Maybe it's the holiday season, but I decided to give Iron Man 3 a rewatch for the first time in probably five or six years, and in hindsight its all the stranger as an entry in the MCU. Although it officially kicked off "Phase 2" after The Avengers, this and Thor 2: The Dark World are the last two movies before the Russos make Winter Soldier and completely transform every bit of how the MCU is produced.
It's not that its the last movie where the director doesn't feel totally subsumed by the MCU project. You can definitely still feel the hand of directors on movies like Black Panther, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Thor: Ragnarok. It's not that its the last movie to plausibly take place in something resembling "our reality", since we do get the Ant Man movies. It's not the last movie to make good use of Tony Stark, that's probably still Age of Ultron. And its not that its the last MCU movie with surprise twists that actually worked (the Vulture reveal in Homecoming is maybe one of the best scenes in the entire run of movies)
But...it is all of those things, and the films since then have only really managed to be some (or none). And in particular I think the one-two combo of Shane Black being an experienced action director already combined with this being one of the last pre-Russo movies means this really does feel like the last movie to almost fully belong to its director. Because after this the sheer amount of CGI every movie's premise requires combined with the maturation of the MCU "production pipeline" means that almost every director is relying heavily on second unit work to handle "the action" and more and more of each movie has to be laid out in advance to accommodate the pre-viz work. This, I think, is the main thing that leads some people to call the MCU "samey feeling", even as it releases movies like Ragnarok and Black Panther back to back.
I've enjoyed the MCU over the years. But I was getting tired of that style by about the time Infinity War rolled around, and I'm honestly not particularly interested in what they have coming after Endgame. And rewatching this a part of me can't help but wish that maybe Marvel and Disney hadn't quite figured out how to "optimize" the process so much, had continued to let people come in and do weird stuff and see if it worked, with maybe only one or two mandatory scenes in which a bunch of toys show up on screen.
Also the violence in this movie, in which people just shoot other people with guns, is way more menacing than Thanos' stupid double ended sword.
It's not that its the last movie where the director doesn't feel totally subsumed by the MCU project. You can definitely still feel the hand of directors on movies like Black Panther, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Thor: Ragnarok. It's not that its the last movie to plausibly take place in something resembling "our reality", since we do get the Ant Man movies. It's not the last movie to make good use of Tony Stark, that's probably still Age of Ultron. And its not that its the last MCU movie with surprise twists that actually worked (the Vulture reveal in Homecoming is maybe one of the best scenes in the entire run of movies)
But...it is all of those things, and the films since then have only really managed to be some (or none). And in particular I think the one-two combo of Shane Black being an experienced action director already combined with this being one of the last pre-Russo movies means this really does feel like the last movie to almost fully belong to its director. Because after this the sheer amount of CGI every movie's premise requires combined with the maturation of the MCU "production pipeline" means that almost every director is relying heavily on second unit work to handle "the action" and more and more of each movie has to be laid out in advance to accommodate the pre-viz work. This, I think, is the main thing that leads some people to call the MCU "samey feeling", even as it releases movies like Ragnarok and Black Panther back to back.
I've enjoyed the MCU over the years. But I was getting tired of that style by about the time Infinity War rolled around, and I'm honestly not particularly interested in what they have coming after Endgame. And rewatching this a part of me can't help but wish that maybe Marvel and Disney hadn't quite figured out how to "optimize" the process so much, had continued to let people come in and do weird stuff and see if it worked, with maybe only one or two mandatory scenes in which a bunch of toys show up on screen.
Also the violence in this movie, in which people just shoot other people with guns, is way more menacing than Thanos' stupid double ended sword.
