, either. Grab 'em, dive in, and keep diving. Two minutes later, you've got an Extremis soldier desperate for air and unable to do anything to get it. Within four, they're unconscious. Within six, they're dead. Attach weights and let the sea crush what's left.

Heck, when Tony encases Mandarin in the armor, he should have either rocketed it straight up or straight down into the ocean. Either way, Mandarin is gone. Even if he burns through the armor, what's he gonna do? Survive a +10,000 ft. fall? At that distance, the brain case would be PULPED and scattered. If below the ocean, the pressure will crush his ribcage in (and probably his skull, too). Even if he rises to the surface, I doubt the Extremis factor can handle nitrogen build up. He's a goner, either way.

Come on, Tony— a smart guy would have figured all that out (I bet the kid could…)

Yup. Plot holes you could drive a tank through, but I still enjoyed it immensely.

Doug

Still, Iron Man 3 had a LOT fewer plot holes than Star Trek: Into Darkness.

You can either have Super Powers™ or you can think.
One or the other. Your choice.
Me, I would take the Super Powers™. You get more chicks with Super Powers™ than by thinking. You could look it up, as Yogi would say.

More chicks with super powers? I couldn't handle all the chocks that thinking brought me!

Unfortunately, the Occam's Razor of Hollywood usually applies: The smartest or most commonsense solutions are most often the least fun and entertaining ones.

Plot holes serve a great purpose. They make the protagonist heroes appear more mortal than they are by doing things the hard way and at more peril to themselves than necessary 'in real life.' It makes for a more thrilling experience at the movies.

Mandarin = Syndrome from Incredibles …

You can either have Super Powers™ or you can think.
One or the other. Your choice.

I disagree. Genre fiction carries with it a set of assumptions that may or may not be logical "in reality," but that doesn't matter. Once you've presented the assumptions as being "fact" for your story, you can still have a story that is logically consistent with these facts. In my example, a nicely "logical" solution to the problem that fits the "facts" presented in the film would have been to indeed have Tony order the armor to encase Mandarin, and then said, "Ever been to space, Albrecht? It's cold— even you can't warm it up. Trust me." And then sent suit and contents into the dark (this would have also tied in nicely with his wormhole PTSD). Suit zooms upwards till we see the arc of the earth… and then comes apart, leaving the red hot Mandarin gasping in utter silence. His eyes widen in fear as he gets white-hot— he's got no way to convect off his heat; he can't even "breathe fire"— Cut to closeup of eyes giving off searing light, then cut to Tony looking up from the ground as a brilliant flash adds a temporary star to the sky. "I always thought he was a bright guy," says Tony.

Fits the abilities of everyone and is consistent with the story (and, sorry, but the one thing I didn't like about the movie was the SuperPepper ending.)

I haven't seen IM3, but I agree with DesertScrb. Not being specific about the new Star Trek movie because of spoilers, but when I saw the climax of the film, all I could think was "why on Earth did they design it like that???". It really reminded me of the scene in Galaxy Quest with the corridor of chompers;

[Gwen and Jason encounter the chompers]
Gwen DeMarco: What is this thing? I mean, it serves no useful purpose for there to be a bunch of chompy, crushy things in the middle of a hallway. No, I mean we shouldn't have to do this, it makes no logical sense, why is it here?
Jason Nesmith: 'Cause it's on the television show.
Gwen DeMarco: Well forget it! I'm not doing it! This episode was badly written!

Cheers,
JohnG

I loved how quickly the locked up portions of his suit.flew from TM to Miami is 20 seconds but the first part of the suit took at least several hours to make the trip. Huh?!?

BTW we found the villain to be annoying and pathetic. Give us the real Mandarin! Who cares about Exploding Lava Boy. Sigh. Where is Modoc when we need him. I cringe to think what they will do to Thanos in the next Avengers movie.

A hero with debilitating angst which clouds his mind during the crisis is the norm for films these days & while that plot line is not new, I'm annoyed when it's misapplied. Iconic literary heroes Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, John Carter, Conan & James Bond never had a second of angst but, eventually, a movie version must have each of them question if his "Dark Side" is harmful to his friends. This self-doubt distracts him from the straight-forward task of defeating the foe in the most logical manner.

I saw IM3 last night. Parzival summed up my thoughts exactly.

Just flipping them off the oil platform would have been the easiest solution. If they swim, they're sitting ducks for repulsor head-shots, at your convenience.

While methodical is not cinematic, but they should have done it a few times to kind of say, "yeah, we though of that".

Just flipping them off the oil platform would have been the easiest solution. If they swim, they're sitting ducks for repulsor head-shots, at your convenience.

Precisely. They can't fly, and they can't jump, run or swim any faster than a normal human. Healing and heat is all they've got. Toss 'em in the biggest heat sink in the world— the ocean— and what are they gonna do— create a sauna?

I loved how quickly the locked up portions of his suit.flew from TM to Miami is 20 seconds but the first part of the suit took at least several hours to make the trip. Huh?!?

CPBelt, I noticed that, too, but I think it was shown that way for dramatifc effect.

Here's what I think happened, chronologically:
1. Tony came to and "called" the suit.
2. The first glove and boot got out and took off for Miami.
3. The rest of the suit banged against the door of the shed, and after a minute or two the kid noticed and let the rest of the suit pieces out.
4. Chatttanooga to Miami is a distance of about 780 miles (I don't recall the distance they cited in the movie) but I don't remember whether anyone in the movie ever stated how fast the individual pieces of the suit could fly. I've seen Internet chatter that speculates hypersonic flight capability for the suit pieces. Let's assume for the sake of argument that's right, so faster than 760 mph, or a little over an hour of flight time, with the first glove and boot having a few minutes' head start.
5. Tony killed an hour or so with the two goons until the first glove and boot arrived.
6. A few minutes later the rest of the suit pieces arrived.

The other option is that all of the pieces of the suit "escaped" at the same time, and the first glove and boot just caught a slightly more favorable tail wind.

So it really wasn't that some pieces of the suit could fly much faster than others, it was just that the director chose to edit the film so that the arrival of the first glove and boot would be a complete surprise to the audience.

The Extremis effect also gave the bad guys super strength and the ability to jump/leap further than normal… or so it seemed to me.

But the main thing to me was that it was a superhero film and what good is a film of that genre if the character doesn't have to go through real hardship and prove how heroic he is?

I turn a blind eye to a lot of the logic behind things that are done.

Another thing to realise is that Tony Stark is really REALLY clever… that means his common sense is likely to be trapped amongst all the clever thoughts in his head. Also, he isn't a soldier, he hasn't had soldier training and probably doesn't think as quickly on his feet as a soldier would… so he'd probably point and shoot and hope for the best.

Here is the reasons behind the plot holes… So say I have a super suit of power armor. I fight some mild genetic freaks. I destroy them in about 8 minutes. No movie. The plot holes exist so the other character can fall through them, and thus, be entertaining. If you start picking apart genre fiction, you will quickly find that almost none of it makes a lick of sense on any kind of credible logical level. It is best just to learn how to shut your brain down for a couple hours and look at the pretty lights. Or at least that is what I do. If you want to think, that is why movies like Inception and Memento get made… Well, that and to stoke the filmakers ego.

That being said, I enjoyed Iron Man 3… Although I am pretty sure at this point I actually hate Tony Stark. And the bit with Pepper, at the end? What the hell was that?
And why do the IM3 toy lines keep presenting Mandarin as if he were an actual super villain? Check out the Lego " attack on Stark Mansion" set… So maybe I haven't ENTIRELY learned to shut my brain off… But I can at least do it during the film.