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Finally someone who may be able to help me, because I can't figure this part out. I fail to see the motivation for why Mandarin was doing what he was doing.

To use the other movies as a means of illustration, the antagonist the original Iron Man was Tony's partner at Stark Industries. He was selling weapons to terrorists without Tony's knowledge, and was trying to leverage the company away from Tony. He was motivated by power and greed.

In the second Iron Man movie, Whiplash's father helped Tony's father develop the core reactor that was the basis for the power supply in Tony's suit. He felt that Tony stole his legacy, and was motived by revenge.

In the 3rd movie, the only connection I see is because Tony dissed this guy at a New Year's Eve party 15 years ago, he has decided to go on a global campaign of terror with his genetically enhanced powers? That's seems to be... a bit of a stretch. I know that some people hold grudges longer than others, but Captain Ahab didn't have this type of monomaniacal level of obsession.

 

I don't think that Tony Stark and/or Iron Man was ever in his plans. He was going for world domination. I believe he used a quote something along the lines of "I control the world's number one terrorist, and next I will control the number one government.". He had the Vice President in his pocket as he planned to restore his little girls leg and ability to walk so all he needed to do was kill the President.

It was Tony that threw himself into the mix when Happy got hurt in the bombing.

 

Sounds like the League of Shadows in the Nolan Batman movies. "Gotham must be destroyed." Um, why is that again? "Gotham is a plague upon the earth. Or something." Okay, so you want to kill everybody in Gotham because they are part of the plague? Or something? "No, we want to give them back their city while destroying parts of it, either by poisoning the water and crashing a train or just blowing it up." But that's kind of moreso killing everybody, not giving them back their city so much. "Well, it's all part of the plan, trust me." What plan? Who came up with the plan? "Ra's al Ghul." Who is he and why does he want to destroy/give back the city? "He IS the League of Shadows!" Well who is this Bane dude then? "He's also the League of Shadows, although in part he is actually just a lovesick friendzone guy friend of Ra's al Ghul's daughter who is willing to murder millions of people to prove his love. Also Gotham is a plague upon the earth!" Wait, who is this daughter chick? "She climbed out of that pit for some reason, even though as a child she had much lesser vertical jump capabilities than an adult." What does that have to do with Gotham? "Revenge! For Ra's al Ghul!" For what? "Because Gotham must be destroyed!" Why again?

Okay okay, just give me back the Joker ... he doesn't even have a plan but at least I kind of know where he's coming from.

 

I'm not asking for a deep answer, but I expect a plot that is rational enough to reasonably answer a 5-years old's question which can be summed up as: "Why is this guy so pissed off?"

And the end game of that is what, exactly? There was no mention of world dominance at any point. Say their plans aren't foiled. The Vice President becomes the president. You're buddies with the new president, so he can probably keep the military off your ass. But you've already proved that as this super terrorist group, that you can evade and outwit the Secret Service, assassinate a sitting president, and be completely undetectable and untouchable by the US government even before this took place. How has your position improved? How a super terrorist group goes from being best buddies with a president - having no actual authority in government mind you and the president does come up for election every few years - leads to world domination? The plot just doesn't work.

I don't know - maybe I just suffered from unrealistically high expectations. I was anticipating this one to be the best of the three. And it wasn't. No plot, Mandarin isn't Mandarin, and the real Mandarin isn't Mandarin either, and Tony doesn't need to be in his suit... It just wasn't working for me.

 

Yes, you are over thinking this.

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Yes, you are under thinking this.

 

World domination would allow me to put an end to such irritations as “reality” TV, Justin Bieber, and SUV’s that are the size of a small house. At the same time, I could make such improvements as changing the name of American football to something actually related to the sport, and making days 25 hours long so I could get an extra hour of sleep.

Yep - world dominatioin would be awesome.

 

Super-villains can be viewed in a much more interesting way if they are viewed less as desires to establish dominion than they are desirous of overthrowing dominion.

Iron-Man runs the world in the IM movies...only less so in the Avengers (on the other hand, he's apparently the leader of the Avengers). Superman and Batman, at least according to the movies, are the most powerful beings in the DC universe.

 

I'd recommend setting your expectations for anything that is even remotely related to comic books a bit lower, Aldeth. Just because of the reiterating nature of any comic that continues over a longer period of time, the story will always be kinda dumb. Hence pretty much anything based on it will have a pretty dumb story. For me, it's only to be expected.

 

Oh, I totally get that. But I don't think my expectations were without precedent - I need look no further the two previous iterations of this movie. Both of the previous movies had a better plot, and both of the previous movies had a better villain. Or look at the other recent Marvel installments - The Avengers had a better plot and a decent, although by no means spectacular villain. Same thing with Captain American and somewhat less so with Thor (although better than this one). So it's not like I execpted something greater than what I had been receiving up to this point.

And it's not like I don't like superhero movies in general. I loved the original Iron Man movie. Most people were critical of the Iron Man 2, but as I said, I thought it was a pretty decent. I also really liked the Avengers. So I'm all about the willful suspension of disbelief that must be taken with any of these films - but that doesn't let you off the hook from telling a logically self-contained story.

 

I think that's actually Captain America, at least from a tactical standpoint. Remember how he told everyone what to do before the big final battle? Joss Whedon seems to say the same here.

I think RDJ got top billing and a sort of feature role because his Iron Man solo movies perform the best. (And what does CA really have to offer next to Thor/Hulk if he can't tell them what to do? )

 

F&F6

Well, I caught F&F6 over the weekend. IMO, if you liked any of the previous installments of this movie, there's no way you won't like this one. Yes, there a plot holes that you can drive a truck through, but that's not why you go to see this series of movies. It's nothing short of fantastic. This one gets an A from me.

 

Sorry, I won't be going anywhere near Fast & The Furious 6 ( the first one was terrible enough for me) but I did enjoy Star Trek: Into Darkness which I saw last week on a very rare outing to the movies with my wife.

 

Star Trek was awesome. Most ingenious "reboot" ever. Makes all other reboots just look lazy ("we don't like that old Batman movie so lets just make a new with a new story and pretend the other ones never happened. No one will notice.")

 

I didn't care for reboot #1 - just old characters behaving in strange new ways IMO. Is this one any different?

 

I liked the first Star Trek reboot a few years ago quite a bit. I particularly enjoyed the opening -- far more than the opening of Into Darkness. After that, they were about on par for me -- great effects, decent storyline, and a villain who could at some points garner our sympathies.

As for other Blockbusters, Iron Man 3 was OK, but it struck me as colossally stupid for him

Spoiler

to blow up his armours after having it demonstrated so clearly that some villains are so blasted tough that they would go through several sets. Seriously, if Stark considered the possibility of another Skrull (or whatever they called themselves in The Avengers -- Chitauri, like in the Ultimates?) invasion, he would be really ill advised to blow up all of that hardware. I get that he did it for the love of Pepper, but seriously, she's smart, she could understand the dangers the world might face.

I'm pumped about Man of Steel. It looks like it could be lots of fun.

That magic movie, Now You See Me, looks like it could be fun.

No way in heck am I going near F&F6. I hated the first one and never bothered with the rest.

Did ANYONE bother with The Hangover III?

Not even gonna bother with This is the End or The Internship. The same goes for The Purge, though that one might be a PVR rental on a dull weekend. I'd sooner poke my own eyeballs out than watch Will Smith's pretentious crap-o-rama After Earth.

Ang that brings me to Gatsby. Never was a fan of the novel, certainly not a fan of Leonardo. Pretty well the only reason for me to see it is that

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I know Leonardo gets his mangy ass killed.

In my opinion, no one will ever top Redford's 1974 version.

Olympus has Fallen looks like it could be fun. My wife wants to see it because apparently old Gerard can crack a walnut with his tush. i just want to see the White House get trashed. Canadians are obsessed with that idea.

All for now . . .