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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
The one shot doesn’t clear things up in that front, though it does fiddle with expectations a bit.
The stinger makes you think that Tony’s there to talk to Ross about recruiting Banner. The one shot clarifies that the WSC actually wanted Blonsky for The Avengers, and Tony was there as a False Flag Operation to ask for Blonksy on SHIELD’s “behalf” but be so obnoxious that Ross would refuse.
IIRC, IM 2 (and the Avengers itself, I think) explains the shift as the original attempt to set up The Avengers failing between films.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 7th 2019 at 7:20:18 AM
If you want to get technical, Iron Man 2 is supposed to take place before the events of The Incredible Hulk. During the ending when Tony's talking with Fury, we can see news footage of the Hulk's fight with the military in the background. So the events of Iron Man 2 happened, then The Incredible Hulk and Thor roughly happened at the same time afterwards.
There's a reason the tie-in comic at the time was called Fury's Big Week.
Oh, please, we all know Doctor Strange found plenty of timelines where they won against Thanos. He just cherry-picked out one where Tony Stark also dies, as punishment for backsassing him too much.
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Isn’t it supposed to be all around the same time?
Like, wasn’t it that Thor getting sent to Earth created a wave of strange weather, which can be seen being reported on in the background in Iron Man around the time Coulson leaves for the midwest, and which creates the thunderstorm that Banner and Betty run into in TIH?
One thing I noticed in the interview for What If? is that the showrunner seemed to shoot down the rumor that each MCU movie would be getting its episode. She also cautioned that the objective was to "hopefully see the majority of the characters from the movies," but made it sound like that isn't a sure thing.
Given that the two Spider-Man movies were actually Sony productions and not actually done by Disney (despite Feige producing), I'm guessing those two won't be getting episodes. Though I wonder if Marvel and Sony would be willing to have Tom Holland voice Spider-Man in an episode based on Civil War or Infinity War.
There's an episode that is just "What If Spider-Man wasn't in the MCU?" and it covers the events of Civil War, Homecoming, Infinity War, Endgame, and Far From Home. From that point forward, all What If episodes using those movies take place as spin-offs of that first episode, and it's eventually revealed that Phase 4 of the MCU is taking place in the universe Spider-Man isn't in.
Ah, Iron Man 3. This is probably one of the most polarizing of the MCU films. I've seen people praise it for its unique approach for an Iron Man movie, and condemn it for the same reason. You can definitely tell it's a Shane Black movie, so it has that going for it.
A little late to this, but I'd say my top 3 MCU moments, in no particular order, are:
- The fight on the rainbow bridge set to Immigrant Song.
- Bucky and Cap's fight at the end of Winter Soldier.
- The Mysterio illusion sequence.
There's a lot of other moments that I'm quite fond of, ( Yondu's funeral being a very close runner-up) but those are probably the three I like the most.
they're gonna find intelligent life up there on the moon/and the canterbury tales will shoot up to the top of the best-seller listI haven't actually bothered to watch Iron Man 3 in so long, and last time I did, I felt like the film had severe Ending Fatigue.
It literally feels like the film is about to wrap up three times, before it's shown that Tony Stark has to go rescue someone else... and then Tony has to fight the main villain, and save Pepper !
Oh yeah, and that whole thing with the Mandarin which has long been discussed as well.
The only good moment in Iron Man 3 that I ever remember is The Stinger.
Edited by Brandon on Sep 8th 2019 at 9:30:31 AM
Like creepy stories? Check out my book!It’s kinda funny that IM3 was made before the MCU gained a reputation for using Generic Doomsday Villains with copies of the heroes’s powers, since IM3 tried to make an intentionally generic villain with the Mandarin, and Killian is generally considered disappointing regardless of having a completely unique power set.
Edited by Tuckerscreator on Sep 8th 2019 at 9:48:39 AM
The problem with Killian is that he's actually pretty generic in a different way. He's yet another evil scientist, with a rather generic petty grudge against Stark. Mandarin, by contrast, was a type of villain Iron Man hadn't gone up against yet, and his motives (some hatred of the west, I gathered) were more compelling than the petty revenge plot.
Mind you, the movie has other problems, too. I find the plot of veterans becoming suicide bombers a bit offensive, for example. Also, this might be a sort of nitpick, but removing the arc reactor from Stark was a bad idea.
Leviticus 19:34The veterans weren't becoming suicide bombers. Killian was covering up their deaths by having a fake Mandarin claim that they were bombings.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersI think Killian would have benefit as a villain if they cut out his personal connection to Tony. It adds nothing to the film and only serves to muddle the conversation surrounding him. He's got a pretty interesting plot and I actually like that much of his villainy is a reaction to a f*ck-up rather than a deliberately conceived master plan.
This isn't really about getting revenge on Tony. The only reason Tony's even involved is because Maya's hit a dead-end on cracking Extremis, and they need Tony's brain to finish the work. That works just fine in a vacuum, no personal connection required. But putting "Tony slighted me!" into his character motivation causes people to still slot him into the 'Angry Dude Lashing Out at Tony Stark Specifically' category.
Both Killian and the film as a whole would have been better off if he was just a bad guy Science Dude using fake terrorism to disguise his explosive failures, and then targeted for reprisal against one such explosion by Iron Man. And also if they didn't call him the Mandarin.
Also, if he was Maya Hansen. That would have worked too. Could even keep the personal connection if he's Maya. We've had plenty of "Tony Stark ruined my life" villains, but the only competition for "Tony Stark helped me create my evil plan! I owe your doom to Tony Stark!" is Ultron.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 8th 2019 at 11:30:21 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.That was basically Maya’s motive in the comic. She wanted the boatload of money that would come from a military contract, figured pitting the Extremis subject against Iron Man would show America the formula’s incredible potential, and convinced herself she just wanted the fast war money to get Extremis into the peaceful medicine field sooner. There wasn’t any revenge component.
For me they just needed to rethink Killian from the ground-up. There's too little to distinguish him from Justin Hammer and Obadiah Stane in the previous films. He's effectively Stane without the Parental Substitute shades with Tony or Hammer without being Laughably Evil. His character, as it is, is comparable to Ezekiel Stane (rich playboy motivated by perceived humiliation). If they had made him that it'd already be an improvement, which says something about how generic Killian is.
He'd actually probably have worked better as a take on the actual comics Justin Hammer, the old, Professor Moriarty-esque enigmatic Diabolical Mastermind.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Making the villain Maya instead of Killian would've served the plot better, but it still has its problems. Essentially, the first female Big Bad in the MCU would've just been a jilted lover of the hero. It doesn't necessarily have to be framed like that, but there still would've been shades of that in her motivations.
Iron Man 3 is also in this weird place in that it was basically written to be the final film for RDJ as Iron Man. His initial contract with Marvel was up at that point, so this could've been his final film (I don't remember if he was already contracted for Age of Ultron at this point). It makes some of the creative decisions make more sense such as destroying the Malibu mansion, Tony blowing up all of his suits and removing his arc reactor.
How would you guys feel if this did turn out to be the final appearance of Iron Man in the MCU? While I like the film, I think what we got with Tony afterwards was a more dynamic route for him and ultimately was a better send-off by Endgame.
Edited by chasemaddigan on Sep 8th 2019 at 2:16:10 PM

There was a lot of Early Installment Weirdness at the beginning of the MCU.
My various fanfics.