Wow! Was It Really That Bad?

Rating: 7/10 (17 June 2013)

My goodness. I've just read a series of reviews of this film. I had no idea it was so bad. I guess I'll have to un-enjoy it. Is that a word? I'm just an old guy who likes to go to movies. While I read comic books as a child, I never really let them dictate my very existence. My pain has been watching the Minnesota Vikings for 50 years and having them never win a Super Bowl. The angst over this movie is nearly startling. To make the fact that the studio took liberties with the characters may be disappointing, but the sun will come up tomorrow. I taught literature for over 40 years and I never saw a movie that aligned well with a book. Granted, some movies were actually improvements. Most of the time they were not. Since I didn't know Manderin, I didn't go in thinking he was Iron Man's sworn enemy. The rules were changed and the villains altered. I thought it was a very exciting movie. It had all the cliffhanging events required of an adventure. Special effects allow us a range of spectacle we could not have imagined. Downey and his smug, aloof being are quite delightful. And I felt for the most part that things went as they should. I have seen the other two movies and thought they were also fun. Unlike the fanboys, I don't have the energy to figure out the rule being followed by the players. I need to know how to defeat this guy who has evolved to a horrible force. That is, if you hit him with an i-beam 600 times, which one kills him, or do they kill him? We aren't told. Or are we? Part of any plot or quest is that the hero must face his own shortcomings and rise to the task and (now get this) with knowledge of what it takes, defeat evil. Much like the mercury man in Terminator 3, I was not sure exactly what needed doing; do we melt him, crush him, dismember him, throw him in a pit of molten metal. I don't know. Kind of left me a little cold.