Iron Man 3 analysis

Please note that this analysis contains spoilers. Seriously, don't read it unless you've seen the film or are already spoiled about The Mandarin.

Earlier this month I posted about the Lady Mandarin story, noting that the Mandarin himself would be appearing in Iron Man 3. I couldn't quite see how that was going to work, but didn't lambaste them for doing that because I always like to criticise from a position of knowledge.

I am very glad I held fire.

So, let's talk about it. The way people were coming out of the theatre saying it wasn't orientalist at all but they couldn't talk about it gave me an idea of the shape of the twist.

The idea that I'd already had was that Ben Kingsley's character would not call himself the Mandarin, and that name would be either not used at all, or be bestowed on him by the media. That's what they did with Obadiah Stane/Iron Manger, after all. The problem with this, though, is that the Mandarin is the comics character's only name: there's no Earth name for him to go by. They'd have to make something up. I didn't think that likely, and that's hardly a twist worthy of a spoiler warning.

So, here I am watching the film carefully. Noting the lack of actual cutaways to the Mandarin: we saw footage edited together, but always presented as broadcasts. Then, when we do get the cutaways, noting the obviousness of the Mandarin's surrounds being a studio - we even see his teleprompter.

And then we meet Trevor Slattery. I was a little ahead of them - figuring out that the Mandarin was a front man hired to claim responsibility for Extremis malfunctions - but not by much more than a literate audience was supposed to be. And then the film - already quite good - took a step up to be damn good.

I'm told, though I haven't seen it, that some people identifying as comics fans have been very disappointed with what they did with the Mandarin. Did these people seriously expect a sub-Fu Manchu caricature that should have been embarrassing even in the 1960s in a film that Disney are hoping will do quite well in China?

This Mandarin is a composite of multiple figures (he has, for example, Warren Ellis's beard) but most strongly resembles Osama Bin Laden. Or rather, resembles Osama Bin Laden's public persona. Bin Laden initially denied doing 9/11. And you know what, I believed him, in the sense of him having direct personal responsibility. Al Qaeda is not the type of terrorist organisation the west is used to facing, it's not hierarchical in the same way as say the IRA, which has set itself up as an army. Al Qaeda does not have committee meetings with apologies for absence, as I imagine the IRA Army Council doing. Instead, that structure was imposed onto Al Qaeda and Bin Laden's retinue by a western security apparatus desperate to get a scalp that could be sold to the people as sufficient revenge. And after several years of manhunt for him he decided he might as well take credit. Whether or not it's true (and I'm not now saying it isn't) is frankly irrelevant. Bin Laden was blamed because we had to find someone with ultimate command responsibility and that had to be someone with something of a public persona.

Enter the Mandarin. Killian knows exactly how this works. He and AIM can stay in the shadows while he leads the US government on a fruitless search for terrorists who have a better hiding place than the Pakistan/Afghan border - that of not even existing. This is a rejection of one of Iron Man's flaws. Iron Man used this imagery of generic foreign terrorists allying with a US domestic villain without the slighest bit of irony (one of its two main flaws alongside a lacklustre third act boss fight.) Iron Man 3 rejects this as ridiculous, a scenario that plays well in the American media but has no underlying basis in reality and falls apart on even the slightest investigation. It also shows more directly the problem with drone strikes - that all the accuracy in the world is no good if you don't have the intel. And there's that bit about the Vice President - I'm sure that's some kind of commentary on something, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

So, Iron Man 3 blasts the political naïveté of Iron Man. It provides the savage criticism of the theatre that is the War on Terror that has been wanting for ten years of action films. Yet it manages all this while being fun and engaging, having a third act that wasn't just a tedious slug-out, and passing the Bechdel test. And almost as an afterthought it demonstrates that you can do a film which is "just" a superhero having an adventure, without an origin story or large existential threat (Happy and Tony go looking for trouble, they find it.) That this is a genre in which you can tell stories about other things (something The Dark Knight Rises, for example, tried and failed at). Well done that Shane Black and Drew Pearce.

Amazing Adventures #11-#16, Incredible Hulk #161: A Beast is Born

Amazing Adventures was an anthology series in the 1960s, which would later be renamed Amazing Adult Fantasy, and then Amazing Fantasy for its final issue #15, which introduced a small character called Spider-Man. A revival of Amazing Adventures started in 1970, this time starting as a split title with the Inhumans and Black Widow as co-headliners.

Amazing Adventures #11 (April 1972) began a brief run as a Beast solo title. Hank has left the X-Men and got a job at the Brand Corporation, where he will be researching mutant genetics (although apparently without having outed himself as a mutant?). Xavier let him go, unlike the other mutants, who he has been keeping in lockdown since the events of #66 (another blow for The Hidden Years).

He successfully isolates what will later be called the "Mutant Growth Hormone", which he believes should give normals powers for a couple of hours, perhaps. His colleague Carl Maddicks develops an instant dislike for him. There's some spying shenanigans, and Beast ingests the MGH, and then well, goes blue and stuff. Well, grey at first. And then black (shown as blue). And angry. Not Jekyll and Hyde so much as just Hyde. His polysyllables fade off a bit.

In #12 (May 1972) he manages to disguise himself well enough to get back to work, instantly becoming a genius-level make-up artist after consulting a couple of books in the library. The one weakness is his inability to kiss someone. Just as well, really, as his newly-introduced love interest, Linda Donaldson, is really some kind of spy who killed Maddicks in the last issue. In #12 he gets into a misunderstanding with Iron Man, and in #13 gets set up by Mastermind (who has reformed the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants with Unus and Blob - using that name in dialogue for the first time). #14 has him fight Quasimodo, the Living Computer.

Following this Beast recovers at Patsy Baxter (neé Walker)'s place, where she discovers his secret identity as Hank McCoy. We find out here that this succession of enemies - including Mastermind's Brotherhood, has been arranged by the Secret Empire, who are Linda's paymasters. Warren pops up for an assist against Griffin, and then him and Hank talk. This is the first time any of the X-Men have seen the new Beast. Hank is left alone, and then goes to the library where he runs into Vera... (who, like Zelda, hasn't been seen since X-Men #47).

The whole Secret Empire plot is forgotten, as Vera and Hank go north, run into the Marvel bullpen in Rutland County (in a strange crossover with Justice League of America), and Beast fights and defeats the Juggernaut in #16 (January 1973). It feels more like a date than the first part of the story concluded in Incredible Hulk #161 (March 1973), where she brings Hank to her lover, Calvin Rankin/Mimic, who is dying and may take the world with him. She apparently still doesn't know Hank is an X-Man, despite knowing all about Calvin. They save the world, but not Calvin... (which of course is temporary, he pops up in Legacy in 2012, although I don't know quite how temporary).

Although the physical transformation he undergoes here is very important to his character in the future, it's a bit of a letdown to finally read this. It's not really great material for Beast, as he gets victimised and led from set piece to set piece. And it isn't caused by some kind of heroic sacrifice, the spirit of curiosity, or even (as in the 2011 film X-Men: First Class) an attempt to cure himself. It's just idiotic, as he himself recognises.