A lot of people weren't happy with the Mandarin twist in this movie, but for me Sir Ben Kingsley steals every scene he's in, both as the Mandarin and as Trevor. As for which Iron Man movie is my favourite, it's probably still the first one, then Iron Man 3 and Iron Man 2.
You're doing fantastic with these reactions. Get ready because things really start connecting from here out in a way that will pay off long term. You're seriously going to be blown away when you see where this all goes.
I remember people being really upset with the Mandarin in this film simply because it's revealed that he's not actually the Mandarin. He's a big Iron Man villain extending to other Marvel characters so it would be like if The Joker in a Batman film turned out to not actually be the Joker. Marvel did kind of redeem themselves with the short: All Hail the King (2013) released after this film giving into the backstory of the actor playing The Mandarin, confirming that The Actual Mandarin does exist within the MCU giving fans hope that we'll see him somewhere down the line. Overall I really enjoy Iron Man 3 and how it explored the PSTD of Tony Stark after the events of The Avengers. The film gets alot of hate, mostly from the Mandarin drama but looking back it's still a really solid film. Next is Thor: The Dark World.... Well after that we have Captain America: The Winter Soldier followed by Guardians of the Galaxy so that's super exciting two of my favourite MCU movies back to back.
The original Mandarin from the comics was kind of a racially insensitive stereotype of an evil Chinese "Fu Manchu"-like villain. And the name "Mandarin" never really made any sense. It's like calling a mastermind villain "The Bureaucrat" or "The Assistant" or "The Lesser Functionary". The Mandarin in this movie is an improvement over the comics, IMO.
But there are also people like myself -- the whole bickering about "MCU is wrong because the comics did something differently" is just an annoyance. From my perspective, "Marvel" is some of the older movies that I happen to know, such as the Blade movies -- and the MCU. So, if anything, it's the comics that are "wrong" :-)
The dog tags don't control if they are going to explode or not. They're just standard military tags to help for prelim ID on fallen service members. But metal in a microwave is bad...especially when a room has an open gas line pumping it into the air.
Another fun reaction. You have a long way to go with many ups and downs in Marvel .Im going to make a recommendation. From rhe DC universe. Its a separate hero universe. I think you should learn some about Batman. For me Michael Keaton is Batman but that series is a much different tone then Christian Bale Batman. I would recommend for you his Batman series. It goes more into his origin, the story is well done and In my opinion the best version of the joker. I dont want to SUPER overwhelm you but i think you could weave it into your marvel journey. Im looking forward to what you do next. 😊
This film was not among my favorites when I first saw it (longtime Marvel fan, was really hoping for The Mandarin) but now after a few viewings, I really love what they did with it and I understand why. The old stories from the 60's painted The Mandarin as a very "yellow menace" guy who was just evil because he was "oriental". So many racist stereotypes. The MCU did right.
The trouble with Michael Crichton is that with each book, he got further and further from scientific plausibility. Remember that, with the earliest Apollo missions, that astronauts were needlessly put into isolation after they got back to earth. So, at least, there was a precedent for this story. The problem is that it's dumb to look for diseases that can infect humans in any location where humans do not exist. Viruses and bacteria need to evolve to be able to exploit the body of a living thing. Crichton was decent at creating suspense but horrible at doing so in a believable way. He's not a good writer. Andromeda Strain was the best of them. But he could paint a cinematic pucture.
