Snappy Answers To Silly Critiques (**Spoilers For Iron Man Three**)

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR IRON MAN THREE--BEWARE.

I thought Iron Man Three was rather good. Still, any movie has it's flaws, and is subject to legitimate critiques.

These critiques, however, are not legitimate.

I. WHY DIDN'T S.H.I.E.L.D. OR THE OTHER AVENGERS COME TO HELP OUT? HUH?!?

Yes, I am certain that every time Iron Man has faced off against the Mandarin, all of his allies showed up to help...

Err...OK, I'm sure that whenever Tony faced off against AIM and assorted other super-villains, S.H.I.E.L.D. was right there to help--they'd never let Tony go solo...

Ummm...All right, if ever a colossal menace threatened our entire federal government, there's no way that the Avengers would let Iron Man face it all on his lonesome...

Well...you have to acknowledge, if Tony Stark were believed to be dead, well, every super-hero and secret government agency would be there to pick up the slack...

Look, the problem with this critique is that it also applies to virtually every issue of every hero's solo title EVER. OMG, the Red Skull has the Cosmic Cube--how come Captain America has to deal with that alone? Brainiac about to destroy Earth? Where the hell is the Justice League? This is one of those things we accept with a wink and a nod in our comics. It's Comics Trope 101, right after "glasses or a domino mask won't hide your identity!" But because it's in a movie now, some people think it's somehow different. It's not. In the Marvel Movie Universe, not everyone is going to show up in every movie. Deal with it.

Plus, the movie explains it fairly well. Rhodey tells Stark that the government doesn't want any super-heroes involved in this. See how easy that was? The other guys listened, or were busy. And when Stark did get involved only he had all the data and the smarts to figure out where to go. For all we know, Hawkeye and Black Widow were looking for him or the baddies--but they had no clue where to start. Easy peasy.

II. OMG TONY STARK HARDLY SPENT ANY TIME IN HIS ARMOR!! I THOUGHT THIS WAS IRON MAN 3, NOT TONY STARK I!!

Fair enough, because really, who would ever want to see Tony Stark playing secret agent?

Urrr...no one would ever desire to see Stark out of the armor...that's the only reason to see the mvoie or read the comic--to see him as Iron Man!!

Maybe the blunt summary at the end ("the armor was becoming a cocoon") was too subtle. But the whole theme of the freaking movie was Tony finding himself and becoming less reliant on the armor. So, no, we didn't need more "Tony as Iron Man" scenes.

As for me, I enjoyed seeing CSI Tony, Secret Agent Tony, Mechanic Tony, etc...

III. TONY WAS REALLY STUPID FOR GIVING OUT HIS ADDRESS ON LIVE TV

Yes, because no one in the world knew where Tony Stark lived. It's not like he took reporters back to his crib for intimate encounters; he never threw huge birthday parties with hundreds of guests there whilst doing Iron Man tricks. Nope, his home was a classified secret.

Yes, publicly challenging the Mandarin like that was reckless and stupid, as he acknowledged. He was distraught over Happy, and his other troubles had him way off his A game. But giving out his address had nothing whatsoever to do with his being attacked (unless we assume that our villains can't use Google, or even a phone book). And, in Tony's defense, the helicopter attack on his home was absolutely nothing like the Mandarin's M.O. He was expecting a suicide bomber, not air-to-ground missiles.

IV. STARK TOLD RHODEY THE ARMORS WOULD ONLY WORK FOR TONY--BUT PEPPER USED IT!! WTF?!?

Yes, but all of the armors at Rhodey's portion of the battle were older armors. The one Pepper used each time was the Mark 42, which was an unfinished prototype, so presumably it hadn't been finally "set" to the "only-Stark" setting yet. It probably would have worked for Rhodey, too, but it didn't show up until after he left. Or, alternately, Tony did specifically design it to work for Pepper, to better protect her...he just didn't want to hurt Rhodey's feelings by telling him that.

Thus endeth the rant.