Beau and I saw IM3 yesterday on a lark. I didn't love it, but I found the movie entertaining and I liked it more than IM1 (I did not see IM2 because I heard it was terrible). I am a bit disappointed in the film because the trailer seemed like a more interesting, engaging movie than what I saw. Around 20 minutes before the end of the movie, my mind wandered - which is usually an indication that a movie isn't working for me. No mind wandering with "Avengers", for example. My mind wandered because I was thinking about a scene that had no purpose in the movie, the scene where IM rescues the 11 people. The scene made more ridiculous because dozens more were ON THE PLANE and the plane blew up. I didn't mind that some plot twists were easy to predict, the Mandarin was an "actor"/not the mastermind, but I thought the involvement of the Vice President was ridiculous.

Beau was deeply offended that the suits were operable without a person inside. It's like this violated a principle with him. I am mostly amused by his reaction. I haven't read the IM comics and only have a passing knowledge of the character's history, but I think it is an interesting notion for the suit to be operated by Stark as well as have some IM robots. My favorite part in the movie was two: 1) when he was looking at a 3-D model of the Chinese theater crime scene. I just loved the possibilities of this and how his mind worked to solve a mystery/problem, figure out what was going on. I wished there was a bit more of this. Which connects to my 2nd favorite thing: When he went to a hardware store to build crude weapons. However, if Tony Stark really was at Home Depot, I think he probably could have come up with harder core things with more lethality, but maybe he was under a time crunch.

The big thing that I'm excited about as a result of seeing IM3, was Thor in November. That looks like it might be a pretty good movie. I am more excited about Star Trek. The trailer was better than the previous trailers I saw - the previous trailers have made me worried this movie was going to be terrible.

Thor in November.

Man, seeing the trailer on a big screen REALLY made Loki's outfit look like a hoodie.

Personally, I loved the idea that the suits could be remote-controlled. I mean, why not? If the guys on Top Gear can remote-control a full-size car, Stark can remote-control an IM suit through a virtual interface. Plus, all the memory Jarvis had been using to control the Malibu house and all those robots was now available; why not have him* control a small fleet of suits? It's cool.

*Yes, to me Jarvis is a him, not an it.

Yeah, Beau's response is that lessening IM's role in the suits means that anyone theoretically could control the suits. Why is IM necessary? He felt that Stark's persona as being a brilliant inventor should have been more on display than just the function of the suits.

Warren Ellis was in the credits--I'm pretty sure I saw his name there, and I hadn't been prepped by discussion here.

My assumption was that Maya's motive was to kidnap Pepper and use her as leverage to persuade Tony to do what she wanted. Did I misread the explanation to Killian entirely?

I quite enjoyed it, but I do feel they could have shortened the final fight scene and not skimmed over what he narrated afterwards instead. In terms of things happening, and things of import, I felt the it was imbalanced.

LeN--I did drift away during Avengers too, thinking, wow, they're still fighting, and I'm not learning anything new about anyone here.

I just watched Contraband and accept that Mark Wahlberg is a much better actor than I was giving him credit for--the inane guy on talk shows is well-hidden when he dons the garb of working class or lower roughneck.

I give the movie a thumbs up for the Jackson Pollock--I can't not. But, Jesus, talk about erasing all the tension with zero consequence. Yikes. It could have been a kinda dark movie, but it punks out something awful.

I saw IM3 today with amyth and another friend. I loved it on just about every level. I was glad to go into it unspoiled.

I want to see IM3 again just so that I can watch it knowing what movie I'm seeing, if that makes sense. It was quite different from what I was expecting (and I'm not sure what that was) and that can leave me with a bad taste the first time around.

I'm too tired to make any points, but towards the end, things seemed to get . . . derivative? Homages? Rip-offs? There was the Terminator sequence (you know, the scene after Reece climbs out of the dumpster and he and Sarah cling to each other, thinking it's over); it felt a lot like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in some instances, which made me feel a bit awkward about being excited that Shane Black being at the helm, or maybe that was the SB/RDJ combo working against itself. There were a couple of other instances that if felt too much like it was tipping it's hat to other movies instead of trying to be itself, but now I can't recall what.

But I enjoyed it, I just need to watch it again with the correct expectation goggles on.

Once I finally believed that Ben Kingsley really wasn't the villain, I thought it was hilarious, and it all made sense (the bad accent). Maybe if I hadn't read so many stories involving him I wouldn't have had such a hard time believing the fake-out and it would have played better. As it was, watching his explanations seemed like a bunch of hasty lies, so finally accepting it was a bit lame. BK does the best comedy, though.

Too much white font! Must not read!

I shall see IM3 tomorrow; tonight I saw 42, which although not complicated, was indeed a feel-good movie. Strange to recognize the horribly racist Phillies manager as Alan Tudyk, though. Eww.

My old gym was in IM3! One of the reaction shots where everyone was watching TV, they panned past people on ellipticals and running machines on a mezzanine level, and that was the West LA branch of SportsClub LA.