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let's hear it for America's sweethearts
The more I think about the Mandarin's storyline in IM3, the more impressed I am by it.
I'm sure smarter people than me have written meta about this already, but: what Killian did by creating the Mandarin- the designated foreign enemy, the us-versus-them bunker mentality, the idea that evil is a thing to be defeated via the possession of bigger and better guns, the use of the media to build a narrative that people are all too willing to read as an attack on their freedom and as a call to arms, taking advantage of the unwillingness to acknowledge exactly who created the environment that either allowed or forced the designated foreign enemy to act as such in the first place- what Killian did is exactly what the US of A did circa War on Terror, is exactly what the US of A does on a regular basis.
It's still not a perfect movie- IM3 fell down in the end in pretty much the same way the first Iron Man did, that the resolution of the narrative was still about who had the better arsenal. (Except the better Arsenal, in this case, was Extremis in Pepper, Pepper using Killian's weapon against him, so I don't know.) And I don't know where to start with the disability thing- everyone treated using Extremis went on to work for Killian? Really? But it brings full circle the movies that started with Obadiah Stane funding a terrorist cell in Afghanistan. Tony Stark's greatest enemy is Tony Stark, so the US of A's quote-unquote greatest enemy is the US of A.
I'm sure smarter people than me have written meta about this already, but: what Killian did by creating the Mandarin- the designated foreign enemy, the us-versus-them bunker mentality, the idea that evil is a thing to be defeated via the possession of bigger and better guns, the use of the media to build a narrative that people are all too willing to read as an attack on their freedom and as a call to arms, taking advantage of the unwillingness to acknowledge exactly who created the environment that either allowed or forced the designated foreign enemy to act as such in the first place- what Killian did is exactly what the US of A did circa War on Terror, is exactly what the US of A does on a regular basis.
It's still not a perfect movie- IM3 fell down in the end in pretty much the same way the first Iron Man did, that the resolution of the narrative was still about who had the better arsenal. (Except the better Arsenal, in this case, was Extremis in Pepper, Pepper using Killian's weapon against him, so I don't know.) And I don't know where to start with the disability thing- everyone treated using Extremis went on to work for Killian? Really? But it brings full circle the movies that started with Obadiah Stane funding a terrorist cell in Afghanistan. Tony Stark's greatest enemy is Tony Stark, so the US of A's quote-unquote greatest enemy is the US of A.