Iron Man 3Follow

Just a simple bump and update for Guardians of the Galaxy movie: Looks like Vin Diesel will be voicing Groot. I'm not a particular fan of his, but the better part of me believes even he can't mess up voicing a character who only says three words at most. I ... guess he's a good enough actor to play a tree.

I think they said in an interview that a big part of the Captain America movie is explaining why the Avengers and SHIELD weren't helping. No other details of what that could be. My go-to guess is that the individual Avengers were all on missions of equal import (less significant POIs, but more significant potential damage), and that SHIELD was in the middle of fending off an aggressive takeover by the world security council.

Sorry, I meant the upcoming CA movie - Winter Soldier, which will have a primary cast consisting of both Captain America and Black Widow. And because of the topic area concerned in it, the movie will probably have a plot line with heavy international politics.

SpoilerBucky Barnes, Rogers' best friend from the first movie, survives his fall from the train, or something, and is "recruited" into a Soviet supersoldier program, where his identity is surpressed and he becomes the Winter Soldier, or something. In the comics, Black Widow was originally a Soviet spy, so I don't know what they're doing with her plotline, but if they're making her a major player you can be sure Russian relations will be a part of the film.

You also have Thor 2, which will probably be happening simultaneously with both IM3 and CA2 (which I believe are confirmed to be the same approximate time period in the universe). And considering the topic area (SpoilerThor fights the Dark Elves, I wouldn't be surprised if SHIELD was focused on preventing a Spoilersecond invasion.

And it seems like the bulk of SHIELD's forces have always been spread thin, dealing with the smaller isolated threats that pop up (which is the basic premise of the new Agents of SHIELD) series, plus a lot of covert work. They're covert ops, primarily, and not really equipped to fight bigger battles (which is why they assembled the Avengers in the first place).

I do remember them promising that the exclusion of SHIELD from the IM3 plot was deliberate and directly built into the plot of CA2. Considering how incredibly common hostile takeovers of alphabet soup organizations are in the Marvel Universe, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the story here.

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I just had to Google to make sure that Dum-E made it out okay. Because I wouldn't have been able to handle that.

Edited, Oct 6th 2013 7:35pm by idiggory

Having finally watched it, I'm willing to agree the extent to which they were missing was jarring.

But as for not saving the president, I'm fine with that. They had no notice of the threat on AFO, because it was reported to the VP who buried it. And then Tony and Rhodey go to save Pepper, who happened to be where they also hauled the President. But no one knew that beforehand.

The only plot explanation I can even come up with is that the entire organization goes dark before the events of the movie even begin, which isn't mentioned in the film because it would be a clear spoiler for an upcoming film. And Extremis is featured in the new Agents of Shield series (with the canon being that the first two episodes being within one week of each other), so we know that stuff takes place after IM3.

Side note: I really don't see Jarvis becoming Ultron. With the change to Extremis to not create cyborgs, and for its utility to be replaced with Jarvis instead, I just don't see them stripping that particular power from Tony in the future. In ways, it's a LOT nicer, because Jarvis has to be limited in a way Extremis Tony wouldn't. And with the decision, it seems, to cut the sheer number of suits down, I don't think the army of Iron Mans will be making another appearance.

Thinking about it, I realize there's actually no good reason for SHIELD to be involved with this, sans the fact that we expect them to be since they're the "special" paramilitary force for the universe.

But SHIELD isn't the DoD, and they don't handle terrorist incidents unless they're in their jurisdiction (which is essentially to handle all the "weird" stuff that other military forces aren't equipped to deal with).

Until Extremis was revealed, the Mandarin was just a terrorist, and the military and government were treating him as such. That was the point of the front - get the people hating the terrorist, and then wipe out the terrorist with Extremis technology to push their think tank to the top of the industry.

TONY learns about Extremis relatively early, but he's notorious for not playing nice with Fury. It would be extremely out of character for him to send a memo to SHIELD requesting assistance unless he REALLY needed it, particularly when he's in the middle of an emotional crisis.

We know they were watching the incidents, since Tony uses some of their data to construct his own investigation. But the point of the Mandarin front was to hide Extremis' existence. The lack of bomb casings was definitely mysterious, and is probably why they were watching it, but without any evidence to suggest it would be in their jurisdiction, there's no way that the DoD would punt the case over to an quasi-international, covert organization instead of handling it firmly in-house.

Shield isn't homeland security. It's just not what they do.

What about any of these films has made you think that SHIELD's typical operating procedure is "throw some superheroes at it"?

Plus, the president already had one super protecting him. Considering the total number of superhero assets at Shield's disposal, I'm thinking they probably decided the Iron Patriot was sufficient.

Also, technically speaking, Cap is retired. He came out of retirement in the face of global annihilation, but at no point in the established plot has he become an active member of SHIELD. He's not Fury's to order around. It's possible that has changed at this point in the plot, pending the next movies, but we don't know that. So we should really be going off the previous movie's precedent that Cap serves at will.

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Again, though, the conflicts between SHIELD and other military/political units has always been a big part of their story lines. And considering they're a shadow operation, it's not like a lot of people are clamoring to put everything under their dominion. Particularly when it's the president's safety (which is its own military unit to begin with).

SHIELD has direct jurisdiction over a very particular kind of threat. Everything else, they offer aid and assistance on request. Which they don't get too frequently.

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We live in a world where 20 people can shut down the government and you're surprised some military helicopters could take out a Californian mansion? I bet the people manning the radar were cheering them on.

Edited, Oct 7th 2013 10:00am by idiggory

First film, the military handles the Hulk because he's technically related to an army research project. SHIELD only provides intel. It's one-shot has Tony going to talk to the General, because the political side of things are leaning on Fury to replace the Hulk with the Abomination in the Avengers, and Fury needs a high-power military force to counter them by refusing.

Iron Man, SHIELD tries to contain Tony. But they clearly aren't trying that hard at first. Though once the scope of his capabilities is understood, and they realize he could be either a risk or an asset, they step up their game. Pepper directly involves them in the Iron Monger incident, so we don't really know whether or not they'd have taken over that from the start otherwise.

Iron Man 2, SHIELD steps in when Tony becomes a risk, but otherwise they aren't involved with Iron Man at all. He doesn't take missions from them, they don't give him missions. They place Romanoff on him because they know he could be dangerous, and they need someone internal to keep him (and possibly that big stock of Stark Industries weapons in storage) in check. They didn't expect whatshisname to attack; that was a surprise. And they STILL don't take point on that investigation. We see nothing of them trying to put him in their own containment unit, he just goes into a normal French prison and never gets interrogated (that we can see) by SHIELD.

It isn't until he and Hammer unleash an army of drones to attack the Expo that they do anything, and that's because it's damage control of a direct and imminent threat.

Thor, they go to investigate a series of mysterious artifact that has appeared in the desert, which is pretty much textbook for what their mission is at this point. They make contact with Thor, and they interrogate his connection to them, but that's all pretty standard. At first, he's someone who invaded their base. Then he turns out to be an alien. Both in their jurisdiction.

Also interesting to note that Fury makes it clear that the "situation in New Mexico" is a much bigger priority to him than Tony's meltdown. As in, Fury's attention is on a mysterious object that just appeared, and not on the self-destructing super hero.

Captain America, SHIELD isn't involved until he wakes up. And that's unsurprising, since he's definitely in the realm of weird.

Avengers is realistically the first time SHIELD switches to "work with" superheroes instead of "containment of."

Now we have a human terrorist in Iron Man 3. Why would SHIELD be involved? There's an entire military unit dedicated to the protection of the president, and then multiple others that focus on dealing with homeland and international terrorist threats.

SHIELD doesn't exist to handle those.



That's essentially exactly what the movie did? They brought out the Iron Patriot at a press conference when the government announced he was the center of their plan to handle the Mandarin situation, and then we saw the Iron Patriot going around the world attempting to handle the Mandarin situation. And at no point was Tony involved in the Mandarin situation until he decided to introduce himself into it after Happy got hurt.

And then there was the whole side part of the AIM program, which was the re-branding program that went along with said plan to make Iron Patriot the face (and body) of the anti-Mandarin unit.

And then we see Rhodey continue to be central to the "protect the president" plot line for the whole movie...

Edited, Oct 7th 2013 10:33am by idiggory

Speaking of Iron Patriot, Rhoady (?) is an active member of the US Air Force operating under DOD command, isn't he? I'd think that Iron Patriot operating in the US would be a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act

Right, just like the FBI, CIA, etc wouldn't be involved so why would the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division be involved in a major domestic terrorist threat? There's no homeland intervention or enforcement to be done in stopping major domestic terrorists from killing the US president.

Yeah well, your mom.

Really, you might be technically correct (I'm not about to start combing movie scripts to make a case) but if it takes an internet argument to get to it, it was a failing of the film. Even my wife who actually used to read comics and is familiar with the base material thought it was very strange.

And to be 100% fair, I totally agree with you that the sheer lack of SHIELD was jarring. They only mentioned them once, and that was when Tony was compiling his file on the Mandarin.

I think they should have been at Tony's house after the blast, and I'm surprised that Pepper never tried to contact them post-blast (when she had the other scientist woman with her).

I am okay with them not being a part of the action, due to the timeline. But, I also agree that the movie might have been stronger if they were able to take a bigger part in the events. I wouldn't have minded some Romanoff and Barton action.

I guess the other part is that they structured this story under Tony's narration, which gives them more wiggle room to retcon SHIELD into the events. Though that works MUCH better in print form than in movies.

This definitely wasn't my favorite of the Marvel films so far. I'd say that order is Avengers > Thor > Iron Man > Captain America = Iron Man 3 > Iron Man 2.

Though, to be fair, there's a pretty big gap between IM3 and IM2.

Sure, but was Iron Man 2 worse than Spiderman 3?