Is Iron Man 3 The Most Divisive Comic Book Movie Yet?

Reading the comments section on any of our many Iron Man 3 articles this weekend has shown us one thing: Our readers hate Iron Man 3. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Or else they love it and think it's the best thing since bread sliced with Wolverine's own claws and turned into Watchmen toast. In either case, they're very passionate about it and they'll do things like making the same negative comment on repeated stories or following "haters" around to correct them that, No Sir, This Movie Is Awesome. Yesterday's story on the five biggest flaws in the film provoked immediate scolding from fans who felt we were too harsh, too picky or just plain wrong--a half dozen of such comments in a matter of minutes on Facebook alone--but it also almost immediately became one of our most popular stories of the day. For my part, I thought the movie was beautifully-executed and technically great (I gave it a B+)...but I feel no particular need to watch it again and think it will likely suffer with repeat viewings--especially the long, slow chunk in the middle where there's very little Iron Man and it's mostly "Tony and His Li'l Buddy Play Internet Detective." More on that below. Iron Man 3 feels like a movie that's made for critics, and made for a gargantuan opening weekend (which it's expected to have) but not necessarily to have the same kind of insane durability and repeat business that The Avengers did for a month.

And, yes, in spite of being a movie that's made for critics, it still scored a 77% on Rotten Tomatoes--far closer to the forgettable Iron Man 2 than to mega-hits like Iron Man or The Avengers. Part of that could be that the movie is so self-aware; the original Iron Man and certainly The Avengers had a sense of fun to them in spite of the films's high stakes, and this movie lacked that in any organic way. The plot was truly dire, things looked bad, all of the leads were in peril. It was dark. Director Shane Black seems to have been aware of that, and tried to give the film a shot of humor and fun in the form of Harley, whose subplot wasn't strictly necessary but nevertheless provided most of the energy of the film's second act. The artificiality of seeming to consciously create something that came organically in the past created an unsettling effect for me, and probably some other viewers as well (and I liked the film). It seems that whenever a director tries to get too precious with comic book movies--and to make a film that will garner mainstream critical acclaim as an objectively good stand-alone movie outside of the context of superhero films or the universe of the Marvel movies--there's a segment of the audience that's unable to "get" what the filmmaker is trying to do, and another segment of the audience who demands it's the best comic book movie of the year, whether or not it's actually any fun. In all likelihood, this film will build a substantial fan base among comics readers and other fans, while others will continue to maintain that it's the place the franchise went totally off the rails. Again, just like The Dark Knight Rises. What Black does next will be as interesting as where the Iron Man franchise goes next. It's also worth noting that, as with The Dark Knight Rises, this film probably had a vast majority of its audience fall in the middle, thinking, "Yeah, that was pretty good" or "Nah, not really for me," but not feeling passionately enough to go out and rant about it on the Internet. But the most vocal parts of the audience can't quite meet in the middle on this film the way they have unabashed hits like The Dark Knight and The Avengers, or dogs like Green Lantern and Iron Man 2.